Growing up obese, I spent the first half of my life struggling with body image issues, and the poor self-esteem that came along with them, daily. As young as 11 years old, I remember looking in the mirror and absolutely loathing what I saw, leading me to begin making lifestyle changes, mainly by mimicking things I heard adults do and say. “No fried food, don’t drink soda, exercise more, etc.” It took losing 50 pounds while simultaneously growing three inches by my freshman year of high school to realize I never wanted to be “skinny.” In fact, I HATED it as much as I despised my overweight former self. Now the image staring back at me was the same insecure boy, just left with a smaller version of the same flabby stomach but with tiny arms and boney shoulders - not exactly quite what I envisioned “getting in shape” would look and feel like. This is because I wasn’t “in shape.” I was weak, lacked any muscle tone, and most importantly my mind certainly wasn’t where it needed to be yet (and that must be developed first and foremost).

 

What began as after school trips to my best friend’s (R.I.P. MYLES VICTOR GOSSELIN) basement, where he and I followed the instruction of his father using an old weight set, eventually lead to me joining my first gym. The rest is history. By senior year I weighed the same as I did as a freshman, but my waist had gone from 36 to 28 inches. Although still “small” by bodybuilding standards, I looked athletic and healthy. It was around this time that I realized, despite having just been accepted to the top three business schools in the Northeast (and arguably the country) for marketing, fitness was my true passion and something I wanted to pursue full-time. My then guidance counselor told me of a college renowned for its dedication to health and physical fitness. It was then I applied, was accepted to, and decided on Springfield College SIGHT UNSEEN.

 

Springfield College gave me the opportunity to further my bodybuilding alongside my education and for the first time I had “peers” (aside from my aforementioned best friend who passed away just two weeks prior to me leaving for school) with similar goals and interests. In the spring of 2008, I entered three natural bodybuilding shows. I was hooked enough to withstand yet another rigorous period of diet and training to take the stage again the following April, while also beginning to work for a personal training company that many area gyms outsourced to. It was around this time I had a change of heart and decide to transfer to the University of Bridgeport for the fall 2009 semester, where I had enrolled in the pre-Chiropractic program. Meanwhile, a close bodybuilding friend of mine had just been accepted into the UB Chiropractic School. Sharing this newfound direction, we rented a house near campus and became both roommates and training partners.

 

I only lasted one semester at Bridgeport before realizing I made a huge mistake in transferring and that Springfield College was truly a perfect fit for me. However, this move wasn’t entirely in vain. By training and living with another bodybuilder, I now truly looked the part of a competitive bodybuilder in that I was bigger and leaner than ever before. I took the spring 2010 semester off from school and focused on training for my first ever NPC competition that June and simultaneously starting what is now my very successful coaching and training business, as well as getting everything in order to return to Springfield College that fall.

 

I spent the next two years taking the remaining courses and labs I had left, interning, and competed during the summer of 2011 three more times . I ended the season with a Juniors class win at the Musclemania Empire States. My client load grew alongside my accomplishments academically and within the sport of Bodybuilding and everything was falling into place. However, after finally obtaining my bachelor’s degree in Exercise Science from Springfield in the spring of 2012, I once again started to have a change of heart and began investing the money I had saved from training clients into my newfound passion for nightlife by taking ownership in both a bar and nightclub.

 

Despite still maintaining a steady client base during this time, I watched my own physique slowly unravel over the following 3 years and bodybuilding became nothing more than a piece of past. By the fall of 2015, I was disgusted with the man staring back at me in the mirror.  This was the first time I felt this way since childhood. My diet was awful, training sporadic, sleep habits terrible at best, and I found myself drinking heavily (I was straight-edge sober up until 2012). Not only had I invested everything into the nightlife endeavors,  I had nothing to fall back on beyond my now very small income from training (as I kept downsizing more and more to focus on the failing other businesses). Here I was, having gone from a rockstar lifestyle (which distracted me from my fading physique at the time) to having nothing but an iron will to regain the life I lived since I first made those lifestyle changes as an 11 year old boy up until getting derailed from my own goals.

 

That fall, I completely shut the door to the three year chapter that had broken me back down to nothing, leaving me with the task of needing to complete my greatest self-transformation to date. This time it wasn’t just getting my body in shape, but my health back, beating the addiction I had developed to a “fast” lifestyle, rebuilding my personal training business to its highest level yet, AND I decided might as well get on stage again for the first time since 2011 for good measure. I knew that with my education and mind that was slowly returning to its former state from the haze of three years of poor decision making, if there was anyone who could pull this off it was me.

 

From a sloppy 265 pounds, I began taking all of the necessary steps to not only resurrect the “old” Anthony Tedesco, but create the best one yet. On June 4, 2016 I presented my biggest, most conditioned physique to date at the NPC Atlantic States (the show I had my eye on back in 2012 before falling off) and placed in both the Novice and Open Heavyweight classes! Now, if you took the time to read all of that, chances are you can see exactly why I am so talented at what I do. In just 27 years on this earth, I have walked in many different shoes, and chances are that at point, you and I have been one in the same. This is what allows me to connect so well with such a wide variety of individuals, all hailing from very different walks of life, each with their own unique bodies and goals. Combine this common ground with an extreme sense of compassion, a phenomenal education, and over a decade of experience and I can promise you the healthiest, most encouraging, and safest guidance in achieving your health and fitness aspirations. Allow me to change your life, as I have my own and those of so many over the years.  I guarantee you will never look back other than to see how far you’ve come.