Name: Shelly Ann ThomasAge: 48Title: Sports nutritionist and workout instructor

What is a sports nutritionist? Take the daily diet of someone who wants to add physical activity to their day, and show them how to fuel the body both PRE and POST exercise. You “Gotta Eat,” and even more so when you add physical demands on “the machine.” Clean fuel is necessary.

Tell us about your exercise initiatives with the USO. To offer a variety of fitness classes within the military community and allow the convenience of being right in their own neighborhood.

Do spouses and soldiers mix on the exercise mat? On occasion, but rarely! But hey, the couple that exercises together stays fit together!

Besides fast food, what is the greatest impediment to a healthy lifestyle? It’s a tie: Lack of motivation to be active and make healthy choices, and alcohol equals belly fat!

How and why did you get into this field? Ok, you wake up one day and realize that you have to move the scale to 200 lbs, you do something! I am my very first success story, and trust me it took 15 months to transform myself. I know what works!

You’ve mentored a lot of people. Give us another success story. This will hit home with many of your readers: a soldier deploys for one year, the spouse is sad, lonely and has a small desire to make a change. Bingo! Forty pounds later, four pants sizes smaller, six - seven months of hard work, and voila! Soldier comes home and finds the true love of their life, happy health and highly motivating to others! Good job Alex![Another] 65 year old [woman] is at the last stages before back surgery and seeks out a personal trainer. Six months later she can smoke most soldiers in sit ups (she can do 75 in two minutes) and does 20 man push ups and hangs tight in kick boxing for one hour! No surgery necessary and she has mastered the art of eating small frequent meals every day. Hugs MaryDe!

And you met your husband, a soldier, in class. Has he bought into the program? Let’s just say he no longer stands in the short-order line at the DFAC and he doesn’t eat Snickers and Mountain Dew after PT for breakfast. He does draw the line at eating asparagus!

How do you smoke a soldier? Give them to me for PT. Thirty minutes of Awesome Abs and one hour of Aerobic Kickboxing and they need the WAMBULANCE! They really do cry for the next three days!

Interview by Kevin Dougherty

Know someone whose accomplishments, talents, job, hobby, volunteer work, awards or good deeds qualify them for 15 minutes of fame? How about someone whose claim to glory is a bit out of the ordinary — even, dare we say, oddball? Send the person’s name and contact information to: news@mail.estripes.osd.mil

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