Yemeni Mesa

I have spent my life pursuing two passions that are at odds with each other: a love for carby sugary food and all of the great pleasure it brings, and an equal love for feeling lean, strong and healthy. These opposing endeavors have brought me to where I am today: on a mission to optimize my health, without compromising on the great joy that food brings.

Food

I am obsessed with food! I enjoy getting creative in the kitchen with new recipes and new ingredients. I love exploring new restaurants. I go up and down every aisle in the grocery store in search of new products/foods. I watch hours of cooking shows and follow dozens of cooking YouTubers. Foos is squarely at the center of most of my life’s special moments.

Some of my favorite foods include flaky and buttery croissants, fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, chocolate bark with chunks of nuts and fried mozzarella with a well prepared marinara sauce. But, my favorite thing to eat in the whole world is Pizza! I’ve been having epic Pizza cheat days for decades!

Unfortunately, the foods I most enjoy are usually devoid of nutrients, calorie dense, and hyper-palatable, which means if left unchecked I could easily consume thousands of calories a day without providing my body with the minimum nutrient requirements for health and performance and I would lose muscle and get fat in the process.

Thankfully, 30+ years of being equally obsessed with health & fitness, have forced me to find ways to bring these opposing passions together.

Health

Physically challenging myself, sculpting my physique and improving my health have been lifelong passions. I have a memory of being a 7 year old skinny kid, standing in front of the mirror and drawing muscles on myself with a marker. Through my late teens and early 20s, I became obsessed with building big muscles, which lead me to competitive bodybuilding. Over the course of five years, I transformed myself from 160 pounds of “skinny-fat”, to a muscular 200 pounds with under 5% body fat. This was good enough to win overall NPC Mr. Huntington Beach in 1994. As much as I enjoyed bodybuilding, I knew that it was never going to be a long-term pursuit. Not only did I see it as a dead end financially, but truthfully, what is required to get into competitive bodybuilding shape is not aligned with my personal health goals. Through my late 20s and 30s, my primary focus in life shifted from “building muscle” to my daughters and my career. Building multiple businesses, lots of travel, coaching soccer and being president of the swim team, left little time for my personal health and nutrition. Yet, being healthy and feeling good remained a priority. During those years I found smart ways to eat, train and recover, in a way that allowed me to continue to improve my health, all within the time constraints imposed by my family and work schedule. Today, in my 50s, my obsession for robust health while enjoying all the great foods the world has to offer is greater than ever. These passions come together in my work.

Career

I’ve been very fortunate to have built a career that has brought my conflicting passions for delicious junk foods and fitness together. Over the years I’ve worked with some of the most successful nutrition companies in the world.

My career started in the 90s working with a startup, called MET-Rx, founded by A.S. Connelly MD. This was an innovative company that created the MRP category, launched the first ever keto brand, and became the leading protein brand. I was fortunate to get my foot in the door of this startup as an entry level inside sales rep. In four years I was able to grow with the company eventually becoming VP of Sales and helping it grow to over $100 million.

Founded by Ron Penna, Mike Osborn & Tom Bilyeu, Quest Nutrition may be the most successful endeavor of my career. I joined this amazing company in their 2nd year of being in business. By then, they had already reached $27 million in revenues. As the Chief Sales Officer, I had the great opportunity to craft and execute the sales, distribution and pricing strategy. This included building a sales team and global distribution network. Three years after joining the team, we grew to company to $500 million in revenues. Two years later is sold for over $1 Billion.

In each of these companies, I had the privilege to work with amazing business leaders, product developers, brand builders and sales professionals. The relationships, built over this great career, are perhaps what I most value.