By Jonathan Fletcher

When did you feel the best you ever have?

Did you play a sport in high school or enjoy being active at the pool or at the park on the weekends? Did you do intramural sports in college or go skiing with your family in the winters? Maybe you even stayed active after college and continued to feel great.

It’s funny how time can go by so quickly and before we know it, we don’t feel anything like that person anymore. I think it happens so gradually that we don’t even notice how the small changes and choices we make every day add up to big changes.

Let me tell you how that happened to me and how I have been able to reverse it.

I never exercised for exercise sake EVER growing up. In high school I played basketball with my friends all of the time and we would mess around outside just being “active” in general. I was pretty darn fit.

I worked part-time all through college so the most active thing I did during that time was sell shoes at FootLocker for 12 hours in a row, with the occasional basketball game on the weekend.

As far as food goes, it was $.99 bean burritos at Taco Bell and a huge styrofoam container of white rice for $1.50 for lunch and pasta or pizza at night. Oh, and a lot of Mountain Dew. Gallons and gallons of Mountain Dew.

Blakley and I got married (we met working at FootLocker), I graduated from college and got an office job wearing a suit and tie every day. If you know me now that probably makes you chuckle. I’m a jeans or shorts and a T-shirt kind of guy. Really all I did at that job is look forward to lunch. My other 20 something year old coworkers and myself were standing at the door at 11:00am sharp of whatever chain restaurant or buffet we had chosen for the day. We’d be in a food coma at our desks by 2:30pm. After an hour commute home, Blakley and I would usually pop a pizza in the oven, make a bowl of pasta shells with butter or throw some microwave meals in the oven and settle down for a few hours of TV time.

After a year at that office job, with Blakley's support and encouragement, I quit and started a real estate company. I traded in the cubicle and suit for a desk in our spare apartment bedroom and a pair of cargo shorts. That was really all that changed as far as my health went though. Still no clue about what I was putting in my body and still no exercise. I was gaining weight slowly without even realizing it.

By the time this picture was taken in 2004 I had gone from about 165-lbs to 200-lbs little by little. Even more so than the weight on the scale, I didn't feel healthy. I hated the way it felt sitting in a a chair or in my truck with my belt digging into my stomach fat. I felt gross.

Over the next few years Blakley became more active, going to classes at the 24 Hour Fitness that we were members of. Sometimes I would go and use the elliptical machine while watching the news. I don't think I ever broke a sweat. Our diet improved a little, but not much. We just didn't know any better. Almost everything was out of a box or from a restaurant.

By 2008, I was going through a bad experience with anxiety and panic attacks. It had a deep impact on my emotional and physical health. I had constant stomach aches and irregular digestion. Weight was falling off of me because I lived in fear of being out in public and having a stomach ache or a panic attack, so I didn't eat much. I dropped back down to about 165-lbs, but I still wasn’t healthy. During this time, we also found an outdoor bootcamp that we both ended up really enjoying. I would say it was the first time I enjoyed exercise.

In 2009 we moved to Tennessee and we wanted to continue to improve on what we had started with the bootcamp. I remembered seeing one of my friends from High School posting something about CrossFit on Facebook, so I sent her a message about it. Once we got to TN, we found a CrossFit gym, and that is when things took a turn for the better. I was still dealing with anxiety, but it was improving as I learned to let go of the things that I cannot control. Through the CrossFit gym we learned a little more about nutrition. We were steered toward eating more whole foods vs. processed foods and our overall health and feeling of well being was improving every month. I was still rail thin at this point.

We moved back to Houston in late 2010. 2010-2014 were pretty much a blur for me. I'll save that for another blog post. Let's just say I maintained the little bit of fitness and health that I had gained over the last 4-5 years.

By 2015, Blakley was already a CrossFit coach at Rice University and Village CrossFit and was set to attend a Starting Strength seminar put on by Mark Rippetoe at his gym Wichita Falls Athletic Club. Due to a freak ice storm, I accompanied her. It was here where Mr. Rippetoe personally told me that I was underweight and that Blakley was going to leave me if I didn't weight 200-lbs by next week. He was exaggerating (I think) but I got his point. I was scrawny and under muscled. I took some time off of CrossFit and focused solely on doing strength training and eating a lot of food. Still not much of a clue about what to eat and how much, but I ate a lot. I bulked up to 185-lbs pretty quick but once again, I felt pretty gross. Big belly and 2 or 3 chins. Looking back it was not a smart approach.

In late 2015 I got injured. I tore part of my left glute pretty badly, and I bulged 2 discs in my low back. So there I was, overweight again and unsure about what to do. I knew that I had to lose some of that 185-lbs that I had rapidly gained, so I needed to learn how to do that while working around those pesky injuries. That is what lead me to develop my own style of training and to start learning about the importance of nutrition.

I read everything I could and listened to as many experts as I could find podcasts for. Over the next year or so of educating myself, doing the workout program I built and doing classes at Blakley's amazing gym that she opened, I had made great progress.

I learned the importance of consistency over perfection. I learned about calories and energy balance. I learned about the importance of food quality and quantity. I learned about the importance of recovery and sleep. I learned about the things that make most people get stuck. I learned about sustainability.

I'm not done learning, and I want to help as many people as I can change their lives and understand their bodies. I want them to make the same changes that I was able to make so that they can understand what it feels like as an adult to have the energy that they had in their youth. I want to help people feel confident when they see themselves in the mirror and know what It feels like to not be overwhelmed when it comes to food and food choices.