What I Learned Growing Up in Greece
Dinner in the village: No apps, no tracking—just real food and good company.
I grew up in Greece during the 1970s and 80s, watching something that confused every modern diet expert I'd later meet in America.
My great-grandparents and grandparents, their friends, everyone in my village—they ate whatever they wanted. No calorie counting. No meal plans. No macro tracking. They enjoyed bread with every meal, olive oil on everything, wine regularly. Many of them were active well into their 90s, and they stayed naturally lean without ever thinking about their weight.
What I didn't realize then was that I was witnessing what researchers now call a "Blue Zone"—one of the five regions in the world where people live the longest, healthiest lives. Not because they had better willpower or discipline, but because their environment and lifestyle naturally supported their biology.
When I moved to America and entered the fitness industry in 1992, I saw the complete opposite. Everyone was fighting their bodies. Counting every calorie. Measuring portions. Forcing themselves to exercise. And despite all that effort, 95% of them eventually gained the weight back.
That's when I realized: The modern fitness industry isn't teaching people how to fix what's broken—they're teaching people how to manually override broken systems forever. And that's exactly how they keep you dependent.
So I opened my facility in Danbury in 1996 with a different mission: repair what's broken, don't manually override it forever. That's been my approach as a weight loss coach and personal trainer for over 30 years.
