In 2008, LaTasha Lewis was a nurse educator in the DeKalb Medical Center’s emergency department and intensive care unit. As such, it was her responsibility to oversee, among other things, the rapid response to patients in distress.
You don’t have to visit a hospital emergency room to know how important it is to get the care you need when you need it. It can mean the difference between life and death.
Lewis was on the ground floor of the hospital one day that year when she heard a blue alert, signaling a patient had lost consciousness.
She headed for the stairs, climbing quickly to the fourth floor where she passed the physician leaning against the wall, unable to go any further. In the room, the nurse was out of breath trying to administer CPR.
Lewis jumped into action, applying chest compressions until the patient started breathing again.
“The patient survived but I was appalled,” Lewis remembered recently. “Every second you delay care, you increase the patient’s chances of either going into a vegetative state or dying.”
Lewis felt medical personnel were being hypocritical. On the one hand, they were encouraging patients to exercise and eat healthy, but on the other, they were enjoying pizza, fried chicken and doughnuts on the regular and not even thinking of exercise.
She asked administrators if she could start a boot camp to help hospital personnel get healthier.
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All her life, her mother told her to watch over her name, her finances and her health, and for most of her life, she had.
For years growing up in Detroit, she was a cheerleader. She ran track and cross country throughout high school. Even after she left to attend Tuskegee University in 1988, she worked out, but, to be honest, what happened that day was a reminder that she, too, needed to get back in shape.
Lewis, nicknamed Tadda, got the go-ahead she needed from hospital administrators. She posted flyers announcing a start date for the six-week camp.
Twenty-one people showed up and within weeks were they not only shedding pounds, they were coming off high blood pressure, cholesterol and other medications, proof, she said that fitness starts from within.
“It was phenomenal,” Lewis said.
Credit: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The classes became so popular, Lewis was starting to turn people away.
After class one morning, Dominique Smith, one of the doctors in that first boot camp, asked Lewis to follow her up the street.
She hesitated at first but said “something in my spirit said just be obedient.”
They stopped first at Smith’s new office, then a building next door.
What do you think? the doctor asked.
This is awesome. I'm so proud of you, Lewis told her.
Smith placed a key in Lewis’ hand.
I overheard you on the phone turn people away because you didn't have enough room, she told Lewis. I don't want you to ever have to turn anyone away again. I believe in you.
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Lewis dropped to her knees, crying.
Soon thereafter, she left nursing behind to teach fitness full time. Within four years, Tadda’s Fitness was bursting at the seams.
Purely through word-of-mouth, Lewis’ clientele had nearly tripled from 110 clients to 300, and she’d gone from a one-woman shop to one with a staff of 17 certified trainers.
In 2012, Lewis found and leased a bigger facility around the corner. She knocked down a wall and a built a smoothie café, a supplements store, two separate gyms, a bathroom with shower stalls, and rooms for biometric testing and nutritional counseling.
In addition to boot camps, she was offering clients access to personal trainers and a dozen different classes, including Zumba, kickboxing and kettlebell.
Nothing new, right? With the proliferation of fitness centers in communities across the country, those offerings are a dime a dozen. What makes Tadda’s Fitness unique is it’s located where it’s easier to find a fast-food restaurant than a well-stocked grocery store and where rates of heart disease are particularly high.
If you’ve ever driven in this section of DeKalb County and wondered why the need for two dialysis centers less than a mile apart, there’s your answer.
It also explains the cool reception Lewis received when she moved in the neighborhood and began leading runs along Snapfinger Woods Drive. People honked their horns and yelled at them to get out of the road. Police issued her noise citations, she said.
“It was crazy,” she said.
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That’s starting to change, but it has taken years of trying to educate people.
For three straight years, the fitness center has partnered with DeKalb County to host the Mobile Farmers Market on-site and adopted Snapfinger Woods Drive, where they perform periodic cleanups. Once a month, it hosts what Lewis calls the “No Mess Academy,” where doctors come in to talk about important health issues, and every week, clients can participate in grocery store tours to learn how to read food labels and make more healthful food choices.
Rodney J. Russell told me he first heard about Tadda’s Fitness while attending Leadership DeKalb.
Both he and Lewis were members of the 2011 class. Years would pass, though, before he actually joined and only after his wife signed up for a mini session.
“Within just a few weeks, I could see the difference it made,” he said. “Her energy level had increased and she started to lose weight.”
That was in 2016, when Russell, 52, learned his doctor wanted to increase the dosage of his high blood pressure medication.
“I asked him to give me 30 days,” he said.
That was in December. In January, Russell signed up for a boot camp, and within the first few weeks, he’d dropped nearly 30 pounds and his blood pressure was nearly normal.
Russell said he has undergone a complete 360. He’s exercising regularly, and instead of a diet of meat and potatoes, he’s enjoying avocados, butternut squash and tomatoes, all thanks to Lewis.
“We’re doing something special here,” Lewis said.
It certainly sounds like it.
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