I’m so excited about the feedback I got from my first blog post, and hope to keep this blog alive for as long as I can.
When I started my weight loss journey, my inspiration came from a need to change my life and overcome a problem I faced from childhood. I was lucky to find a group of people who shared my need to change and make better decisions and people who were ready to equip us with the right resources and information to reach our goals. We were encouraged not to view this issue on a short-term basis but as a long term solution by leading a sustainable healthy lifestyle. People usually go on crazy diets where they eat close to nothing and lose a lot of weight in a short time, but after a while, they return to their normal eating habits and gain the weight back. With a sustainable healthy lifestyle, you can learn how to make healthy meals, cutting out some things from your diet entirely, keeping active and thinking positive. WAKA FITNESS has successfully imparted this to its clients and changed a lot of misconceptions that hindered us from achieving our health-related goals.
The results I got from the WAKA YOU 2.0 challenge I did at WAKA enabled me to inspire a few people who saw my results and decided to join the gym, some of them even surpassing me in terms of weight loss. This was very fulfilling and I felt motivated to keep going and inspire more people to get healthy. When I started to get visible results, I had people calling me asking me what I had done to lose that much weight and this motivated and inspired me more. I even got an interview on RISE AND SHINE, let’s just say I had my 15 minutes of fame, and this made it possible for me to inspire some more people to also make the decision to change their lives and get on this healthy living journey.
I would like to share with you stories from two friends who have even more amazing and inspiring stories about their weight loss journey. I am glad they have allowed me to share their stories so we can inspire more people. Both ladies say that I motivated them and they are doing the same challenge and already have amazing results. I had not realized I was inspiring anyone but as soon as I noticed this, it has since become a burden for me to inspire more and my story alone cannot inspire many.

I will start with Micheline. When I had just joined the gym, I asked her to tag along but I am sure just like me she had tried all possible things to lose weight but failed and this new gym was probably not convincing enough. A couple of months later I posted this picture that made the rounds on social media. I had managed to get that perfect angle; which made me look leaner, especially for those who knew me before. This picture got Micheline to call me and she said Pearl if you could lose that much weight I too can do it. She later joined and started the WAKA YOU 2.0 challenge, in about 3-4 months she had lost 18 KGS. I remember seeing her and being in utter shock at how fast her results were and this made me so happy that I could inspire someone to make a decision to change their life and chose to be healthy. to-date, Micheline is an active gym member whose life has been transformed and I am happy to have been able to inspire her to join the gym and to see her consistently coming to the gym makes me believe we can inspire more people to GET FIT & STAY FIT. At the moment she has lost a total of 25 KGS and still counting!

The second person I will talk about is Sarah aka (Princess). Sarah has been my friend for a couple of years and we share the same struggles which bring us even closer. In addition to being close friends, we support and motivate each other. To WAKA members, she is very well known as the girl who lost weight in the shortest time possible. Just like me, Sarah did her University in Malaysia and joined the same gym (Fitness First) and we saw some awesome results by doing lots of group classes (mostly cardio). However, somewhere down the road we re-gained double the weight we had lost, and when she returned to Rwanda, she was desperate to get back in shape. She returned right after I had completed the WAKA YOU 2.0 challenge and was inspired by my story, which led her to the realization that it was possible to get back to her normal self and even better. Currently, Sarah is known as the “beast” in the gym, because she is not a quitter – she always goes the extra mile and sets ambitious goals and that is why she was able to lose 30 KGS is less than a year. She is aiming to lose about 50 KGS in total and I have no doubt that she will accomplish her goal. If you are looking for someone to push you through a workout I would recommend Sarah as a partner or gym buddy.

Between me, Micheline and Sarah we have lost a total of 82 Kgs, amazing – right? We hope to inspire more and more to get leaner and fit. It is amazing how confident and great one feels after getting such results and I wouldn’t wish to keep this feeling to myself.
So what do we all have in common? WE DID NOT QUIT! Sometimes it gets hard, you are hungry or just lazy to go to the gym but if you want the results Micheline or Sarah have seen, you have to stop giving excuses and get up and do something. Hope these stories will inspire you as much as they inspired me and my friends.