Thank you for allowing me this space to provide a testimonial of my personal health growth since joining 306.
Let’s rewind 18 years to when I was 10 years old and diagnosed with hypothyroidism. I was seeing a specialist as I was a very young case to have this disease. I was a 10 year old stuck in a 6 year olds frame, therefore I was the ‘chubby’ kid. I never excelled in sports, music was main my passion. I always used hypothyroidism as my excuse, however my co-worker just the other day commented on how I likely used that for so long to cover up the real problem – I was just plain lazy.
In 2013 my roommate (Luke Gordon – most members at 306 know who he is) had tried to persuade me to sign up, however it was not until the very end of the year that I decided to finally try it out. I was coming occasionally throughout the week in hopes of slowly getting better. In the period of time between then and now I took a couple short breaks to do some missionary work (another passion of mine), but other than that I’ve been committed. I love the feeling of a good, sweaty workout.
I am a Civil Engineer and work as a Project Manager which means a LARGE portion of my job is sitting at a desk. I love the feeling of getting off my butt and hitting the gym after sitting at a desk all day.
At the beginning of December 2015, I decided enough was enough, I was ready to be a full timer. I dedicated myself to being at the gym 5-6 times a week and monitoring my portions of food. I can’t thank Jason enough for always pushing me to get a good work out in, however not too much that I didn’t want to return LOL.
One of the things that I’ve noticed since becoming a full timer in December is the fantastic community that 306 has. I love the friends that I’ve made and the pieces of advice they’ll give me when I’m struggling with a movement. I’ve lost approx. 25 lbs but most importantly I love how my body has changed its composition. This has only motivated me to work harder to obtain the ultimate goal, “FITNESS”.
Something I found interesting was I went to the doctor to have my thyroid levels checked, they took my blood pressure and heart rate prior to seeing the doctor. My heart rate was 52 BPM!! When I went in to see the doctor, she wanted to look at my thyroid levels as it can be a telling sign that my levels are becoming more ‘hypo’ or ‘low’. To her surprise, my levels were actually on the ‘hyper’ or ‘high’ side of the normal range. I told her that I’d been working out substantially more and maybe that would correlate with my lower BPM. She had no question in her mind that I was right. She pulled up a graph of my resting heart rate since I began seeing her; June 2015 - 75 BPM, November 2015 – 66 BPM, December 2015 – 64 BPM, March 2016 – 52 BPM. I cannot believe how much my overall health has improved in such a short time – WOW!!
Thank you for all the support in the last 3 years and the extra push these last few months - just when I needed it. Jay explained one class that in a world that is constantly polluting our well-being, giving Jason that 1 hour a day is the best gift you can give yourself – and that gift is FITNESS. Not a doubt in my mind that both Rebecca and Jason are succeeding at this each day they decide to give themselves to our Reebok 306 Community. THANK YOU!