Helen Costa-Giles likes to start her day early, and she wakes up at around 5:00 a.m and by 5:30 a.m, she is already making wind sprints and helps her neighbors exercise. All of these activities happen in her driveway.
The usual meetup place for workouts are parks and bars, but for this San Antonio suburb, their community gathers at Costa-Giles' garage at 5 a.m. Costa-Giles hosted free workout sessions in her garage for the past four years. There are instances wherein two people would show up, but sometimes it is as many as 20.
"People are working on their New Year's resolutions," Costa-Giles explains.
No shortcut or miracle makes her workouts different from the rest. She puts out the invitation in her neighborhood.
"It doesn't need to be a fancy gym. It doesn't need to be a special program. It just needs to be people."
But before she was barking exercise instructions to her neighbors for predawn planks, she was in a very different place. She weighed 220 pounds way back in 2014, and for a 5 feet tall woman, she was considered overweight, and her doctor warned her about the repercussions of her unhealthy lifestyle.
"He had shown me all of my blood work with my LDL, my cholesterol, my sugar, everything was off the charts. And when I asked the doctor, 'Is this just hereditary?' And he's like, 'No, honey, this is all food related.'"
Her doctor warned her that if she does not make any changes anytime soon, she will be heading for a life of numerous chronic illnesses. After her diagnosis, her fear set in.
Costa-Giles thought about her two children, and that is when she started re-evaluating her eating habits and the lifestyle that she and her husband were living. She also worried about not setting the right example for her sons.
"I worked two jobs and just started to live a life of convenience. I was starting to put a lot of junk in my body. I would come home from work and ask my two boys to sit on the couch with me and watch a movie. There was zero activity in my life at that point."
She then got rid of all the processed food in her fridge and replaced them with healthier options.
"I couldn't believe how much-processed food we had and the stuff I thought was healthy. That was a huge awakening for me " she said.
Within just six months, she lost 60 pounds by changing her eating habits, but she knows it wasn't enough.
"I didn't exercise my first six months. I didn't have the confidence. But once I lost the weight, I was like, 'Oh, I kind of look like Gumby. I probably should start working out.' "
That was the moment when she decided to look for motivation, and she reached out to her neighbors.
"I put a post on my neighborhood Facebook and said 'Hey, anybody wants to work out with me at 4 a.m.?' And people said yes! I had a few people come, and then the next day they came again. I started to realize they need me as much as I need them."
The word about her early workouts in her driveway spread and more and more people show up every day.
"Having somebody there next to you and having somebody on the same journey with you is powerful. I think once you help somebody else in their own health journey, it does a lot for you."
Costa-Giles is now 40 years old; she said this is the healthiest and the fittest that she's ever been, and she is happy to be able to share her journey with her community.
"It doesn't matter what I look like in a bikini. When I get my results back from my doctor every year, that's the most exciting thing because I know that I'm going to live longer and I'm going to be around for my kids."
