A year ago I had surgery to remove a tumor and I was struggling. I was defeated. After surgery I started slowly working my way back into the gym. I felt like I was gaining some traction, but still didn’t feel right in my own skin. In December, my husband was at his highest weight he’d been since starting CrossFit, so he started working with coach Alyssa with AIM Nutrition Coaching. The two of us are a great team and always do things like this together, so when he started with AIM I also started tracking macros. But without the guidance of my own coach, I wasn’t making much progress. I enlisted the help of AIM and started working with coach Heather in January 2020, three months after my surgery. My progress was slow, and I had to be super strict (no alcohol, and follow my macros exactly)! I had to trust Heather and this process. There were several emails in the beginning where I whined to Heather about my lack of progress. She kept encouraging me to stay the course and eventually I started seeing progress physically. When the country shut down because of COVID, I was thankful that I had already established some structure around my nutrition. I had goals, motivation, and accountability to keep progressing, even in a time of uncertainty.

My progress with AIM is more than just physical changes. The weekly check-ins always give me something to think about and a goal to set, and this often is not related to my nutrition. For many years, I have greatly enjoyed going to the gym, and for the last 4 years I have grown to love CrossFit. But only in the last 9 months have I really focused on how to get the most out of my workouts. You see, many of my goals were gym-related and specifically related to not comparing my progress to others. Heather helped to keep me focused on the goals that I was setting, flushing out thoughts and ideas that would impede my progress. So while I have made gains physically because of my improved nutrition, the major shift has been about how I feel about the gym.

I’ve lost 20 pounds and 12.5 inches and am now maintaining my progress with Phase 2 of the program. I have a better understanding how food (and alcohol) affects my body. I’ve set multiple PR’s, including several Olympic lifts and gymnastics movements. I can see my abs, which is a side effect of my progress, but was never a part of my goals! The progress that I’ve made over the last year has been well worth the time and money that I have spent being a client of AIM Nutrition.