{"id":3350,"date":"2018-08-31T12:41:08","date_gmt":"2018-08-31T12:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goldsgym.com\/blog\/home-sweet-home-golds-gym\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T20:20:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T20:20:04","slug":"home-sweet-home-golds-gym","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goldsgym.com\/blog\/home-sweet-home-golds-gym\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Sweet Home at Gold\u2019s Gym"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For most of her life, Laura Micetich\u2019s weight made her feel like she was taking up other people\u2019s space and that she needed to earn her place in a room by being funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 6-foot-tall Gold\u2019s Gym member, 27, grew up in Tennessee with a family that loved sports and ate a healthy dinner together every night. But she had a tendency to binge on treats, and, despite swimming and playing soccer, her weight increased. She tried popular weight-loss programs \u2014 but nothing stuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pounds piled on as semesters passed while Laura attended the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She hit a low point after a breakup in 2013, and cake and unhealthy frozen meals became staples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At her heaviest, she weighed about 314 pounds and suffered from joint pain, hyperthyroidism and high blood pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t take a flight of stairs without breaking a sweat,\u201d she says. \u201cI had never really admitted before that my weight was an issue that I was struggling with emotionally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two minutes to get started<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laura began researching weight loss surgery but wanted to see if she could make a difference without going under the knife. One afternoon, she pulled up a 10-minute exercise video on her laptop. The first two minutes exhausted her. But instead of quitting, she paused the video, caught her breath and tried again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt took me an entire afternoon,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a week, Laura could do the video in one stretch, and her progress emboldened her to check out the college gym. The moment her hands touched the weights, she says, everything changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I got into the weight room, suddenly being strong was my greatest asset,\u201d she says. \u201cIt clicked. My body was built to do something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She made a commitment to stop worrying about what others thought. She would change her life, she decided \u2014 and not for anyone but herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laura focused seriously on lifting, alternating workout days targeting her chest, legs, arms and back. She did low-intensity cardio a few times a week and changed her diet, replacing sweets with clean protein and leafy greens. She learned about different bodybuilding and powerlifting techniques online and from people at the university\u2019s gym. Before long, it hurt less to get up off the couch. Her health issues vanished. Soon she was zooming up the stairs to her third-floor classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A home at Gold\u2019s Gym<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After graduation, Laura moved back to Tennessee. She found a club so she could keep up her workouts, but the quiet, sterile environment never felt like home. One day, she drove across town and signed up at Gold\u2019s Gym \u2014 the coolest gym, as she thought of it after falling in love with weightlifting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe charm and draw is that they have areas for people who just want to get dirty and work hard,\u201d she says. \u201cI wanted a place where slamming weights, dripping sweat and kicking ass were encouraged.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There, Laura felt comfortable, and she liked that she could go to locations anywhere in the country. That summer, during a trip to Los Angeles, she visited the renowned Gold\u2019s Gym in Venice \u2014 \u201cThe Mecca.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI fell more deeply in love with Gold\u2019s and the history of the company,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d wanted to train in The Mecca for years, but hesitated, worrying I might not be able to hold my own. I finally plucked up the courage and what I found wasn\u2019t an intimidating atmosphere. Instead, pros and average Joes were working side-by-side, forming exactly the same community I\u2019d seen in my home gym. That\u2019s when I realized that was Gold\u2019s \u2014 family, inclusivity and love of the grind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through hard work and healthy eating, Laura lost more than 100 pounds in one year. She documented her weight loss success on Instagram (The Iron Giantess<\/a>), and as her before-and-after photos attracted attention, strangers started reaching out to her for advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Iron<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With her commitment to better health, Laura had learned a lot about self-love, and she wanted others to benefit the way she had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve really fallen in love with the gym but also with being mentally and physically kind to myself,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d been trying to earn my place in social situations by being funny and goofy, and I could finally settle into myself and figure out who I was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In mid-June, Laura underwent surgery to remove the loose skin that lingered after her dramatic weight loss. She detailed the process on social media and received an outpouring of support from more 330,000 followers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, instead of worrying about taking up other people\u2019s space, she\u2019s only concerned about helping others grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent post she wrote: We wake up, look in the mirror, and critique every inch of us, pulling and picking at parts of us we think need work. Sometimes we feel like we\u2019ve failed \u2026 like we\u2019ve thrown away weeks or even months of work. Guess what? We haven\u2019t. Watch your self talk. Be gentle with yourself. Just start fresh. Be kind to your body. More importantly, be kind to your soul. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to be able to have the conversations that matter most,\u201d Laura says. \u201cHow can I be kind to myself? And how can that help change the world?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A month after her surgery, she moved to Los Angeles and is now a full-fledged member at \u201cThe Mecca.\u201d Home sweet home<\/em>, she posted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more Gold\u2019s Gym success stories:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Father Celebrates Better Health With Family and Followers<\/b><\/a>
\nCelebrity Trainer Melissa Alcantara Shows Women How to Lose the Baby Weight<\/b><\/a>
\nHer Personal Trainer Was So Inspiring, She Became One Herself<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<p>For most of her life, Laura Micetich\u2019s weight made her feel like she was taking up other people\u2019s space and that she needed to earn her place in a room by being funny. The 6-foot-tall Gold\u2019s Gym member, 27, grew up in Tennessee with a family that loved sports and ate a healthy dinner together […]<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":6452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[168],"tags":[103,117,65,88,92,171,119,155],"class_list":["post-3350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-success-stories","tag-community","tag-goal-setting","tag-healthy-eating","tag-healthy-habits","tag-overall-health","tag-golds-personal-training","tag-transformation","tag-weight-loss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goldsgym.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goldsgym.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goldsgym.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goldsgym.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goldsgym.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3350"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.goldsgym.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9659,"href":"https:\/\/www.goldsgym.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3350\/revisions\/9659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goldsgym.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goldsgym.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goldsgym.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goldsgym.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}