Our Spring 2021 Beyond the Challenge Winner, Natalie!

This is my second CSE challenge and the amount I’ve learned about fitness and nutrition is mind blowing. At the beginning of January, I needed to change my mindset surrounding fitness and nutrition. I (like everyone else) was living through a pandemic, I had lost a job I had for 8 years and changed careers, I had gone through an early miscarriage, and I just needed to get out of my funk. 

In my first challenge, I learned about the importance of consistency, and realized that every workout and every meal (even the ones that really don’t feel like it) counts. There were so many workouts where I didn’t want to work hard because I felt like my efforts hadn’t made a difference. It wasn’t until I took my after photos that I really realized how much progress I had made. 

During this second challenge, I was able to shift my mindset during stressful times when I would normally lean on emotionally eating. I’m a first year teacher and was finishing the Spring challenge during my last few weeks of school. Normally, during a time like this, I would let my fitness and nutrition completely go and just blame it on the situation I was in. 

By focusing on my macros, and what I needed to put INTO my body, rather than on what I needed to KEEP OUT of my body, I was able to keep my nutrition on track. While I wasn’t totally on track with my workouts toward the end of the challenge, for the first time in my life I was able to live through a stressful/hectic situation and not default to emotional eating/putting garbage in my body. I never had the feeling of being out of control. 

I have shared CSE with my mom, my sister, and other members of my family because it has changed my life so drastically. It’s not a diet. It’s sustainable, delicious, and has truly changed my life forever!