Is it too late…?
….to learn a new skill, change your career, get in shape, learn to eat better, fill in the blank?
Listen.
It’s not. 🙅♀️
That’s right, I’m not going to make you read for potentially 10+ minutes to get to the big reveal and takeaway. If you know me at all, you know I am rather direct and don’t play games or beat around the bush.
So here’s the truth:
It’s never to late to do ANYTHING you [really] want to do in this life.
Time will pass anyway.
Once that time has passed, you may not even be here anymore (dark, but true. I’ve lost a friend and seen others pass in the past 18 months, not to mentioned watch the world go through a pandemic 🤷♀️).
If you are lucky enough to still be around…what will you wish you’d accomplished in that time? 🤔
Or, put another way: what do you dream of doing, that would take some time to really accomplish, and that time commitment keeps you from taking the leap? 🧐
I’ve taken 3 big leaps in the last 3 years that I absolutely thought it was too late for me to take. Now, on the other side of them, I feel like I’m just getting started.
I invite you to read and realize: whatever it is you want to do, there is still time. It is not too late. You are not too old; the opportunity is not gone. I believe — You can do whatever you want to do with time, a plan, and patience.
Big Leap #1: Career Change.
I was a K12 Educator for ~15 years before becoming a Personal Trainer.
I knew for probably the last 5 years of that time that, while I was good at it, teaching wasn’t the best fit for me.
I loved the actual kid-facing, classroom teaching…but, as the years went by, politics, administration, and classroom management follow-up and documentation all stressed me out to what I now realize was an incredibly unhealthy level. My relationships, health, and mental health suffered.
My body literally gave me lower right quadrant abdominal pain for 5 years to try to get my attention — it was all “hey! we hate this! could you please not be this stressed all the time?” 🫣 and I was like “just a minute I’m soooo busy” for literally 5 years. 🫠
It took me a global sabbatical gap year, a year living and working in Japan, and a global pandemic to make me realize I could do something else with my life. 😅
And so I did!
I took my first big leap to became a Certified Personal Trainer through the National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA-CPT). Along the way I also trained and practiced as a Mindfulness-Based Behavior Change Facilitator, something that paid dividends both personally and professionally.
After a thorough job search and interview process, I made the decision to get experience coaching a wide variety of general population clients through a local Anytime Fitness!
Big Leap #2: Starting my own Business
I had always planned to get experience on site, both to work with a wide variety of clients in person and to learn the fitness industry, and then to take that experience and build my own business that allowed me more flexibility and autonomy day to day. After all, while it’s true that any 18 year old can get a personal training certificate, it’s also true that I’m not 18 anymore, and we are at a point in our lives where we love to travel, see the world, and enjoy our lives. So, it seemed likely that my eventual business would be virtual, to allow autonomy of location and flexibility of coaching delivery method.
While I truly enjoyed my time coaching in person, learned a lot of valuable lessons along the way, and even considered staying longer than initially planned, eventually it was clear that I was ready, and it was time to move on!
So, right on schedule, ~18 months after my entry to the fitness profession, I took my second big leap: taking my in-person training experience and launching my own virtual training business to help women get started and stay consistent with strength training, in a sustainable way. While I’m still very much a baby giraffe (if you know, you know🦒🥰) in business, I’m loving taking all of the skills I’ve developed through teaching and in-person coaching (communication, writing, speaking, curriculum and program development, among others) and applying them to this new, exciting venture.
About 6 months in, I’m still learning and growing with every new program I release, and am so curious to see where it will all take me a year or two or ten down the road! I’ve already gotten extra training by obtaining my USA-Weightlifting Level 1 Coaching Certification and am enjoying exploring the barbell olympic lifts (snatch, clean & press, and clean & jerk) so much!
Big Leap #3: Getting my Nutrition Certification
Recently, I took my third big leap: obtaining my Precision Nutrition, Level 1 Nutrition Certification (PN1) 🎉
In some ways it was a simple choice to pursue this certification — when folks want to make a change and get healthier, they often start with either exercise or nutrition. As they work on one, it usually becomes obvious that it would benefit them to pay some attention to the other as well. At that point, it would be convenient for my clients to have a coach with both the skillset and knowledge to coach them on both their training and nutrition.
So, logistically, and professionally — yes, this choice makes total sense!
That said, this last leap was a big one for me personally due to a long and often challenging relationship with food and body image. There is a LOT I could say here (no really, I just deleted at least half the blog post! You’re welcome!) and maybe I will, another day, in another post, but:
LONG STORY SHORT: for a very long time, most of my life, I was restricting, first probably subconsciously due to the body-centric sports and environments I participated in (gymnastics, dance, cheerleading among others), and then consciously as I got older, to attain unrealistic body goals promoted by society and popular culture. I was not super fun to be around, my relationships suffered, my world was very small, and I was dogmatic AF about keto, fasting, or whatever fad diet I was into at the moment. 😬 Even at my leanest, which at one point was 10% body fat, I was never satisfied, or proud of my body; in fact, much the opposite — the more I controlled, the more I nit-picked every single “flaw” and imperfection.
FOR A SHORTER TIME: I was explicitly NOT restricting, to UN-learn the practices above, to heal, to learn, and do right by my clients. My body changed but not crazily so, and I realized there is a LOT to life outside of trying to control one’s body. My relationships improved, my world expanded (even during a pandemic!), I healed my gut issues and recovered from a surgery and years of pain…but I was still a little dogmatic, this time about ANTI-diet-culture. 😅 Pendulum-swing anyone? 😅
NOW, MOST RECENTLY: I find myself in a neutral place, characterized by flexibility, autonomy and choice, paired with evidence-based principles and mindfulness-based behavior change. My years as a teacher left me with an incredible growth mindset and belief that anything is learnable/figure-out-able, for me and for my clients, from exercise to nutrition to mindset — they are all fundamental skillsets we can practice and develop over time. I’m more curious and less judgmental, strive to keep a beginner’s mind and always be learning. I understand that good nutrition is a science and a skillset, not a belief system, and that there is no one best diet for everyone. Moreover, I promote a focus on deep, holistic health — a multi-faceted, whole-person approach that seeks to help people thrive in all domains: physical, mental, and emotional. As my PN certification materials state and I 💯 resonate with:
We don’t want clients to have big muscles but small lives, or clients who “look good” but feel awful inside. We want to help people feel and function well in all aspects of their lives.
After wading through all of the dogma, and climbing out the other side, I now realize that while restriction all the time wasn’t healthy, it’s also not the answer to avoid and hide from intentional nutrition education in the name of intuitive eating and unlearning.
I understand that while not all foods are nutritionally equal, we can make them morally equivalent.
Moreover, my food choices and my body say nothing about my inherent value or worthiness as a human being or a coach, and, while food is fuel, it’s also so much more, from a way to pass on cultural traditions to facilitating social cohesion and more.
We eat not just when we are hungry, but to celebrate, to socialize, to relax, and sometimes even to avoid hard feelings or boredom. All of this is perfectly normal; some of this may or may not serve us at all times, and that’s where awareness and education come in!
THESE DAYS, my philosophy, and the philosophy I promote with my clients these days is a mix of body neutrality and body autonomy:
- we resist unhelpful socialization, separating our intrinsic value as human beings from the size, aesthetic state, or fitness level of our bodies
- and we grant ourselves full permission to choose to work on our bodies in any way that brings joy and meaning!
Because here’s the thing:
- Nutrition does matter — obviously. What and how and when we eat impacts every system in the body — endocrine, circulatory, immune, lymphatic, respiratory, reproductive, urinary, and yes, of course, the digestive system. There is simply no way that nutrition does not impact our performance, recovery, and how our bodies look, feel, and function.
And here’s another couple things:
- If you have a smaller or larger body, or one with more or less muscle or fat — it says nothing about your inherent worth as a human being.
- And, it might say something about your current life stressors, genetics, lifestyle choices, epigentic expression of your genetics due to those lifestyle choices. That data is yours to do with whatever you wish, whenever you are ready. The choice is yours and you get to do it your way.
And here’s the last couple things before I finish up — told you it might be 10+ minutes, if you’re still here, bravo 👏:
- You are enough exactly as you are — always, period, the end.
- You also have full permission to learn and do whatever you want, at any time. It’s never too late.
When I was stuck in diet culture, I was a dogmatic pain in the a** about it. 😅 I wanted everyone to know about keto, going gluten free, or whatever the fad of the month was. To a lesser degree, when I was healing from disordered eating and deep into intuitive eating, I wanted folks to know how f*d up diet culture was, and I was more or less unable to tolerate people talking about explicit dietary interventions or intentional weight loss or body composition manipulation.
Neither of these scenarios was helpful or optimal.
Now, I can see my journey and relationship with food and body image with compassion: I had to go through what I went through, to learn at the times I was ready to learn, in the ways that worked for me. 🤷♀️
Most importantly, I had to be ready, willing, and able to explicitly allow a focus on nutrition back into my mind, heart, and practice.
I know now that there is not a right or wrong, best or worst way of doing this work — there will always be seasons for everything —a season for maintenance, and a season for explicit goals. Neither is morally superior or inferior— they’re just different and require different practices, skills, and knowledge to facilitate them.
Neutrality, Autonomy, and Freedom with food and body image— who knew that was possible! 🤩
Wrapping Up
Back in my teaching days, with undiagnosed pain, sky-high stress levels, almost zero meaningful relationships, and feeling trapped in a seemingly interminable cycle of restriction, I really thought there was either something really broken or wrong with me, or that it was too late to make a change.
That was false.
Here I am, years later and much older, in a new career, with a new business, and facing some of my most entrenched patterns of behavior to learn, unlearn, grow, and help my clients do the same.
If you want to skip some of the painful parts I struggled through on my own, and jump over years of discontent to start living better now by getting right to the good evidence-based best practices of how to create a sustainable and supportive relationship with your body and food, don’t hesitate to reach out! I’m here and I’m ready, willing, and able to help! ❤️🩹
It’s never too late. Remember that.
