My name is Vinson Smith of Charlotte, North Carolina.
In 2007, I weighed in at 500 pounds; 280 pounds more than my current weight of 225 pounds. After my father’s untimely death in 2005, from aggressive liver cancer, my battle with obesity skyrocketed to another level. I was 16 when he passed. After my senior of high school football, I stopped doing any sort of exercise and started eating through my emotions. I gained over 150 pounds in a matter of months after graduating from high school.
Unfit and unhappy with my life, I decided to make a change. I made a commitment to myself to fight my depression and food addiction. It was finally time for me to face my obesity issues; this was the only way to save my life from a slow suicide. By the time I turned 20, I had lost about 140 pounds, and people had started to notice.
Friends would tell me I looked like a pro football player. I felt good; I had a whole new swagger. I started showing my arms at the gym. But at 360 pounds, I was plateauing — my workouts were no longer really working — and I was tempted to quit.
To reach any fitness goal, your biggest battle will never be on the gym floor or with a trainer, it is in your mind. The football coach at a local high school knew what I was going through — grieving, weight loss — and, in 2009, he asked me if I would serve as a volunteer coach. It was just the opportunity I needed. I started coaching strength and offensive line. The workouts I created for the players, I implemented into my own daily training routines. I began to focus on muscle development and growth and how the human muscle systems work, which caused me to change my body with more purpose.
Coaching also offered me the opportunity to attend a lot of different clinics, which piqued my interest in personal training. In the spring of 2010, I enrolled in a program and became certified as a personal trainer. The personal-training profession gave me an inside look at my food theories and helped me understand that there’s more than one way to lose weight or reach a goal.
The light bulb really switched on when I realized I was an emotional eater. I’m still dealing with that. The key for me is knowing it exists, and then knowing how to counteract it. I know that food is here to fuel me. My diet and exercise has evolved with new goals geared to the lifestyle I want to live. I believe in being flexible. I think that you can and should enjoy food; however, we need to try and “be good at eating bad!”
With 8 years of experience in the fitness industry and my own success in my weight-loss journey, I am motivated to coach thousands to achieve their goals. In addition, I want to be of assistance to trainers in growing into better coaches for their clients, by showing them not the just basic principle of fitness training but by teaching them the mindset of a client that is faced with extreme anxieties when it comes to their state of health and wellness.
Too often, you find great fitness trainers who have no coaching skill to motivate and build individuals. This does not come from a lack of heart but rather a lack of personal connection to the client’s disorder. My goal is to fill in the blanks for both clients and trainers so that they become an unstoppable team.
–Vinson Smith
Website: www.vs2fitness.com
Email: [email protected]
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