An Idea is Born

My name is Estee Ratliff and I’m a 30-something born, raised, & still residing in Philadelphia, PA. I’ve constantly had battles with my weight since the 4th grade. In the 10th grade, I blew up to a whopping 26/28, 280 lbs. At that time I was also diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, a chronic pain disease.
At age 19 I started exercising 5 days a week. Doing that for a few months, I lost 20 lbs, became a size 22/24 and my Fibromyalgia went into remission. I started going back to school and enjoying my adult life.
Getting Started

At the age of 21 I started working out on my own again and I was happily getting into a size 20. It didn’t take too long for me to become lackadaisical and slowly creep back into a size 22/24.
At the age of 24 I finally decided that I couldn’t do this anymore! I was out of breathe and out of shape. I watoo young for that! It just clicked one day and I started going back to the gym in July 2006. I figured out that I wasn’t really a “gym” person, as I was easily swayed from going to the gym everyday, so I started my love of workout dvds and my ‘home gym’… my living room and dvd player!
Home Workouts
I lost 50lbs doing home workouts and cutting my food portions. I then hit a plateau. I found beachbody.com and Turbo Jam. I love to dance, so that was the best workout program for me to lose weight.
I started Turbo Jam on January 20th, 2007, secured her full collection of Turbo Jam workouts and lost 30 pounds in 5 months . I LOVE them all and kept them as a staple in my daily workouts

After hitting another plateau, I thought it was time to “switch it up again”. I heard that Chalene Johnson was coming out with a new workout series somewhat like P90X. I figured it was time for me to tone and hoped my final residual weight would go with my muscle toning.
In my first month on ChaLEAN Extreme I lost 13.4lbs and 8.25 inches all over.By July 2009, I lost 22.6lbs with ChaLEAN Extreme & forever changed my love of “lifting heavy”.
Gone but never forgotten…

In September 2009 my Mother passed away. I became the caregiver of my Father with Alzheimers. In January 2012 my Father passed away. I gained back 55lbs of the 100 I lost…
Archived Blog Article
BLOG: How I lost 80 pounds in one year
Here’s something I wrote for a few friends who asked the question: HOW’D YOU DO IT?!?! How did you lose 80 pounds in 1 year?