About Kelley

Nice to meet you!  My name is Kelley Bernal and I’m a 32 year old wife & mommy living in Southern California.  I haven’t always been a fitness enthusiast.  In fact, I was the exact opposite until I found Beachbody just a few years ago. My passion is to pay forward what I’ve learned during this journey and motivate others through accountability, positivity and support.  I’d love to hear from you!

Here is my story:

The “before” picture above was taken in December of 2008.  I was 185 pounds and my son was a little over a year old.  It was “baby weight”, I would tell myself.  ”It will come off.”  Now, there absolutely is something VERY REAL about baby weight.  A lot of that has to do with self-sacrifice.  When our babies are small, they demand a lot of us physically and emotionally.  It takes a toll on our bodies and our spirits…and that’s OK.  It’s natural.  It’s motherhood.

What’s NOT ok is losing ourselves, and that is exactly what happened to me.  I became the excuse girl.  You know her:

“But I’m SO tired.”

“The baby is most important.  I’ll work on me later.”

“The baby woke up twice last night and I couldn’t get up early to workout.”

“I had a rough day at work today.  All I want is pizza and beer.”

“Mmmm…Del Taco.”

Yep, that was me.  Exhausted, negative, chasing food trucks, stuffing my face, unhappy, unhealthy, LOST.

In the Spring of 2009, my husband asked me to buy him P90X for Fathers Day.  I had no clue what it was but I googled it and bought it off the Beachbody website.

We started P90X together and he was hard core, always the most disciplined of us two.  I went back to being excuse girl:

“If I work out more than 3 times/week, I get too sore.”

“I’ll join you every other day.”

“But the baby!!!  We will wake the baby!”

I literally sat on the couch eating spaghetti (hey, it was whole wheat!) while my hubby did his workouts.  On the days that I would actually join him, I would post about my workouts on Facebook and I started getting some replies from people who had done P90X before.  One of those people ended up changing my life.  My friend from high school youth group, Arlene Paraiso, reached out and offered to coach me through my fitness journey.

Now, my willingness to accept the coaching wasn’t immediate.  In fact, it took much longer than it should have…about 6 months actually!  But Arlene never left my side.  EVER.  She continued to support me and ask me how my workouts were going.  Eventually, I was ready for the change.  You see, I was SO scared of failure.  Up to this day, I had failed at every single physical thing I tried (like the time I finally was passed the ball during a 5th grade basketball game and I scored for the other team)  Arlene continued to encourage me, despite my resistance.

I made the decision to stop P90X and I bought Slim in 6.  I thought to myself “Baby steps.  You gotta start somewhere.”  Well – Slim in 6 is more like a toddler step!  It’s easier than P90X but it’s still an amazing workout.  I ended up losing 14 inches on that program but more importantly than that, it gave me back my self-worth.  I committed to waking up early every morning at 5am to workout. During this time, my son was having a lot of health problems and it took a lot for me to put myself first sometimes.  But as time went on, I realized that by spending an hour a day on myself, it made me a better wife and mommy.

So there I was.  Done with Slim in 6, 14 inches smaller and ready for the next challenge.  I dabbled a bit in P90X again and tried the 30  Day Shred by Jillian Michaels.  Neither kept me motivated.  I yo-yo’d a bit until I found TurboFire the summer of 2010.  That program changed my life.  The music, the choreography, Chalene Johnson.  All of it kept me coming back for more every single day…for 90 days.  30 pounds lighter, I felt like I was on top of the world.

It was not the weight loss that kept me going.  It was the way I felt after my workouts that kept me coming back for more.  I learned that I needed that time for me in order to be a more patient mom, a more loving wife, a more focused employee, a better friend.  That hour of working out changed my outlook on my day and made me a better person.  All of a sudden, that hour was non-negotiable.

I sit here today 40 pounds lighter, a gazillion inches smaller and a much more fulfilled human being. Physically, I’m now able to do all the P90X workouts, as well as Insanity & hours upon hours of Turbo.  I’ve learned that my priority in my life isn’t necessarily my son & my husband…as I had originally thought.  My priority is more specific than that.  It is to be a happy & fulfilled person so that I can be a happy mom for my son, a positive wife for my husband, an inspiration to my friends & family.  It’s so important to me to SHARE this way of life with people…because really, it is the only way to truly live this life to the fullest.

It is important to realize that working out is much more than vanity.  It is about finding yourself & fixing what it is that made you unhealthy in the first place.  If you do not fix it, you will go back to being unhealthy.  Guaranteed.  Weight loss, health, nutrition…a lot of it is emotional.  Find yourself, learn about yourself, make yourself a priority and the rest will fall into place.  I promise.

You only get one shot at life and  I intend to give my shot everything I’ve got.