“Don’t wait to love yourself until you arrive,”
– Supra Human client, Lorena Suarez-Kelly
For Laura and Lorena, transformation didn’t begin when the weight came off. It started when they decided to show up anyway.
We talk a lot about transformation, but let’s talk about what it really means. Transformation is what happens in the early mornings, the recovery months, the days you show up when you’d rather not. It’s rarely just about the number on the scale, and almost always about who you become along the way.
The women featured in this week’s Her Story article came from different places, carried different weights, and found different things waiting for them on the other side. Both of them will tell you the same thing… this was never really about the body they wanted. It was about coming home to the one they have.
Stronger than the diagnosis
Laura Mitchell was told she’d never lift more than 50 pounds again for the rest of her life. She had three kids in just a few years, each born 23 months apart. The pregnancies were hard on her body. After her first, she had significant birth injuries, and even as she lost the weight between each pregnancy, the injuries kept her struggling.
Eventually, she was told the only fix was major abdominal and pelvic floor surgery, a hysterectomy, along with bladder and rectal prolapse repairs. The recovery came with a sentence she carried like a verdict. No more lifting more than 50 pounds.
So, she made her peace with it. She resigned herself to a smaller set of possibilities and a life of activities she’d have to sit out.
“I felt resigned to this restriction and stuck with a lifetime of limited activities I could do.”
Then her husband, Justin, joined Supra and lost 100 pounds. When the female division launched, Laura jumped in, too. She didn’t feel she had far to go on weight loss but what she wanted was to build muscle, and to do it safely and properly after everything her body had been through. She’d see photos of strong women and think, I could look like that, but I’d have to quit my job and live at the gym.
What changed was realizing there was another way that was sustainable for her life, and actually enjoyable. She jumped in and, in her words, hasn’t looked back.
Here’s the part she’s proudest of, because she has every reason not to have done any of this. She’s a nurse practitioner with a demanding practice. Her husband is a surgeon who travels at least twice a month. Her kids are 7, 5, and 3, and anyone who’s parented those ages knows what that schedule actually looks like. She has every excuse available to her.
She moved through her initial fat loss, then several months of recovery, then several months of a build. Next week, she heads into a cut again. The woman who was told she’d never lift 50 pounds is now planning her training in phases.
Forever grateful, she says, for Coach Britt and this program.
“I can honestly say I’m stronger than I’ve ever been, and I’m excited for my continued transformation.”
Strength doesn’t look the same for every woman. But the decision to keep showing up did.
Persistence over perfection
Lorena Suarez-Kelly joined Supra Human in January 2025 with a simple goal, like many, to lose weight. What she found was something she didn’t expect.
“What started as a simple goal to lose weight became a journey of self-discovery, discipline, and self-love.”
She’s clear that it wasn’t easy, and she doesn’t pretend otherwise. It was the early mornings, the hard choices, and telling herself to “just show up” that asked for discipline when her motivation had already left the building. That, she says, is where the real growth happened. It’s easy to show up on days when she felt great, but the days she felt heavy and motivated are the ones that tested her and helped her grow more than anything else.
“I’ve learned that persistence matters more than perfection.”
The results are real and worth calling out. Over the past year, Lorena has lost 55 pounds, 12 inches from her waist, 10 from her hips, and 12 pant and dress sizes. But when you ask her about the progress photos, she won’t lead with the numbers. She’ll tell you they’re emotional to look at and that they show the parts of herself she once wanted to hide. Growth, she’s found, isn’t comfortable. It’s raw and sweaty and sometimes painful.
What comes through most in Lorena’s story isn’t the transformation of her body. It’s the way she’s made peace with every version of herself along the way. She talks about the woman she used to be with a tenderness most of us reserve for other people.
“I see the woman I used to be: not lazy or weak, but tired, overwhelmed, always giving her all to everyone else. She held me together when I didn’t even notice I was falling apart. She deserved compassion. Now I give it to her.”
She doesn’t hide from that woman anymore. She celebrates who she is, protects who she’s becoming, and honors the one who survived everything to get her here.
Her advice is the kind that’s easy to read and hard to live by,
“Don’t wait to love yourself until you arrive.’ Show up for yourself every step of the way. Your health is the greatest gift you can give yourself and those you love.”
What they share
Two different bodies, two different starting lines, two different reasons for walking through the door. But they share the same truth. The work changed how they move through the world, not just how they look doing it.
Laura reclaimed the strength she’d been told was gone for good. Lorena reclaimed a relationship with herself she didn’t know she’d lost. Neither of them waited until they “arrived” to start feeling proud.
They found pride in showing up.
If you see yourself in Laura or Lorena’s story, this is your reminder that you don’t need the perfect time to begin.
You just need a place to start.
