’Success means nothing, if we are not healthy enough to enjoy it. I urge you to make your health a priority’ This book’s premise is to inspire you to go after your dreams despite the ’Its’ that stand in your way. Stay focused, stay motivated, and if no one supports you, I support you in your quest for a fit and healthy life.’
’Excerpted from the Postscript (page 137)

Do you have a litany of excuses to explain why you haven't yet gotten what you want in life? Motivator Joy Ohayia refers to these reasons as your ’Its.’ Generally, most of us place the blame for our failure to achieve a goal on such common ’Its’ as not having enough time or money, being burdened by stress, the demands of family or friends, or pressures from work.

Ms. Ohayia speaks from experience, having stuck with a good-paying job she hated just for the money. She also blamed her 70-pound weight gain on her second pregnancy. So, it was almost a blessing when Joy was eventually fired from her cushy, if soul-draining, position after 20 years spent climbing the corporate ladder, because soon thereafter she turned her passion, fitness, into her profession by opening up her own health club for women.

So, not only did this nationally-ranked sprinter manage to lose all the baby fat and get back into game shape, but she kickstarted a new career which was far more fulfilling than anything she could do sitting at a desk in a cubicle. Still, this was no easy decision to make for an academically-accomplished mother of two with a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Stony Brook and a master’s in math and statistics from Rutgers.

Fortunately, her trademarked, body image system, QuantumQuest, proved to be so popular with members of her female-only fitness center that she decided to write a book in order to share her program with any woman in need of a personal trainer. The upshot is Don’t Let ’It’ Get You, a handy how-to tome which is part personal memoir, part pep talk, part precise training regimen, complete with helpful charts and illustrations of exercise positions.

Her approach is a sensible combination of positive thinking, natural dieting, relaxation, cardiovascular activity, and muscle and strength conditioning individually-tailored to one’s body type and tolerance for pain. Does it work? Judging by the rather unflattering ’Before’ pictures and the solid as a rock ’After’ snapshots of herself the author includes as Exhibit A, QuantumQuest certainly gets this critic’s stamp of approval, though results my vary.