Why I decided to be a FASTer Way Coach:
I have always been a person interested in health. As an equestrian and long distance runner, fitness has long been a part of my life. BUT, like many of my colleagues, clients and friends- I have struggled. I am a mom. I manage two businesses and a small barn. I am allergic to grocery shopping and at the end of a twelve or thirteen-hour day, I have little left in the tank for deciding what to have for dinner and cooking. I have a hard time prioritizing food during the day if I haven’t planned ahead and all this pretty much leads to what I call reactive eating- scarfing down what’s easy and available rather than fueling your body with what’s right. So that’s one challenge. Then there is the fact that I love food and don’t really deal well with packaged foods, restriction or deprivation so many popular nutrition regimes and diets haven’t worked for me. They ended up sapping my energy and sending me around in unhealthy circles. So even though I am a person who knows a lot about fitness and nutrition, I have found myself falling into many of the same traps that we all do in my striving to be as fit an healthy as I can be- either over training and under eating or falling into the trap of reactive eating resulting in really low energy.
A couple of years ago, these dynamics snowballed for me when I tore my right hamstring and my main horse became injured at the same time. Suddenly, I found myself unable to run, and riding much less than my body was accustomed to. My mid forties had crept up on me and my coaching business was requiring me to spend more time on the phone than in the saddle. For the first time in my life, I started to feel like I was no longer an athlete. I gained twenty pounds, became very discouraged about my health and pretty much had myself convinced that this was it- I had entered middle age and my days as an athlete were over. Ugh!
Enter the FASTer Way To Fat Loss program. Recommended to me by someone I trust, I sort of half heartedly decided to give it a try even though I had serious doubts about my ability to follow through with anything at that point. I also had doubts about the intermittent fasting being something that could work with my intense schedule and lifestyle.
So here’s the deal. IT WORKED. I found the program both provided the structure that I need but also inspired creativity and did not require deprivation or a highly restricted diet. In The FASTer Way, you don’t think about what not to eat all the time. Instead you focus on what to eat. I found myself whole-heartedly trusting the science behind the strategies because I had more energy than I’d had in years. I lost twenty pounds in a few months on the program. I feel like this is how my body is supposed to be fueled. Most importantly, I’ve got myself back. I feel like an athlete again. One of the things I love about riding is the exhilaration of sharing an athletic pursuit with a beautiful, sensitive and dynamic animal- I feel like I get to express that again.
When I became a coach, one of the first things I did is become a certified health and wellness coach. As my coaching career developed though, I found that I let that particular type of coaching fall by the wayside as I focused on business and performance. I think deep down, I knew I didn’t want to do health and wellness coaching if I didn’t have concrete nutrition and fitness strategies to give clients that I really owned and trusted in, myself. Most all of you I work with, whether you are an adult amateur rider wanting to make the most of your riding, a rider working to excel in top sport, a professional striving to run a profitable, fulfilling business, a CEO, a manager, an attorney, or a business owner- all of you rely on having energy to live your purpose. We all want to make the most of our one wild and precious life and that usually means being at the top of our game physically and mentally. THIS is why I have decided to add the FASTer Way into my coaching palette. I want to be able support my clients on a more practical and concrete level when it comes to health so that they can live the lives they want to live. So whether you want more energy, to lose weight, to sleep better, to improve your blood work numbers or to just feel good, LET’S DO IT!
