CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. -- Tina Johnson first took an interest in fitness as a child. At the time, it was a form of therapy.
"Growing up in a household with domestic violence, I looked for sports to redirect my emotions," she said. "It made me feel like I had a sense of control. It also helped me be free."
She joined a run club as a five-year-old and stuck with it, running in middle school, high school, and as a student-athlete at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
After graduation, she joined the workforce and raised two daughters.
As life got busy, Johnson's passion for movement took a back seat. The only thing she found herself running was to her daycare.
"I was drinking six regular Pepsis a day because I had to have energy for these kids. I was eating fast food probably two or three times a week because, at the end of the day, I'm tired," she told CBS 6 anchor GeNienne Samuels.
Those habits led to a shocking question from a nurse during a health screening when Johnson was 37.
"Do you know that you have high blood pressure?" Johnson recalled the nurse asking. "She's like, 'Sometimes people feel fine, but they're not really fine.'"
A physical with a doctor later revealed that Johnson was hypertensive, overweight, and had high cholesterol.
Having a family history of heart disease and diabetes, Johnson was given an ultimatum: Get your life together.
As she did when she was a child, Johnson turned to running. She started waking up at 5 a.m. to run.
"I literally started running to save my life because I saw myself in the future. I saw myself having a heart attack, having a stroke, and not being able to be here for my children," Johnson said.
She also revamped her diet and transformed her passion for fitness into a new career as a champion bodybuilder and later an award-winning coach.
Johnson said she is now winning the most important competition of them all.
"At the moment when I found out I had hypertensive diabetes and high cholesterol, I felt like I was kind of losing at life. But now that I've made that lifestyle change and commitment to helping other people, I feel like I'm winning at life," she said.
According to the American Heart Association, an estimated 47% of American adults have hypertension, and someone in the United States dies of cardiovascular disease every 34 seconds.
Do you know about a good news story happening in your community? Click here to email WTVR.com and the CBS 6 News team.
EAT IT, VIRGINIA restaurant news and interviews
