I wanted to escape the bitter cold and enjoy all of the opportunities there were all year long for outdoor activities like hiking, backpacking, and kayaking. Unfortunately, I couldn\u2019t take advantage of that outdoor lifestyle as I had become very sedentary during and since college weighing in at over 300 pounds. In the fall of 2017, I had hit a point where I was tired of being tired and decided to make a change in my life. I made the decision to begin my weight loss journey and by following a sensible diet and changing my lifestyle I was able to lose over 100 pounds.<\/p>\n
It had been years since walking into a gym and the staff and Group Fitness Instructors at the Y made it comfortable for me when I was first getting started and kept me motivated to keep at it. The first (of many) group exercise class I attended was a Cycling class and I quickly discovered the value of working out with others and that having that team environment was essential in keeping me motivated to continue. My main goal as a Group Fitness Instructor is to have the opportunity to motivate others to make similar lifestyle changes and continue with their journeys as the Y Instructors did for me during my own ongoing journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Member Spotlight: One of the biggest and most impactful changes I made in my life was joining the Y. The Y made it comfortable to walk into a gym.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-member-spolight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/ahwatukee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/ahwatukee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/ahwatukee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/ahwatukee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/ahwatukee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/ahwatukee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":352,"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/ahwatukee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/ahwatukee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/ahwatukee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/ahwatukee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleyymca.org\/ahwatukee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}