In September 2021, Mallory, her husband, and their dog Roo shifted into gear and rolled out of their hometown of Red Cliff, CO, with their sights set on a grand adventure in their camper van for an entire year. “When I started on the road in September, we were very new to this concept of our life getting about 3000 sq feet smaller. We were sitting a lot, we were driving a lot, and we were driving by all the fast food.”
With the start of their new adventure, Mallory seized the opportunity for a complete transformation and decided to use her time focusing on her health too. “I call it my year of transformation because I transformed my home, I transformed my eating, and during this process, I also gave up alcohol.” After learning about Stronger U in a Facebook nutrition group, Mallory eventually made the leap into personalized nutrition coaching with Stronger U Coach Jeremy. “I knew that by signing up with a coach, the accountability was going to be there, which meant that I had to show up, and that’s what I was looking for. I wanted somebody I could take on the road with me,” Mallory explained.
When she started working with her coach, Mallory expected Coach Jeremy to tell her what to do and what to eat and hoped that she would follow his instructions exactly and start seeing results. Instead, she learned that working with a Stronger U coach empowered her to learn how to make her plan work in her life. At the same time, Jeremy walked alongside her, providing encouragement, support, and advice as needed,
“What Jeremy did for me without me realizing it is he gave me space to figure this out for myself while giving me support…I never felt like I had to meet his expectations; I was set up to meet my own expectations”.
The Stronger U accountability has allowed Mallory to be more in tune with her body and understand how what she is eating might benefit or hinder her ability to feel good. “What I realized was the more I was showing up for myself, the better I felt. And I knew if I didn’t feel good, then maybe I wasn’t making the best choices for myself” over the past seven months working with her coach, Mallory now understands a little bit more clearly how fueling her body right allows her to show up for herself consistently. And her consistency has paid off, and Mallory has successfully lost 40 pounds with the help of her coach, despite some of her concerns of life on the road (including food temptations, access to only a mini-fridge, induction cooktop, and toaster oven, and a lot of time sitting.)
So what does an average day on the road look like for Mallory? When possible, they set up camp near a trailhead, so Mallory can begin her days walking her dog and centering herself before the day starts. “It was a mental shift that I used to think that I had to work out for an hour for it to count. And now I take my dog for a 45-minute walk, and I feel just as good”. One of her biggest concerns of life on the road was falling into a food tourism cycle, ensuring that she didn’t miss a single local delicacy, gas station crunchy, or fast food line. Still, in her seven months working with Coach Jeremy, Mallory has learned how to balance delicious local foods with consistently planned foods to help maximize her enjoyment. “My food tourism got pretty specific. I knew when we pulled into Tennessee I knew I was going to eat shrimp and grits and I knew I was going to enjoy it, but I had to make space for it and got back to my macros the next day.” “You can have those days of celebration. You can have those days where you don’t track everything because Jeremy helped me learn what is going to serve me, what’s going to make me feel good.”
And when asked about Stronger U, Mallory had no shortage of reasons Coach Jeremy is the difference-maker, “I used to be all or nothing thinking that if I screwed up, then it all went to hell and I’d restart on Monday, but it was so debilitating for progress. I’m really excited to put that beside me and realize it doesn’t serve me to treat myself like that. It’s so much easier to stay consistent with small bumps”. Coach Jeremy plans on being by her side for the long haul (#roadpuns), continuing to support Mallory with anything that life throws at her (and Mallory has had no shortage of unique situations, including a trip to Ecuador, her time on the road, and plenty of social gatherings). “It’s nice that when there’s a new challenge, which there always will be, there is somebody who already knows me and knows how I respond and can support me through it,” Mallory explains, “A lot of people have asked me how I lost weight and I just tell them ‘I’m nicer to myself’. I like myself more because I respect myself more and I learned that here”.
“Stronger U makes me feel like a human and makes feel like I’m being supported and encouraged by humans.”
As Mallory, her husband, and Roo hit the open road again this fall, she can charge forward confidently with her consistent approach to weight loss thanks to the continuous support of Coach Jeremy and the Stronger U Community.
