Hi! Welcome to my page! I’m Sandra. I’m a mom, wife, NASM certified personal trainer, nutrition and corrective exercise specialist that strives to have balance in life just like everyone else.
I have always had a passion for fitness dating back to grade school, but often fell into the trappings of the Standard American Diet (SAD), which often limited my potential. It wasn’t until I started educating myself about proper nutrition that I really started to see all the pieces coming together as far as achieving my health and fitness goals and striking that proper balance. Knowing what foods help fuel my performance, as well as figuring out the right training balance has truly been life changing. That is why I feel compelled to share everything that I can in the hopes that it will help others to do the same and live their best life possible.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have it all figured out, but I have “been there and done that” as far as the “wrong” and “right” approaches, and nothing fulfills me more that helping someone find their way to truth health and happiness. Without health, nothing else matters. Living a long, high quality healthy life is my goal and I want to see all of you there right along side me. Let’s Make it Happen!
A Quick Rewind
I grew up in a great little suburban town in New Jersey called Roxbury. I was fortunate to go to a well funded school even though I lived on the “wrong side of the tracks”. Growing up with a single mom who worked nights and my brother, I found myself relying heavily on the Standard American Diet (SAD) of fast, processed, boxed, artificial “food”. As a result, I wasn’t as slim as the other girls, but I was able to fend off some of the bulge naturally through my love of fitness. I always enjoyed going to the gym to lift weights, running, and playing sports. Playing volleyball in high school was probably one of my healthiest outlets growing up. Regardless of the amount of activity, I was still chubby.
As I ventured off on my own for college, I decided to move to Tampa to eventually pursue a degree in Finance at USF. Yes, there was some soul searching and scrambling there. I was always good with numbers and I worked a job that was willing to pay my tuition for a business degree, so finance was a logical path.
As I navigated through my twenties, I had my fair share of yo-yo dieting. I was sick of being chubby, but was not educated enough to know that quick fixes were not the solution. I even did a not so bad attempt at “Intermittent Fasting” without knowing it. Back then I just called it “Starving Myself”.
Fast forward a few years, and I find myself on the same hamster wheel many of us find ourselves, working a desk job in corporate America, where I met my huband. While there were certain aspects of my job I enjoyed and even loved, I was always more excited and passionate about fitness and health. I came across a book that sparked my interest in getting a deeper understanding how the body works and how what we consume impacts health and performance.
From there, I was hooked. I kept reading book after book like The China Study, The End of Dieting, Whole 30, and the like. I was intrigued by the nuances differentiating the various lifestyle diets like Paleo, Vegan, Keto, etc. I really wanted to understand the “why” behind each diet and gave each one at least one test run. It is definitely my belief that you can’t know what works and what doesn’t work for you unless you try it.
Simultaneously, I was falling in love with various forms of HIIT training and really started thinking seriously about putting together my own outdoor classes in a field somewhere. I envisioned calling it YoloFit because “You Only Live Once” and I was ready to go all in on pursuing my passion. I didn’t even care about making money. I just wanted to have fun and help other people get fit. I can’t even tell you how many hours a day I would daydream about having my own training program while sitting at my desk staring at excel spreadsheets. The hard part was being able to rationalize quitting a well paying job to essentially start from scratch to get my program going. As a compromise, I earned my personal training certification and told myself I would start training as a side hustle.
Fast forward a little more, and I got pregnant. My doctor strongly advised against doing any intense HIIT training for extended periods of time, so I decided to put my plans on hold. We were fortunate enough to have a healthy baby girl named Emily. I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her, so I switched careers to be a Stay at Home Mom.
The transition of staying at home and missing out on that adult interaction and being at the beckon call of a baby was tough, but so rewarding at the same time. I don’t regret my decision to leave corporate to spend more time with her at all. It took me a few months, but after I was cleared by the doc, I was able to squeeze in a few workouts here and there, in the back bedroom during Emily’s naps. As she became more mobile and the naps became shorter, that became more difficult.
Fast forward a few more months, and the stars aligned! I had joined the local Moms Club and I received an invitation to workout for FREE at a boot camp style gym down the street from me named Burn Boot Camp. The best part, outside of the insane workout, was the fact that they had FREE Child Watch! I was in heaven!
I quickly fell in love with Burn, and knew this was the missing piece of my puzzle. Within a few months, I started helping out in child watch, then started working the front desk, then started training there. YES! My life goal that had taken second fiddle to having a child was finally being realized!
Not too long after that, hubby and I decided to pull the trigger on opening our own Burn. The journey is taking us a little longer than originally anticipated, but we are now well on our way and should be opening our first location in late Spring of 2019.