My Story

How A Small Family Fitness Challenge Took Me From Overweight Daycare Provider to Successful Fitness and Nutrition Coach.

Hey there! Thanks for taking the time hear my story!

I’m Carla White and I want to share my story of how a fun family fitness challenge took me from an over-weight, worn out, full-time student, minister, wife, mother and daycare owner into a fit and fabulous, energetic, wife, super active grandmother and successful personal trainer and nutrition coach.

Wow, that was a crazy run-on sentence, but all those details are important.  I want you to know that I’ve been where you are. I have not been fit all my life, and in order to get fit I had to juggle A LOT of responsibility, it wasn’t easy but I did it and you can too. Check out my before and after picture!

My Story Might Sound A Lot Like Yours

I was an active kid growing up and was always playing outside with my four siblings or neighborhood kids. When I was old enough to play sports, I did! I may not have been the most naturally talented, but you would be hard pressed to find a kid that worked harder than I did to continually improve her game.
When I ran track, I would practice my hurdle form over lawn chairs in the backyard. When I played volleyball, I would practice bumping and setting the volleyball off the angled garage roof  for hours on end. I cant remember a time in my life that I didn’t play basketball, and I was a pretty darn good shooter, after all I grew up shooting over my much taller older brother.
My extra effort always paid off on game day and it’s that same dedication and commitment that makes me a successful coach to many today.

Here’s a current picture of that back yard where my love for fitness began. My mom still lives here (my dad passed away). The folding lawn chairs are long gone and the basketball goal is no more, but that garage roof can still send back a volleyball.
Here’s a pic of my freshman volleyball team. You want to know something crazy? Well, many of you probably understand. Take a look at this photo of me (I’m the one with the green circle around her) can you believe I thought I was overweight? I realize now that I have ALWAYS thought my legs were fat. What in the world was I seeing?

I was a Yo-Yo Dieter Most of My Adult Life

I married at the age of 18 and I’m still joyfully married to the same amazing man today. I became a mom right away and I ran a daycare out of our home for 20 years. Now I’m Grandma to THREE!

I tried to stay active in my young adult years by playing some recreational volleyball, playing with the kids in my daycare, scheduling group workouts with friends (that never quite panned out) and when I hit my thirties I even learned to play tennis and I loved it. But the extra activity was not a long term solution for my poor eating habits.


The year we were saving to purchase our first house might have been the worst. We pretty much lived off hotdogs because they were cheap. Combine that with years of nibbling on lunchtime leftovers of dino-nuggets and tator-tots, along with popping animal crackers all day added up and the scale, the mirror, my clothes and worst of all photographs proved it.

You Name the Diet I Probably Tried It

Along with trying different ways to stay active in hopes of getting fit, I found myself continually starting a new diet. You name it, I tried it.

  • I was all about the fat-free craze. Remember when the grocery stores couldn’t keep Snack-Wells devils food cookies in stock? Who wouldn’t love a diet of endless cookies?
  • Next on my list was slim fast. How could drinking delicious chocolate shakes instead of eating food not work, right? Well those things gave me THE WORST headaches.
  • Next came Adkins fail.
  • How about the cereal for dinner diet? It might have been magically delicious, but magically nutritious, not so much.
  • The baked potato diet
  • Oh and who could forget the Subway diet?
  • And I cant leave out my attempt at Weight Watchers where I successfully watched my weight continue to rise.

There were so many others that I cant even remember them all. Lets just say none of them stuck and any pounds I shed along the way, always came back and so kindly brought new friends along.

A Purposeful Mindset Helped me to Lose the Weight and Keep It Off


Did I finally find the perfect workout routine? Did I discover a top-secret diet plan? Nope! It was neither of those things.

What I found was a New Mind-Set!

A new mind-set propelled by the discovery of a new motive. A motive that was bigger than me, bigger than how I looked and bigger than how I felt.

Let me explain.

I mentioned earlier that I was a minister. The same dedication and commitment that I put into sports in my younger days, I likewise put into ministry.

One day while sitting in a church service I suddenly felt convicted about my health and eating habits. I began to think about how there are many things in this life that we cannot control, but what we chose to put into our mouths and how we care for our bodies is completely up to us.

Just one of the MANY church dinners over the years that helped contribute to my weight struggles.

It was on that day in which I realized that if I did not get a handle on my health I could potentially put myself in a physical conditional that could hinder ministry and from doing all God had purposed me to do. I decided in that very moment that I would not allow myself to get in Gods way of doing whatever He wanted to do IN me and THROUGH me.

A Fun Family Fitness Challenge Gave Me Support & Accountability to Succeed

A few short months after that church service a small group of close church friends and family got together at my house and I organized a Family Fitness Challenge.

I had to dig deep to find this pic, but I wanted you to see part of the crew that met every Sunday night to fellowship and check in for the challenge. Fun Fact and fond memory —they lost points if they were late! This particular rule made for some funny times at the doorbell when the deadline hit!

In true Carla character I poured my all into organizing and executing this challenge. The challenge itself was simple. It did not ultimately focus on weight-loss (as not everyone needs or wants to lose weight), but on developing healthy habits.
There was no gimmick to our system. No food group we had to completely cut out and nothing we had to do in excess to win the challenge. We earned points for practicing healthy habits and the weight loss results were amazing!

Purpose & Community Were Key For Me

Purpose – I began to understand the relationship between my goal and my purpose. Weight loss was my goal, but it was not my purpose. My weight loss goal was actually just a means to my purpose. My purpose we was to have the energy, confidence and physical ability to live and enjoy the life God gave me. I wanted to be all in when it came to the things that mattered most to me, like ministry and family.
Community – If it had not been for the group of like-mind group of people in our little challenge group I don’t believe I would have had the same results.  It was the since of community, constant support, encouragement and accountability of that group that kept me focused on my purpose and pushed me to keep going.

Hiring A Personal Trainer Increased my Confidence and Transformed my Body in Amazing Ways

 When I hit what I thought was my weight loss goal, I wanted more. I was smaller and lighter, but now I just felt skinny-fat, I desired a healthier more toned and defined look. I knew I needed to incorporate weight training, but the free weight section of the gym intimidated me. Up until that point I had strictly stuck to the machines where I felt like I couldn’t mess anything up. The last thing I wanted to do was to make a fool of myself.

At this point I sought out a personal trainer.  That that was no doubt THE SMARTEST investment in my health that I had ever made.  Not only did she help me build my confidence the incorporation proper free-weight training to my weekly routine and the tweaking of my diet truly transformed my body in an amazing way.

I Was Planning to Go Into Full-time Church Ministry, but God Had a Different Ministry In Mind

You can make many plans, but the Lord’s purpose will prevail.   Proverbs 19:21

As I became toned and fit I completely fell in love with the process.  I found myself learning as much as I possibly could about weight training and nutrition. I was constantly using what I learned to help and encourage others. The next thing I knew I had a job as a trainer that I never asked for, and wasn’t even sure I even wanted, but absolutely loved. I have continued to dive deep into learning and I have earned  a variety of  certifications that enable me to be a well rounded coach.

  • NASM Certified Personal Trainer
  • NASM Corrective Exercise Specialist
  • PN Level 1 Certified Nutrition Coach
  • OTA Certified Online Trainer
  • IWU Certified in Pastoral Care & Counseling

After two years of working crazy long hours as personal trainer and coaching 17 group workouts a week for a local boot camp God lined things up for Completely Fit to be born. I never planned it, I never dreamed it, and once again I never even knew I wanted it but THIS, helping people transform their lives; body, mind and spirit, is part of what God was preparing me for in that church service so many years ago.

While I was in seminary and slowly transitioning out of the daycare business my full intentions for all of my efforts in school, health and fitness were focused on increasing my effectiveness in full-time church ministry in the local church. I realize now that God was equipping me with the tools that I needed to successfully coach and minister to so many amazing people through their amazing journey of fitness.

This is Nikki. She is one of the amazing Fit Family members. What you probably notice right away is Nikki’s dramatic physical transformation, but what I am most proud of is Nikki’s continually progress toward COMPLETE transformation Body, Mind & Spirit, the stuff pictures like these can’t fully show.

Completely Fit Has Touched More Lives Than I Would Have Ever Believed

I started with doing a little personal training, which grew into adding in some group training a few times a week, which quickly grew into a full schedule of clients each week. It wasn’t long before I began offering unique fitness challenges, nutrition coaching and seminars.
Next thing I knew I was renovating the garage because I needed space to expand, adding new high-quality equipment, adding online training services and purchasing a custom app to add to my arsenal of fitness tools to keep up with all the client success.  God is so faithful!

Now All That is Missing Is You

So many people have come to Completely Fit and found a sense of value, belonging, understanding, support and encouragement. Lives and being transformed inside and out! You life can be transformed too.

Most everyone comes in feeling frustrated, unsure, defeated, lacking confidence, confused and/or discontented. They often think something must be wrong with them, yet the desire to be fit is still there.  They join our Fit Family and find the support, guidance and accountability that they need to succeed. In addition to reaching the weight loss, muscle tone and strength gains that they intentionally signed up for, they are often even more excited about all the extras like

  • having more energy
  • establishing life balance
  • becoming more confident
  • making great new friends
  • being more organized
  • getting better sleep
  • having healthier relationships
  • The list goes on and on………..

Now it’s time for you to experience these kinds of results too!

Your Next Step

Getting fit is not about waiting for the ideal set of circumstances before you begin.  It’s about learning how to gradually add in healthy habits into your REAL life!  We are not striving for daily perfection here, progress comes by taking one personalized step at a time.

Your next step is to contact me today for a free coaching consultation. 

During your consultation we will

  1. Discuss your goals, frustrations and foreseeable barriers
  2. Develop a simplified yet detailed plan that eliminates overwhelm, seeks to overcomes barriers so that you can reach your goals
  3. Determine your next step

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