Amy Aspey is a Life Time Fitness member at the Parker-Aurora club in Colorado who recently committed to vastly improving her physical condition. She had a strong desire to become healthier, fitter, stronger, and to enhance the overall quality of her life. Amy is journaling her 12-week Metabolic Makeover on the Assessments & Testing page every Wednesday. Read about her initial decision to get healthy here, her first week here, and her second week here.

I've been trying to approach this "Makeover" kind of like a science experiment: "If I do everything exactly like they tell me, will I really lose weight and keep it off?"  Well today was my first official weigh-in.  The verdict: I've lost 7 lbs!!!

I've been keeping track of everything I eat religiously.  I break my meals down into all the food categories (starch, fruit, veggies, protein, milk and fat) and I then take the extra step to enter it into an online calorie counting program and confirm that what I ate is close to my daily target calories.  I've been pretty on the money.  And to tell you the truth, 1,650-ish calories is plenty of food.  I'm still able to have the occasional glass of wine or Margarita, I just don't have a second glass.  Same with my meals.  I've simply stopped reaching for seconds.

A while ago, I switched over from doing cardio training on my own to taking classes, because I was so impressed with how many more calories I could burn.  But I've found the CardioPoint workouts are burning just as many calories.  And since the workouts are specifically designed for me, I'm exercising more efficiently and therefore burning more of my stored fat.

When I told a friend of mine that I was doing this Makeover, she was so excited for me!  She said that when you start to improve your fitness routine and nutrition, you get "addicted to the results."  Let's hope she's right. Stay tuned!

If you are interested in documenting your own Metabolic Makeover on the Assessments page, please contact Marissa Kristal.

Disclaimer: The health, wellness or fitness information on this site should not be considered complete, nor intended to represent or replace medical diagnosis, advice or treatment from your healthcare professionals, whom you should consult before beginning or altering any personal exercise, diet or nutritional supplement programs.  The assessment results featured in any testimonial on this site may not be typical.