{"id":8096,"date":"2013-07-16T11:39:37","date_gmt":"2013-07-16T15:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leehayward.com\/blog\/total-fitness-bodybuilding-spotlight-melinda-allen\/"},"modified":"2019-08-01T09:59:07","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T13:59:07","slug":"total-fitness-bodybuilding-spotlight-melinda-allen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leehayward.com\/blog\/total-fitness-bodybuilding-spotlight-melinda-allen\/","title":{"rendered":"Total Fitness Bodybuilding Spotlight \u2013 “Melinda Allen”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today you’re going to meet Melinda Allen<\/strong>. A single mother of 3 who totally transformed her health and fitness by losing 77 pounds in just over a year!<\/p>\n

Melinda’s story is a very inspirational one that a lot of people will be able to relate to… <\/p>\n

She went from rock bottom; going through a divorce, being overweight, suffering from bouts of depression, and feeling like she had no purpose in life. And through bodybuilding she was able to totally turn her life around. <\/p>\n

Not only does she look and feel 100% better, but she is motivating her children to live a healthy active lifestyle as well.<\/p>\n

Just check out Melinda’s “Before”<\/em> and “After”<\/em> pictures.
\nHer physique transformation is nothing short of amazing!<\/strong><\/p>\n

I encourage you to read Melinda’s story below because it’s a prime example of the benefits of living a healthy bodybuilding lifestyle. If you know of someone personally who could benefit from reading this, please feel free to share it with them.<\/p>\n

\"Melinda
\n


\n\"Melinda<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Hi,
\nMy name is Melinda Claire Allen. I live in Shreveport, Louisiana. I am a registered nurse and a single mother of three beautiful boys, ages 15, 9, and 7 years old. <\/p>\n

I initially started working out to loose weight, gain confidence in myself, and develop a healthy outlook and attitude in my life. <\/p>\n

When I started my weight loss journey last February, I was going through a divorce and was a complete mess. I suffered from depression and was riddled with self-doubt. <\/p>\n

At 210 pounds I never had the energy physically to do any of the things that I aspired to do with my children, as well as within my social circles. I had lost complete hope and confidence in my physicality and self worth. These issues made me very unhappy and caused great conflict and despair. I felt like I had no sense of purpose or meaning in my life.<\/p>\n

But thankfully during this time I was blessed to have fallen in love with a wonderful man who shed a new light on my life and helped to build my mind, body, spirit, and character. He began to shape this wonderful journey that was about to unfold. <\/p>\n

With unconditional love, motivation, and support, a “team”<\/strong> was born and it gave new meaning to my life. He became my life coach, my best friend, and educated me about the mind\/body connection. <\/p>\n

Our initial goal was to shed all these layers of weight and self doubt that had built up over the last ten years of my life. These layers were composed of insecurities, pity, feeling sorry for myself, laziness, and a poor attitude and lack of self worth. <\/p>\n

Caring for my father, who had suffered a recent life threatening condition, gave me that much more strength and willpower to “make it to the finish line”<\/strong> not only for myself, but for my beloved family. <\/p>\n

As my layers of fat began to melt away I noticed my world and my children’s world became much happier and fulfilled. At this point, this gave me THAT MUCH MORE motivation to obtain my small, step-by-step, weekly and monthly attainable goals!<\/p>\n

Some of the many challenges that I faced were balancing my nutrition, building muscle, and obtaining the proper exercise regimen. At the beginning of this incredible journey, I really had no idea or concept of what living a healthy lifestyle REALLY meant! <\/p>\n

Finding the delicate balance of private time for myself was indeed challenging. However, through hard work, dedication, perseverance and sacrifices on a daily basis, I began to learn the true definition of what living a healthy lifestyle was really all about. I also discovered my passion for dance, running, and aerobics.<\/p>\n

Learning how to focus on the positive and not “rushing”<\/em> my weight loss and muscle building progress was indeed a challenge as well. Instead of “beating myself up”<\/em>, I began to learn the difference on how to make “good”<\/strong> healthy choices vs. “bad”<\/strong> destructive choices. This was certainly not an easy mountain to climb, especially for a southern girl who loved to eat fast food and did not understand the importance of healthy eating and good consistent water intake. <\/p>\n

Luckily I found out about Lee Hayward<\/a> and followed his advice. I began to include weight training as part of my routine. I learned through Lee’s coaching how to lift weights properly and this helped me lose a total of 77 pounds<\/u> while gaining lean muscle tone. <\/p>\n

As my body became more muscular and started responding to weightlifting, I wanted to take my training to a whole different level. Educating myself about heavy lifting, the importance of visualization, core foundation training, proper nutrition and supplementation, and finding the right routine to meet my goals has become not only a lifestyle for me, but a way of living my life in all of the right, most productive, and healthiest ways.<\/p>\n

Lee’s website, You-Tube videos, and coaching has been and continues to be my ONE stop shop for educating myself on how to attain my current goal of gaining 10-12 pounds of lean muscle mass. <\/p>\n

Amazingly, Lees videos, workouts, and educational articles have also helped my 15 year old son, Tyler. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that I would be spending quality time with my son learning how to build our bodies together. What a true blessing following Lee’s coaching has been, not only to myself, but to my entire family as well.<\/p>\n

I am passionate about bodybuilding now and have a vision to help and motivate others to achieve their goals as well. I now consider Lee a vital part of my “invaluable team”<\/strong> in helping me achieve my current and future goals and dreams. I am hear to tell everyone who might have suffered or gone through some of the same issues I did that… Dreams can come true, life can be so rewarding, gratifying and filled with much love and hope.<\/strong> But only if you believe in yourself, want them bad enough and work hard enough to attain them. <\/p>\n

I am a living testament to this and have many to thank and bless along the way on this incredible journey of my mind, body and spirit, one being my new found friend, Lee Hayward. <\/p>\n

Thank you,<\/em>
\nMelinda Claire Allen<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"after-e1373991602863\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Melinda went through a divorce, being overweight, suffering from bouts of depression, and feeling like she had no purpose in life… To just 1 year later she’s now lean, healthy and living life to the fullest. Everyday she feels grateful and excited about life. She is a better mother and better person all around – because she choose to take care of herself and make health and fitness a priority in her life.<\/p>\n

If you would like some help to re-gain control over your weight, health, emotional health, and fitness – just let me know and we can schedule a time to chat and come up with a realistic action plan that’s right for you… Click Here to book a Free 10-minute Strategy Session Call.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Melinda, a single mother of 3 used bodybuilding to totally transform her health and fitness and lose 77 pounds in just over a year! Not only does she look and feel 100% better, but she is motivating her children to live a healthy active lifestyle as well<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","category-motivation-inner-game"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p36tGh-26A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leehayward.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leehayward.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leehayward.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leehayward.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leehayward.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8096"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/leehayward.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11819,"href":"https:\/\/leehayward.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8096\/revisions\/11819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leehayward.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leehayward.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leehayward.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}