MY PATH TO STRONG STYLE FITNESS

Fitness doesn’t fit into the same body for all of us and fitness doesn’t look the same for everyone. We aren’t all built to look a certain way, wear a certain size, or hit the same number on a scale, but what we ARE is capable of being healthy, strong, and able. My goal for Strong Style Fitness is to make fitness and health available to everyone, no matter their age, gender, abilities, or fitness level.

You’ll likely notice right away that I don’t look like a lot of personal trainers you’ve met before. Trust me, I’ve already noticed and I am 100% ok with it! I am still on my journey to my best me, and I want to walk along yours with you. I understand where you’ve been, what you are going through, and where you are going. I want to take you there!

I spent the majority of my life a very proud, self-proclaimed, “fat girl”. By age 10 I was wearing an XL in shirts/pants, by age 12 I was a size 14, and by high school I was a size 22/24. At the same time, I was also an elite fast-pitch softball player, a vicious basketball player in the post, a cheerleader, and a cheerleading coach. My fitness level was quite high and my success was even higher, and while I knew that my size wasn’t ideal (hello teenage critics!) I felt no need to change. I was successful, able, and proud of what I could do at my size. Haters could just keep on hatin’!

Like most of us, as I got older, my physical activity level dropped. Team sports were no longer available to me and I eventually left a full time job that at least kept me on my feet all day. At age 25 I started my first desk job and suffered a large amount of job related depression and anxiety. The combination of these things opened up the floodgates of weight gain for me, and they stayed open for about 2 years. Here’s the crazy thing: I literally never gave it a moments thought. Size never mattered to me; it never meant success or failure, happy or unhappy, good or bad. It was just a thing I was…truthfully, it was sort of WHO I was. I very much identified with the plight of the “fat girl” and promoted body positivity to those like me. I meant (and still mean) “fat girl” with love and pride, which is why I’m comfortable using it now. There was no shame.

Then two very specific things happened that opened my eyes, and changed the course of my life dramatically. To keep a very long story short, I’ll say it was a picture and a scale. I knew my size and shape had really started to shift from my normal. I went up to a size 28, which was a new high for me. I didn’t fit into seats comfortably. I was ALWAYS hot and uncomfortable. I’d put on clothes that used to make feel great, and they now made me feel embarrassed. Then the picture came. It was a picture I expected to look fabulous in, and instead it broke my heart. All I saw was a girl who had given up, and all of the bad inside was on the outside. Most people say it’s a cute picture, but I saw through myself big time. At that point, I made a loose idea that I should start changing some things in my life. Nothing crazy, just some better decisions here and there to make me feel back in control. Baby steps. We’ll get there. Then the scale came.

I probably hadn’t seen a scale in 5 years, and an insurance evaluation at work required us to get standard measurements done. I hopped on the scale, told the lady “please don’t tell me my weight” and closed my eyes. Then I heard a soft whisper in my ear “300 pounds”. That was 50 pounds more than the highest I had expected to hear. She knew I needed to hear those words. That day, I sat down at my desk and said to myself “no more”. That’s it. We are done with this. And you know what? I truly was done!

In that moment, I started to see what mattered. The picture, the scale. Not the weight on the scale or the image in the picture; but my opinion of myself, my ability to live, my love for the person looking back at me. That is what mattered, and that is why I do what I do. Since that day, I have never looked back and never done anything but move my overall health in a positive direction. While I still have work to do, I continue to push, and try (and fail), and win, and that is my goal for you. To keep pushing, to keep trying, and to find the success you want!