Success Story - Jessica Scott

Occupation: Student

Age: 27

Fitness challege: Bikini Competitor

I have struggled with my weight all my life; I have gone through phases where I was athletic, and I’ve dieted, but I’ve never known how to make those tools work together to give me a body I liked. I’ve never thought of myself as a “girly girl”. I was always a daddy’s girl who liked science and cycling and martial arts. I was one of those cerebral women who convinced myself that size 2 girls were born like that, and that “real women” had curves. Despite my attempts to convince myself, I was never happy in my own skin. When my college friends and I went out I was always the biggest girl in the group, trying to hide my muffin top under my designer blouse, and I was very aware of it. I have an eye for fashion and when I looked in the mirror my clothes never looked the way I imagined they should. One day I went shopping for designer jeans. I cried in the Nordstrom dressing room when I discovered that I could barely zip up their largest size. My parents are overweight, and I had promised myself that I would never wear clothes from a plus-size store. That did it. They say “you have to decide that you are sick and tired” before you can make changes in your life. I was thoroughly ashamed of myself and I decided I was going to do something about it.

I tried Weight Watchers and it worked for a while. With a lot of hard dieting, I went from a size 14 to a size 8. I loved how I looked but I was still skinny-fat and as soon as my discipline wavered, I gained weight again. I was hungry all the time, and every time my blood sugar dropped I got cranky, which was hard on my relationship with my husband!

That was when I met Kristi Tauti. A friend of mine had transformed her body in the matter of a couple of months and I was amazed with her results. She referred me to Kristi, who evaluated my body composition and talked to me about my lifestyle. Kristi takes a very personalized approach, no two of her girls have the same diet or exercise program. I admit I was a skeptic; I didn’t think I had the body type to ever be thin. When she first evaluated me I was 171 lbs. and 36% body fat.

Kristi started by telling me to read The Eat Clean Diet by Tosca Reno, to put us on the same page. She taught me to fuel my body with clean foods, use weight training to build a furnace, and use cardio to burn extra calories. In the right proportions these tools work together to build an excellent physique, and Kristi specializes in finding that formula. It is different for everyone. I won’t deny that I had to put in hard work and discipline to make it happen, but I had done that before. This time, I had the right formula to follow and it paid off. In 5 months I lost 34 lbs, weighing in at 137 lbs and 11.7% body fat. I was officially a size 2! I took 3rd place in my first bikini competition and qualified for nationals next year.

I can not express my gratitude to Kristi for showing me how to change my body. My whole world has changed as a result. If there is one thing I could change about training with her, I would have done it sooner.

- Jessica Scott