SFX Member Testimonial- Lori Henry                                                                                 

 I have been asked to tell my story.  While that is an uncomfortable task for me, I hope that it will encourage others to begin and/or stay the course on their personal health journeys.

I have always been thin with the exception of a 60 pound weight gain during pregnancy.  I watch what I eat and cut back on the calories whenever I have gained 5 to 10 pounds.  So, what happened that changed my life in June of 2012?  I read an article about being “skinny unhealthy” or “skinny fat”.  As I read it, something clicked in my brain.  They were talking about me.  I was thin and I was not healthy.  The next day I received an Amazon Local promotional deal for SFX and I decided to take them up on it.

Well, this was uncharted territory.  I hadn’t been on the “gym scene” since the eighties and that brought back images of disco balls and velour sweat suits images that I would prefer to forget.  I asked several of my friends to join me and I didn’t have a single taker!  Actually, not only didn’t I have a taker but I also had numerous friends that chided me for my quest and, yes, some actually implied that it was an eating disorder issue.  Please know that I have never even remotely had a weight and or image issue.  So, I was on my own.

I went to SFX worried that I was too old and too unfit to fit in.  While they made me feel welcomed, I still felt ucomfortable and cautious.  Those feelings would soon melt away.  My first couple of classes I thought I was going to throw up and was convinced that my heart was going to explode but I bribed myself to continue.  “Just put your shoes and workout clothes on…just drive there…just give it 5 minutes and then you can leave.”  I persevered, always managing to stick it out.

It has been a slow steady adventure.  When I started my BMI was 34% it is now at 14% and I feel great, better than I have in years!   I have taken nutritional and fitness direction from my personal trainer, Jill, even when I thought “I knew better”.  She pushes me when I need pushing and just when I think that this whole exercise thing is getting easy breezy she switches it up again.  Everyone asks me when I turned the corner from “making myself go to the gym” to “wanting to go to the gym”.  I’m not sure exactly when that happened but I will say that a personal benchmark was in December, 6 months into my quest, when a retail sales associate described me as having an “athletic body”.  The first time in my life!