V A N E S S A
W o m e n’ s S t r e n g t h & P h y s i q u e S p e c i a l i s t
Let's get personal..
I am a travel junkie, foodie, low class photographer (as you might see), active in the feminist and body-positivity movement and a terribly passionate coach!
I’ve been lucky enough to be in this business for more than 3 years now, helping dozens of women feeling incredibly confident in their bodies and stronger in their minds.
And no I’m not talking about the time of a summer break.. the changes I make in people are there to last a lifetime.
IF I DID IT, YOU CAN do it TOO!
We tend to compare our beginning of the journey to someone else’s ending. And that is especially true with coaches. The truth is that everyone has to start somewhere.
My journey in particular has been really long and difficult.
I’m not genetically gifted in terms of where I store fat or gain muscle and I didn’t have the luck to find a good coach early on.
But I’m really grateful of that because it gave the the knowledge and experience to become my own coach and be able to help ANY woman who desires to change her body or fitness for the best – whatever that might look like for her –
MY FITNESS JOURNEY
Let's go reeeal back
At school I was the unfit, fat kid that was bullied for being overweight.
Even when I ended up losing a bit of weight, the feeling of ''I need to be skinny for people to like me'' stayed with me for a long time.
My Eating Disorder
I wrongly associated the diet itself, and not my freshly gained self control, with being fit and as a consequence I considered anything that wasn't an 'healthy' meal (salads, chicken breasts, egg whites..) with storing fat. I ended up developing an eating disorder because I couldn't stop thinking about 'good tasting food', but in my mind I couldn't have it.
The Heavy Weights = Bulky Stigma
I also decided to start going to the gym for the first time but I found being in that environment really ankward and daunting.
The lifting room was interesting but all women I knew stuck to the cardio and group classes area. Trainers were of no help as well; the stigma of "women should stick to lighter weigths and only focus on abs glutes" was spread everywhere. So cardio and classes is what I did. I can't count how many times people expressed concern about me becoming manly as a product of training with just a tiny bit more intensity.
Training as a Punishment
Not seeing great results, I thought the solution was to train more.
I couldn't imagine that the whole system instead, and how every single woman was training was per se wrong.
My gym session escalate to up to 5h per day, I was doing the most different things to keep me going (running /light weights pump style training /cardio sessions on machines /group classes /muay thai..).
I used to train till I HAD to stop because I simply couldn't stand on my feet anymore, so I knew there was nothing more I could do
The Truth About "Weight-Loss"
Everything changed when I noticed a strong woman in my local gym lifting heavier than most men, that was incredibly fit and good looking while appearing to enjoying life.
She made me realise two hard truth about myself:
1.Losing "weight" didn't made me gain a better shape, neither improved my physical or mental health and
2.Strength and muscles do not make women manly, quite the opposite actually.
It was time for me to change how I played the game.
The Game Changer
I stopped training ''more'' and I started straining ''smarter''.
During the following years (up to these days) I used that freshly gained free time researching deep into the principles of training and nutrition.
I became a certified personal trainer and I learned how to discern truth by myths and trends,
how to prioritise what's indispensable by what is a plus,
and how to adapt all of this to the single individual.
Letting Go The False Beliefs
I put end to my confusion.
And with that letting go my old bad habits came without effort:
it was the most simple and logic option.
Where I Am Today
I've now gained much knowledge and achieved my personal goals, but my journey isn't ended yet: I do know what it feels like to be confused, giving your 100% but never achieving concrete results, and I don't want other people to experience the same.
My new goal is to change hundreds of people's lives by teaching them how to distinguish what is a myth from what is truth.
Teaching women not only how to effectively achieving their goals
but how can effortlessly maintaining them for life AND truly enjoying the process.
