I have always loved sports and fitness, and have always tried to stay “fit” all my life. However, from the age of 15 to my mid-late 20s I was trying to stay “fit” from a place of “I just hate my body, and I just want to be ‘skinny’/have a ‘six pack’.” This resulted in yo-yo dieting, extreme diet “cleanses,” and sporadic fitness quests. When I was a teen and in undergrad I was a “cardio bunny,” always running or taking cardio focused classes in my quest to be “skinny.” I even took a class in college on how to train and program for marathons. I ran my first marathon on my 21st birthday. It was a great class though and I learned so much!

However, I was never ever happy or at peace with my body. I was never “skinny” enough. I had lots of lists of foods that were “off-limits,” but would find myself binging on them when someone brought them into the house. I felt out of control with food half the time and overly strict and limiting the rest of the time. Not to mention the mental anguish and depression I was experiencing at this time as well.

I did not love me, and loving myself wasn’t even in my radar. I was lost and I felt like I would never feel true happiness and peace. My workouts were often moments of peace, but not always. And getting myself to get up and actually workout was such a chore.

As I write this I feel so much pain for my younger self. I wish I could go back in time and tell her, “it does get better. You will find peace, joy, love, and happiness. You will eventually experience all emotions with a sense of dignity and grace. You will let go of black and white thinking and life will shine bright again. To get there though is a journey that doesn’t really have an end. It’s a lifelong journey that begins with a single step and a healthy dose of awareness.”

Growing up no one ever taught me, directly or in-directly, how to love myself or the importance of emotional intelligence, self-love, self-care, and positive self talk. It took me being sick and tired of being sick and tired to make loving myself and healing a priority. And I am grateful for my past self, for the pain and the sadness, because it pushed me to want something different. It lead me to start my healing journey, my self-love journey, my mindfulness journey. It has allowed me to relate with many others with a similar stories and lend a hand, a listening ear, and a loving response when necessary.

My past has lead me to this beautiful present moment. It lead me to what I like to call “mindful strength training,” as a way to honor and love my mind, body, and spirit. And my past has lead me to teaching other women this beautiful art. My past gave me the courage to quit my “dream” job at an Outpatient Physical Therapy clinic and start my own business training women the Coach Krissy way.

I continue to find more and more of my inner and outer strength every day. I CHOOSE to work on it from a place of love and not lack or hate. I don’t just flex my skeletal muscles, but my mindfulness muscle daily. Once I realized how truly healing it is to take care of my mind, my body and my spirit equally is when everything started to fall in alignment.

You are worth investing in. You are worth taking care of. You have to put in the work, and choose a different path than the one you are on now that is no longer serving you. I like to think of the path to enlightenment or the healing journey like this:

Most of your life you have been taught, directly or in-directly, to walk in the thick forest. It’s dark, but it shields you, and at some point in your life may have protected you. However, you cannot see the path ahead or much light. When you start to heal your relationship with yourself you have to choose with courage and love to veer from your same path and cut through the weeds to get to the wide open field. Where you can feel the sunshine on your skin, where you can see the path ahead, and where you can see the beauty that this one life we have has to offer.

But we are creatures of habit and our habits run our life, and currently our habits may not be serving us any longer. Habits include how we talk to ourselves, our mindset, our daily routines, and how we REACT instead of respond to life. So we must choose one day to jump onto the path in the field and start to replace the old conditioned habits, ones often passed down from our parents/caregivers and our fear-based society, with habits that do serve and support us in the direction we want to go. Habits that serve us in mind, body, and in spirit..

However, you can choose to walk this new path one second and then *blink*, WTF how are we back in the woods again? The grooves of the old habits run deep and you need to establish a proper support system (family, friends, therapist/counselor, ect.), tools and tricks, and new rock-solid habits to help you get back to the life you want to life. And you will fall back into your old habits, especially in the begin, boy will you, but you must give yourself love, and compassionately CHOOSE awareness and the new habits again, and skip on over to the path in the field, over and over and over and over and over…and over…again, until it becomes and unconscious habit, like brushing your teeth daily is.

Some things that have helped me choose the healing journey path over and over again, is my amazing friends that are choosing the healing journey as well, amazing self-help books that show living a life based on love and not fear is the only way to live, Faith, love, fitness, and especially mindfulness.

Love you, Coach Krissy