I have slowly gained weight since the birth of our first child. One excuse after another kept me from getting back into the gym. The sleepless nights and the long days of work gave me the perfect excuse to eat fast food way too often or to snack on unhealthy foods at any time of the day. It’s easy to look back and see how I could lose control of my weight. Gaining ~10 pounds per year meant that I didn’t notice it was happening. Life in the pandemic was the final straw. Like many people, I gained another 10 pounds during the shutdown period alone. It was during this time that my wife and I evaluated our situation, primarily mine, and made the realization that we needed to use the challenge of the 7th year of marriage to work together on our heath and I believe it’s been the best investment we’ve ever made.

In September of 2020, I decided to start my journey to better health. I told my wife that by the end of our 7th year that I was going to weigh less than I did on our wedding day. This gave me 8 months to lose 55 pounds. My wife was elated to hear that I was willing to give this a try and she committed to supporting me through the process with her own fitness and diet plan. I was thankful to have her support. My wife reached out to Hitch Fit and I was paired with Austin. A few days leading up to my first meeting with Austin, my wife came down with Covid and resulted in me having to quarantine with the kids. This pushed back my start with Austin by almost a month, however I was not going to let another excuse cause me to break my promise to my wife. I was able to lose the first 13 pounds on my own leading up to my first workout.

My 4 months working with Austin have been life changing. I took a quick liking to the science behind the diet plan that Austin gave me. It became an enjoyable math problem to try to meal plan in a way that allowed me to hit the macros as close as possible. The workouts twice per week were amazing. I have a bad knee that I knew would limit the type of workouts that I could perform. Austin worked around my limitations and provided an exercise plan that pushed me to my physical limits but did not leave me gimpy and sore for days afterwards.

During my time with Austin, I lost an additional 54 pounds bringing my total to 67 pounds from the day I made the commitment to my wife. I reached my wedding weight almost a month before my final weigh-in and 4 months before our anniversary date. I enjoyed this process so much that I set additional targets to align with other milestones in my life. At the time of my final weigh-in, I am now the lightest that my wife has ever witnessed, and I’m still not done yet. This program has given me a diet and workout plan that I can and will sustain. And I know that when we celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary, I will have already given her one of the best gifts, a healthier me.”