At one time, I ran a blog called Fitterverse: A universe of fitness. One of my favorite features of that blog was an interview series I did with a variety of people at different stages in their fitness journey. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, I’ve been able to recapture the text of those interviews. I’ve published them here on their original publication dates.
Crystal B is a 30-something stay-at-home-mom. She lives outside of Atlanta with her husband and son. Fitterverse found Crystal on Facebook, and was interviewed at a local restaurant.
FV: What made you start your fitness program?
CB: I don’t know why, but from the moment I was able to recognize bodies and healthy and lifestyles… at a young age… I was able to recognize that a lot of people in my family weren’t very healthy. Fitness, diet, and otherwise. So it was something that, honestly, since I can remember, I decided “I am not going to be that way. I am not going to do that.” And it was something that stuck with me.
FV: I’ve heard that from other people who let it happen to them anyway. But you didn’t go that route?
CB: Eventually, I did. I got out of high school, moved to Atlanta. I hadn’t planned to move here, I came for a quick vacation and stayed with an aunt and uncle for a post-school trip. They were a very active, healthy couple, and I saw that what I was in back home was a little bit more… toxic than the environment I was currently in. It was so attractive to me that I started going to the gym with my aunt. Then the gym had a job opening for the front desk. I called home and said “I’m not coming back, I just got a job.” That was it. That’s where it took off.
My first friends in Georgia were trainers and gym owners. I had a great start. It went downhill when I met my husband. I don’t blame him, I blame how comfortable and happy I was. He was a gym rat, I was a gym rat. We went to the gym together. We moved in together. With supporting an apartment together, and we got a dog, and we had jobs that weren’t that close to the apartment. It became the last thing on my list. I just wanted to hang out with my boyfriend who I’d just moved in with and have a great time, and go out.
At one point I got on the scale and I had gone from 110 to 150. I don’t know what made me get on the scale that day, but I was like “Holy shit! What happened? How did I not notice my clothes getting bigger? This was over the course of 3 years, so it was a gradual process. I don’t look at my pictures from ’01 or ’02 and think that I’m obese, but by ’04 I was definitely hitting something. That’s where I fell off. And I’m 5’4″. 150 on a girl at 5’4″ with a small frame…
FV: So you reached that point, and what did you decide to do?
CB: I went and got a gym membership. I went back to the gym where I was working before. I had a friend who had previously done a diet called the Fat Flush plan. It’s the best thing I’ve seen out there. It starts with a two-week detox, where you detox your body from just everything – your liver, your kidneys, all your organs. You start off with no sugar, no caffeine, no carbs. You’re eating, but you don’t use salt, you don’t drink coffee, nothing processed. Once I made the commitment and read this entire book, I got the grocery list from it, I said “I’m done. I’m doing it.” In the meantime, my fiancé and my friends and everyone are hanging out and partying and drinking beer and eating whatever for dinner. I’d steam chicken and take it with me wherever I went because I couldn’t believe I’d got there.
I got very quickly acquainted with meal prep. Prior to that, we were talking about me working in gyms, and that was all fine and great and I was fit and had muscle tone before that, but I’d never really been sat down and talked to about nutrition. That book and that diet catapulted me through the weight loss and getting off those thirty or forty pounds. It was a really good base for getting me where I am today, because it taught me everything. It taught me about processed foods and sugars and salt and what to use and not use and how to control… even if you go out to eat… you don’t want stuff steamed in butter. You just want vegetables.
FV: How long did it take you to lose the weight?
CB: In four months I lost 30 pounds. It was very strict. Over the next two, I lost the last 10.
CB: Because I was on such a calorie-restricted diet, I couldn’t go in and lift heavy. I probably would have killed myself. I wasn’t consuming salt so my blood pressure was low. So I’d go and do cardio and light weights to try and get some tone.
Now I’m in the gym 5 days a week. I weight train 5 days a week. One day if I feel like I had too many beers over the weekend, I’ll throw in a day or two of cardio, intervals, stuff like that. I also always do a mile before and a mile after my weight training.
I love Bodybuilding.com. While my son’s asleep, I’ll spend 2 hours there to build out my entire next month’s worth of circuits by going through all the exercises there.
FV: What do you find hardest to do?
CB: Mental’s definitely the hardest. Nutrition for me, since that diet, is not a problem. I don’t eat because I enjoy it, I do it because it’s required for me to be alive. I’m a very routine, systematic person. I pretty much eat the same thing for breakfast-snack-lunch-snack-dinner every day. I prepare all of my meals at the beginning of the week. I always have grilled or shredded chicken. I’ve always got vegetables. I’ve got the food in the house.
Getting in the gym isn’t difficult for me now because my son is a motivator. I want him to have something, and the gym daycare is great interaction for him.
It’s first thing in the morning, it wakes me up and gets me really prepped for my day. The time of the day that I go it’s mainly stay-at-home moms or moms that work from home, so there’s a lot of kids in there. It’s really good for him because he’s not in any other environment away from me.
The hardest part is not getting complacent with my routines. It would be not going in there and the 3rd week in a row doing the same thing for legs on Monday, same thing for bis and tris on Tuesday, same thing for shoulders on Wednesday, chest and back on Thursday, cardio on Friday. It’s easy to fall into a routine with that because I’m so routine with everything else and then be on the treadmill and think “Man, I haven’t left the gym sore after doing bis for the last three weeks. I really need to do something different today. What am I going to do today?” Then you get in your own head, you get on the floor and start to feel lost and decide “I’m just going to do everything that I did before.” For me, as much work as meal prep might seem, routine prep is as important. You have to be switching it up.
FV: What do you enjoy the most?
CB: It’s just feeling good, the energy and feeling good. Also, going back to the whole family thing and seeing some of my family who weren’t as into doing anything healthy… I remember looking at people who had any kind of muscle tone, or worked out, or just came from the gym or whatever, and feeling that there was a certain confidence that they exude. You just feel better about yourself in every way.
FV: Do you have any advice for people who might find themselves in the same position you were in?
CB: I think the first thing you have to do is put it in your day. It has to be just like brushing your teeth. It has to be a part of your day. Not negotiable. I have to get up and brush my teeth – I have to be in the gym at this time. Period. I leave work, I go straight to the gym. I don’t go home and put up my feet or take off my work clothes at home, because I’ll turn on the TV and feel cozy at home… It has to be a part of your routine. If it’s not, and you don’t have a place for it, don’t make a place for it, it’s never going to be regular. It’s always going to be up and down.