Hitch Fit Living Magazine Volume 9 - November/December 2016 | Page 17

Belinda's Story:
Back in November, 2015, I woke up one morning and honestly thought I was having a heart attack. My arms hurt, my
heart was beating out of my chest, my eyes were puffy and swollen, and my head hurt. I took myself right away to see
the doctor who informed me that both my blood pressure and resting heart rate were off the charts. I’d never had high
blood pressure before, in fact it had always been low, and the racing heart rate was new too. He told me if I kept it up, I
was a stroke waiting to happen. He got my attention – in trying to grow my business, I was actually killing myself.
I started on blood pressure meds which got things sort of under control, and confronted by shortening my life, decided
I was going to whip myself into shape – no more excuses. The biggest excuse after running a business for 6 years at
that point was that I simply didn’t have time.
At this pivotal moment, I realized that I didn’t have time not to.
I cut out all the things that were bad for me – salt, sugar, caffeine (oh yes, typical entrepreneur – would drink a pot of
coffee in the morning, then switch to (a lot of) diet Coke in the afternoon), started to limit my lunch-time take-out habit
(because I didn’t have time to plan, right?) and got up and walked every morning. I managed to lose 20lbs, but it took
me 5 months, and I still didn’t feel good, or look well, and my heart rate and blood pressure were still nowhere close to
where they needed to be.
A client nagged – I mean really nagged – and told me I needed to get in shape. When I say nagged, I mean that he
cared enough about what was happening to me to help me see the light. Some time at the end of March, 2016, after
going it alone for a bit, I decided that with a 55th Birthday coming up, I owed it to myself, to my family, and to my
business family to make time to work on me – to be the best 55 year old I could be. So, after emailing Diana and telling
her all my tales of woe, on April 19, 2016, I started my journey with Hitch Fit. I had a long way to go, but signed up for
personal training with Diana and got to work. During the first meeting after weighing and measuring I was confronted
with the terrible truth – that despite my efforts in previous months I was seriously overweight, body fat way up there,
and had some pretty serious things to overcome like chronic arthritis and being so out of shape that just walking on a
treadmill for a few minutes winded me. The phrase “hot mess” comes to mind.
Diana told me that she thought I could get my body fat down to 25%, and lose 20lbs. Being the independent one that I
am, I let her know that I really didn’t think that was going to be possible in 12 weeks, but sure, if she felt I could then
why not? I doubted myself – I was committed to making a difference in my own life – but I doubted myself.