Boot camper shares her enthusiasm for fitness.
Brianna Marzett was up to the challenge of losing 140 pounds
Brianna Marzett’s wake-up call came at the doctor’s office. It wasn’t anything he said. Instead, she was surprised by what she read on her own chart.
She went in for a respiratory infection, but the diagnosis in the report read “morbid obesity.”
“That slapped me in the face,” Marzett said. “It was reality. I couldn’t run from it. It was written right there across the paper.”
Now, she sees that moment as the start of a journey that led to losing 140 pounds. She has spent the past two years immersed in exercise and is ready to share her enthusiasm for fitness with others.
Marzett remembers a time not too long ago when the scale was easy to ignore. Her days were busy as a special-education teacher in Alvin ISD. She had finished graduate school and bought a home.
She was the type of person who always said yes. “I’m a doer,” she said. “I’d get things done. I felt committed to everything and everybody. I just couldn’t say no.”
But staying busy kept her from checking in with herself, Marzett realized.
Weight had been an issue since childhood. The first time it spiked was in 2011, when, as an undergraduate at the University of Houston, she experienced depression.
She lost 50 pounds and then headed to graduate school in 2014. “Then I packed on 50 pounds again — and another 50,” she said.
Marzett weighed about 265 pounds when she walked across the stage to get her diploma.
The number climbed even higher. “I’d step on the scale, and it would be 270, 280, 290,” she said. “I remember seeing 300. I thought that my scale must be broken.”
Marzett, normally a people person, started hiding out to avoid dealing with her weight.
“I’d get invited and say no,” she said. “I’m realizing my clothes aren’t fitting. I’m down to one pair of pants that fit. I’m so immersed in work. I’m so stressed.”
She didn’t even go home for the holidays. She was exhausted just walking up the stairs in her home.
“I felt like I didn’t want to be seen,” Marzett said. “I was embarrassed. I’d look in the mirror and not recognize who I was.”
Then, that doctor visit in 2016 pushed her to take action.
“I wanted to blame someone, but I had no one to blame but myself,” Marzett said. “I ate myself to the place where I was. I hit rock bottom. I ravished my body. I had been too complacent. I let myself go.”
Still, she’s the type to get things done. Once she made up her mind to make a change, there was no stopping her.
“I was in crisis mode,” she said. “I had to fully commit.”
Marzett discovered Reggie C Fitness, a one-stop shop for fitness and nutrition headed by Reggie Collier. There were nutrition plans as well as members-only classes and gym challenges.
Collier’s own weight loss inspired him to go into business helping others. When he shared photos of his journey online, he discovered that people wanted to train with him.
“I moved forward and got my certification,” he said. “I started training my first clients. After that, it just blossomed.”
Now Collier has five facilities with plans to expand further — in addition to offering training online and community events.
Reggie C’s tagline — “the mecca of women’s transformations” — was just what Marzett needed to get started.
She signed up with her cousin Tyler Oakes, who became her accountability partner. The two attended an information session in the summer of 2017. They were tasked with taking a “before” photo. Marzett weighed in at 287 pounds.
“I had to talk myself into going,” she said.
Then, the cousins embarked on a 21-day challenge. They attended boot camps and changed their diets, eating five clean meals a day, all portion-controlled.
The extra weight began melting away, and Marzett felt more capable and energized.
“I felt like I was breaking shackles,” she said. “What was holding me down before? It was lack of control of my physical self.”
In three months, Marzett dropped 60 pounds. “The ability to transform, that’s a grace that is given to us,” she said. “A lot of us think that we have to be whoever we are. We get so captured.”
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She signed up for another boot camp. In five months, she was down 90 pounds. Then she decided to compete in the Beastmode Games at the Mean Green Training Center.
“I finished, a woman who was 287 pounds a few months prior,” she said. “It wasn’t just about losing weight. I could do whatever was in my mind.”
Another 90-day gym challenge brought her weight loss to 140 pounds.
“And I had earned every bit of it,” Marzett said. “That’s when I realized I needed to help someone by sharing photos. The impossible was possible. Someone needed to see someone who did it naturally with eating right and working out.”
She even became an employee of the gym that changed her life.
“I went from working out to shadowing and training,” she said. “I wanted to help women in the same way, women who’d love to change the trajectory of their lives through fitness.”
Collier is confident Marzett’s story will inspire others. “She just came in for a consultation, and that led her on a life-changing journey,” he said. “I want everyone to achieve that. You’re not going to get better by sitting where you’re at. One decision could be all you need.”
“I went from working out to shadowing and training. I wanted to help women in the same way, women who’d love to change the trajectory of their lives through fitness.”
Brianna Marzett