Precision Nutrition Coaching Grand Prize Winners: January 2020. We just surprised our latest winners with more than $125,000 in prizes!

Bernie and Paul spent the past 12 months transforming their eating habits, health, bodies, and lives with personal help from a PN coach. And now? They’re our latest Grand Prize winners. See how we surprised them with $25,000 each, and meet the rest of our January 2020 Precision Nutrition Coaching winners.

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Every six months, in our Precision Nutrition Coaching program, we give away more than $125,000 to the men and women who have the most incredible, inspiring body transformations.

Yep, that’s more than $250,000 a year.

And today, you’ll meet our latest amazing winners.

These folks started working with us in January 2019 and—over the course of the past year—completely transformed how they eat, move, look, and feel.

They lost weight, gained strength, boosted their health, and inspired their friends and families.

What’s more, they did all of this without extreme diets or crazy workout routines. There were no meal plans or off-limit foods. No unbreakable rules. No deprivation. And perhaps best of all, no guilt.

Each person simply committed to making a change, stayed consistent, and used the accountability and support of one of our dedicated coaches.

• Meet Bernie, our Women’s $25,000 Grand Prize Winner
• Meet Paul, our Men’s $25,000 Grand Prize Winner
• See photos of all January 2020 Women’s winners
• See photos of all January 2020 Men’s winners

Bernie Stewart just couldn’t bear to show her arms.

That pretty, strappy top she’d so optimistically bought during a fit phase?

She felt she had to cover it up with a bolero cardigan.

She was also wearing what she calls her “Ali Baba” pants—voluminous and drapey enough to disguise the lumps and bumps underneath.

Hunched over a coffee, she stared at her tablet, desperately looking for something, anything to take her away from the endless round of diets.

After 35 years of fluctuating weight, 35 years of binge eating and emotional eating, 35 years of feeling guilty and ashamed, Bernie was fed up.

Now 46 years old and with two young children watching her every move, Bernie knew this wasn’t just about her any more.

Sure, she wanted to look great. She wanted to feel fit and healthy. But more than that, she wanted to set a positive example.

She wanted to change her attitudes to food and to herself. Precision Nutrition Coaching showed her how.  

“My issues with food and self-hatred were shocking.”

“At the start, I was still working with old conditioning,” Bernie says. She was the kind of person who could eat an entire pizza with a large side of chips, follow up with some cheesecake, and wash it all down with pints of sherry.

She liked the feeling of fullness, the way that rich and fatty food could numb her. Overeating was a pleasure and a comfort.

But it was also a kind of curse, dooming her to a constant and nasty internal chorus. “I was self-berating, guilt-ridden, self-flagellating,” she says.

Bernie knew she needed help to make a lasting change. From the moment she signed up for coaching, Bernie gave it her best.

Every time she clicked on a new day’s lesson or habit, she considered it a gift, and her passion and focus never wavered. By staying consistent and trusting the process, she lost some weight in the first month.

But the next few months tested her patience. The scale seemed to plateau and improvements weren’t as visible. Yet Bernie stayed the course.

In retrospect, Bernie sees she wasn’t really stagnating—she was laying the groundwork for deeper change.

Precision Nutrition didn’t promise a quick fix, like diets she’d tried in the past. Instead, it gave her the tools for a total transformation.

Among those tools was self-forgiveness.

For the first time in her adult life, Bernie didn’t interpret mistakes as signs of failure. Instead, she saw them as steps in a learning process.

“With this one change, I felt like a new person,” Bernie says.

She stopped blaming herself. Her guilt began to fade. A metaphorical weight had lifted, and with it, the physical weight began to melt away.

She started to feel more energetic. She had more fun with her kids. They noticed she was happier. Her friends noticed she was happier.

“I was more confident, clothes were fitting better, I was starting to see muscles, I was gaining strength.”

What surprised her most was how easy it all felt. 

“Just one small step at a time, no pressure and no strain or stress!” Bernie says.

Watch the video below to see Bernie’s priceless reaction to winning our $25,000 grand prize.

Want to get results like Bernie? Learn more about the Precision Nutrition Coaching Program for Women.

There was a time in his life when Paul LeTourneau found it difficult to gain weight.

Eventually, he got so frustrated that, in order to beef up, he joined Scrawny to Brawny, a predecessor to Precision Nutrition Coaching.

It worked, too. Paul gained 22 pounds, became a finalist in that program, and was happier with his body and his fitness than he’d ever been.

But just as the program ended, Paul hurt his back. He had to go easier on his workouts. And then, over time, life got complicated. Work, more work, family stuff—the usual. Meanwhile, his metabolism was starting to slow down.

Bit by bit, his body composition was morphing from muscle to fat—almost without his knowledge.

Paul was eating the way you have to eat when you’re a skinny guy who wants to bulk up.

But he wasn’t that skinny guy any more.

Now, he was famous among his friends for gorging himself at buffets–those all-you-can-eat smorgasbords seemed made for him.

Meals always involved seconds. Sometimes even thirds. And when it came to snacks, he could swallow a large bag of chips without blinking.

At 37, Paul looked in the mirror and saw a belly for the first time in his life. 

He was also waking up with throbbing headaches. He knew he had to make a change, so he signed up for Precision Nutrition Coaching.

By the end of his first month in nutrition coaching, Paul was seeing improvements. He loved the way the program helped him track and measure his progress.

He started getting compliments from people at work. The morning headaches soon disappeared.

Then he injured his neck at the gym. The problem wasn’t serious, but it meant he had to cut back on his workouts for a while.

“In the past when I hit a roadblock, I’d probably give up. I’d figure, if I can’t go full out, why bother?”

This time, with his coach, Craig Weller’s help, he found ways to adapt his workouts and stay active. Instead of indulging in “all or nothing” thinking, Paul kept his goal in mind and looked for what he could do. 

And with that one small change, he inaugurated a whole new mindset.

Paul’s goal, from the start, was to improve his relationship with food. But this meant a shift in his identity. 

For years, overeating had been a kind of gimmick for him. It was the quality that friends knew him for, and one they seemed enjoyed him about him. Fifty-two wings in a sitting. Fifty chicken nuggets. It became a game to keep track of it all.

So, when he started to eat slowly and have smaller portions, he faced some ribbing and pushback from the crowd.

Where did the old Paul go? Who was this new version? Maybe he wouldn’t have as much fun. Maybe he wouldn’t be as much fun.

Maybe he wouldn’t be as manly.

Those were the thoughts that percolated in his mind (and his friends’ minds) as he started to change his behaviors.

It took determination and courage to stay true to his goals. 

Especially when the little voice in his head was telling him that losing weight would also mean losing muscle mass.

“Heavier can seem better for a guy,” he explains. When “big” and “strong” always go together, it doesn’t feel good when the scale starts to drop—even when you know you need to lose some fat.

But with his coach’s guidance, Paul began to understand that in trying to maintain a very high weight along with visible muscle, he was actually ignoring his natural body type and doing himself a disservice.

“My bones are small. My frame isn’t made to carry a lot of weight.”

Now, instead of aiming to be heavy and strong, Paul aims to be the strongest he can be—at the lightest he can be.

It’s a question of emphasis and balance.

Today, Paul is focused on reaching his own personal best—not someone else’s.

These days, he may not be packing in as many wings at the buffet table, but he’s enjoying his food a whole lot more.

And at 22 pounds leaner, he’s also stronger and fitter than he’s ever been.

“Everyone can be successful in this program,” Paul says.

“It’s like that proverb about the difference between giving a man a fish and teaching a man to fish,” he adds. “This program gives you the tools to stay fit and healthy for life.”

Watch the video to see Paul’s awesome reaction to hearing he won our $25,000 grand prize.

Want to get results like Paul? Learn more about the Precision Nutrition Coaching Program for Men.

Meet our other Women’s winners

Meet our other Men’s winners

Meet a few hundred more Precision Nutrition clients.

To view all the men’s and women’s finalists from the January 2020 Coaching Program, click the links below.

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