Team Bios

Amie Mitchell
Trainer & Instructor

Once upon a time, in a land and time not far from here and now, there was a not-so-young girl who was fat…

… and now I’m not. Really, I used to be well over 200 pounds! I was so ashamed. I was so unhappy and felt that no matter what I did, it wouldn’t matter to anyone. I felt like I didn’t matter to anyone. I didn’t know I was depressed at the time, but looking back on it now I know I was. I would however, come out from my depression and also out of my shell. There was one brief moment in time, one defining moment when I knew I wanted to change how I was living my life. I look back on this defining moment and call it my “Ah-Ha!” moment. You know the moment where that little light bulb over your head lights up when you get a terrific idea, although, my terrific idea was more of an energy than an actual idea. This energy would drive me to do something, anything different in my life to make it happier. Happiness was my goal.

I was 18 and just graduated high school. I had no college plans and all of my friends were going to their first choice colleges. No joke, all of my friends…first choice colleges. I didn’t even bother applying. I was scared of even colleges rejecting me, too. Why wouldn’t they? I mean, everyone in my life did…or so it seemed anyway. It was so demeaning. I felt like such a loser. On top of that, I was fat. Did I mention that before? My parents were divorced; I lived with my dad; my mom and I had a lousy relationship; my dad worked all the time; I practically ran the household. Waa-waa-waa. Enough about that though. I’ve been through therapy. I don’t really need to relive that moment again for the ump-teenth time. I love my parents…both of them immensely! We’ve worked through our “issues” and they truly did the very best they knew how to do, and at the end of the day I learned that I was responsible for myself!! I had to stop blaming everything else in my life. This was a battle. This was my battle. Me vs. food (and I have a strong love and connection with food) and this was my personal battle, not anyone else’s. Food fit any mood I was in. It gave me pleasure…salty. It was there when I was sad…sweet. It was there when I was lonely…spicy. Food loved me for who I was. It never talked badly to me and it never wanted something in return. I could always find it and I could always find it cheap!

One afternoon while sitting with my best friend on my bedroom floor, I was crying to her because of how repulsed I was with myself because I was fat and wasn’t going to college. My senior year was going to be over in three weeks and I had zip, zero, nada to show for it! Cry, cry, cry was all I was doing. It was at this particular time that she turns to me to deliver this verbal doozie. “Well, at least you have your health.” At least I have my health!!! Was she kidding? These were her heartfelt words of comfort. I mean out of all of the words in the English language, she chose these to string together in a sentence! If you are wondering if this was my “ah-ha!” moment, it wasn’t.

My moment came immediately following when after this hideous comment was said to me, I was so steamed that all I could think of doing was getting in my car and getting the heck out of there. I didn’t know where I was going but I knew I couldn’t stay there anymore. So I drove about a mile and a half and that’s when it happened. This wave of happiness literally swept over me, like someone had poured a bucket of warm butterfly kisses all over me. But just as quickly as it came, it left.

I hadn’t experienced that sensation of happiness in such a long time. I can’t tell you what caused it either. Maybe because instead of staying and listening to all of the bad things that people had to say to me, I didn’t stick around. I picked myself up from that humiliating situation and just left. I took control of me. I think it might have been the first time I had really every done that too.

I loved how I felt in that brief moment and I knew I had to have more of it! Where do you find such a feeling? Do these feelings just come or can you create them? Once you found them, how do you make sure you don’t lose them or that no one can take them away from you?

Well, in my situation, it was on a trial and error basis.

First thing I did was pack up my truck and moved to Virginia. I loved it there. It was peaceful and green. It was a fresh start. It was when I lived there that I found out about calories. I was sitting at the dinner table eating my THIRD bowl of cereal (a pre-dinner snack) when my aunt said to me “do you know how many calories are in each bowl of cereal?”

“What’s a calorie?” I half-heartedly asked because I was much too interested in reading the comics and one-liners on the cereal box.

I was glad I was sitting because here came another verbal wallop. She told me “that in everything you eat there are calories. Some foods have more, some have less. We should be burning the same amount of calories that we consume every day. If we have too many, we get fat.” Wait a minute. Was she calling me fat? I mean I was and I knew I was, but she was family. She is supposed to love me for who I am…all that I am. Anyway, I’m glad she said it. If it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be where I am now.

She continued: “We should be burning the same amount of calories that we consume every day. If we have too many, we get fat. Our body just saves up any of our unburned calories for a rainy day,” (like when I decide to go on a hunger strike for some lost cause or when I think it might be a great idea to go out hiking in the Sahara Desert and happened to get lost and stranded without any food and you have to live off the fat of your ass and thighs that you’ve worked endlessly to create for such a time as this one) Yeah, those kind of rainy days. “If you add exercise to the equation then the total amount of calories that you burn at the end of the day could be much more than if I were to sit around on your duff all day. The harder and longer the exercise, the more you calories you’ve burned.” This was simple math!

Once this was all explained to me, I realized that all I needed to do was to count the calories I ate every day and to speed up this process I added exercise to the equation. It was all I could think about. During this time I had no access to computers since they weren’t something that everyone had yet. So I bought a book on all kinds of foods and the calories they had. That is all that was in the book. I carried it and my piece of paper that I would journal my calories on around with me everywhere. I knew that in order to lose weight I had to be consuming less than what I burned for the day. It sounded simple enough. However, I soon realized that therein lays the problem though. If anyone has ever been on a diet then they know how hard it is to keep your mind off of food. Thoughts of food haunted me! That’s when I decided to get a hobby. I decided my new hobby was going to be finding new ways in which to make exercise entertaining. During this time I realized that “exercise” per say is not that entertaining, and it took me awhile but I realized that it’s in staying active that I derive pleasure. So I tried anything that kept me moving and far away from the fridge. I set goals for myself like, no fast food for one week. When this wasn’t too much of a stretch for me I decided to make that my New Year’s resolution. I stuck to it for 8 years, by the way. I would tell myself that today on my walk I would run between trash cans. This is when people would leave their trash cans curbside I would walk to the first one and then between trash can #1 and trash can #2 I would run. I would do that just until my halfway mark and then I could walk the rest of the way back home. It progressed from there. Soon it was running between trash cans the entire way, to running the entire thing, then extending the distance I would run, then timing each run trying to beat my previous time. Each time I exercised I made it different than the last.

Even though I was learning so much and was seemingly happy, at the end of the day I was lonely. I began to miss my family and home. So after about a year in beautiful Virginia, I packed up my car again and moved back to California.

Once I got back I decided to go to college. I would go to community college just until I figured out what I wanted to do when I “grew up.” After 2 years of community college, I applied to Cal State University Fullerton. I was in a great relationship with a man that would someday become my husband and also knew I didn’t want to be far from home again. I was accepted into CSUF and was declaring Business as my major. It was so boring! Snoozeville, and the semester had only just started. I was talking to my stepfather one morning and he asked me why I wanted to be a business major. I told him it was because I could make a lot of money in business. He laughed out loud and then plopped on my lap what was to be yet another golden nugget of insight….

“Honey, doing the things you love is what makes you money, and exercise and food are the things you love, not business.”

He was a genius! Without a second of hesitation I changed majors from Business to Kinesiology. Kinesiology in case any of you are wondering is, the study of human movement. Ahhh, those were beautiful words to my ears. I loved college! I loved it not for all the cliché reasons that everyone tells you why they loved college so much. I loved it because this was my passion! I tried soaking up every morsel of information that was given to me. Anatomy, exercise physiology, physics and how it relates to sports, and nutrition were my passions. My dad was a physician and we were able to quiz each other about muscles and bones and exercise. He was so helpful and it was really nice to have something to connect with him about too. So, I ended up finishing up my degree, with an added emphasis on Exercise Physiology in record time and also found time to get married along the way.

Now what? Where do I go from here? I had to get a job. Where? A gym! I applied and I got the job and now I was officially a Personal Trainer. I had a uniform and a badge and everything…very official. It was a wonderful transition for me and I learned a lot through them, but what I really took away from my experience there was how I made my clients feel. I helped them set realistic goals for themselves and that at the end of the day they should feel great about how much they have already achieved, instead of focusing on how much farther they had to go to reach their goal. I became pregnant and decided it was a good time for me to leave the gym. I branched out on my own and became successful at getting and maintaining a private clientele.

I was able to train and be pregnant. Once I delivered my gorgeous son, most of my clients were such regulars that they insisted on coming to my house and workout so I could be with my son. It also gave me a great excuse to use some of their time to get my own workout in so I could take off my own baby-weight. 30 pounds worth! I wasn’t really allowed to exercise the last 4+ months of my pregnancy so during that time I made packing on the pounds my daytime job. I was fantastic at this! I exceeded even my own expectations. However, I stunned even myself when all of my weight was lost that my post-pregnancy weight was 10 pounds less than my pre-pregnancy weight!

My journey has led me to this point. It has been 6 years since I delivered my son and I have kept off the weight. In fact, I currently tip the scales at 115 pounds. I try to keep my diet on the healthier side but as I first told you, food and I have a strong connection to one another. Pizza, Thai food, and red wine are my Achilles heel. They (minus the wine…ick) are my favorite breakfast leftovers. I try not to eat these things all the time. Do I have to watch what I eat? ABSOLUTELY! Everyone should. Pay attention to YOU. Don’t ignore yourself. Treat yourself well. You deserve it.

I have come up with a motto for myself: “I exercise because I love to eat so I exercise so I can eat!” I realize that my love for food will never go away and if I want to enjoy it and being thin, then all I need to do is burn more calories than I eat. It’s just that simple.