We think it’s time to change the narrative about fitness and our team is sharing their stories to help you change yours!
This is the story of Christina who is a part of our Management Team, a Group Fitness Instructor and a mom of 2 boys.
“For a long time, I was someone who attached the word FITNESS to a number on the scale. To a body fat percentage. To a clothing size. I wasted a decade trying to fit into a very superficial box, and never found the strength and vitality I thought existed there.
I decided it was something that couldn’t be mine and instead punished myself with emotional eating, inactivity, and relentless shame.
Two and a half years ago, when I felt winded trying to stand from a kneeling position, while holding my infant child, I knew I needed to figure out how to feel better – for his sake and mine.
When I started chasing a FEELING, rather than an IMAGE, that’s when I discovered fitness.
Fitness is your ability to show up for you life, and the people who depend on you.
It encompasses movement that challenges you, and brings you joy. It involves eating foods that bless your body. It demands daily self-care – not as a form of crisis management, but as a demonstration of love. It calls for you to connect to and respect your body. And it certainly means celebrating the vessel that is carrying you through life, at EVERY stage of it.
As I stand in this photo, six weeks after having my second son, a younger version of myself would see a body that is soft, undesirable, and as someone with “a long way to go”. I want to hug that version of myself (and shake her a little bit!)
The woman in these photos IS FITNESS.
She challenges her body while meeting it where it’s at, and enjoys the discoveries along the way.
She honors her body with the way she nourishes it, allowing her to also nourish her baby.
She fiercely pursues a loving relationship with herself.
She appreciates her ever-evolving body, rather than trying to manipulate it.
Most importantly she knows that a scale will never represent how intensely she loves and shows up for her family when she chases them around on the playground, when she serves nutritious family suppers, when she speaks with body-positive language, and when she proves daily that her fitness allows her to realize her potential as a woman, wife, and mother.”
So we ask – what does fitness mean to you?
We can take back a word that has hurt so many of us, to make it something of diverse beauty. To create our own definition of what a “fit body” looks like.
An act of love for our bodies, rather than hate.
#ThisIsFitness