YEAH, BUDDY! Congrats to our female CSE Winter Challenge winner, Tara!! GET READY! We're sending you to Walt Disney World! 🎢 Talk about a story of resilience, Tara's transformation story is one for the books. After being in a life-changing car accident, she decided she couldn't sit around and wait for life to happen to her, and that it will take effort to reach her goals. And man, did she put in some MAJOR effort during our Winter Challenge! We can’t believe this transformation happened in just 7 weeks! There are so many great takeaways. Way to go, Tara! You're an inspiration to us all!

Congrats, Tara!

What has been hardest for me about reaching a goal is overcoming the barriers that I set for myself. Excuses have kept me from reaching my health goals for years, but CSE has given me the tools and motivation to be more than those excuses.

I’ve always loved playing sports and working out, but these actions by themselves have never equated to me reaching my health goals. Over time, I eventually let my thought distortions and excuses be my driving forces, and from there it went downhill.

Before I knew it, I hit an all-time high weight. I hated being in any pictures and the thought of wearing a swimsuit could make me cringe. My mindset had even switched from enjoying working out, to doing it in hopes of losing weight.

Then, this past August as I was starting to make some progress back to my “normal”, my husband and I were hit by a car while driving to work. This accident left my husband with some serious injuries and left me with more emotional damage than physical. For a few months, not only could I not work out from my own small injuries, but I had become my husband’s full-time caregiver while he recovered. I didn’t know how hard this would be for me personally and my eating habits matched my emotional distress.

Luckily we are doing great now and our roles have switched as he has been my biggest supporter for the past 7 weeks while I’ve been on this journey. One thing I got out of the accident was that I can’t sit around and just wait for life to happen to me, if there is a goal I want to accomplish, it will take effort. 

This is when I found CSE, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. I knew that I didn’t want to join a fad diet, I wanted that healthy lifestyle change everyone speaks of. The more I researched CSE, the more I realized that I had come across something invaluable. I never thought that I would have learned so much about nutrition, consistency and even myself. 

Through CSE many of my sugar cravings have subsided. And when I do have them? There are so many recipes and ways that I can fill those cravings. I can honor my body when truly hungry. I love having the flexibility to switch up meals when something else sounds better. And I even crave a homemade meal over eating out... Something I never thought possible!

I have now learned how to fuel my body instead of starving it. CSE provided me with the tools I NEEDED and gave me a CSE Tribe to lean on. These past 7 weeks have given me back my body - and it’s one that now feels strong. I have rediscovered that love for being active and without the proper fuel and knowledge, I’m not sure I would have found that again.

I’m so thankful that CSE showed me that I can do extraordinary things if I choose to. No excuses need apply. Now I choose to love myself, have major gratitude for my body every day and live my best life. CSE is something that I will continue to do for my life, there is no replacement for what I have gained with this.

I worked out 5-6 days on average a week. My typical workouts consist of a 2 mile jog warm-up and then various circuit lifting workouts based on body part. I did try the sprinting workout in the back of the book and loved it, so will definitely continue to incorporate it. Then the last 2 weeks of the challenge I also added yoga 2-3x a week and have felt really strengthened by this as well!

GET MORE DETAILS ON OUR NEXT CHALLENGE.