Today’s guest is Kandice Shelton. Kandice is a certified health and nutrition coach, and fitness instructor. Kandice is also the CEO and founder of Fitspiration10, a health and fitness lifestyle company. Through her company, Kandice helps women reach and maintain their ideal weight through fitness, nutrition, and accountability programs. Her plan includes ten key elements of healthy living to keep women balanced. She also partners with companies to offer similar programs for their employees, members, and stakeholders. This episode is all about Kandice’s victorious weight loss endeavor and how she turned that into a successful business. Listen in to this great conversation between Happy Black Women.   Value your personal experience enough to realize others can benefit from it.   Kandice lost 60 pounds over the course of her weight loss journey. She was in Corporate America, attempting to balance her career with her personal life. Health took a backseat and she gained more and more weight. One day she stepped on the scale, and at 5’3’’ had hit 200 pounds. That was the moment she decided to take initiative to shift her mindset and begin a weight loss journey. Kandice embraced the process and fell in love with how healthy felt. Her passion, combined with a talent to coach, led Kandice to turn her passion into her business. She valued her story and success enough to realize others could benefit from it, too. Kandice’s fitness plan stems from the program she followed, and is available to you now on this episode of Happy Black Woman.   Bring your life into balance.   The focus of Kandice’s journey was not on weight loss. Instead, she focused on the idea of bringing her life back into balance. Weight loss was a goal, and the weight did come off, but she also created a lasting lifestyle change.  Kandice came up with ten key elements that summed up sustainable changes. Some elements are what you would expect with a weight loss program, like exercise, but also included on the list are mindset, sleep, and stress. On her website, Kandice offers a free guide of specific strategies to make a difference on your journey. If your expectation is to make a lasting lifestyle change, start with baby steps. Take your first step today by listening in to today’s episode.   Your mindset is your foundation.   On this episode, Kandice offers action steps to start your journey. One thing she always tells her clients is to set a strong foundation. Yes, you have to exercise and eat right. But you build these things from a healthy foundation, which is your mindset. Learn how to become aware of the thoughts that come to your mind about your body and weight. How you think sets the tone for how you will act. Once you’ve addressed your mindset, put in place a system of accountability. We all need cheerleaders, but we also need that challenging voice to keep us on track. The last step is to prepare. You can easily plan for your own success by scheduling your workouts on your calendar. Kandice challenges you to take it a step further: lay out your workout clothes ahead of time, put your gym bag in the car, plan your meals. That extra step makes all the difference to success stories like Kandice’s. Creating a storehouse of healthy habits.   Kandice’s business was born out of the process she went through to lose 60 pounds. Her everyday habits led to huge change. So, how does she do it? Kandice makes sure to get centered and grounded at the beginning of her day. She expends a lot of energy coaching fitness classes all day and working with clients. From the onset, her days are structured to make sure she takes care of herself.  Kandice has her own exercise regimen, even after teaching group fitness classes. She knows herself well enough to know she’s an evening workout person.  She’s figured out what works for her.  She also keeps inspiration close by and dives into all kinds of devotionals.  She is a real Happy Black Woman who advises to just start. Learn how to wa