Non-Diet Fitness Goals
In this episode, I’m sharing my journey in healing my relationship to fitness.
Over the last 2.5 years, I have been working with a non-diet fitness coach to help me change my recurring unintentional thoughts about moving my body.
Last month, I achieved the last goal I had set for myself back 2.5 years ago so it was time to set new goals.
In this episode, I’m sharing my new fitness goals with you.
What you’ll learn listening to this episode:
- The step by steps approach I took to heal my relationship to fitness
- Why I hired a coach to help me become someone who loves to go to the gym
- My new non-diet fitness goals go forward.
Mentioned in the show on Non-Diet Fitness Goals:
The Rebellious Eating Solution Masterclass
Undiet Your Life Coaching Program
Episode Transcript:
Going Beyond The Food Show 352-My Personal Fitness Goals
This is episode 352 of the Beyond the Food Show, and today I'm gonna share my personal fitness goal and how high healed my relationship to exercise. Y'all ready? Stay tuned.
Hello my sisters and welcome to this very special episode that they're going to be on the food show because this is gonna be a very personal episode. I am going to take you into my personal life and talking to you about how I journey true healing my relationship to exercise and the reason why I decided to do this episode is because just a few weeks ago, I achieved my last fitness goal that I had set up two years ago with my fitness coach and I kind of ticked the last box on the list of goals that we had set together, and I was ready for a new set of goals in my journey of working with her and in my journey with fitness.
So as I was writing these goals on my phone in my note app, I'm like, oh, that would be a cool podcast episode for all of you. So here we are effectively three weeks later. I am recording this episode. So this episode is not scripted. It's literally me talking to the microphone and for those of you who are listening to me via video, talking to the video and sharing my journey.
So I wanna, before we get to the current goal, I wanna set the tone and to show you how, where it came. So I, when I was growing up to the age of about 10 or 11 years old, I moved my body naturally and with pleasure. I did a ton of bicycle and running around. It was a what people called a tum boy. Like I played with boys a lot when I was young and we were built forth and drive around our bike and jumped on sand dun and all of that stuff. And then I got into organized sports. I was a competitive swimmer from probably the age of 10 to the age of 14 years old. And something happened at the age of 12, which a large number of you probably are aware of and if you're not at 12 years old, was my entry point in the world of dieting. So at 12 years old, I was introduced to Weight Watcher and I went on to understand that my body was wrong, that I looked ugly and that I needed to shrink my body.
So conclusively up to the age of 40, I thought that my body was a tool, or not a tool, but something to be fixed and that happened in the middle of my journey of being a competitive swimmer, and it affected deeply how I viewed myself in sport. Because as many of you are aware, when you go to Weight Watchers, yeah, it's about the food, but it's also about exercising so you can quote unquote lose calories. So in that little girl's brain, it started to equate that playing sports was about potentially shrinking your body and get to a place where your body is okay or good enough so you don't feel the discomfort of being in that ugly body, and you can get rid of that whole part of you and please the adults in your life that you are in a okay body.
So, within the spano I would say a couple years, I started to not liking moving my body at all because it became a journey of expanding calories, that's what it became. And I wasn't allowed to not move my body because I needed to expand calorie. Like it came to a point where I didn't enjoy swimming at all and I was faced with the choice, you either continue swimming or you do another sports. You be inactive. I don't remember being told exactly it's because you're gonna gain weight but I was smart enough to make one plus one in my head, like, I cannot not move. I have to move. And that began my understanding of moving your body is I have to. It's not about pleasure in any way, shape or form, you just have to. And that carried on with me as I pursued what I call my PhD in dieting. I have a solid 25 year career in dieting. So from the age of 12 to the age of 38 years old, I dieted and associated moving with my body with managing the size of my body and I have to. There is no pleasure in moving your body, and that's just what it is.
So, this is the way that deep play, I believe, moving your body was. I, I was hearing other people around me in my adult life running for pleasure or playing hockey for pleasure and I could not comprehend how someone could enjoy moving their body because for moving My body was no pain, no gain. I had to go all in like sweat, like crazy, and being a ton of discomfort throughout because I needed to expand as much calorie as I could, which resulted a lot in, in and out, in and out and out. Like I would go into the gym and I would go like all in six days a week for an hour and a half, three months, and then I wouldn't go for the rest of the year. And that my in and out on exercise was also along the line of dieting, right? So I would diet hardcore and restrict myself to an insanely low calorie count, go to the gym, and I couldn't sustain it. And then I would abandon both, feel into, oh my God, my life is still terrible, gain all the weight and then up and down and up and down and up and down. And I did that for 25 years.
So fast forward to 40 years old when I've decided to no longer diet, I didn't exercise. I didn't move my body at all because I was quitting dieting, which meant I quit moving my body. And that resulted in me having a lot of pain in my body, lot of physical tightness, pain in my body. So one thing that I'm bringing forward and telling you the story also an awareness that I have a health condition, a chronic health condition that is called a scoliosis. So for those who don't know what a scoliosis is, is a curvature of the spine. It's a bending of a spine that should be straight. It happens in different area of the spine. For it is in my lower back area. It's in between L one and L four, so Lu one and Lu four. So really right in the middle of my hips and above my hips, which leaves my hips to be unbalanced, which leads me to be really tight in one side of my body and creates a lot of subsequent pain around my body. And the only thing I knew about this part of myself is I felt better when I was moving my body to a certain degree. And because I was abusing my physical body in the gym in order to lose weight, I actually made something that was positive for my body, which was to move my body to help with managing the pain of the scoliosis, actually worse, because I was over exercising and doing things in the gym that actually created more pain in my body.
But, that's not my specialty. I am not a physiologist. I'm not a kinesiologist, I'm not a personal trainer. I didn't understand all of that, and as a result, I associated going to the gym, moving my body, doing sports, doing exercise as causing me pain. And that was just a thought, that wasn't a fact, that was my perspective on the whole thing. And I honestly think I allowed myself to think that thought because it allowed me to not go to the gym, which I needed for a period of time.
So there's a a period of time from the time I stopped co-opting diet culture to actually the time where I decidedI was ready to heal my relationship to exercise to be a six year period almost where beyond moving from my desk to the car to go see some family, like just normal, basic human living, I wasn't moving my body beyond any of that. And that I think is a part of the rebellion of leading diet culture behind. I needed that break, I needed that space of time. I had chosen to do the work on healing my relationship to food and going through intuitive eating and all the things and focus on food, and then I integrated the body and focus on that, that required a lot of my mental space, my emotional space. A lot of my energy was expanded in those two and by the time food was no longer a thing, I had a completely neutral relationship to food, and I was like 75% there with my body. I had this energy space available in my life to improve on another part of me, on self-improvement. And I took that space and I gave it to my relationship to exercise and I knew I couldn't do this on my own. Just like I knew that I could not heal my relationship to food on my own, I hired a coach. I work with Evelyn Tripoli to coach me on intuitive eating, and I became a certified intuitive eating counselor. I did her training program and then I hired a coach for a body image, another fat woman who had herself work on her body image. I hired, I invested in myself. I believed in myself that I was going to be able to become someone who's body neutral, but I needed help. Well, I did the same thing when it came to exercise. I hired a coach. I hired an expert who has studied a background in exercise, who has herself a very productive relationship to exercise. I hired a woman, right, and I explained to her where I was coming from. I told her, I gave her my boundaries and the things I was willing to do and not willing to do and what I believed, and I asked her to coach me. I paid her and I asked her to coach me.
So effectively, two and a half years ago, in October of 2020, I had my first session with her, and that was the first time I moved my body in a supported way, in an organized way, in almost sick six years. And we set up goals, right? As any coach would do, when you start working with a coach, you set up goals, right? So you hired your coach and you say to your coach, this is where I wanna go. Your coach's job is to coach you to get there. And that's what she did. My goal at the time was to be able to go back to public speaking and to stand on stage delivering a 90 minute to a two hour presentation and not be in any pain.
And I wanna step aside to say, I was a public speaker for years in my corporate work, I love public speaking, I love engaging with people that's why I have a podcast. But towards the end, and even when I began my business in as a nutritionist, I used to do public speaking, but I was in so much pain that I could not deliver an engaging public speaking event because I had so much pain in my body because of my scoliosis and all the arthritis I have. And all the knee pain that I have is just, it was so overwhelming that my concentration could not be on delivering the best presentation for people, and I had to stop. Combine that with me gaining weight and being ashamed of gaining weight, I retired from public speaking almost seven years ago.
And I always in the, the deepest part of me, I always wanted to go back to public speaking and at just another anecdote, that's the reason why I started a podcast. One of the reason that I started a podcast is when I officially quit public speaking seven years ago, I needed another outlet to talk to the world and share my value into the world, and that's when podcast started. Because I could not go on stage and speak with people, I started a podcast. And that was a very safe place for somebody who has, who had at the time deep body image suffering is I could hide just behind a microphone and I would be allowed to share my thought without anybody seeing me. Funny enough that today I'm recording this podcast with a camera filming me and this just to show you how the impact of how you think about your body, of your quote unquote body image has on how you live your life, on how you pursue your career, and how you pursue your business. I'm on, I'm in front of a camera, an HD 10 80 pixel camera, and I'm not even, I forget that the camera is there now. I don't care if you're seeing my roles, like right now, I'm pitching my role, I'm looking at the camera, I don't care anymore. This is like how far I've come.
So I think I got to that. I'm talking to you about that because the goal, yes, that's what, it's, the goal I had given two and a half here to my coach was to build my fitness, to build my strength, to be able to go back on stage and go back to my passion of talking to people. And I did it. On March 8th, 2023, I deliver my first public speaking event at the University of Idaho for the first time in seven years. Yeah,I'm recording this on March the 21st, it's already had happened. You will see a lot of video about that coming up on our social media. I'm officially back to be a public speaker. Here's the relationship to the goal. I was able to stand in front of people for 90 minutes with zero pain. And I'm saying that to you, and I'm almost like my throat is tightening up right now as I'm sharing that to you because that, I couldn't have never imagined being able to say that one day. This is how much pain and suffering I was in three years ago before starting my fitness journey. I chose that goal because it was almost unachievable, like it was so big to me to be able to do this, that I, yeah, I stretch myself to do it, but I don't know if it could really happen.
If you're listening to this and you're suffering for whatever reason, you have physical pain for whatever reasons, I want you to listen to this from a place of possibility. It may be not the case for you that you won't be in pain at all, but I want you to hold the possibility that maybe you would, could be in less pain. And not being in pain hane or solving the pain shouldn't be holding you back from moving your body. And that was a thought error that I was in for a few years prior to hiring my coach. I was running from doctor to doctor, specialist to specialist thinking, in order for me to move my body, I need to resolve the hip pain, I need to resolve the inflammation, I need to resolve the knee pain. And I spent a lot of financial resources into that. I spent a lot of time, I spent a lot of mental space thinking about that, and nothing was working, quote unquote, nothing was working. I think it wasn't working and I wasn't finding the solution because the pain was the gateway for me to move my body. It was the motivator for me to move my. So I came to movement with that goal of going back on stage of at least alleviating some of my pain, and it took two and a half years. It took two and a half years to achieve the on stage to achieve the pain, but to also create an enjoyment for moving my body, to create the habit of wanting to move my body. It took two and a half years. I knew from being a coach myself, I knew from having gone through the journey of changing my relationship to food and to body, that it was not gonna be overnight, that it was not gonna take three months, six months, it was gonna be for the long haul. So I organized my budget, I organize my resources in order for me to commit for the long term.
And I want to tell you something. This is how good my coach was, and obviously I'm skilled in selecting a great coach because I'm a master coach myself, so I picked her for a reason. Do you know that the first four, almost six months,for sure we were talking about that, for sure the first four months we worked together, so, October, November, December, January, and almost February of 2021, I only had one appointment a week. She knew that that's what need. I needed to create the thoughts and the feeling, the basic thoughts and feelings for me to show up for myself to move my body for half an hour once a week.
And I did. It took me four months to not resent having to go to that training session and I had to coach myself, like I had to apply our self-coaching framework. I had to apply all the coaching technique, and then after four, six months, whatever, we increased it to twice a week. And I stayed at twice a week for almost a year. For almost a year, I work with her for half an hour, twice a week. But as soon as I moved to twice a week, I started to see result with pain. I started to have less, it's kind of a muscle pain attack, like my whole spine spasm. And I started to get less and less of it, and I started, like instead of being a nine out of 10 outta pain, it was a eight out of 10. It was a seven out of 10. And she made me track all of that. And I could start seeing, after eight months, started to see a reduction of pain. I had to believe in myself so much cuz the result weren't instantaneous. Like I was at the same level of pain for the first eight months and then it started to reduce a little bit and it reduced a little and it was like very small, almost untrackable. And because of the coaching she was giving and all the techniques she was telling me to track and track, I could see it and the attention she was bringing me over, the small result that I was getting a long time, over a long period of time, I stuck with it. And I can tell you honestly that if I didn't pay her to show up, it was on Zoom, it was during the Covid time, so it was on Zoom, I would've probably given up. This is how much work mentally I had to do. Like there was a lot of neural pathways to reprogram when it came to my exercise. So I had to keep investing my money in paying her to show up and create the habit and create the habit, and create the habit and see the reward and create the habit, and create the habit and keep showing up and have her coach me through all the thoughts. Like I remember in summer of the session, I was so angry. I was angry because I was like not getting it right, and I wasn't like my result weren't coming fast enough. She had to coach me through all of that. Would, has she not been there, I guarantee you it would've quit before.
And so I'm gonna share with you another milestone, a year and a half into that, I walked into the gym for the first time. Like for a year and a half, we worked out together on Zoom in my house with barely no weights, just my body weight and a amount, and that was it. And I was in a location, I was traveling and I was a location where there was a gym, and she could sense that I started to be mentally ready for that. So she challenged me to go to the gym with her, right. So we had the first session into the gym and it brought a new level of challenge for me, and I enjoyed it. And I kept, as I was traveling, kept looking for a gym to go without making any commitments, I just kept looking for a gym and paying month to month to month, and I started to enjoy it and my body started to respond, in that I was lifting heavier weight.
I was going from five pounds to four months later, or three months later, 10 pounds, and I could see that my body was getting stronger, I was getting up of the couch easier. And I,I have a low bed in my condo here. I would get up of the bed without having to push myself off the side of the bed and the same thing on the toilet. You know, this is like crazy day-to-day to day movement that started to improve and I started to notice I was getting up the toilets easier. Like I remember one day, this is really personal, I was getting up of the toilet and I was doing something on my phone. Yes, I have my phone sometime in the bathroom and I got up of the ba of the toilet while doing the thing on the phone and then it dropped on me, oh my God, I didn't have to think about doing the movement. The movement just happened. It was like magic, and it happened because I had done squats week weeks after weeks after weeks, in every goddamn session. I was doing squats and squats and squats and squats, and I slowly, gradually reprogram a proper posture, a proper squat, build the strength in my, knees, and in my hips, and in my feet, and poof, it just happened naturally.
That's why we exercise. We don't exercise toto lose weight, to look better, to look thinner. We exercise so we can live our life. And that was my goal all along. My goal was my body is a tool to experience my life. I need to respect my body by moving my body, by giving my body what it needs, which is structural functional movement. We didn't do any body building crap and CrossFit crap. We just did functional movement, squatting, , walking lunges, right, presses, like pulling to hold your grocery bag. We just did the basic functional skills that my body needed so I can operate my life, so I can live my life.
And as soon as I started to challenge my body with the weight and getting stronger, I started to not only have a lot less pain, but do a lot more with my body and my life. I remember I was, where, I was in Portugal and I visited. So I'm a history fan. I love history. I love sociology. I love anthropology. It's a thing with me. I love that. So when I go to cities, I go to the old part of the cities and I do all the walking tours, and I visit the church in the museum and I walk on those cobble street, which are very unstable for the body. And typically I would be in pain. I would have to stop every hour to rest my hips, to rest my knee, and I remember being in Portugal and walking and walking and it was four o'clock in the afternoon and then it dawned on me, you've been walking since breakfast, whatever, nine or 10:00 AM nonstop. And you didn't have to stop and sit to relieve the pain in your knee or in your hip. It was just like my whole being just got shaken by this realization. Of me taking care of my body, changing my relationship to exercise, changing my thoughts and my emotions around exercise, changing my belief system about exercise resulted in that. It resulted in me being able to walk for nearly six hours in cobblestone street for 14 kilometers. When I went to my phone and looked, had been walking for 14 kilometers, whichhadn't, I don't remember ever doing that and had no pain.
And then I stood on stage in March of this year, delivered a presentation, which I was able through my body to building the strength and changing my relationship to exercise, to deliver my talk, fully engage with the people listening to me. And I touched so many life that day. I know it's a gift of mine. The podcast is a gift of me talking, but I am telling you, if you were to see me physically face-to-face, it'd be magic. I have this magic, I have this gift. I have this capacity, and the only way for me to be able to share that gift with the world was to change my relationship to my body, to become body neutral, and then invest in changing my relationship to exercise so I can build the strength in my physical body to be able to use my gifts and create the magic that I can when I talk face-to-face with people.
So here's my new fitness goal for, we don't know how long. We never have a timeline. I don't believe in timeline. I believe that timeline creates toxicity in setting your goal. So here's my goals that I shared, withthat I gave my coach. Number one most important goal. Stabilize and prevent any further damage to my spine, to my disc in my spine, to my stenosis, to my SI joint, and to my left knee.Strengthen the structure of these parts of my body that can protect me from further damage as I'm. I am fully owning that I'm 47 years old. I am getting older. My body is supposed to struggle, so I want to prevent deterioration, by far my number one goal. Number two, goal, prevent and reduce, if possible, the inflammation in the arthritis in my lumbo spine and my leg joint. Goal number three, build up my endurance to be on stage for longer period of time, up to one full day. Here's what my goal is. I want to host intensive retreats, with all of you. Like I wanna rent a resort somewhere and have conferences, which requires me to be up in front of you on stage for like four to six hours, and I wanna be able to do that day one, day two, and day three. I need to build the endurance to do that. And goal number four is hiking and walking, not climbing, at fear of height, hiking an unstable environment in nature, and walking for a long distance when I'm traveling and when I'm discovering new cities. So I want to keep the endurance of walking for six hours. I want to do more hiking in nature and not experience pain during and not experience as much pain after. I'm always gonna be in some kind of pain because of the inflammation, because the damage is done to part of my body, but I can minimize it. So these are my fitness goal. I'm using my fitness. I'm using moving my body just like I'm using my nutrition, just like I'm using my health habit so I can support my body, so I can fully live my life.
This is what I wanted to share with you. I welcome any question that you may have. You can send me an [email protected]. I hope it serves you. I hope it inspires some of you of what is possible when you invest in yourself, when you invest in a coach, and when you invest in believing in yourself, in your body. That you can live your full life, whatever that means for you, and that your body will be there to help you achieve your life. I love you, my sister, and I'll see you on the next episode.
Episode 352-Non-Diet Fitness Goals – My Personal Fitness Goals
This is episode 352 of the Beyond the Food Show, and today I’m gonna share my personal fitness goal and how high healed my relationship to exercise. Y’all ready? Stay tuned.
Hello my sisters and welcome to this very special episode that they’re going to be on the food show because this is gonna be a very personal episode. I am going to take you into my personal life and talking to you about how I journey true healing my relationship to exercise and the reason why I decided to do this episode is because just a few weeks ago, I achieved my last fitness goal that I had set up two years ago with my fitness coach and I kind of ticked the last box on the list of goals that we had set together, and I was ready for a new set of goals in my journey of working with her and in my journey with fitness.
So as I was writing these goals on my phone in my note app, I’m like, oh, that would be a cool podcast episode for all of you. So here we are effectively three weeks later. I am recording this episode. So this episode is not scripted. It’s literally me talking to the microphone and for those of you who are listening to me via video, talking to the video and sharing my journey.
So I wanna, before we get to the current goal, I wanna set the tone and to show you how, where it came. So I, when I was growing up to the age of about 10 or 11 years old, I moved my body naturally and with pleasure. I did a ton of bicycle and running around. It was a what people called a tum boy. Like I played with boys a lot when I was young and we were built forth and drive around our bike and jumped on sand dun and all of that stuff. And then I got into organized sports. I was a competitive swimmer from probably the age of 10 to the age of 14 years old. And something happened at the age of 12, which a large number of you probably are aware of and if you’re not at 12 years old, was my entry point in the world of dieting. So at 12 years old, I was introduced to Weight Watcher and I went on to understand that my body was wrong, that I looked ugly and that I needed to shrink my body.
So conclusively up to the age of 40, I thought that my body was a tool, or not a tool, but something to be fixed and that happened in the middle of my journey of being a competitive swimmer, and it affected deeply how I viewed myself in sport. Because as many of you are aware, when you go to Weight Watchers, yeah, it’s about the food, but it’s also about exercising so you can quote unquote lose calories. So in that little girl’s brain, it started to equate that playing sports was about potentially shrinking your body and get to a place where your body is okay or good enough so you don’t feel the discomfort of being in that ugly body, and you can get rid of that whole part of you and please the adults in your life that you are in a okay body.
So, within the spano I would say a couple years, I started to not liking moving my body at all because it became a journey of expanding calories, that’s what it became. And I wasn’t allowed to not move my body because I needed to expand calorie. Like it came to a point where I didn’t enjoy swimming at all and I was faced with the choice, you either continue swimming or you do another sports. You be inactive. I don’t remember being told exactly it’s because you’re gonna gain weight but I was smart enough to make one plus one in my head, like, I cannot not move. I have to move. And that began my understanding of moving your body is I have to. It’s not about pleasure in any way, shape or form, you just have to. And that carried on with me as I pursued what I call my PhD in dieting. I have a solid 25 year career in dieting. So from the age of 12 to the age of 38 years old, I dieted and associated moving with my body with managing the size of my body and I have to. There is no pleasure in moving your body, and that’s just what it is.
So, this is the way that deep play, I believe, moving your body was. I, I was hearing other people around me in my adult life running for pleasure or playing hockey for pleasure and I could not comprehend how someone could enjoy moving their body because for moving My body was no pain, no gain. I had to go all in like sweat, like crazy, and being a ton of discomfort throughout because I needed to expand as much calorie as I could, which resulted a lot in, in and out, in and out and out. Like I would go into the gym and I would go like all in six days a week for an hour and a half, three months, and then I wouldn’t go for the rest of the year. And that my in and out on exercise was also along the line of dieting, right? So I would diet hardcore and restrict myself to an insanely low calorie count, go to the gym, and I couldn’t sustain it. And then I would abandon both, feel into, oh my God, my life is still terrible, gain all the weight and then up and down and up and down and up and down. And I did that for 25 years.
So fast forward to 40 years old when I’ve decided to no longer diet, I didn’t exercise. I didn’t move my body at all because I was quitting dieting, which meant I quit moving my body. And that resulted in me having a lot of pain in my body, lot of physical tightness, pain in my body. So one thing that I’m bringing forward and telling you the story also an awareness that I have a health condition, a chronic health condition that is called a scoliosis. So for those who don’t know what a scoliosis is, is a curvature of the spine. It’s a bending of a spine that should be straight. It happens in different area of the spine. For it is in my lower back area. It’s in between L one and L four, so Lu one and Lu four. So really right in the middle of my hips and above my hips, which leaves my hips to be unbalanced, which leads me to be really tight in one side of my body and creates a lot of subsequent pain around my body. And the only thing I knew about this part of myself is I felt better when I was moving my body to a certain degree. And because I was abusing my physical body in the gym in order to lose weight, I actually made something that was positive for my body, which was to move my body to help with managing the pain of the scoliosis, actually worse, because I was over exercising and doing things in the gym that actually created more pain in my body.
But, that’s not my specialty. I am not a physiologist. I’m not a kinesiologist, I’m not a personal trainer. I didn’t understand all of that, and as a result, I associated going to the gym, moving my body, doing sports, doing exercise as causing me pain. And that was just a thought, that wasn’t a fact, that was my perspective on the whole thing. And I honestly think I allowed myself to think that thought because it allowed me to not go to the gym, which I needed for a period of time.
So there’s a a period of time from the time I stopped co-opting diet culture to actually the time where I decidedI was ready to heal my relationship to exercise to be a six year period almost where beyond moving from my desk to the car to go see some family, like just normal, basic human living, I wasn’t moving my body beyond any of that. And that I think is a part of the rebellion of leading diet culture behind. I needed that break, I needed that space of time. I had chosen to do the work on healing my relationship to food and going through intuitive eating and all the things and focus on food, and then I integrated the body and focus on that, that required a lot of my mental space, my emotional space. A lot of my energy was expanded in those two and by the time food was no longer a thing, I had a completely neutral relationship to food, and I was like 75% there with my body. I had this energy space available in my life to improve on another part of me, on self-improvement. And I took that space and I gave it to my relationship to exercise and I knew I couldn’t do this on my own. Just like I knew that I could not heal my relationship to food on my own, I hired a coach. I work with Evelyn Tripoli to coach me on intuitive eating, and I became a certified intuitive eating counselor. I did her training program and then I hired a coach for a body image, another fat woman who had herself work on her body image. I hired, I invested in myself. I believed in myself that I was going to be able to become someone who’s body neutral, but I needed help. Well, I did the same thing when it came to exercise. I hired a coach. I hired an expert who has studied a background in exercise, who has herself a very productive relationship to exercise. I hired a woman, right, and I explained to her where I was coming from. I told her, I gave her my boundaries and the things I was willing to do and not willing to do and what I believed, and I asked her to coach me. I paid her and I asked her to coach me.
So effectively, two and a half years ago, in October of 2020, I had my first session with her, and that was the first time I moved my body in a supported way, in an organized way, in almost sick six years. And we set up goals, right? As any coach would do, when you start working with a coach, you set up goals, right? So you hired your coach and you say to your coach, this is where I wanna go. Your coach’s job is to coach you to get there. And that’s what she did. My goal at the time was to be able to go back to public speaking and to stand on stage delivering a 90 minute to a two hour presentation and not be in any pain.
And I wanna step aside to say, I was a public speaker for years in my corporate work, I love public speaking, I love engaging with people that’s why I have a podcast. But towards the end, and even when I began my business in as a nutritionist, I used to do public speaking, but I was in so much pain that I could not deliver an engaging public speaking event because I had so much pain in my body because of my scoliosis and all the arthritis I have. And all the knee pain that I have is just, it was so overwhelming that my concentration could not be on delivering the best presentation for people, and I had to stop. Combine that with me gaining weight and being ashamed of gaining weight, I retired from public speaking almost seven years ago.
And I always in the, the deepest part of me, I always wanted to go back to public speaking and at just another anecdote, that’s the reason why I started a podcast. One of the reason that I started a podcast is when I officially quit public speaking seven years ago, I needed another outlet to talk to the world and share my value into the world, and that’s when podcast started. Because I could not go on stage and speak with people, I started a podcast. And that was a very safe place for somebody who has, who had at the time deep body image suffering is I could hide just behind a microphone and I would be allowed to share my thought without anybody seeing me. Funny enough that today I’m recording this podcast with a camera filming me and this just to show you how the impact of how you think about your body, of your quote unquote body image has on how you live your life, on how you pursue your career, and how you pursue your business. I’m on, I’m in front of a camera, an HD 10 80 pixel camera, and I’m not even, I forget that the camera is there now. I don’t care if you’re seeing my roles, like right now, I’m pitching my role, I’m looking at the camera, I don’t care anymore. This is like how far I’ve come.
So I think I got to that. I’m talking to you about that because the goal, yes, that’s what, it’s, the goal I had given two and a half here to my coach was to build my fitness, to build my strength, to be able to go back on stage and go back to my passion of talking to people. And I did it. On March 8th, 2023, I deliver my first public speaking event at the University of Idaho for the first time in seven years. Yeah,I’m recording this on March the 21st, it’s already had happened. You will see a lot of video about that coming up on our social media. I’m officially back to be a public speaker. Here’s the relationship to the goal. I was able to stand in front of people for 90 minutes with zero pain. And I’m saying that to you, and I’m almost like my throat is tightening up right now as I’m sharing that to you because that, I couldn’t have never imagined being able to say that one day. This is how much pain and suffering I was in three years ago before starting my fitness journey. I chose that goal because it was almost unachievable, like it was so big to me to be able to do this, that I, yeah, I stretch myself to do it, but I don’t know if it could really happen.
If you’re listening to this and you’re suffering for whatever reason, you have physical pain for whatever reasons, I want you to listen to this from a place of possibility. It may be not the case for you that you won’t be in pain at all, but I want you to hold the possibility that maybe you would, could be in less pain. And not being in pain hane or solving the pain shouldn’t be holding you back from moving your body. And that was a thought error that I was in for a few years prior to hiring my coach. I was running from doctor to doctor, specialist to specialist thinking, in order for me to move my body, I need to resolve the hip pain, I need to resolve the inflammation, I need to resolve the knee pain. And I spent a lot of financial resources into that. I spent a lot of time, I spent a lot of mental space thinking about that, and nothing was working, quote unquote, nothing was working. I think it wasn’t working and I wasn’t finding the solution because the pain was the gateway for me to move my body. It was the motivator for me to move my. So I came to movement with that goal of going back on stage of at least alleviating some of my pain, and it took two and a half years. It took two and a half years to achieve the on stage to achieve the pain, but to also create an enjoyment for moving my body, to create the habit of wanting to move my body. It took two and a half years. I knew from being a coach myself, I knew from having gone through the journey of changing my relationship to food and to body, that it was not gonna be overnight, that it was not gonna take three months, six months, it was gonna be for the long haul. So I organized my budget, I organize my resources in order for me to commit for the long term.
And I want to tell you something. This is how good my coach was, and obviously I’m skilled in selecting a great coach because I’m a master coach myself, so I picked her for a reason. Do you know that the first four, almost six months,for sure we were talking about that, for sure the first four months we worked together, so, October, November, December, January, and almost February of 2021, I only had one appointment a week. She knew that that’s what need. I needed to create the thoughts and the feeling, the basic thoughts and feelings for me to show up for myself to move my body for half an hour once a week.
And I did. It took me four months to not resent having to go to that training session and I had to coach myself, like I had to apply our self-coaching framework. I had to apply all the coaching technique, and then after four, six months, whatever, we increased it to twice a week. And I stayed at twice a week for almost a year. For almost a year, I work with her for half an hour, twice a week. But as soon as I moved to twice a week, I started to see result with pain. I started to have less, it’s kind of a muscle pain attack, like my whole spine spasm. And I started to get less and less of it, and I started, like instead of being a nine out of 10 outta pain, it was a eight out of 10. It was a seven out of 10. And she made me track all of that. And I could start seeing, after eight months, started to see a reduction of pain. I had to believe in myself so much cuz the result weren’t instantaneous. Like I was at the same level of pain for the first eight months and then it started to reduce a little bit and it reduced a little and it was like very small, almost untrackable. And because of the coaching she was giving and all the techniques she was telling me to track and track, I could see it and the attention she was bringing me over, the small result that I was getting a long time, over a long period of time, I stuck with it. And I can tell you honestly that if I didn’t pay her to show up, it was on Zoom, it was during the Covid time, so it was on Zoom, I would’ve probably given up. This is how much work mentally I had to do. Like there was a lot of neural pathways to reprogram when it came to my exercise. So I had to keep investing my money in paying her to show up and create the habit and create the habit, and create the habit and see the reward and create the habit, and create the habit and keep showing up and have her coach me through all the thoughts. Like I remember in summer of the session, I was so angry. I was angry because I was like not getting it right, and I wasn’t like my result weren’t coming fast enough. She had to coach me through all of that. Would, has she not been there, I guarantee you it would’ve quit before.
And so I’m gonna share with you another milestone, a year and a half into that, I walked into the gym for the first time. Like for a year and a half, we worked out together on Zoom in my house with barely no weights, just my body weight and a amount, and that was it. And I was in a location, I was traveling and I was a location where there was a gym, and she could sense that I started to be mentally ready for that. So she challenged me to go to the gym with her, right. So we had the first session into the gym and it brought a new level of challenge for me, and I enjoyed it. And I kept, as I was traveling, kept looking for a gym to go without making any commitments, I just kept looking for a gym and paying month to month to month, and I started to enjoy it and my body started to respond, in that I was lifting heavier weight.
I was going from five pounds to four months later, or three months later, 10 pounds, and I could see that my body was getting stronger, I was getting up of the couch easier. And I,I have a low bed in my condo here. I would get up of the bed without having to push myself off the side of the bed and the same thing on the toilet. You know, this is like crazy day-to-day to day movement that started to improve and I started to notice I was getting up the toilets easier. Like I remember one day, this is really personal, I was getting up of the toilet and I was doing something on my phone. Yes, I have my phone sometime in the bathroom and I got up of the ba of the toilet while doing the thing on the phone and then it dropped on me, oh my God, I didn’t have to think about doing the movement. The movement just happened. It was like magic, and it happened because I had done squats week weeks after weeks after weeks, in every goddamn session. I was doing squats and squats and squats and squats, and I slowly, gradually reprogram a proper posture, a proper squat, build the strength in my, knees, and in my hips, and in my feet, and poof, it just happened naturally.
That’s why we exercise. We don’t exercise toto lose weight, to look better, to look thinner. We exercise so we can live our life. And that was my goal all along. My goal was my body is a tool to experience my life. I need to respect my body by moving my body, by giving my body what it needs, which is structural functional movement. We didn’t do any body building crap and CrossFit crap. We just did functional movement, squatting, , walking lunges, right, presses, like pulling to hold your grocery bag. We just did the basic functional skills that my body needed so I can operate my life, so I can live my life.
And as soon as I started to challenge my body with the weight and getting stronger, I started to not only have a lot less pain, but do a lot more with my body and my life. I remember I was, where, I was in Portugal and I visited. So I’m a history fan. I love history. I love sociology. I love anthropology. It’s a thing with me. I love that. So when I go to cities, I go to the old part of the cities and I do all the walking tours, and I visit the church in the museum and I walk on those cobble street, which are very unstable for the body. And typically I would be in pain. I would have to stop every hour to rest my hips, to rest my knee, and I remember being in Portugal and walking and walking and it was four o’clock in the afternoon and then it dawned on me, you’ve been walking since breakfast, whatever, nine or 10:00 AM nonstop. And you didn’t have to stop and sit to relieve the pain in your knee or in your hip. It was just like my whole being just got shaken by this realization. Of me taking care of my body, changing my relationship to exercise, changing my thoughts and my emotions around exercise, changing my belief system about exercise resulted in that. It resulted in me being able to walk for nearly six hours in cobblestone street for 14 kilometers. When I went to my phone and looked, had been walking for 14 kilometers, whichhadn’t, I don’t remember ever doing that and had no pain.
And then I stood on stage in March of this year, delivered a presentation, which I was able through my body to building the strength and changing my relationship to exercise, to deliver my talk, fully engage with the people listening to me. And I touched so many life that day. I know it’s a gift of mine. The podcast is a gift of me talking, but I am telling you, if you were to see me physically face-to-face, it’d be magic. I have this magic, I have this gift. I have this capacity, and the only way for me to be able to share that gift with the world was to change my relationship to my body, to become body neutral, and then invest in changing my relationship to exercise so I can build the strength in my physical body to be able to use my gifts and create the magic that I can when I talk face-to-face with people.
So here’s my new fitness goal for, we don’t know how long. We never have a timeline. I don’t believe in timeline. I believe that timeline creates toxicity in setting your goal. So here’s my goals that I shared, withthat I gave my coach. Number one most important goal. Stabilize and prevent any further damage to my spine, to my disc in my spine, to my stenosis, to my SI joint, and to my left knee.Strengthen the structure of these parts of my body that can protect me from further damage as I’m. I am fully owning that I’m 47 years old. I am getting older. My body is supposed to struggle, so I want to prevent deterioration, by far my number one goal. Number two, goal, prevent and reduce, if possible, the inflammation in the arthritis in my lumbo spine and my leg joint. Goal number three, build up my endurance to be on stage for longer period of time, up to one full day. Here’s what my goal is. I want to host intensive retreats, with all of you. Like I wanna rent a resort somewhere and have conferences, which requires me to be up in front of you on stage for like four to six hours, and I wanna be able to do that day one, day two, and day three. I need to build the endurance to do that. And goal number four is hiking and walking, not climbing, at fear of height, hiking an unstable environment in nature, and walking for a long distance when I’m traveling and when I’m discovering new cities. So I want to keep the endurance of walking for six hours. I want to do more hiking in nature and not experience pain during and not experience as much pain after. I’m always gonna be in some kind of pain because of the inflammation, because the damage is done to part of my body, but I can minimize it. So these are my fitness goal. I’m using my fitness. I’m using moving my body just like I’m using my nutrition, just like I’m using my health habit so I can support my body, so I can fully live my life.
This is what I wanted to share with you. I welcome any question that you may have. You can send me an email at [email protected]. I hope it serves you. I hope it inspires some of you of what is possible when you invest in yourself, when you invest in a coach, and when you invest in believing in yourself, in your body. That you can live your full life, whatever that means for you, and that your body will be there to help you achieve your life. I love you, my sister, and I’ll see you on the next episode.
