Okay, truth be told, I was not always fit. On the contrary, for the first twenty-one years of my life, the word “fat” comes to mind…in big, bright, blinking letters, actually. I’d show you some priceless “before” pictures, but unfortunately and inexplicably all photos of me at that weight have been erased from the face of the Earth…or were they all burned as part of what I like to recall as my “fat exorcism” 20 years ago?

Did any of you see My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Well, I basically grew up in My Big Fat Greek House. I ate around the clock, and I hated athletics so much that I skipped gym class a lot…ok, pretty much all the time!  In fact, I had to take gym twice a day for the last week of school just to graduate. Growing up, polishing off a bag of chips or a box of donuts was about as commonplace as brushing my teeth. If you can believe it, I was actually “taken downtown” once for simply “borrowing” a couple of donuts from a local grocery store to satisfy an instant craving. Yes, those were dark – and doughy – days indeed.

In college, I picked up my first sport – smoking. Smoking, I found, mysteriously helped me gain some control over my rapidly worsening weight problem. As a result, I went at it so hard that in no time I found myself struggling to make it up the stairs of my fraternity house without collapsing into a wheezing mess on the floor. Then, in the second semester of my junior year I had my FLIP moment. It was 1982, I was in London, about to turn 21, getting ready to take on the world and suddenly found that taking a simple walk without stopping for a breather was a problem for me. I was studying at the London School of Economics when I made the decision to quit smoking. But there was a problem: every other time I tried to quit, I always had a relapse when I saw the pounds creeping back (sound familiar, anyone?). I had to come up with a plan (this is what we authors call foreshadowing) to quit smoking while keeping the pounds off. At the time, running was the conventional form of exercise. So, run I did…

There I was, all 200-plus huffing and puffing pounds of me, running through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens in the heart of London. People would literally clutch their children in horror as I came lumbering by, assuming I was being chased for something (maybe stealing a donut?!?) since no one that big ran just to run – come on, it was 1982! Slowly, but surely (I hadn’t discovered the strength training secret yet) I began to shed the weight – I’d done it!

When I finished college, I was determined to keep at my eating and exercise program and guess what – I did it!  And it made all the difference in my life. Sure, I looked better. Sure, people didn’t turn and run when they saw me plodding toward them. But truth be told, I actually felt so much better that I couldn’t imagine going back to the way I was before.

Then, about five years later working as a private portfolio manager in Chicago, a life-altering event occurred. I was taking an exercise class on a Saturday morning and the teacher didn’t show. About 100 of us were waiting around until I said, “Well, if someone has a tape, I think I can teach.” So up I went and taught the 8:00am class, and when 9:00am rolled around and the teacher still hadn’t shown up, I taught my second career exercise class. 

That day, I got my first taste of the unparalleled rush you can get from helping someone literally reshape their life. Trust me, there’s no better high in the world! After that, the manager of the club asked me if I was interested in becoming an instructor (at the time, they weren’t into a whole lot of certification and experience). I asked, “What are you offering?” He said, “$4 an hour and a free membership.” I said, “Sold!”

Stay tuned for more on how I turned my passion into my profession by becoming one of the first personal trainers in Chicago.