My name is Robert, and I am a Certified Wellness Coach (CWC) and Founder of Circle Six Coaching. I'm originally from New Jersey but have lived in the Washington DC Metro region for 20 years. In my free time when I'm not working, I have a passion for my family as a proud dad, outdoor activities (camping, hiking), cooking and juicing healthy foods, and of course, wellness coaching!

Before coaching, my self-improvement journey first started in high school as a baseball and track athlete. I had a penchant for optimizing my physical and mental performance in the form of exercise and nutrition. That passion extended to college as I became interested in the health sciences and the social sciences. Psychology and geography have always been interesting because they gave me the curiosity of how humans interact on a micro and macro level with themselves and their surrounding environments.

After college, I volunteered at a local hospital for a year to give back to the community and help people recover from their pain and suffering. I signed up for Palliative Care at night in the ICU, and it was very eye-opening to see and interact with terminally ill people at the end of their lives who would often pass away. It was very difficult helping these patients' families who were experiencing devastating pain and anguish as they lost their loved ones. On the flip side, I also helped people in the Rehabilitation Unit by serving food and hosting games. I got to see patients become physically reborn after hard work and dedication. This hospital experience gave me a new perspective on life, death, and suffering for sure. It was tough to see so much suffering from the patients in ICU and their families.

A few years later in my career, I became interested in project management because just about every project involves, you guessed it, people! I was curious about the various things that motivated people to work and how they handled interactions and conflicts with their coworkers. Hence project management was a natural career path for me, and it has been amazing meeting so many talented people in the public and private sectors.
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However, during this time, I neglected my diet and started gaining a lot of weight, and it became a vicious cycle of work, stress, eating to relieve stress, video games to relieve stress, gaining weight, and then back to work again. Even though I had been working out here and there, I was still overweight from a lack of physical activity, poor eating habits, and too much stress. Something had to change.

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At this time, I took up a new "healthy" hobby - competitive powerlifting. This sport forced me to clean up my diet and fix lousy sleep habits to recover from the rigors and strain of such training. It soon became evident that the human body is capable of extraordinary feats if you are willing to put in the hard work. While training 4 days a week, 3 hours a day, I was terrified the first time I squatted and deadlifted over 500lbs. It forces you to push aside the "what ifs" and the fear that these kinds of weights would cause massive injury to an average person. Yet somehow, the human body can adapt to such feats, and the confidence gained from winning competitions cannot be quantified. Here's me deadlifting 529lbs in competition and squatting 500 in training (with a best of 520). I went on to almost break the 100% RAW deadlift state record (1 lift away) before retiring due to the birth of my child.

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While very rewarding, the downsides to that sport are that it often required adding body weight to set new PRs (Personal Records). When I retired, I was so heavy that even mowing the lawn became difficult! My joints were sore and in pain from the training, and I had a slipped disc in my back. I was well over 30 BMI. I started to get kidney pain from the very high levels of protein intake, chest pains, and super elevated LDL cholesterol, most likely caused by eating meat and 6 eggs every day. My doctor said if I didn't change, there was a chance I wouldn't make it to my 50th birthday. So it was back to the drawing board - I researched ways to optimize my food by going vegetarian, started juicing a gallon of veggies 3 times a week and found research that showed how to reverse atherosclerosis through diet. Over the next few years, I dropped over 55lbs (over 1/4 entire bodyweight) and 5 pant sizes! I can now hike for 20+ miles straight with a 30lb pack, and all of my joint pain has healed naturally - even my back. My kidney pain is gone, and blood tests have stabilized back to the normal range.

 

Fast forward a few years, and I wanted to see how I could channel this energy into others in the form of health and wellness coaching after losing many people who were close to me. In 2018 I lost a dear relative to heart disease, and a few years before that lost another to a leg infection and another to diabetes where their kidneys shut down. In between, I saw friends dealing with cancer and other health ailments like ulcerative colitis. These situations motivated me to help not only friends and family improve their wellness but also my own. So I got trained in Motivational Interviewing and Positive Psychology at one of the only accredited schools for the NBC-HWC (National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach) certification - the only health and wellness coaching certification nationally recognized by the medical community. Shortly, I will sit for the national medical board exam for my NBC-HWC and will work with doctors after that. I founded Circle Six Coaching to become the coach to others that my loved ones never had.

 

My vision for Circle Six Coaching is to not only help clients achieve what they never thought possible in all six pillars of health but expand the website's health and wellness content, especially in the form of the latest scientific studies. I want my clients to receive the latest greatest information in a way they can understand without having to understand statistical methods and science-speak. I find it alarming that research shows that, on average, it takes doctors 17 years after publication to implement medical information. I think our company can help fill that gap.

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to connecting with you. Let's replace those old habits with new ones and live long, happy, and disease-minimal lives!

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-Coach Robert

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• Master Certified Wellness Coach, Catalyst Coaching Institute (NBHWC accredited)

• Project Manager, 10 years experience (Public and private sectors 5 years apiece)

• Former competitive powerlifter, 100% RAW and USAPL