This is me as I am right now – no filter no flexing just a dodgy tan in my avocado pjs. I am not a fitspo I am not a bikini model or a competitor. I’m not the strongest or the fastest or the girl with rock hard abs.
BUT who the f@*k cares ?! Seriously why is there this need to compare to everyone else out there ?? You can be a bikini model, you can be a competitor, you can lift the heaviest and run the fastest and if you have rock hard abs I’m happy for you. I am not shaming any one, size or shape, I have respect for everyone to have their own paths and decisions. This is 2017 the year of body confidence and self love (which I love by the way) we just all need to sometimes take a step back and remember our own paths before feeling the need to stop someone else’s.
Anyway I digress, this post today is going to be a chance for me to say some things I have wanted to say for a long time but haven’t had the balls until now. I understand that it might not be what you want to hear but I want to share my story.
Ok lets begin …
CHANGE #transformationtuesday the birthday addition. 2010 >>>2017
Gone are the days where I obsess over what size I am, how many calories I put in my body and over exercising through guilt. Gone are the days where I look in the mirror and hate what’s looking back at me And finally gone are the days where I compare myself to others
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I am happy with who I am, I am happy in my body. I can accept who I am and what I’ve got but still feel pride in wanting to look good, feel healthy and look after my self. Not all changes are physical and even though there is an obvious physical change here there is more than that.
This was a transformation Tuesday post I did as it was my birthday last Saturday and like all birthdays you tend to look back on what has been. It really put a few things into perspective for me and I realised how far I have come and the difference in me now from the me 7,6,5,4,3,2 even 1 year ago is so far apart.
I have been on a bit of a body transformation from the girl who under ate and over exercised to the girl who really didn’t have a clue but tried ,to the newbie PT who wanted to try everything, to going into 2 different photo shoot preps and coming out the other side a different person to changing my mindset and focus and finally to where I am now. Obviously not as simple as that but you get the idea. And it’s here I want to just take the time to share a few home truths that I haven’t before because until recently I had never really thought about it. The main thing I want you to remember that even though there has been a physical transformation it is the mental one I am most proud of !
My PT Values
Everyone grows over time that is a given and as do your values, beliefs, ethics etc. The same goes for my PT business and what my ethos is. When I became a PT 2 and a 1/2 years ago I just knew I wanted to help people find fitness but I wasn’t too sure how I was going to do it I just was. Let’s use the word naive here because I was … very naive in the sense that I really didn’t have my niche sorted or my core values. I entered the gym environment and wanted to help as many people as possible but at the same time I wanted to make a living from it. When you’re self employed the first few months are hard and not everything runs smoothly but I got clients, I helped them, I lost clients I got new ones it goes on. I was always an advocate of helping women and getting them more into lifting weights to help with their goals – if you want that toned look ladies some form of weight training is needed. However that isn’t the be all and end all and I wish I had known that then so I could have had more diversity in my training. Now I still am an advocate of women training but in all honesty I couldn’t care about a weight loss goal, yes I can get you there and yes I will help you BUT I prefer to focus on creating that lifestyle and getting you feeling incredible in yourself and your body. If a potential client just wants a quick transformation then I’m sorry you wont be my client. This is one of the many reasons that drove my slight career shift because I didn’t want to PT just for the sake of it, I want to personal train ladies who actually want my help and are willing to invest in my ethos so I can invest in their progress!
And a little rant about Personal Trainers in general – there are so many BS ones out there who don’t care, want to make quick money and will just write up cookie cutter plans with no care. So do your research and find the one that works for you – because amongst all the crap there are some amazing ones.
Pressure
I have definitely felt the pressure to look a certain way as no matter what people say if you are in the fitness industry you will be judged slightly by how you look. Your body is part of your selling tool, people see you first and then they take the time to read and research. Which is fine as PT you probably will be in to looking after yourself and training but my big thing now is reliability and sustainability. I DO NOT need to be supper ripped and shredded to be a personal trainer because A/ it isn’t sustainable and B/ I want to relate to my clients and my clients are just ladies who want to be fit and healthy for life. Which is all I aim to be now – fit, healthy, strong and happy for life nothing else.
However 2 years ago that wasn’t the case I felt I needed to look a certain way and my issue was I wasn’t in the right mind frame to see my body for what it was so it was always not right to me. I have done 2 fitness style photo shoots both of which I prepped for in different ways, both were a way of me having a goal to work towards and hopefully get some content from the end of it. All of this I have shared before and all of it is true, BUT the main driving force in all honesty is because I thought they would get me in the best shape I could be and I thought that’s what everyone did. Photo shoots are great for content I love them, I’m also a massive poser in front of a camera so that helps ha and I intend to do more. But I don’t intend on dieting or major prepping for them as I do not want to do that to my body again, a massive shout out to the coaches who prepped me and the photographers who took amazing pictures but never again. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind and looking back I should have done them but each one was a learning curve. We need to take away the stigma of needing look ‘in shape’ to be in a gym which is utter crap because what is ‘in shape’ . If you want to cut and bulk and prep that’s fine you do that but me … no not any more I want my photos to represent me. The only prep I will ever do ? Will be to just have a bit more focus and avoid foods that balloon me because as much as I love pregnancy photos I don’t want to look like I’m having one.
Eating
Any one who knows me now knows that I am a foodie and I LOVE my food (well the food I can eat anyway …) however that hasn’t always been the case. Recently Elliot and I went on a picnic, it was sunny so as all Brits we took advantage and it was so nice to sit in the sunshine eating our dinner. And he said something along the lines of he is glad I don’t see there for hours with a calculator working out my meals. Which really hit home and made me realise that my obsession with macros and numbers affected our relationship more than I knew. He wasn’t allowed to cook for me unless I vetted the ingredients, we couldn’t go out unless it was to a restaurant with nutritional information purely for the calories. I know plenty of people who count macros and it works for them and if you want to get a rough idea of what you are eating it can be good for a couple of weeks. BUT if you have an unhealthy obsession with food and calories then don’t do it. Tracking macros and my fitness pal isn’t living ! You will not be doing it until you are old and it is ok to not do it. I spent 2 years of our relationship obsessing over clean eating and calories only to have massive blowouts and another 2 obsessing over counting and tracking macros that food became a chore not a pleasure. Food is social food should be something you enjoy and I hate how we all still seem to have to demonise things or follow some kind of fad. You do you and you find what works for you – I know tracking never did and never will work for me.
Training
Can we all just stop hating on certain training styles and putting others on a pedestal! It’s just getting annoying now, exercise is exercise and as long as people are moving then they are doing something right. If you hate something … why do it ?? Unless you are on a strict training programme for something that requires certain things you don’t like then you don’t HAVE to do anything. Also if you are on strict training programme is is worth it ?? Ask yourself next time you are training do you want to is it worth it or could you change it? I used to love running and HIIT then I stopped because it wasn’t seen as the thing to do. I lift because I enjoy it but sometimes I just don’t feel like it so that’s when I change it up to something I do enjoy. No rights or wrongs just movement.
Me
I like organistation, structure, routine and things to have a plan – I’m not very good at spontaneity as a lot of people can vouch for ha. However this used to take over my life, it became obsessive I became obsessive and if things didn’t go to plan or fit this ideal I had set myself then I couldn’t relax. It had such negative impacts on aspects of my life that I hadn’t properly realised until now and as much as I don’t live with regrets I really wish I had had the ability to see that then. I made myself stressed, run down, burnt out and overly worried over things that didn’t need to be. I was always striving to be this ideal, making other people happy, seeking and needing constant approval and never really myself. There were times when I used to cry myself to sleep because it wasn’t working. The thing is I have so many happy memories that if I had just taken the time I would have seen that everything was ok and the reason it “wasn’t working” was because I wasn’t letting it.
There is no ‘ideal’ there is just us and I am so much happier now because I have just relaxed and taken the pressure away from myself. I don’t need someones approval to be happy and I don’t need to fit a certain ideal because that’s not me. Life is for living and making memories and doing things we want to for ourselves. There are always going to be things we have to do that might not be fun but that’s what everything else is for. Lets take away this pressure to be something and lets just be ourselves.
Thank you for reading and I hope it wasn’t too much of a long one. Here is to being ourselves and not giving a damn !
Love Vicki xxx
P.s if you are feeling a bit meh and want a pick me up ? I shared something the other day that might help
