Hello! My name is Matt, and I am a NASM certified personal trainer, as well as a working musician (singer/songwriter). My path towards health, happiness, fitness, & personal fulfillment has taken a lot of turns and detours over the years, and now it’s landed me right back where I started: MyBodyTutor.com.

Growing up, I was always an overweight kid, and I grew up with pretty bad eating habits (and no fitness habits whatsoever). Once I finished my freshman year of college, I had ballooned up to 230 pounds, and I reached a breaking point. I was sick of being the fat guy, and I was sick of feeling awful all the time. I committed then and there to lose weight and get in shape, but I didn’t really know how to accomplish that.

My weight fluctuated for the next 8 years. I had some initial success losing weight in college but steadily put some of it back on over the years that followed as I earned my Master’s degree in Psychology from Michigan State University. I tried the South Beach diet for a while and saw some moderate success, but no one can deny all carbs forever… that’s not fun and it’s not that healthy. Eventually, I deviated from the South Beach diet, went back to business-as-usual, and the weight I had lost came right back on.

Over the course of my graduate school education, I realized that academia was not making me truly happy, and I decided to move to Chicago to pursue my career in music. A couple of years passed as I worked a full-time job to pay the bills while consistently playing shows on the weekends. The stress and workload of these years crumbled my eating habits and any semblance of a workout routine I had in place.

I found myself putting on more weight and feeling really unhappy with how I felt and looked on stage. I knew it was time for a real change to take place. That’s when I saw a write-up for MyBodyTutor.com in an online newsletter I subscribed to. I checked it out, spoke with Adam, and got moving towards a slimmer, fitter, healthier, and happier me, and never looked back.

The diet was simple and made sense. Sticking to it wasn’t difficult, and after a couple of weeks of eating right, I started really enjoying the foods I was eating. I felt better, I had more energy, and I never felt overly full or weighed down. Likewise, after the first couple of weeks in the gym, I really started to enjoy my workouts. I liked the way I felt afterwards. I started to like the way I felt during. I started noticing that I was losing fat, and gaining muscle. I began to really transform my body, and it felt incredible.

I had always believed that it was genetically impossible for me to have the perfect body that I wanted. Wrong. My whole problem was that I didn’t know how to eat properly and I wasn’t exercising consistently. Once I applied the MBT principles of eating right, exercising, and doing these two things consistently, I began to achieve the body I had always wanted. Consistency really is key, and having an online coach really helped me achieve that consistency.

Working with MBT changed my life. The knowledge I gained from working with Adam sparked a fire in me, and I found myself consuming as much information as I could on diet, health, and fitness. I was in the gym 3-4 times a week trying new exercises and routines and seeing great results. Over the next few years of working with MBT, I saw serious strength gains in the gym, I lost 40 pounds, and I successfully trained for and completed a half marathon and multiple obstacle races. I fell in love with being fit, and I’m so happy that I did.

In 2014, I made two major life changes: first, I decided to study for and obtain my certified personal trainer certification (through the National Academy of Sports Medicine) so I could help other people improve their fitness and health and feel as good as I did after my transformation.

Second, I decided to quit my day job in Chicago, pack up all my worldly possessions, and move across the country to Florida to play music full time (and if I’m being honest, to live at the beach). I am a firm believer that you truly have to follow your heart in this life and do what you love, and the life I have carved out for myself now revolves around the things I love the most: singing and playing music, helping others achieve their health and fitness goals and working on my own health, and fitness.

Here’s the thing: I’m also a big fan of food and drink. I keep crazy hours and I’m in bars ALL THE TIME. I love craft beers, and bourbon, and frozen drinks in the hot sun on the beach. I love a good burger, some legit southern BBQ, and late night tacos. Oh and pizza. Who doesn’t love pizza?

The thing is, I get to enjoy all of these things on a fairly regular basis. No, it’s not every day (and truthfully, would you really want it to be?), but it’s frequent enough to where I don’t feel like I’m really giving anything up. Adam taught me how to be fit and happy (not fit and miserable) and I’m so excited to help others do the same.

If I can transform from the 230 pound college freshman that had never worked out a day in his life into the person I have become today, YOU can achieve ANY possible goal you want. MBT can help you get there. I can help you get there. And truthfully, I’m really excited about the journey you’re about to embark on. It will change every aspect of your life for the better.

Things I enjoy: singing, playing guitar, karaoke (basically performing in any way), swimming in the ocean, beach days, frozen mai-tai’s with dark rum floaters, bourbon, the blues, Netflix binges (on rest days, of course), meditation, long runs along the river, lifting heavy, cooking, talking, laughing, sriracha, and basically any HBO show.

Things I don’t enjoy: negativity, defeatist attitudes, fluorescent lighting, shoes, and water chestnuts (shudder).