After Charlotte, North Carolina-based mom Patreasha Jones fully recovered from a viral infection that plagued her brain and spine in 2016, leaving her unable to wash, feed, and dress herself for four weeks, she vowed to take better care of herself to maintain her health. “I stopped and started many times before I finally committed to staying the course,” she says of the dedicated fitness journey she began nine months ago.
Yesterday, fitness account @AfroGirlFitness regrammed side-by-side photos of Jones that document how much her body has changed since going gung-ho. The 30-year-old’s back transformation photos received more than 25,000 likes:
In the before shot, Jones had been eating mostly processed and fast foods and her only mode of exercise was keeping up with her four-year-old daughter, Reagan. “I realized how much I had taken the gift of life for granted,” she says of her health scare. “I started asking myself the hard questions: What would Reagan do without me?”
Having become an online trainer in 2014 after documenting her own weight loss journey online, she knew exactly what she needed to do, beginning with her diet. She gradually replaced the junk food she’d been eating with whole, organic foods while monitoring both her calorie intake and balance of carbs, fat, and protein.
Rather than resorting to a hokey fitness program — “programs out there that promise to help you drop 30 pounds in 30 days are unhealthy and temporary,” she says — Jones practiced patience and actually put the time in: She began to either run, or do a 30-minute, high-intensity interval-training (HIIT) workout at home five or six times a week. Once she’d gained momentum, she joined a gym and began weight training for about 45 minutes five days a week. And it worked:
Jones credits her discipline for her progress: “Things come up outside of our control that so easily derail us,” she says. “When those things happen, we usually push ‘self’ to the back burner.” This time, she’s not letting that happen: She continues to do HIIT twice a week with three to four weight lifting sessions, during which she does moves like cable machine rows, which strengthen the upper back, and compound exercises like one she calls squat and pivot, which engages the lower body, arms, shoulders, and core.
“Changing your body is not a quick fix,” she says of her success. “If you allow your body the time it needs to make adjustments, in the end, it will all be worth the wait.”
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