Welcome to the second interview in the Exercise Hero series.

Exercise Hero Series features real people who have transformed themselves from coach potatoes to exercise heros who can inspire the rest of us.

This time I feature one of my favorite fitness bloggers, Marion Shaw (43), from Wisconsin, USA.

Marion calls herself  ”Girl Monster” and I sometimes call her “Marion the Amazon”. :-) That is because she’s able to do 160 lb bench presses and uses 40 lb dumbbells for bicep curls.

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Why did you start exercising? How long did it take before you started liking it?

I started exercising about 3 weeks before my 39^th birthday because I was actually scared of the poor physical shape I was in while heading towards my 40^th birthday. During this time in my life, I cried about how fat I was quite often. I was not doing anything more than short walks, while eating way too much junk food each day. (In my 30’s, it was not unusual for me to drink 5 cans of soda pop along with candy each day.)

I decided that I was going to give myself the best 40^th birthday present ever– a fit healthy body. And I did!

I was a paying member of the gym for about 2 years before I actually started going regularly. At that point in time, I absolutely hated going to the gym, probably because I went to the gym often enough to get very sore, but never enough to overcome that soreness and get in shape. [Read more...]