180 Degrees of Ricky Update

This feels a little crazy to be writing on the blog. I left this without providing any justification of why I stopped blogging. Thankfully, that will all be explained and you will get a sneak peak into the next chapter of 180 Degrees of Ricky.
Let’s first get you up to date with how life is going right now. Currently, I am living in Austin and am engaged to my beautiful fiance Crista Sheumaker. I work for a technology company in town and also at doing a little training on the side (more on this later).
I have tried my hardest to stay at my target weight and right now I am at 245 (when I finished with Workshop Fitness I was at 240). It hasn’t been easy; my weight has fluctuated from back up to 270 pounds to as low as 235 pounds. My experiences have forced me to realize that maintaining is just as big of a challenge as losing weight was.
I still workout 4-5 times a week, either at the gym at my apartment complex or at Austin Peak Fitness, a gym that focuses on group workouts. I only went there because I bought a Groupon to try it out, but I fell in love with the trainers and they are constantly challenging what I thought I was able to do.
I received my Personal Trainer certification over a year ago through NASM, and have trained a couple friends for a little while, however training people never felt right. I also was having trouble believing gyms would hire me since I still looked overweight. When you look at trainers, you see a person who has dedicated their entire lives to fitness, where I’ve only been dedicated for a little over 2 years. My body issues seem to never go away no matter how much weight I have lost. I was losing faith in being a trainer and making that something part of my life.
So I started to think why I wanted to become a trainer and it boiled down to the fact that six trainers helped me for FREE for a YEAR and gave me my life back. This is something I want to give to others, yet I was having a difficult time finding a way to make this possible. That was until I found Rob “Undercover Boss” Dooley.
Rob is a co-worker with me and he had listened to me while I was at KLBJ, the Texas State radio station.. He was inspired by my story and even went to Workshop Fitness to train there. I will let him tell more of his story when he posts an introduction on the blog in a couple of days.
Why Rob will be writing on this blog is because I am happy to announce that I will be training Rob for the next six months. The blog will now be transformed into how I train Rob, while also allowing him a forum to write about how the weight loss plan is going. I will have much more information as the weeks progress, but our start date is set for November 1st.
Rob is looking to change his life and I want him to change mine. I will be pushing Rob where my trainers pushed me. I am looking forward to seeing how people react to the new idea on the blog. I will continue to post my weight loss too, and any updates that go along with that.