The most important thing to keep in mind is that the key to success is not to do everything at once. While you might be eager to skip ahead, I urge you to stop because you are not connecting with yourself. You are only connecting with the outcome that will not stick around.

I am doing this because I am that woman who lost herself at a very young age and never really understood why she felt so different from everyone else. I was embarrassed to be me, and I felt ashamed. I hated how I looked; I resented my body and held myself back from everything because I was so scared to make a mistake and never wanted the attention to be on me. When I started my journey I was twenty-seven years old. My first personal trainer, Kasia Sitarz, opened my eyes to a whole new world. It was her wisdom and knowledge that taught me to really get in touch with myself.

We had to slow things down and start right from scratch. You see, Kasia wasn’t just any- body. I respected and admired her before I started to train with her. So, when she told me to do something, I never questioned her. I just did it because I wanted to change and needed to be open to learning. One of my first lessons with her was to start listening to my body. I was learning that I could tell my body what it needed to do, and that if I focused really hard on each muscle that I was working on or moving through, my muscle fibers were going to listen and change. It was then that I understood that there was nothing really wrong with me; it was that I was never inter- ested in learning or listening.