Robyn Koolen’s transformation began in 2010, when she weighed 197 pounds, but there was more to it than the number on the scale. An overall feeling of discomfort had left Robyn wanting and needing change.
“I didn’t like what I saw when I woke up in the morning,” she says. “I wasn’t the person I wanted to be.” For the girl from a small town in Canada, it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling. Despite her athletic upbringing as a skater, she’d always felt bigger. “I had an athletic build, but girls are taught that they should be small,” she says. “I was fit, but not small.”
When she moved to Calgary for college, fitness took a backseat to partying. Occasional trips to the gym once every few weeks weren’t enough to combat the weight gain that came from partying. Drinking and overeating coupled with cycles of crash dieting and food restriction caused Robyn’s weight to increase.
In 2010, she found herself on the cusp of 200 pounds. That shook her enough to start making changes. Robyn’s transformation started out small. She replaced chips with pickle spears and roasted chickpeas, started walking the 3.5 kilometers to and from work, and moved more in general.
The hard work paid off, and Robyn lost 50 pounds. She was closer to her goal and happy with how she looked, but she still needed extra motivation to drop the last bit of weight. That’s where Bodybuilding.com‘s 100K Transformation Challenge came in. What started out as a quest for the extra motivation and accountability needed to lose those last 10-15 pounds became so much more.
Chipping away at the Arnold Blueprint trainer, learning the basics of nutrition, and striving to see change in progress photos all helped Robyn push forward in the right direction. Twelve weeks later, Robyn had lost 15 pounds and 6 percent body fat. She was more than a leaner, six-pack-sporting version of her former self, though she was finally the athlete she’d known she was destined to be.
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