About Matt Carmen, MPH, RDN, CPT

My inspiration to start MCWS started when I was an undergraduate college student at University of Miami (FL).  Growing up, I did not practice the healthiest lifestyle and habits.  Upon starting college, I finally decided to take action and undertake healthier exercise and nutrition practices when I saw how confident, energetic and happy all of my peers were.  Over the span of my freshman year of college, I had managed to lose 65 lbs, shrinking down from 240 lbs to 175 lbs.  It was after this temporary transformation that I knew I wanted to help others along similar health and fitness journeys- at the time, I felt completely re-invigorated.  I felt like I had completely changed my life for the better.  I had more energy, higher levels of mental focus, I felt better about how I looked, I became exponentially more confident, I had more action in my dating life- the list goes on and on.

 

Fast Forward to my senior year in college- I was living my best life.  I was in a fraternity, partying hard, getting good grades, and on top of all that I had a girlfriend I was super happy with.  Unfortunately, I got a little bit too comfortable and started to regain some of the weight I had lost.  By the end of my senior year in undergraduate studies, I was back up to 225 lbs.  I was certain at this point that I wanted to become a registered dietitian so that I could learn the ins and outs of nutrition and how to not only impact others' lives with it, but my own.  I had majored in psychology, so in order to manifest this dream I had to pursue a master's degree in Nutritional Science and go through a dietetics graduate program, which I was fortunate enough to have done at University of Michigan- Ann Arbor.  I wanted to learn not only how to lose weight, but how to keep it off for good.  By the end of my program, I had re-lost the weight I had re-gained and began my journey as a registered dietitian.  I had finished my graduate studies in 2019 and completed my Dietetic internship at the beginning of 2020- right when COVID hit.  Although I was eager to start my business, I wanted to gain some work experience and help fight the pandemic in the front lines, so I worked in the longterm care industry from 2020 to 2022.  Seeing as this was a stressful time, I unfortunately continued to regain my lost weight in graduate school.  But this time around, I had discovered a secret weapon- weight training.  

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I did not start lifting weights seriously until the beginning of graduate school, when I lost weight the second time around.  And I believe thoroughly that had the pandemic not happened, my incorporation of weight lifting in addition to improved nutrition practices would have allowed me to keep the weight off for good due to the muscle mass I had gained.  That said, COVID-19 was unforeseen and took its toll.  I was stressed, scared, and not sleeping well.  When I saw my scale weight going up, I knew that if all else failed, I had to keep going hard in the gym and continue to eat nutritious foods.  And while I did gain weight, I gained a TON of muscle and a TON of strength.  Right now, I sit at around 290 lbs.  And yes, I do cary around some extra weight that I am slowly but surely in the process of losing now.  But my weight has been stabilized, I have more strength and energy than I have ever had in my life, I am sleeping great and I am emotionally in a great place.  I am also metabolically healthy, which is important to note given my high weight.

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This is why I started my company.  No matter how stressed you are, or no matter what you look like, I want you to understand that you can live a happy, healthy life if you simply take action, implement healthy behavior changes, and stick to them long term.  Moreover, because we vary so much as humans, I am on a mission to help people understand that what that process looks like may be highly different from person to person- we are not all going to look like fitness models, but that certainly does not mean that you cannot be healthy, happy and full of life.  I want to provide my clients with the knowledge and the service that I wish I had when I started out on my own fitness journey.

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