A THANK YOU blog…              by Cheryl Niekamp

Just like a graduation speech, or the academy awards, I have many many people to thank for all their help and support along this journey.  Thank you to everyone at Gym of Buckhead, Institut’ DERMed and Nolan Suttles for making my BBC experience so tremendous.  

Since we spent the majority of our time at the Gym of Buckhead, I’ll start with them.  First and foremost is Amy Neal.  Quite honestly, I was a bit intimidated by her at first.  Here’s a woman who owns her own business and can leg press 750+ pounds.  Yeah, it’s intimidating.  But, from the moment we had our first conversation, I just adored her.  She truly wants to help people, to arm them with the tools they need to meet their goals, to reshape their habits.  I’ll never forget one of the first things she said to us as we were discussing our new meal plan.  She said, “You’ve tried it your way for the last 10+ years, now it’s time to try it my way.”  And guess what, I did try it her way and it works.  Thank you Amy, from the bottom of my heart for all of your unbelievable help, guidance, support, clarification, patience (you needed a lot of patience with me and my lame questions) and for loading me up with so many good lessons I can use not only in the gym, but in my everyday life.  You were a trainer, nutritionist, counselor, camp counselor, cheerleader, myoplex shake provider, and support-system all rolled into one.  Thank you for all of the countless hours you invested in us, and for forever changing my approach toward fitness and health.  THANK YOU.

Every time we walked into the gym we felt like rock stars.  The entire staff knew we were Beauty Boot Campers and always greets us with a smile and a “how’s it going so far”.  It was such a positive and supportive atmosphere.  A huge thanks goes to everyone at Gym of Buckhead but especially to Jennifer, Maile and Fitz.  While Amy was sick, they filled-in for her and made sure we kept cranking on the workouts.  Maile and Fitz, thank you so much for your awesome, hard-core workouts, it was great experiencing different ways you could make us sore.  And Jennifer went above and beyond to make sure we were always taken care of.  You came in early to train us, you were always available for advice and wore a smile through it all!  I enjoyed every moment we trained together and all of us deeply appreciate your knowledge, easy laugh and charm.  Thank you soo much!

My darling torturer, uh, I mean Kristen.  I just discovered today that she actually gives pleasant facials in addition to the stinging chemical peels.  Just kidding Kristen, you are awesome and I can’t thank you enough for all the wonderful treatments you gave me.  You have erased years of damage from my face and I’m truly and deeply grateful to you, Lyn, and Charlotte and for giving me the opportunity to take part in these skin improvement techniques.  I loved our sessions together, you are wonderful!  Everyone at DerMed is fantastic and I also enjoyed my endermology sessions with Jen and Jenny – you guys are both so talented and kind – I really enjoyed getting to you know you!

Todd, you are a hair genius.  Thank you so much for taking the time to analyze, assess and execute the perfect hair cut and color for me.  It’s been such a transformation from my “natural disaster” to a sleek and lovely look.   It is really terrific and I am so grateful to you.  Thank you also for working so hard on the www.mybeautybootcamp.com website. I know that was a big job but we really loved following the blog and all the advice each business provided for the readers.  

Thank you to Kim, Deena, Heather and Phyliss.  Thank you guys so much for always being supportive, enthusiastic and fun.  I learned from each one of you and am grateful to you all for all your words of encouragement and sincere support.  Getting to know you guys was one of the best parts best parts of BBC.  I’d like to give a special shout-out to Kim who I had the pleasure of working out with the most. My nick-name for her is PM or project manager – she’s a natural!  We were a great a.m. team, always excited about our workouts and always looked forward to hanging together.  

Thank you to my amazing girlfriends who sent emails, called, checked in on me and always checked the blog on Tuesdays and Friday to see if they’d won anything.  Debra, thank you for being so patient with me when you visited and for enduring tuna and fat free mayo for lunch and for coming to my workouts.  Thank you to my amazing Mom and Dad who have and always will be my biggest fans and who loved following every moment of this process.  Thank you also to Jim’s family – they were all so kind and supportive while we were at the beach.

I’d also like to thank my children, Bradley, JP and Matthew who were so cute and asked me everyday if I was going to my workout.  They loved going to the gym with me and pretending to “workout” on the machines.  My hope is that I am showing them by example the importance of exercising, eating right and staying healthy.  

Above all, I’d like to thank my husband, Jim.  Without his support I could not have kept up with BBC or, as we jokingly refer to as my “part-time job”.   Jim willingly picked up the slack with the kids.  He’d take them to school for me for I could make the morning workouts and come home early from work so I could make my evening workouts.  Jim would often be at the gym during our boot camp workouts and I think he got great joy out of watching me sweat!  Thank you Jim for your patience as I underwent this transformation.

I am deeply thankful to you all.