New mom adopts baby and fitness regimen
Not every client who decides to commit to our 12-week body transformation is primarily concerned with weight loss. Many enjoy the structure and secondary health benefits that come with being in shape, eating a healthy diet and working out properly. Don’t get me wrong, the weight loss is a nice bonus, but sometimes feeling better, being stronger and having a clear goal to sharpen mental focus can be just as rewarding. This was definitely the case with Keri Schaeffer, who recently completed our program and finished with great success. Not only did she achieve all the above goals, but she also adopted a new baby and looked amazing by the time she finished the transformation.
Keri initially joined my program because she felt she needed something to help knock her out of a funk. It was brought on by the stress from going through several rounds of unproductive fertility treatment and eventually the process of adoption and raising a newborn child. Her journey was much more difficult than it initially sounds. “I already had two children but wanted more because I always loved being a mom, but I suffered from secondary infertility so I went through years of IVF to try to get pregnant again.” Unfortunately, these attempts were unsuccessful and Keri had several ectopic pregnancies and complications, which were very difficult and dangerous to her health. One of them resulted in a life-threatening surgery. At that point, Keri began to consider adoption.
It wasn’t long after Keri made her decision that an open adoption was arranged. This means she not only met with the birth mother on numerous occasions, but even helped with other siblings until the baby was born. Once the adoption was completed, she decided to take a regimen of hormones so she could breastfeed and bond with the newborn more naturally. This worked great, but the end result was weight gain that was difficult to shed due of lack of sleep and the demands of raising a newborn child. She needed something to focus on to get her back into a healthy lifestyle. “I started this program because I was sleeping too much and needed something to motivate me and get me back on track,” she said. So we signed her up and designed a specific program to help her achieve her goals.
Keri had done the program before several years ago with great success, but this time she wasn’t sure how it would work because of the hormones she took. But her body responded very quickly. Since she had worked with us before, we wanted to use some techniques that would shock her body into getting fast results, so we immediately incorporated a tighter diet than before, and added interval training and morning starved cardio, and this combination worked great. Her workout consisted of a combination of weight training, cardio and body weight movements combined into a full-body workout that she was required to do three times a week. We designed it specifically so she could do it at her home gym and not have to leave her baby to work out.
By the time Keri had finished the program, she had shed 20 pounds from her already petite frame, putting her in excellent physical shape. She also dramatically increased her energy level as well as her self-confidence and mental focus. She was no longer sleeping long periods of time, and at one point, she was getting up at 4 a.m. to get her workouts done so she could attend to the needs of her new baby. She also had to buy a lot of new clothes, but she is now in the best shape of her life, so it’s well worth the effort.
Although she was not overweight, her transformation proves that anyone can dramatically improve their shape and physical condition, and her results are inspirational to anyone who would like to accomplish similar goals.
