“People always ask me how I lost all the weight, and my answer is always the same: Eating Clean and exercise!”
WHY I GOT STARTED
I always felt embarrassed to be overweight, but never tried to get in better shape because everybody used to say I was cute – that I had pretty face. So I forgot about my body and before I knew it I was fat.
On May 2006 I started to date the man who later became my husband. He is the owner of Tropical Gym in Pompano Beach, a personal trainer and a pro natural bodybuilder. I began going with him to contests and helping him with his preparation. He was always in amazing shape and here I was, 169 pounds. That made me start thinking about my body; about how I want to look and live.
Troy never said anything about my weight, but he started to teach me how to cook and eat clean, how to exercise right, and how to have patience to wait for the results. Plus he motivated me to do my cardio, which was always torture for me! He started training me four days a week and after my training I would do 30 to 45 minutes of cardio. For the first few months it was really hard for me to understand the relationship between my diet and my body, but after a while I started to lose weight and understand better what is good and bad for me.
When I started I weighed 169 pounds and wore size 13. I took two kinds of medicine for depression. Now I weigh 116 pounds and wear size 3! Not only that, but I don't take any kind of medicine and never have been so happy in my whole life.
THE EAT-CLEAN DIET
Before I moved in with Troy I ate very badly. I always ate everything but never thought about what nutrients the food contained. When I moved with him my first question was: "Where are the salt and sugar?" For me it was super strange and hard to understand.
After a while I started to cook, eat clean, drink water and work out. That was when I bought my first Oxygen magazine. There I learned a lot, and I started to read about this amazing woman called Tosca Reno. I could not believe that she used to be fat and now she has that amazing shape! That's when I found my huge source of motivation: Tosca Reno!
I saw the advertisement in Oxygen magazine about Tosca's new book called The Eat-Clean Diet®. I bought it that same week. I was already motivated to eat cleaner than I used to and work out harder than ever.
When I started to read her book, I just could not stop! I read The Eat-Clean Diet in two days! I made all the notes I could and wrote out my new clean grocery list. I cleaned out my refrigerator and started everything from zero. I had been seeing results already because of what my husband taught me, but after I read the book I was ready to make my dream comes true. I wanted a Fitness Model body!
I started to eat cleaner than ever, five or six meals a day without skipping any meal (something that I used to do a lot). I added very important foods to my diet that I had learned about in The Eat-Clean Diet book, such as ground flaxseed, bee pollen, wheat germ and this amazing grain called quinoa, which I'd never heard of before. One day I made the dessert recipe that Tosca wrote in her book called Quinoa Fun Dessert, and fell in love with this rich grain. Now I eat at least one portion of it every day!
As I learned in The Eat-Clean Diet book, for breakfast I have three or four egg whites and a small portion of oatmeal, quinoa or Cream of Wheat with flax seed, wheat germ and bee pollen. I never let more than three hours go by without eating, and every meal has a small portion of lean protein and complex carbs from vegetables or whole grains.
This book and the way Tosca teaches about the clean-eating lifestyle changed my life. Now I love to cook. Every morning I cook all the meals for the day for my husband and me. It is my therapy, the time when I relax and plan how it is going to be another healthy day in my life.
Recently, my mom came from Brazil to spend one month with me. She saw me at the last week before my first competition as a bikini Model in Miami. After my contest I stopped eating clean while my mom was visiting. What a BIG mistake! We had fun, but I ate a lot of bad foods like ice cream, pizza, french fries ... One week later everybody in my gym was asking me: "Barbara, what happened? Are you sick?"
Because I had not been eating clean for one week everything changed in my life. I could not work out because I did not have the energy. My headaches from when I was depressed started again. The skin on my face broke out. I started to wake up at 10 am (I always wake up at 7 am) and to top it off, I missed my period that month!
That was a good and bad experience. It was bad because it felt terrible, but it was also very good for me to learn that my body works very well when I eat clean and exercise hard – and it doesn't work right when I don't. The day my mom left I cleaned my fridge again and started to read The Eat-Clean Diet book one more time!
The book gave me everything I needed to re-start my healthy lifestyle. The next day early in the morning I was at the grocery store buying all my healthy foods. In two days after I start to eat clean again I had my period and in one week my body and mind were in equilibrium again! Now no more breaks in my eating clean! I will do it forever because I want to feel good, stay healthy and fit forever!
My skin, hair and nails are beautiful and stronger than ever. I feel good all the time. I am really happy and I have lots of energy to train really hard at the gym. I used to have cellulite on my arms and from my belly all the way to my knees. After one year of eating clean and exercise I am proud to say that I don't have any cellulite in my legs and belly. The results are amazing and I just started this new plan. I am going to stick with this and I can't wait for the next summer! People always ask me how I lost all the weight, and my answer is always the same: Eat clean and exercise!
As a lover of nutrition, fitness and health I am looking forward to getting my certification in nutrition and personal training, and to make my husband even prouder of me for bringing everything he taught me to the next level.
I am building my dream fitness model body ... and I am almost there!
Thanks Tosca!!
BARBARA ECKONEN
Pompano Beach - Florida