Dom Matteo - Death of a friend, birth of a son and a rebirth (losing 125lbs)

Between The Before & After (The Stories that Shape Us)

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Weight loss and fitness aren’t optional to Dominic Matteo. For him they are literally matters of life and death.

We have to go back to 2009 to understand why. Dominic was in rough shape. In fact, he was morbidly obese.

He held a decent job, he was happily married, he enjoyed some solid, long-standing friendships, and he liked his hometown, Cleveland.

Yet something wasn’t right in his life – and on a deep level, he knew it. He just wasn’t sure what the problem was, or how to fix it. Or maybe he lacked the confidence to try.

Things could have continued like that indefinitely. Dominic might have existed with this low-level dissatisfaction for years.

After all, many people do – assuming that it’s the best they can expect, or doubting that they have whatever it takes to achieve fulfillment.

But fate had something different in store for Dominic.

And it arrived in the form of two significant and eerily timed events.

First, one of his closest friends suffered a pulmonary embolism and passed away.

Naturally, the news stunned him. It’s never easy to lose the people we care for, but when they’re young and their death is sudden, it’s that much harder to reconcile ourselves to the fact that they are gone.

Meanwhile, on the very day that his friend died, Dominic also learned that his wife, Kelly, was pregnant with their first son.

In a few short months, he would become a father.

This is the kind of juxtaposition that would compel any of us to reconsider our lives and our choices. Dominic was no exception.

He had been diagnosed with metabolic syndrome and “exercise induced asthma.” And he knew that if he kept on going the way he was going, his physical condition would only get worse.

If he wanted to be there for his son in a meaningful way, he had to act – now.

As a kid, growing up in Arizona and New Mexico, he’d loved to chase lizards and ride his bike, and he’d happily explored the desert for entire days.

Yet something was different now.

He felt pulled in a new way to persist and to go deeper in his reading and his learning. And the deeper he went, the more he wanted to learn and do.

Meanwhile, the weight was coming off. In the first year, he lost 100 pounds. But at that point, he was small and weak. He then decided to put on some muscle and try to lean out even further.

That makes the process sound simple and straightforward. But it wasn’t.

In fact, Dominic started and stopped quite a few times during his journey – feeling unsure that he could continue, or simply not

Eventually, Dominic lost 110 pounds, reducing his body fat to the single digits. No longer morbidly obese, instead he was unusually fit.

And weight loss wasn’t the only benefit.

As he started to become more comfortable with the process and more confident that he could maintain and even improve on his new levels of fitness, he found himself experimenting, looking at his own outcomes. In effect he was coaching himself.

“For example, I found that certain foods inflamed the arthritis in my neck quite a bit,” he explains. “Cutting those foods out and adding more anti-inflammatory foods pretty much eliminated the arthritis issues.”

Always curious, and always a careful and methodical thinker, Dominic was now bringing these strengths to a new area of his life.

As result he was feeling healthier, not only in body, but also in mind and spirit. He was coming into his own..

Still working full-time as a systems analyst for a major insurance company – and by now, a proud father – he also became a part-time coach and trainer, working with others to help them attain the amazing results he’d achieved for himself.

Within the next few years, Dominic earned certifications from just about every sports and nutrition association out there.

International Rugby Board, Hardstyle kettlebells, Russian kettlebells, StrongFirst Girya, the National Academy of Sports Medicine, PN’s Certification program, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition – and more.

In fact, once he’d begun, it was as if he couldn’t get enough learning in this field.

And he supplemented his learning with continued practice, coaching members of his rugby team, designing and delivering workshops, offering group classes and programs.

“A lot of people don’t give themselves enough credit,” Dominic explains. “They want to change. But they don’t believe in themselves. So they shut themselves down before they even try.”

His job, as a coach, is to offer the kind of encouragement they need to get them over that hump of resistance. “So they can see how strong they really are,” he adds. “It’s an amazing process.”

And as someone who has lost a substantial amount of weight and taken himself from morbid obesity to fitness, he’s uniquely positioned to understand his clients’ triumphs and their challenges.

“There are things you go through that lots of people might not even think about,” he explains.

Your identity shifts. Your relationships change. And when you lose a great deal of weight, you can even become almost unrecognizable to others and to yourself.

People treat you differently – for better and for worse. You wonder how and where you fit in.

At moments like that, a coach can be invaluable – supporting you in your positive choices, helping you navigate the social minefields, and encouraging you to be your best self. Moving you forward.

CONNECT WITH DOM:

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