Tony DiQuollo

“Lost 35 lbs, Body Fat 25% to 9 %, Pant Size 36 to 30”

I would guess that a lot of people who start to gain weight have that one moment, be it an honest look in the mirror or an unflattering photograph, where they realize the train is running off the rails and have to make a choice about their future.  That choice for me was simple really: continue doing I’d been doing and end up being somewhere in between the Blob and Rosie O’Donnell by the time I hit 30, or take control of my life and get the help I needed to be fit.  When I found Rob at RobZFitness about a year ago, I knew two things: he and his team were the guys I had been looking for, and it wasn’t going to be an easy fix.

A little backstory: When I first started at RobZFitness, I wouldn’t have described myself as fat.  I was only 22 at the time after all.  Then I got a little dose of reality when I had my body fat checked for the first time and it came out at around 25%. Twenty. Five. Percent. That means a quarter of my body weight (around 200 lbs at the time) was pure, gooey, gelatinous flab.  That probably sounds as sexy to anyone reading this as it did to me at the time, and it was all the motivation I needed to keep me on track.

Aside from shining a light on how out of shape I really was, the first thing Rob did when I started was outline an eating plan. Much to my chagrin, Doritos, cheesecake, and Peanut M&Ms weren’t in it. But let me tell you what Rob told me, and what I’m pretty sure everyone already knows anyway: A SUPPORTIVE EATING PLAN IS OVER HALF THE BATTLE. It took a few weeks to get into the groove, but after I did, eating healthy food became pretty easy.

I ended up staying at RobZFitness for about half a year, and my experience there was pretty amazing.  Both Rob and my trainer, Taylor, were fun guys and easy to talk to about anything during the workouts (for me this was mostly baseball). Not only that, but they were encouraging and interested in making sure I was doing everything the proper way to help me get the best results possible.  That kind of moral support is really critical to anyone trying to lose weight, and I was certainly no exception.

I’ve been on my own since August, but I still follow Rob’s plan because IT WORKS. I’ve had to replace my pants twice, moving from a size 36 to a size 30, and my shirts have gone from a squeezing into a medium to fitting comfortably in a small. I also enjoy having my neck back, being able to play sports for as long as I want without sucking wind, and just being stronger in general. And in about a year’s time, that ugly 25% has turned into a much-easier-on-the-eyes 9%. It wasn’t easy, and I’ve had to sacrifice a lot of things that I enjoyed once upon a time. But it’s like Rob says: Nothing tastes better than looking good feels.