My 12 week BodyBlitz journey has been 21 years in the making. An obese teenager, I disliked who I was and had no confidence or self worth. Just before my 21st birthday I started my first diet, setting in motion a frustrating cycle of yoyo dieting.

Since then I have pinned my hopes on a stream of books, magazines, diet programs and nutrition guidelines. I built an amazing bank of knowledge; I had so much information swirling around in my head it was confusing me and I found myself jumping from one method to another with no set goal other than to lose weight – and this I did. Very well, in fact… Over and over again.

As my weight rode the rollercoaster, so did my happiness. One month I would love the person in the mirror and the next I loathed her. The strange thing was that others didn’t seem to recognise my self-loathing, they would come to me for weight loss and fitness advice thinking I was so in control and happy with who I was. They didn’t see my daily struggle. I was in an unhealthy place mentally and physically, frantically seeking balance and consistency, but the harder I searched, the more out of control I seemed to be.

I needed to achieve balance not only for myself but for my children. I did not want to pass on to them an unhealthy relationship with food and body image. These generic one size fits all programs weren’t working; I needed to wipe the slate clean and work out what was best for me. Then I found Ideal Bodies On Line (IBO).

IBO wrote me a tailor made program that took into consideration the busy lifestyle of a working mum with two young children. The program enabled me to workout at home early in the morning. IBO made me realise that I wasn’t training hard or smart enough. Now I challenge myself each and every workout with my eye on my end goal.

Deb, my mentor, has been a rock for me every step of the way. It was a battle to undo my habits and self-sabotaging thought processes as well as correct my relationship with certain types of foods. But I found the eating plan easy to stick with. My eating is now far more balanced; I know that my body needs fuel if I want to train hard everyday and still get everything else done.

I can’t say that the whole 12 weeks went smoothly. I certainly got impatient with ‘slow results’, but I had both Deb and Leisl to remind me that my consistency and good daily habits would reap rewards, I just needed to trust the process. Consistency and patience was my mantra and it worked.

I am really happy with the results I have achieved on this 12 week journey but for me they are not merely physical. I have overcome some big emotional hurdles and for this I am really proud of myself. I have a new feeling of freedom with food. My lifestyle feels balanced. I love being physically fit and passionate about my health. I have come to realise that my dream body does not have an end date, on which it will miraculously appear, but that it is simply a work in progress that I will achieve the ideal way, through balanced and consistent choices.