A year ago, Cindy became a client and forever changed the way I see my role as a coach.
She lived close by and knew I was a fitness coach. And from my blog she also knew I was certified with Precision Nutrition (PN), which she was already familiar with.
Like most people that contact me for coaching, she wanted to lose weight.
But of course, there was more to it than just the weight. A lot more.
She was consumed by her size, and over decades, she’d come to let it define who she was.
She was feeling depressed and disempowered.
From the very beginning, when I asked her how she wanted to feel in a year from now, she said “I want to feel powerful.”
But up until then she’d been equating feeling powerful with being thinner.
As a fitness and nutrition coach, my focus has mostly been on helping my clients feel better about themselves by beginning with the physical body: Adding exercise, and eating better.
Then, once they discover what their bodies can do, once they’ve lost some weight and gained some strength, they begin to feel a whole new sense of self-confidence, and more loving and compassionate towards themselves.
And this outside-in approach works a lot of the time.
But working with Cindy, I learned that this is sometimes backwards.
Sometimes the change has to happen inside before you can see it outside.
Cindy needed to find out, that regardless of her size, she is powerful. And inspiring, confident, and beautiful.
You can see all of these qualities in her photo above taken last month (just so you know, she would never have posed for a picture like this just a year ago.)
And now, with this strong emotional and mental foundation in place, she’s motivated to move forward and get her body even stronger… Starting with weight lifting!
So, here’s Cindy’s year-long journey is her own words:
One year ago, I was 30 years into an endless cycle of extremely restrictive eating, bingeing, and compulsive eating.
I have been on every diet out there, and have seen some short-term success on them. The key here is the ‘short-term’.
By going through this cycle over and over, not only did I learn to hate my body, but I also completely lost faith in it.
I had lost all connection to my soul, to my reason for being.
I was so focused on how I wanted to look, that I forgot that I needed to be alive to be able to look in the mirror.
I was anxious, clinically depressed, out of touch.
My life was dictated by numbers – the number on the scale, the size of my pants, the number of carbs I ate on a particular day. I was attempting very intense workouts on very little fuel. I had no energy, no patience.
But most importantly, I had absolutely no compassion or love for myself.
I remember very clearly being 4km into a very intense running workout and telling myself, out loud, ‘You’ve given birth twice, you can get through this.’ The one thing that I had no recognition of at the time is that in order to give birth to my sons, I needed to have faith in my body and what it is able to do.
You see, here’s the kicker – when your existence, self-worth, and ability to love yourself is tied to the wrong thing, your focus is skewed.
Instead of appreciating my body for what it was doing, I was punishing [my body] for not being what I so direly wanted it to be.
Fast forward to me finally having the courage to contact Debbie.
I initially told her my goal was to lose X amount of pounds.
After a few weeks, however, it became blindingly apparent that what I needed to work on was my head and my heart, not my muscle mass and fat stores.
I committed to the process fully.
I engaged, I dug deep, I did the work.
This became much more of an emotional process that a physical one. I needed to free up everything I’d been pushing down with food and self-loathing for 3 decades.
And I did.
I burned some bridges, but I also built new ones.
I learned to listen to my body instead of relying on statistics and magazine articles.
Most importantly, I learned to show compassion to myself in a healthy way.
I [also] learned to be mindful.
To show love in ways that don’t include baking powder.
I went from making a crazy promise at the start of my year with Debbie to walking into a CrossFit class – the first promise I’ve kept to myself in more than 10 years.
That is more meaningful than any number, as far as I’m concerned.
If you are where I was, please, listen to me.
Read my story, look at what you’ve been doing, and ask yourself : How is this working for me? Can I, or do I want to, keep going in this spiral? How is this affecting my relationships? How can I do this in a better, healthier way?
This answer is simple: trust in Debbie. Trust in PN. Trust in yourself. You CAN do this. You DESERVE a balanced, healthy life.”
What a year!
I’m so proud of Cindy and all she’s done these past months.
Despite the craziness of life which included packing up and moving into the city with her husband and two young sons, and taking on more responsibility as she got a promotion at work, she never used any of it as an excuse to stop.
She always kept on keeping on.
She did her workouts, she ran, and she changed her relationship to food.
But most importantly she did the tough emotional work that was part of the PN program and our weekly coaching calls.
And now she’s ready to push herself – and her body – to see what more she can do.
And I can’t wait to see what she does next.
Debbie
P.S. For more information about my 12-month coaching program, just check out my Coaching page on my website. Just so you know, I only have room for 2 more clients beginning in January, so contact me if you’re interested!
P.P.S. Stay tuned… Winter Yoga and Winter Boot Camp are coming this January! In the meantime there are still 2 fall classes left of both if you’d like to come try them out… just let me know!