Fit Girl Yolanda Mitchell- Vice President

My weight loss journey has been a constant up and down struggle for most of my adult life. Both of my parents are deceased due to complications of obesity. Like most woman, majority of my weight gain came when I had my first child.  By the time I had my third child, I was at my highest weight of 315lbs size 26. I’ve always kept myself well put together and had a larger than life personality. In addition to that, not having any kind of health problems almost made my weight not seem like an issue. Deep down I’ve always suppressed the fact that I never liked taking photos because I had a visual of how I really looked. I was always the fat girl in the photos, the “cute for a big girl”.  Everyone around me wanted me to loose weight but it wasn’t until late 2010 I made the decision to do it for myself. At that time my weight started affected me physically.  There were days I wasn’t able to stand or walk because of joint pain as a result of carrying all that weight around. I had tried several medications and even cortisone shoots. My doctor eventually told me I would need to undergo knee surgery or try to work thru the pain and loose the weight. So I took the latter and decided it was time to give it a valiant effort.

First I sought out a nutritionist who showed me how to eat the proper foods to maximize my weight loss. I then started walking and taking water aerobics because the pain was still very present. After the weight began to drop off and I had better movement with my joints, I decided to try zumba classes.  Zumba became such a passion and a place where I gained motivation and inspiration from a group of awesome woman. I never had felt so alive then when I was in Zumba class. Rain or shine sometimes not even feeling 100% at times,  I was there 4x a week at best. It wasnt until I plateaued that I felt like I needed to challenge myself more.  So myself along with 2 of my girlfriends sought out bootcamps, extreme fitness classes and even developing our own routines in an effort to challenge ourselves.

From this a bond formed along with the desire to help other woman with similar stories as our own. We decided to take our passion for fitness along with determination and pursue it professionally. Those efforts has produced the company Fit Girls ROCK Bmore LLC in which I am part owner. We are a growing company that continues to dream big and has plans of expanding in the future. I encourage everyone to never give up or say that something CANT be done because with the right atitude and determination…anything is achievable! #STAY MOTIVATED