Closer to 40 than 30 but still a big kid at heart. Married to my high school sweetheart of over 20 years, mum to two beautiful girls, and a walking contraindication of a personality:

 

• Extroverted Introvert

• Feminine Tom Boy

• All or nothing, daydreaming realist

• Stubbornly strong willed, compassionate sweetheart

• Passionately driven, light-hearted joker

• Private over-sharer

• Impulsive, Over-thinking routine-lover with a playlist ranging from Offspring, Hilltop & punk rock, to Bieber and Darryl Braithwaite, and

• Fiercely competitive yet always the biggest cheerleader for other’s success

 

For the majority of my adult life pre-kids, I battled quite a negative body image and self-worth, and although I regularly exercised, it was purely something I felt I “had” to do to chase an unrealistic expectation for how I wanted to look, totally mistaken that it would make me happy. It was a punishment to my body for what I had eaten.

 

After becoming a mum, exercise and any form of “me time” took a back seat, and I found myself in quite a dark place mentally. Until one night, out of pure desperation just to get out of the house at witching hour, the Universe aligned and I found myself at a local fitness boutique. So much more than “just another gym”, I credit that beautiful community for teaching me to exercise for how it makes me feel both physically and mentally, not how it makes me look.

 

For the first time in my adult life, I began to love the feeling of moving my body, and WANT to exercise simply for the weight it released from my mind and the feel good hormones it pumped through my body. I focused on loving the process of pushing my body and realising what it was capable of, and chasing down performance based goals like increasing my weights, doing pushups again and my first pull ups, running 10km...

 

Unintentionally, when I ditched the obsession of trying to use exercise to make my body look a certain way, I ended up seeing the physical changes in my body which I had previously chased so miserably hard with (what I thought at the time was) no success.

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But from all the changes I’ve experienced along the way, the physical changes mean the absolute least to me.

 

Until you’ve tried it and experience it first hand, it’s near impossible to explain the feeling of empowerment that lifting weights can bring. In my opinion, feeling physically strong is second to none, both in the gym and in life (like bringing the groceries inside in just one trip, hanging from the monkey bars with your kids, losing your footing but having your strong core and glutes help you regain balance and save you from falling, winning an arm wrestle against the cocky young kid in the bar... not that I frequent bars much anymore, but I rarely decline a challenge...). And physical strength transfers directly into mental strength, resilience, grit and the ability to confidently face life’s challenges head on.

 

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