A glimpse into Stacy Dill's life changing journey

By Stacy Dill

As we go through life, "life happens", how we react to it is what determines the outcome. My "outcome" was depression, becoming overweight and struggling with fitness. I once armed myself with Prozac, Ambien and food to get through the "emotional pain," then I noticed something in the mirror. The girl staring back at me wasn't me, so I took one big scary leap of faith and headed to Jeremy Scott Fitness for the first time.

My first day included a lot of anxiety. Surely I was going to die. That day I asked Jeremy to help me change my life, to help me lose 100 pounds and yes, I cried while asking.

The 3 Keys to My Success

Nutrition - Learning to eat by macronutrients. Welcome to MyFitnessPal ...tracking food, if it goes into your mouth, you log it and the goal is to hit your set numbers of grams of proteins, carbs, and fats. Re-learning how to eat is hard, but as Jeremy explained to me if I didn't learn how to do it myself then how would I be able to do it for the rest of my life? I stumbled many times while I was working to change my eating habits. When bad days happened, I was reminded that the "old me" would have eaten much worse.

Fitness - Day 1 at the gym; my anxiety was off the charts but I didn't die! Enduring 20-30 minutes of fat burning HIIT was its own kind of hell for me. I don't think I noticed my own progress till my clothes started to fall off.

Soon my fitness expanded outside of the gym. One day I walked into Jeremy's office and told him I wanted to start hiking, his response, "well then, go hiking." I was back to being terrified, my anxiety level turned up to high. With every step, I told myself, "if you want to be a better hiker, go hiking."

This type of dialog turned into a cycle with him and I... I'd want to do something new related to my fitness, be scared to go do it, tell Jeremy about it, and he'd say, "go do it." I'd take a lot of deep breaths and acknowledge my anxiety then get to it. I might suck at it, but each time I'd try I'd suck a little less.

Mindset - I read Jeremy's book Make Success Mandatory. The book is filled with inspiring, self-confidence-boosting motivation and goal setting concepts. I learned to not settle on being average. I didn't know this book would be the thing I would lean on to keep going, especially on the days when I just wanted to quit. It's also what helped me take another big scary step. I wanted to get off the Ambien and Prozac. The withdrawals sucked but I kept going. June 2015 was when I took my last pill and my mind is clear.

MY Journey Doesn't End...It Never Will

I started at 42% body fat and now 2 years later, I'm around 25% (that is a whole 90 pounds lighter). All of these changes; my new habits, my new way of eating, my dedication to fitness & goals, these are LIFE CHANGES. This journey doesn't end, the eating healthy doesn't end, and the fitness doesn't end. This is where people (including the old me) get stuck. For some reason, we think that we can go back to old habits and still maintain how far we have come. It doesn't work that way, if you leave fitness, if you leave eating healthy, all of your accomplishments that resulted because of those will leave you.

This is where people (including the old me) get stuck. For some reason, we think that we can go back to old habits and still maintain how far we have come. It doesn't work that way, if you leave fitness, if you leave eating healthy, all of your accomplishments that resulted because of those will leave you.

For some reason, we think that we can go back to old habits and still maintain how far we have come. It doesn't work that way. If you abandon exercising and quit eating a healthy diet, everything you earned through living a healthy lifestyle will disappear.

The person I am today is the person that was lost inside me. When I look in the mirror I no longer see a stranger, I simply see me and I'm happy.