Santa Barbara Body Sculpting's "Getting Back to Awesome" Project

Hello and welcome to my "Getting Back to Awesome " project (thanks for the name idea Rob! ) I figured this would be the perfect time to share with you a little bit about myself as well as give you an overview of the "Getting Back to Awesome" project.

To begin I will give you some background information on myself. My name is Leon Jesmanowicz, I am 25 years old and I have been a SantaBarbarian for the last fourteen years (outside of my 16 month hiatus, more on that later). I have been a personal trainer and nutritional consultant since 2000 and in 2004 I started my personal training company Santa Barbara Body Sculpting (http://www.sbbody.com/). I have done modeling and competed in bodybuilding as well as had side jobs ranging from managing store fronts, to bouncing at nightclubs, to taking care of kittens at a pet store (they are pretty darn adorable after all!).

Now, if there is one thing more varied then my professional life, then it must be my personal life especially when it comes to my body. I was born and raised until the age of six in my birthplace of Wroclaw, Poland. During my early years I was always extremely skinny and tall, even though my mother fed me like I was a prized pig, I couldn't put on any weight. After leaving Poland in 1988 we moved to Germany and then Holland before making our way to the USA in December of 1990. It wasn't until then that i was able to fill in my frame and stop looking like somebody locked me up under the stairs with no dinner every day (thanks McDonalds!). Throughout my teens and early twenties I had gone through ups and downs when it came to my physique and personal health. In November of 2005 I had become what I like to jokingly call "full of awesome". I was in the best shape of my life, I was helping people reach their goals and life was great.

Unfortunately, as the saying goes "The bigger they are, the harder they fall." With that being said, since that time I have learned that above all else I am human. I am a man like any other man that can reach great heights as well as be unbelievably humbled by the trials and tribulations sent towards us by life. In times of prosperity it is easy to feel over confident and "invincible". But when you least expect it, life comes around and smacks some humility into you. In between the time I was "full of awesome" and now many things happen. Things that happen to everyone, things that have befallen the best of the best. Within a 24 month span my life had been ripped apart by tragedy within my family and friends circle. Personally I had been plagued by injuries both mental and physical. I learned the hard way that people i thought i could trust, suddenly were the knifes in my back. It was a dark portrait of what my life had become. I attempted to go a new direction in my life by moving to Los Angeles for 16 months and attempting to try and ignore all the bad that had happened, unfortunately like any wound left unattended it soon got worse rather then better.

Luckily for me, I believe that every bad situation has a silver lining to it and it is from this silver lining that the "Getting Back to Awesome" project had its origins. After 16 months in Los Angeles i had decided to move back to my strongest roots here in Santa Barbara in order to make things awesome again! I was left with a daunting task, i had been working a desk job for 16 months and that coupled with my injuries had lead to chronic inactivity (read: couch potato), I had been left staring at a body that was 80 lbs over weight and a shadow of my former awesomeness. Something had to be done, and I felt I would approach it like all my other projects, and that was through pushing it to the limit. Because if you are going to do something, you might as well do it right!

The "Getting Back to Awesome" project is simple at its core. I have 12 weeks during which I am going to attempt to get as close being "full of awesome" as possible! But there is a catch, oh why does there always have to be a catch! I'm a firm believer that two extremely strong motivators for people are "rewards" and "fear of humiliation". People generally love rewards, and hate humiliation so i thought "geez Leon! what would happen if we put both on the line".

So the deal was as followed. I would start out by putting an ad in a local newspaper where it showed three pictures; a picture of me when I was full of awesome, a picture now, and a question mark(?). I personally always had a hard time relating to all those "before and after" pictures in magazines and ads as you never knew how the person really transformed. Plus there was no risk. They only showed the "bad" pictures after they were in shape. There was no pressure, because if you didn't make your goal nobody would see it. With my project, at the end of the 12 weeks I will have to fill in that question mark in the ad with my new status. Basically we flip around the "before & after" idea and give it an added twist. Talk about pressure!

With the "Back to Awesome" project everyone who wants to follow the journey from Aweful to Awesome can thanks to the miracle of blogs (bless you blog inventor guy!) During the project I will be sharing my diet, training strategies, as well as mental strategies and personal reactions as the project wears on.

In the end my intentions are for this project are two-fold. My primary objective is to get back to my healthy lifestyle and earn a physique that I can be proud of again. My other goal is to show the world that nobody is infallible and it can be hard when life knocks you off your horse, but if you work hard you can get up and be stronger then ever. I have had clients over the years always say to me "when I was younger, I was a football star and I was in great shape" or "before I had my kids, you wouldn't believe the body I had" and to that i say, "well lets get that body back!". Hopefully for those trying to get back to their former Awesomeness my journey can be an inspiration. For those that have never been in shape and are just starting out I am hoping that they can see that they are not alone when it comes to dealing with the hurdles thrown in their way on their path to living a healthy lifestyle. At the end of the day with the right kind of training and guidance anyone can sculpt that body they always wanted. The road to awesomeness is not an easy one, but hopefully my experience can motivate you to reach new levels of physical health and well being.

Look for my upcoming blogs as my start date of Monday January 14th approaches and beyond!