I was a volleyball player from the age of twelve, playing competitively year-round until I graduated high school. Performing my best was always my number-one priority. Growing up a competitive athlete, food was my source of fuel. What I ate before practice, after practice and on game day significantly impacted how I played and felt, so monitoring my nutrition has always been a part of my life.
Getting into high school, I started becoming body conscious, comparing myself to others and restricting my calories- the whole 9 yards. My goal quickly became being as skinny as possible, and I took up long-distance running to further my fat loss progress. This quickly became a very unhealthy, unsustainable routine where I was running to “burn off” what I ate, eating extremely low-calorie all day, and overeating at night many times per week. I fell into a dark place mentally in this same time frame and all these factors perpetuated the vicious cycle.
Finding flexible dieting, macro tracking and lifting weights toward the end of high school was what brought me out of this cycle. My mindset changed, and I wanted to be strong, muscular and toned rather than skinny.
Immediately after graduating high school, I studied for my NSCA Certified Personal Trainer certification, passed with flying colors, and began working as a trainer in my local gym full-time that fall, while taking time off from school for one semester. I began taking bodybuilding and eating right very seriously in college, focusing on tracking macronutrients and following specific training protocol to build a competitive physique for the bodybuilding stage.
Fast-forward to the Spring of 2016, I began my online coaching business, started taking on less clients in-person (I finished in-person training in October that year) and grew my social media reach to support my career goals. I competed twice in the Summer of 2016, and twice in the summer of 2018 in pursuit of my IFBB pro card. I placed 13th of 29 women at the NPC North Americans National show.
Currently I am taking a few years away from the stage to build the muscle mass I need to win a Pro status in the sport of Women’s Bikini Bodybuilding, coaching clients, building my business and enjoying life to the fullest along the way.
