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| Tracey Garito Mahaney |
My Story
I have been where you are.
I have been where you are.
In my 40+ years I have lived many different diet and exercise programs and I can assure you it has not been a linear process. I have been fat/overweight. I have been through stages of extreme dieting and extreme exercising. I have suffered from disordered eating and starved myself down to 95 pounds. I know what it’s like to not want to look in the mirror. I know how it feels to hate being naked. I know how it feels to be so unhappy with your body that you hide it under layers of baggy clothes. I have been where you are. I was constantly researching the latest diet and exercise strategies (and fads) searching desperately for that magic pill. Every time I heard about a new diet I had to try it. You name it I’ve done it. I was frustrated that no matter how hard I tried I was never able to achieve lasting results.
After every failure (which was often) I always defaulted to the same behavior. And instead of figuring out why I had failed (or rather, what behaviors had failed me), I’d move on to the next extreme diet/exercise strategy hoping this time things would be different.
It took me over twenty years to finally realize that it isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. What works for one person may not work for another. Through research, experience, trial-and-error, self-examination and self-experimentation I have found a sustainable plan that creates real significant lasting results. The truth is there is nothing magical about it. It was just a combination of behaviors that added up to big results.
When I set out to write my first book, Be Ye Transformed, I knew I didn't want it to be just another diet book. If I have learned one thing over the years it’s that just knowing what to eat and what not to eat is not enough. The difference between success and failure for me meant a complete shift in my thinking and a change in my behaviors. My goal is to draw from my experience and share what has worked for me, the specific actions I took, and the behavior change strategies I employed that have allowed transformation to happen and resulted in lasting change. I want to share any details of my journey that may help you reach the same results in your life, even if your path looks slightly different from mine.
Over the course of my lifetime my diet and exercise programs have changed and evolved. Below is an overview of the chronology.
Stage #1 – The Standard American Diet
Growing up I was always active. As a child I enjoyed playing soccer, tetherball, kick-the-can, and flashlight tag, riding bikes, playing in the dirt and building forts with the other kids in the neighborhood. In middle school and high school I played field hockey. I wasn’t coordinated, fast, or athletic enough to be good, so they made me a goalie (No offense to goalies! I’ve played with some really good ones).
For the first 16 years of my life I ate a conventional diet which consisted of a lot of processed foods. The staples included lots of cereal, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (made with white bread), frozen burritos, Ramen noodles, Pop Tarts, spaghetti and M&Ms – not much different from most kids and teens at the time.
Stage #2 – The Low-Fat Era
Unfortunately my teenage years coincided with the “low-fat era” where the idea was if people just reduced the fat content of their diet they would be improving it. It also happened to be the time that I began to shift my focus to my appearance. It was then that I began to use diet and exercise to control my shape, size and weight rather than for health and enjoyment. I made my diet and exercise reflections of who I was as a person. When I was not what I would consider perfect I deemed myself a failure. My self-worth was based on my appearance, specifically the size and shape of my body. The staples of my diet included still more processed food loaded with additives, preservatives, chemicals, artificial sweeteners and added sugars: dry pasta (seasoned only with salt, pepper and Butter Buds), bagels with Promise Ultra fat-free margarine, “healthy” cereal with skim milk, “lite” bread, soft pretzels, diet soda, Slim Fast, and fat-free Snackwell cookies. (Carbs, carbs, and more carbs). On the rare occasion I would eat chicken but I thought it was too high in fat to consume on a regular basis. As long as I consumed zero fat and stayed under my allotted 800 calories for the day I was okay as far as I was concerned.
I was a very skinny (95 pounds), very hungry (starving), very unhealthy (sick), very sad (depressed) little girl. Every morning, when I opened my eyes, the first thing I thought about was what I would eat that day... and what I wouldn't eat. My self-worth depended on whether I ate foods off of what I referred to as the "good" list or the "bad" list. Each night I'd go to sleep vowing that tomorrow I'd "be better." I counted calories in everything... sugarless gum (5 calories), black coffee (5 calories). I knew nothing - and cared little - about the nutritional value of what I was eating. It didn't matter if it was processed, had no expiration date and an unpronounceable ingredients list a mile long. As long as it wouldn't make me "fat," that was all I cared about. Hunger pains gave me a sense of control. But I had no idea then how out of control I really was.
Stage #3 – Starvation Diets and Binge Eating
I continued to starve myself until one day my body just rebelled. I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was the day before Thanksgiving 1990. My grandparents were visiting for the holiday and I wanted them to taste the chocolate chip cookies I had made from scratch. As a way to strengthen my willpower, I would often bake cookies and cakes but not allow myself to eat them… and if I could get others around me to eat them it would just prove how strong I really was. I was in awe at how my grandparents were able to enjoy a cookie (or two!) without a second thought. And they didn’t even seem to show any guilt, shame or remorse afterwards. It was fascinating. So the thought occurred to me that maybe I could have a cookie… just one. What harm would it do? So I had one. And the flood gates opened. After having several cookies I pulled out a box of Kix cereal and proceeded to consume three bowls. Now this may not seem like a big deal to you, but for a 16 year-old with a messed up self-esteem and a distorted body image that had spent the past six months starving herself down to a “petite” size three, consuming two chocolate chip cookies and three bowls of cereal in one sitting was a VERY big deal. That moment was a turning point for me… and not in a good way. In November my size three Gap jeans hung loosely on my hips. By February, less than three months later, I had gained over 40 pounds and was barely squeezing myself into a size 13/14.
I spent the next several years on a roller coaster ride of starvation diets, binge eating, diet pills, over-exercising, self-destructive, obsessive-compulsive behaviors and lots of therapy. My workout routine was sporadic at best and consisted of mostly cardio. I had no interest in being strong or even healthy for that matter. All that mattered to me was being skinny. It was a nightmare that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. You couldn’t pay me any amount of money to go back to that period in my life.
Stage #4 – A Gym Rat is Born
By the grace of God, when i was around 20 years old, I was introduced to weight training by a friend and immediately fell in love with it! I spent my life at the gym. I did forty-five minutes to an hour (or more) of cardio every day and then your traditional body-builder type split routine: chest, shoulders and triceps on day one, back and biceps on day two, legs on day three, one day off and repeat. I read everything I could get my hands on about health, fitness and nutrition.
Then it dawned on me—Why not get certified? So I did….and that’s where my personal training journey began, with a basic personal training certification and a position as a trainer at a New York Sports Clubs (NYSC). The more I learned, the more my own workouts evolved. I began adding flexibility, mobility, core, balance, stabilization and power training to my programs. But I still couldn’t pull myself away from the long, boring workouts and one-hour long cardio sessions every day. I even had a staff member approach me one day and say, “The treadmill asked if you could please take a day off. It’s tired.”
In 2000 I completed my first marathon. I was proud of my accomplishment but really I just did it because I thought for sure that the training regime (lots and lots of running) would make me skinny. I continued with my low-fat, high-carb, fat-phobic diet, yet still couldn’t manage to get rid of that extra ten pounds of fat I was carrying around. I was baffled.
Stage #5 – The Low-Carb Craze
In the late 1990s and early 2000s came the “low-carb craze” when low carbohydrate diets like The Atkins Diet and other diets with similar principles became the most popular diets in the country. Willing to try anything, I jumped on the bandwagon. It was the first diet I had tried up to that point that “allowed” me to eat meat and fat without (as much) fear. Yet I still found myself on a diet then off a diet then back on a diet… and every Monday was day one.
After every failure (which was often) I always defaulted to the same behavior. And instead of figuring out why I had failed (or rather, what behaviors had failed me), I’d move on to the next extreme diet/exercise strategy hoping this time things would be different.
It took me over twenty years to finally realize that it isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. What works for one person may not work for another. Through research, experience, trial-and-error, self-examination and self-experimentation I have found a sustainable plan that creates real significant lasting results. The truth is there is nothing magical about it. It was just a combination of behaviors that added up to big results.
Over the course of my lifetime my diet and exercise programs have changed and evolved. Below is an overview of the chronology.
Stage #1 – The Standard American Diet
Growing up I was always active. As a child I enjoyed playing soccer, tetherball, kick-the-can, and flashlight tag, riding bikes, playing in the dirt and building forts with the other kids in the neighborhood. In middle school and high school I played field hockey. I wasn’t coordinated, fast, or athletic enough to be good, so they made me a goalie (No offense to goalies! I’ve played with some really good ones).
For the first 16 years of my life I ate a conventional diet which consisted of a lot of processed foods. The staples included lots of cereal, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (made with white bread), frozen burritos, Ramen noodles, Pop Tarts, spaghetti and M&Ms – not much different from most kids and teens at the time.
Stage #2 – The Low-Fat Era
Unfortunately my teenage years coincided with the “low-fat era” where the idea was if people just reduced the fat content of their diet they would be improving it. It also happened to be the time that I began to shift my focus to my appearance. It was then that I began to use diet and exercise to control my shape, size and weight rather than for health and enjoyment. I made my diet and exercise reflections of who I was as a person. When I was not what I would consider perfect I deemed myself a failure. My self-worth was based on my appearance, specifically the size and shape of my body. The staples of my diet included still more processed food loaded with additives, preservatives, chemicals, artificial sweeteners and added sugars: dry pasta (seasoned only with salt, pepper and Butter Buds), bagels with Promise Ultra fat-free margarine, “healthy” cereal with skim milk, “lite” bread, soft pretzels, diet soda, Slim Fast, and fat-free Snackwell cookies. (Carbs, carbs, and more carbs). On the rare occasion I would eat chicken but I thought it was too high in fat to consume on a regular basis. As long as I consumed zero fat and stayed under my allotted 800 calories for the day I was okay as far as I was concerned.
I was a very skinny (95 pounds), very hungry (starving), very unhealthy (sick), very sad (depressed) little girl. Every morning, when I opened my eyes, the first thing I thought about was what I would eat that day... and what I wouldn't eat. My self-worth depended on whether I ate foods off of what I referred to as the "good" list or the "bad" list. Each night I'd go to sleep vowing that tomorrow I'd "be better." I counted calories in everything... sugarless gum (5 calories), black coffee (5 calories). I knew nothing - and cared little - about the nutritional value of what I was eating. It didn't matter if it was processed, had no expiration date and an unpronounceable ingredients list a mile long. As long as it wouldn't make me "fat," that was all I cared about. Hunger pains gave me a sense of control. But I had no idea then how out of control I really was.
Stage #3 – Starvation Diets and Binge Eating
I continued to starve myself until one day my body just rebelled. I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was the day before Thanksgiving 1990. My grandparents were visiting for the holiday and I wanted them to taste the chocolate chip cookies I had made from scratch. As a way to strengthen my willpower, I would often bake cookies and cakes but not allow myself to eat them… and if I could get others around me to eat them it would just prove how strong I really was. I was in awe at how my grandparents were able to enjoy a cookie (or two!) without a second thought. And they didn’t even seem to show any guilt, shame or remorse afterwards. It was fascinating. So the thought occurred to me that maybe I could have a cookie… just one. What harm would it do? So I had one. And the flood gates opened. After having several cookies I pulled out a box of Kix cereal and proceeded to consume three bowls. Now this may not seem like a big deal to you, but for a 16 year-old with a messed up self-esteem and a distorted body image that had spent the past six months starving herself down to a “petite” size three, consuming two chocolate chip cookies and three bowls of cereal in one sitting was a VERY big deal. That moment was a turning point for me… and not in a good way. In November my size three Gap jeans hung loosely on my hips. By February, less than three months later, I had gained over 40 pounds and was barely squeezing myself into a size 13/14.
I spent the next several years on a roller coaster ride of starvation diets, binge eating, diet pills, over-exercising, self-destructive, obsessive-compulsive behaviors and lots of therapy. My workout routine was sporadic at best and consisted of mostly cardio. I had no interest in being strong or even healthy for that matter. All that mattered to me was being skinny. It was a nightmare that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. You couldn’t pay me any amount of money to go back to that period in my life.
Stage #4 – A Gym Rat is Born
By the grace of God, when i was around 20 years old, I was introduced to weight training by a friend and immediately fell in love with it! I spent my life at the gym. I did forty-five minutes to an hour (or more) of cardio every day and then your traditional body-builder type split routine: chest, shoulders and triceps on day one, back and biceps on day two, legs on day three, one day off and repeat. I read everything I could get my hands on about health, fitness and nutrition.
Then it dawned on me—Why not get certified? So I did….and that’s where my personal training journey began, with a basic personal training certification and a position as a trainer at a New York Sports Clubs (NYSC). The more I learned, the more my own workouts evolved. I began adding flexibility, mobility, core, balance, stabilization and power training to my programs. But I still couldn’t pull myself away from the long, boring workouts and one-hour long cardio sessions every day. I even had a staff member approach me one day and say, “The treadmill asked if you could please take a day off. It’s tired.”
In 2000 I completed my first marathon. I was proud of my accomplishment but really I just did it because I thought for sure that the training regime (lots and lots of running) would make me skinny. I continued with my low-fat, high-carb, fat-phobic diet, yet still couldn’t manage to get rid of that extra ten pounds of fat I was carrying around. I was baffled.
Stage #5 – The Low-Carb Craze
In the late 1990s and early 2000s came the “low-carb craze” when low carbohydrate diets like The Atkins Diet and other diets with similar principles became the most popular diets in the country. Willing to try anything, I jumped on the bandwagon. It was the first diet I had tried up to that point that “allowed” me to eat meat and fat without (as much) fear. Yet I still found myself on a diet then off a diet then back on a diet… and every Monday was day one.
Stage #6 – Training for Ms. Figure
In that same year I left the “globo gym” world and opened a one-on-one personal training franchise. I finally had “my own place.” In addition to working one-on-one with clients, I trained and developed a solid team of trainers. I was running a successful business and helping hundreds of clients reach their health and fitness goals. But I still was not at peace with myself and my body.
Stage #7 – Clean(er) Eating + the Zone
By 2007, after years of research and self-experimentation, I had cleaned up my diet quite a bit. I was making food choices that I believed would not only help me get lean, but that would also make me healthier. My main staples were egg whites, grilled chicken, broiled salmon, steamed vegetables, green salads, fruit, nuts and a small amount of whole grains, dairy and soy products. My cereal / grain consumption was typically in the form of sprouted grain breads, steel cut oats, and, occasionally, brown rice. My dairy / soy consumption was typically in the form of soy milk (with my oatmeal), cottage cheese, and skim lattes. I was also committed to strict adherence to the parameters of Dr. Barry Sears’ Zone Diet which meant weighing and measuring everything I ate. Thirty percent of my calories came from low-glycemic carbohydrates, forty percent from lean protein, and thirty percent from “good” fat.
Stage #8 – Paleo and CrossFit
In 2009, I was out one night having dinner with my good friend, Karianne – a fellow trainer, and former co-worker at NYSC, whom I respect and admire immensely. She had just gotten back from a CrossFit Level 1 Seminar. The excitement and enthusiasm was coming out of her pores! I had heard of CrossFit and had even done an occasional WOD (Workout Of the Day) here and there, but nothing consistent. In addition to talking about CrossFit she also mentioned a way of eating called the Paleolithic Diet – commonly referred to as the caveman or paleo diet – which I had never heard of before (I’ll talk more about the details of the Paleo Diet later). For the weeks and months following my dinner with Karianne, her words replayed over and over again in my head. My interest was piqued.
When I first heard about the paleo diet naturally I had some reservations. By that time, my diet was pretty good compared to most people I knew… I was finally healthy and I felt good. At least I thought so. The modifications necessary for me to “go paleo” were relatively small. I couldn’t imagine it would make much of a difference. But I was curious enough to give it a try. Boy was I in for a surprise! Within days I noticed a dramatic improvement in my energy levels and sleep quality. I noticed my sinuses were clearer and my skin glowed. Within a week I actually started to notice a change in my body composition (with seemingly little effort). In less than two weeks I stopped craving the foods that at one point I couldn’t imagine living without (sugar, grains and starchy carbs). Over the next few weeks my bowel function normalized (Halleluiah!) and I no longer experienced the post-meal bloating and indigestion that I just attributed to overeating. My athletic performance improved – I got measurably faster and stronger. At the age of 35 I was looking, feeling and performing better than I ever had in my life!
That same year I completed the CrossFit Level 1 Certificate Course, closed my one-on-one personal training studio and became a CrossFit affiliate… transform CrossFit was born. In June 2009, transform CrossFit opened its doors at 10 North Main Street in Pennington, New Jersey. Since the beginning, we had three primary goals: 1) to educate our clients and our community on the benefits of CrossFit and Paleolithic Nutrition, 2) to change lives and 3) to pursue excellence.
For the first time in my life, thanks to the paleo diet, I have a healthy relationship with food and my body.
Before discovering CrossFit and paleo, I completed two figure competitions and three marathons, and I can honestly say that, at 42 years-old I am in the best shape of my life. And the best part is it doesn’t just stop at my workouts. It has translated into every area of my life. It has changed the way I feel, the way I look, the way I think. It has given me the courage to step out of my comfort zones and try things that, before, may not have seemed possible.