I gave up my science career to pursue what felt like God's calling in my life to help people better their health through fitness and exercise. I became a CrossFit Level 1 coach to help people with their fitness and took on ownership at a nutrition club selling shakes to help people with their nutrition and weight. Then one day, I made a sale at the nutrition club that changed my life forever. Through that experience, I knew that selling shakes as a means to helping people lose weight was definitely not for me and I immediately stepped away from the club and stepped towards building a nutrition company that educates people on nutrition and weight loss and equips them for long term success. I called that company “Calories & Confidence” and it has been radically changing people’s lives since 2016.  

Pain is a funny thing.

It can bring out both the best and the worst in you. What I’m about to share with you is how both physical and emotional pain led me to creating Calories & Confidence. A personalized and educational weight loss coaching program.

Before I created Calories & Confidence, I did something that I am not proud of. Something that when you hear it, you may think “How could you do that” and never look at Calories & Confidence again. I understand I run that risk and it’s a risk I am willing to take because it was a pivotal moment in my life and it’s part of the reason you are even able to read this right now.

One of the greatest things I have learned in life is that your response is what matters most, and only you get to decide how you respond. So if you are willing to let me share with you what I did and how I responded, then read on.

My name is Samantha Bahr. I grew up in the beautiful Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I received my Bachelor’s Degree at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point with a double major in Fisheries-Water Resources and Biology. Immediately after college, I got married and moved to Georgia as my husband pursued his Master's Degree. During my two years in Georgia, I worked in a veterinary diagnostics laboratory diagnosing animals with pathogenic organisms and doing drug susceptibility tests to provide treatment plans. Basically, I was a science nerd trying to cure animals of their sicknesses. It was an incredibly fascinating job and it allowed me to build an excellent resume, but there was one problem. Day after day, I would find myself staring at the clock waiting for five o’clock to strike so I could bike home, eat fast, and head to the gym.

In March 2015, my husband accepted a position with the DNR in Brainerd, MN, which is what brought us to where we now call home. For me, this meant I needed to find a new job. And to me, there were only two clear options to choose from. Continue to use my degree and search for a job with the resume I built, or start over from scratch and follow what my heart was telling me; my passion to be at the gym and to help others with their health and fitness journey. It was a no-brainer. I had to humble myself, take a step back from my pride of building a great science career, and follow what I knew I was truly made to do.

Now before I go any further, I need to bring you back in time so you understand how physical pain played a role in my journey. On March 2^nd, 1989, I was born.  I was a healthy baby, but there was something a little unusual about my left leg. It had a blue-ish purple tint to it as if it was entirely bruised. As I grew older, the color mostly went away, but there was clearly something wrong internally. I had many pains with my leg and had seen several doctors growing up, but I never received a clear answer to what was causing the pains or how to treat them. When I got married and moved to Georgia, I began to experience some more intense pains. I sought out a vein specialist, and then finally, after 24 years of wonder, I was officially diagnosed with Klipple Trauney Syndrome, otherwise known as KTS. After my diagnosis, I spent some time learning more about it, but to be honest, I still don’t fully understand it. So instead of trying to explain what I think I know about it, let me give you the simplest definition I could find on Google instead.

“KTS is a rare congenital malformation involving blood and lymph vessels and abnormal growth of soft and bone tissue. 1 out of 100,000 people are born with KTS”.

To put this into perspective, if the Minnesota Vikings stadium can hold 65,000 people, you add on another 35,000 seats, and randomly pick one person, you get me. Now that’s what I call lucky! I mean, I already knew I was special, but now I have proof! Just kidding.

It was a relief to finally understand the root of all the pains I had been having, but the only option I had to relieve the specific pain I was experiencing at that time was through surgery. So in January 2015, just a few months prior to moving to Brainerd, MN I had surgery to remove a vein and it left me couch ridden for six weeks. There’s not much you can do when you are just laying on a couch for six weeks, so I turned to the only sensible thing: YouTube! Now I don’t know if you know this or not, but there are a lot of interesting videos on YouTube. There are cute cuddling puppies, there are funny videos of people falling, there are inspirational TED talks, and there are a lot of CrossFit videos, which particularly caught my eye.

Now I knew about CrossFit before seeing the videos on YouTube, but I had never personally stepped in a gym myself or experienced the atmosphere and culture that comes with the CrossFit community. I watched video after video, and I was hooked. I knew I loved it, even though I had never actually tried it. In reality, it wasn’t much different from what I was already doing on my own. The only real difference I saw was that there was an organized group of people doing workouts and lifting together versus individuals doing them on their own.

When I learned that we would be moving to Brainerd, MN, the first thing I did was make a google search for a CrossFit gym in the area. To my great delight, I found CrossFit Grow and in that moment, I secretly knew that was where my new career was headed. On June 3^rd, 2015, I finally stepped foot in my first CrossFit gym. I met the owner, Todd Halls, and informed him that I would be joining his gym. What he didn’t realize at the time was that I was really saying “Hi, my name is Samantha Bahr and I’m going to become your next coach”. After a month of training with Todd and being a part of the CrossFit Grow community, my thoughts about being a coach were solidified and I informed Todd that I was interested in getting my CrossFit Level 1 Certificate and becoming a coach. In August 2015, I passed the CrossFit Level 1 training course and in October of 2015 I was officially coaching classes as a CrossFit Grow coach. 

Through CrossFit Grow, I met two people in particular that played a significant role in how Calories & Confidence got started. I met a guy named Karl, who owned a nutrition club in town, and a girl named Jen who liked to run. With taking on this new career path I was very intrigued to learn more about the nutrition club. And just having moved to Brainerd recently, I saw a potential friendship with someone who loved to run as much as I did.

The first day I checked out the nutrition club I saw a brochure that said “Coaches Wanted”. I thought, “Hey, I could help out. I’m all about exercise and nutrition.” I told Karl I wanted to be a coach, and that led to me becoming an Herbalife Independent Distributor. I was a CrossFit coach, so I had the exercise component, and as an Herbalife coach I had the nutrition component, or so I thought. At the time, it felt like everything was falling right into place.

Taking on a new career path and diving all in with the coaching scene, I knew I needed to do some self-educating on exercise and nutrition. Throughout my elementary and high school years I played lots of sports and I carried my passion and talent with softball into my collegiate career. As a college athlete, I learned a lot about strength training as it was part of our mandatory conditioning, but there really wasn’t any nutrition training so that was more of a figure it out yourself thing. As a CrossFit coach, I was able to catch on to teaching movements fairly easily because of my experience in college, but I didn’t really have a solid foundation for nutrition yet. I began reading everything I could get my hands on. The more I read, the more I began to see these common themes on specific topics. The more I read, the more I began to find outliers that didn’t line up with the other things I was learning. The more I read, the more I realized that I really like learning about this stuff.

As an Herbalife coach, I enjoyed the products I was promoting and I loved celebrating with clients when they started to see results by using them. Things were going very well for me and I received an offer to take on ownership at the nutrition club. I felt like I was helping people and that Herbalife was going to be a long term thing for me so I accepted the offer and I took pride in being an owner. It was a big step for me, and at the time it felt right for me.

Then one day, I learned about an online nutrition coaching service that focused on macronutrients. At that point, I felt like I was getting a pretty good understanding of nutrition and getting a coach seemed like the next best step to learning more. So I took the plunge and signed up for my first personal nutrition coaching program. The program wasn’t exactly what I hoped it would be, but it did help enhance my understanding of macronutrients, and the greatest thing it did for me was solidify my thoughts and beliefs about nutrition.

As an Herbalife coach, part of my job as an independent distributor was to get people to try a 3-day trial. The idea was that after 3 days of having two shakes a day every day, people would feel better and see that their weight dropped. This would then lead me into selling the products. The more I did these 3-day trials, and the more I began to learn about nutrition, the more I began to realize that I wasn’t really being a “coach”. At least not what I believed my definition of being a coach was, and that wasn’t sitting well with me. I was selling products and people were getting results, but they didn’t understand how they were getting their results. Their understanding was: drink two shakes a day, every day, and get results. They didn’t understand what they were really doing that allowed them to get results. My income relied on selling the products, not educating people. And if I did start educating people, they would learn that there is a much cheaper and easier way of achieving their goals, which would put me out of business.

I began to feel uneasy about how I was utilizing my status of “coach”. The more people I sold products to, the more I felt my heart ache because I didn’t feel like I was truly helping them.

And then Shawna happened. Now Shawna is not her actual name, but that’s the name I’ll use for the purpose of this story. Dealing with physical pain in my life led me to CrossFit which led me to Karl and Herbalife which led me to Shawna. But my experience with Shawna is where the emotional pain comes in and was the event in which my response led to creating Calories & Confidence.

I met Shawna at the nutrition club and invited her to try a 3-day trail. She accepted and got great results, and I ensured her that if she continued to have two shakes a day every day, that she would achieve her goal. She trusted me, paid for the shakes and went on her way. After she left, I looked down at the cash she gave me and my heart had reached its lowest low. You see, at this time, I wasn’t having the best business month so I felt extra pressure to make that sale. When I told her the price, she said she had just gotten paid that day and had just enough money to buy the shakes. She willingly paid me, but I felt like I had basically just robbed her. Now, I don’t know what her actual financial situation was. Maybe the shakes were a cheap expense for her. Maybe she wanted to buy the shakes because she really enjoyed the taste of them and didn’t care how much they costed. I don’t know. But I do know how I felt when she left. I felt like a salesperson who was just trying to make a sale to make some money without providing any real value to the customer. And in that moment, I knew that being an Herbalife “coach” was not the way for me and that I needed to get out and restore my heart.

Now before I go any further, I want to make this very clear. There is nothing wrong with shakes or selling shakes. They can be a great part of a healthy diet and I enjoy shakes occasionally myself. In fact, if you’ve never been to Flame Nutrition in Baxter, MN I encourage you to check it out. Your first shake is free and the pumpkin spice is phenomenal! So is mint chip and blueberry lemon cheesecake. But I knew that what I was doing with my status as an Herbalife Coach was not right for me. It was not the way I wanted to help people with their health and wellness journey. And that’s how I knew I needed to leave.

So once again, just as I had to do with my college degree, I found myself laying down my pride and giving up my ownership of the nutrition club.

I left Herbalife on a low. But getting to that point is part of what stemmed the growth and success of Calories & Confidence. I knew I wanted to help people with their health journey. Through my experience with Herbalife I realized that what I really believed in was teaching people. I thought, if I can teach people how to understand their nutrition and give them the knowledge of how to achieve their goals, that is something I can feel good about, every time. Knowledge is priceless. It’s something you can take with you for the rest of your life. And I want to be a part of something that changes a person's life, for life. That, I believe in.

At this point in time, it was Spring 2016. One day, I was running with my new friend Jen just south of Kiwanis Park along the Mississippi River, and we had a conversation I will never forget. I told her about this idea I had of starting a nutrition coaching business to teach people how to truly understand their nutrition and get the results they desired. I was just kind of nonchalantly throwing it out there to create conversation, and I was not prepared for what she said back to me. She said, “When you start that, let me know and I’ll be your first client”. In an instant a pit welled in my stomach. I was instantly terrified and instantly excited at the same time. I was being serious, but I didn’t actually know how to create a program to do that yet. At that point it was just an idea.

I went home from that run realizing that I had just been given an opportunity to do what I truly believed in. An opportunity to restore the ache in my heart and be a coach that teaches people how to understand their nutrition and equip them with knowledge that they can take with them for life. I had no idea how to do it yet. But I knew I had to try and I believed that I could figure it out as I went.

Going back in time a little bit again, in April 2016 while I was still a part of Herbalife, I went to a leadership conference where I qualified for a breakfast with Dennis Dowdell. Dennis was a school bus driver who was introduced to Herbalife, fell in love with the products, decided to become an independent distributor and eventually climbed his way to the top of Herbalife. As I listened to Dennis give his speech, he said many things that really resonated with me.

These are some of the highlighted things I wrote:

1. You have to learn what your business is.
2. NEVER help your distributors. EQUIP them.
3. Don’t be deceived that business is great. If customers aren’t getting results, business is not great.
4. The most important thing you can be is YOU!
5. No two people have the same heartbeat, voice print, thumbprint. We are all unique.
6. There is nothing we can do to change the past, only the future.
7. Focus on POTENTIAL!
8. You must find your purpose. Then find your process. When problems arise, find your WHY.
9. What is your mission statement?
10. Don’t ever sacrifice your values for your objective.

You see, when Shawna walked out the door with her products that day, that feeling I felt was the feeling of ¹⁰sacrificing my values for my objective. It was a horrible feeling. One that I will never allow to happen in my business again, because there is ⁶nothing I can do to change the past, but I can change the future. With Calories & Confidence, we don’t even offer a program to someone who is not ready because it’s not about making a sale. It’s about providing an opportunity for life change for someone who is ready and willing to commit to the program. ⁴If the most important thing you can be is you, then I was clearly falling short of the most important thing I could be because I knew that that was not me. At least it wasn’t the person I wanted to be and knew that I could be. ¹I learned that I didn’t just want to ²help people get results, I wanted to equip them in understanding how to get results. I knew what it was that was really allowing people to get results, and I knew that you didn’t have to use shakes if you didn’t want to. If you want to, great! There’s nothing wrong with that. But I knew that the results were coming from calorie balance and consistency over time. Not a magical shake. And I knew that I could teach others how to understand that too. And not only that but how to do it on a much friendlier budget, without starving yourself, and without having to give up the foods you love or know you never plan on giving up.

Jen was the first person who gave me the opportunity to prove it. Calories & Confidence has come a long way since that day. When Jen started, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I knew I had knowledge about nutrition, weight loss, and enhancing sport performance, but I had never taught it to someone before and I had no idea what it looked like to do that. So the first week of her program I just said, um.. okay.. download this app, weigh and track everything you eat, put your data into this spreadsheet and we’ll talk again at the end of the week. Okay bye!

I’m sure I explained things a little bit more then that, but that’s really my memory of it. At the end of each week I would have her send me an email with how her week went and I would reply with trying to explain how we progress week after week based on her data and what she was experiencing. Along the way I would come up with these homework assignments to try and help her really understand things better. Apparently, she was enjoying her results and what she was learning because I started getting phone calls from some people she knew asking if I would help them too. I also reached out to a couple of friends at the gym to see if they were interested, and to my delight, they jumped on too. I still felt like I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I was determined to give it all I had and figure it out along the way. ⁸I knew my purpose (to equip). Along the way I was finding the process and when problems arose, I reminded myself of why - ⁹my mission to teach people how to understand their nutrition and to equip them with knowledge that they can take with them for the rest of their lives.

Fast forward to today, Calories & Confidence has transformed the lives of hundreds of people and soon to be thousands. One of which could be you by the way. : ) When you get done reading this, I encourage you to check out our testimonies page if you haven’t done so already. The life transformation that has come out of Calories & Confidence is absolutely incredible, and if you need a dose of inspiration for what is possible for you through the program, you are bound to find it in one of those stories.

Calories & Confidence is a proven product. It’s a proven process with proven results. If that wasn’t true you wouldn’t be reading this right now and all the testimonies on our website, Facebook page, Instagram and YouTube wouldn’t be possible. ³It’s great not because I say it is great, but because our clients get results. However, in my personal opinion, Calories & Confidence is the best high quality product investment for your health. And when I say health I mean whole body health and wellness. At first, I thought I was just running a nutrition business. But what I’ve learned through my clients is that it’s so much more than just a nutrition program. If eye pressures can be relieved and medications can be signed off or if new friendships can be made and self-worth and confidence can be built or rebuilt, then Calories & Confidence is not just a nutrition program. It’s a health and wellness program. Nutrition is just our means to releasing your potential and what is possible for you.

Thank you so much for reading my story. I really appreciate it. And with all that said, I would like to you leave you with this. Always remember that ⁵you have unique potential. Sometimes it’s hard to see the potential that lies within us. That’s one of my absolute favorite things about being a CrossFit coach and a nutrition coach is that I can see potential and I get to paint the picture of what is possible for someone. I can see what is possible for the athlete when they learn how to get that one movement. I can see what is possible for the Calories & Confidence client because of what those that have already gone through the program have proven and accomplished. ⁷We all have unique potential. And I don’t just mean with our health journeys. We have unique potential in our careers, in our families, in our friendships, in our churches, in our random acts of kindness, in our generosity. It’s there. I ensure you, it’s there. Believe it’s true. Follow your heart. And never give up on your dreams.