REINVENTING MY LIFE-featuring Mindi Louis

My name is Mindi Louis, I live in South Jordan Utah. I am married to my husband Ramy. I have 3 daughters and 2 grandkids that I adore!  I am an esthetician and recently became a macro coach.

I am passionate about health and wellness!

My story has been about reinventing my life. It’s a journey of finding strength: emotional strength, physical strength and spiritual strength.  But mostly it has been a journey of healing relationships and forgiveness. Forgiving myself and forgiving others has been the key to healing my heart.  I knew I had to start healing the inside before my transformation on the outside could happen.

Even though I was always a bigger girl growing up, my real weightloss journey started in the year 2000, when I married an abuser. He left emotional scars and pain so deep that still try to defeat me to this day.  I endured this pain for 9 years.  Over the years In that marriage I steadily gained weight until I gained over 100 pounds. Food was my escape.  I became a food addict.  The real me was living inside a shell. I escaped my pain through cooking, baking and eating.  I had lost myself, and my self worth.

In March of 2009, I got the courage to leave that marriage.  I needed to be a strong,  independent woman for myself and my 3 daughters that I had to be an example to.

I sought therapy and was diagnosed with PTSD by my therapist who was a god-sent angel.  I went through EMDR trauma therapy for one year, and learned how to discover who I was again.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  My weight went up and down over the past few years, gaining and losing,  mostly gaining, and I desperately wanted to break the cycle.

In July of 2016, I went to see my doctor for weight loss medication.  My Doctor advised me to do Weight Watchers and I took his advice and joined.  I had a fire lit within me and a drive so strong that nothing could stop me.  And nothing has.

I lost 105 lbs in 16 months on my WW journey.  It was a great tool for me to lose the weight.  Over the course of my 4 years that I was a member, I began learning about how to heal emotional eating and changing my mindset around food.  My “WHY” was to learn how to love myself, and I accomplished that through practicing positive affirmations consistently!

I became a coach for WW in 2018, and my passion was to help other people believe in, and love themselves, and teach them skills about mindset and creating new habits for lasting change.

About 18 months ago I learned about macros and started tracking my calories and haven’t looked back.  Last month I ended my journey with WW to pursue my path with macros and to be a macro coach.

Over the last couple years I’ve become increasingly aware that I wasn’t eating enough and was restricting.  I was overtraining, under eating and not seeing any progress despite my efforts and hours i spent in the gym.  I knew something wasn’t right, as I felt fatigued, hungry and not feeling my best. I knew there had to be more.  I thought I was in maintenance, because I hadn’t gained my weight back.  That couldn’t have been further from the truth!

In May (2020) I reached out to Katie Crokus and she agreed to coach me through a reverse diet.  I was eating 1300-1500 calories.  With her help and my commitment to see the process through, I am now at maintenance eating 2300 a day.  I have found freedom in eating foods that I used to restrict.  I’m not constantly thinking about food and I don’t obsess about the scale anymore, AND I FINALLY know what living in maintenance is.  Can we also talk about how much stronger I have gotten? (Thank you carbs!)

As a macro coach, I’m passionate about women fueling  their bodies by eating more food and not restricting, while obtaining their goals. I’m also excited to guide women to reach their maintenance calories through reverse dieting and teaching them that you don’t need to live in a calorie deficit forever!