Eric's Story
My Personal Transformation Story
As a student of Institute for Integrative Nutrition® (IIN) and a member of the Integrative Nutrition®Ambassador Network, I will help you create a completely personalized “roadmap to health” that suits your unique body, lifestyle, preferences, and goals. I am also an affiliate member of the Association for Coaching® and have volunteered extensively. Organizations and causes I have supported recently through volunteering include:
• Promise of Peace Garden - Dallas
• Hope Community Garden - Dallas
• City of Garland, TX (Trash Pickup Day)
• City of Dallas (My Park Day)
• Texas Hunger Initiative
• For The Love Of The Lake - Dallas
• Real School Gardens - Dallas
• Dallas Coalition for Hunger Solutions
• The Salvation Army - Dallas
• Community Garden - FUMC Rowlett, TX
• Motorcops for Kids
• Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
• Bikers Against Child Abuse
• Jeff Gordon Children's Foundation
• Pancreatic Cancer Action Network
• The Diabetes Health and Wellness Institute
In the summer of 2012, healthy living was the furthest thing from my mind. Late one night I was lying in bed channel surfing and came across the movie Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, the documentary about how Joe Cross regained his health by juicing and inspired others to do the same. After watching the movie, I got up, looked at my body in the mirror, and said, “I’m fat.”
At that moment I decided to put together a plan to no longer be fat. I did a lot of intense reading about health and wellness and bought a juicer. I stopped eating fast food and started buying fruit and vegetables instead of frozen entrees, chips, and ice cream. I bought a scale, joined a gym, and had a fitness assessment done. For over two months I rode a mountain bike four miles every day. I enlisted help from a health coach and personal trainers. Sports had not been part of my life since I was a child, but I started to play softball and basketball. I developed a list of twelve goals and a list of things I was tolerating and made a serious effort to change my life.
Three months later my weight was down nearly twenty pounds, and I was no longer considered to be overweight. Today I have adopted a healthy lifestyle and am attempting to influence as many people as possible to do the same. I feel great and have never thought more clearly.
In my search for nutritious/organic places to eat, I joined Yelp and found a whole culture of restaurants I never knew existed. One of my goals was to become more social, so I joined Facebook to catch up with former classmates and relatives. As I began using Facebook, I started looking for more restaurants and health and wellness pages and found local stores that were dedicated to selling the types of foods I was now eating. I met Joe Cross at a Dallas Whole Foods event. At that same event, I met the head of a juicer group and a health coach from IIN.
I found the My Fit Foods Facebook page and entered and won their slogan contest. The prize was entry in the Aramco Houston Half Marathon. I was not a runner and had only two months to prepare, but through determination I became a runner and ended up finishing the race. My winning slogan, “Commit to Be Fit,” inspired me to start a Meetup group with this same name as a way to convince others to begin a fitness journey.
As I learned more about health and wellness, I saw many things that I wanted to change. I became an advocate for a less toxic, healthier world and began to avoid GMO foods and toxic products. My advocacy also began to extend to politics, and I started sending letters to encourage change in what I thought were critical issues.
During this time, the shootings in Sandy Hook occurred. I decided to eliminate violence in my life, first by cutting back on watching it on television. Eliminating television gave me a lot of free time to devote to others. I started volunteering at local gardens, and this inspired me to grow a garden at my home, thereby creating a great source of fresh, organic foods right in my own backyard.
As I got to know more people, more doors opened for me. My goals included being more social and being in a relationship. I joined a local foodies group and ended up meeting my girlfriend through it.
As my life changed, I realized how unhappy I was in my career. The positive changes in my life convinced me that it was time to make another major change. I decided to enroll in IIN and become a certified health coach. Before I even enrolled, I began influencing others to become healthier. I convinced my brother to give up smoking and soda. I bought my mother a Magic Bullet and inspired her to grow her first garden in years. I attended the health and wellness fair at my workplace for the first time and put up a health and wellness bulletin board at work to share knowledge with co-workers.
Through this all, I continued to work out and train so I could enter the Aramco Houston Half Marathon a second time. I ran several local 5K races to prepare. I improved my time and am now planning to improve it again as I run it a third time in January.
As I continue on my health and wellness journey, my next major goal is to open a juice bar. I never imagined that I could completely transform my life in such a short period of time, but I did it. Why don’t you give me the opportunity to put you on the path to do the same?
Warmest Regards,
Eric Roberts
Are you curious about how health coaching can help you? Let’s talk. Schedule an initial consultation with me today.
