I’m Geri and I’m 46 years old. I’d like to tell a personal story that I know will resonate with you..I tried it all.
- Living on 1,000 calories a day
- Diet pills that made me feel like I was strung out on speed
- Pounding away on the treadmill for hours
- Eating many salads such that I was the rabbit food queen
I guess I finally gave up.
It’s just part of getting older, I told myself.
I stuck the bathroom scale in my closet and there it stayed. Collecting dust, year after year.
I wasn’t happy. But I figured happiness was just one more thing you gave up after age 40.
Like intimacy in marriage…
I’m basically a shy person, so it’s a little embarrassing to talk about this. But my husband and I hadn’t had sex for quite some time. I felt like he didn’t even see me anymore.
Sure, it hurt, but in a weird way I was almost glad. With all the extra pounds I was carrying around, I didn’t want anyone’s eyes on me—not even his.
One evening my mother-in-law cornered me after a family dinner. She got right up in my face and told me, “Get it together. Or he’ll leave you.”
I just ignored her and walked out of the kitchen. I didn’t want her to see how badly her cruel words had stung me.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said.
Yep, I was a mess. Helpless, hopeless, ashamed.
Until a terrifying wake-up call changed my life for good…
It started out like any other evening.
My brother, Eric, had come along to pick up my girls—Faith and Amber—from soccer practice.
He was just walking them back to the car from their practice fields when the pain started.
BAM! It hit me like a sledgehammer in the center of my chest.
“Oh my God, my chest!” I gasped. I could barely breathe.
“Help, I can’t feel my arms!”
I was sure I was having a heart attack.
When Eric opened the door and saw me, he looked confused for a moment. Then he realized what was happening and the color drained from his face.
I heard a car horn blaring…
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!
I had slumped forward onto the steering wheel and my body was pressing on the horn.
Somehow Eric managed to move me over into the passenger seat and then race through traffic to the hospital.
As long as I live, I’ll never forget Amber’s sweet little voice pleading with me from the back seat:
“Mommy! Mommy! Don’t die!”
While the nurses put me on a stretcher and wheeled me into the ER, I kept thinking about my precious girls. I guess everyone’s afraid of dying, but that fear was NOTHING compared to the fear of not being there for Faith and Amber.
As it turned out, I was incredibly lucky…
I wasn’t having a heart attack, thank God.
But I did have hereditary heart disease.
The ER doctor (can’t recall his name) didn’t sugar-coat anything. Like a 70-year old dad, he sternly told me, “If you don’t lose at least 30 pounds in the 2 months, you will not be so lucky next time. You will have a heart attack.”
At some point the nurses came back and drew blood for more tests. I remember the doctor coming back to the room with a strange expression on his face. He asked,
“Have you ever heard of liver bile?”
“Liver WHAT?”
He explained that our liver creates bile acids to break down the food we eat, so we can use it for energy. But in some people—especially women over 40—something goes wrong.
The liver doesn’t make those bile acids the way it should. Instead of being broken down as fuel, the calories get stored as fat.
So because of this mysterious metabolic glitch—that’s what he called it—we end up with abnormal fat storage and something called “visceral fat” around our heart, liver and arteries.
“Hmmm . . .” I thought to myself.
Could this be the reason I’ve been fighting a losing battle all these years?
So I finally knew what might be wrong with me. But I still had no clue how to get rid of the layer of fat strangling my organs and threatening my life.
My answer finally came when I called my older brother, Gary, a few days later…
So let me back up a bit and explain. To me, Gary is just my older brother. But he’s also a well-known celebrity fitness trainer in Chicago. He’s been interviewed on so many of the big news networks that I lost count a long time ago.
He’d tried to talk to me about my weight several times over the years, but somehow it never seemed to be the right time.
Things were different now, though. I didn’t have the luxury of waiting any longer.
As if being rushed to the hospital for chest pain wasn’t bad enough, my husband had broken the news just the day before. He was thinking about leaving me.
He couldn’t even look me in the eye when he’d said the words. He’d stood there in our bedroom with his back to me, his shoulders slumped.
“Maybe we should just end the marriage now.”
My mother-in-law had been right all along. He was ready to walk out–and keep walking.
When I called Gary a few days after my hospital scare, I didn’t intend to tell him about my marriage problems. I just wanted to check in because I knew he was worried about me.
But the kindness in his voice that day unlocked something inside me. I let it all spill out—everything I’d been holding in. I told him my husband was practically out the door.
Gary’s always been a good listener.
“I’m so sorry, Geri,” he said. “I wish I could reach through this phone and give you a hug.”
After a while, he gently steered the conversation to my eating habits.
“Tell me everything you eat in a typical day, Geri,” he said.
When I told him, he sounded skeptical.
“No, tell me EVERYTHING. Don’t leave anything out.”
“That’s it,” I told him. “I swear.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Geri,” he said. “If that’s all you’re eating, I don’t get why you’re so overweight.”
Then I told him what the doctor said about bile acids and the weird metabolic glitch.
For the next 10 seconds, there was total silence on Gary’s end.
“Gary? Are you still there?” I asked.
“I’m here,” he said in a stunned voice.
“Oh my gosh, Geri. I think I know how to help you!”
It was like a lightbulb had switched on in Gary’s brain.
He said that a clogged liver could TOTALLY explain why I’d struggled so many years with belly fat.
Better yet, he had an idea.
For years, Gary had competed in bodybuilding contests. Sometimes he needed to drop a few pounds of belly fat FAST in the days leading up to the competition—to get that “shredded” look that always blew the judges away.
For that reason, he’d developed a really simple scientific plan that worked for him every time. He called it his “protocol.” Now he wondered if this fat-burning plan could work for me, too.
He texted me the plan later that day. To be honest, I thought it sounded too simple, at first. And I told him so. But I decided to give it a shot.
The next morning, I followed Gary’s instructions to the letter.
But the next morning, I knew we were onto something. I’d lost 2.5 pounds, and my belly already looked a little smaller.
Fast forward . . . three weeks later, I was down 17 pounds! Yes, 17. I felt incredible.
To me, this whole thing feels like a miracle. Gary’s plan has changed everything for me.
- I’m no longer at risk for a heart attack. By my next visit to my primary care doc, I had dropped 61 pounds! You should have seen his jaw practically hit the floor.
- My cholesterol and blood sugar levels are now in the normal healthy range.
- My joints have stopped aching. If a place I need to get to is a 30 minute walk, I’d walk it—no matter what the weather is outside.
- I’m more energetic than I was 20 years ago. Faith and Amber have noticed a big difference in Mommy’s mood and energy level.
- (I saved the best for last.) My husband can’t get enough of the new me. Losing the weight made me feel so much better about myself. It lit a spark in our relationship that I thought had died out long ago. I’m loving our date nights!
After seeing the impact his plan had on my life, Gary decided to put his breakthrough protocol into a program and offer it to anyone who’s ever struggled with their weight.
If you’re a woman over 35 who’s tried it all (like I did), I truly hope and pray you’ll watch Gary’s presentation below. The information he’s about to give you . . . well, it gave me my life back, and I believe it can do the same for you.
Here’s my brother’s video. Just click the play button to hear him explain how the plan works.
Click Here To Watch The Video
I really hope it has the same impact on you as it did on me. Because the information you’re about to learn has literally saved my life.Blessings,
Geri
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