“I got into a dangerous relationship, it was quite scary, I got to a point where I wasn’t able to get out of it without help, I had to finally speak up. Got people in school involved, got cops involved, and it was a very terrifying experience that led to me having a lot of anxiety and depression. I couldn’t sleep at night, I would be laying in bed shaking in absolute terror. That’s where it turned around, I would wake up and be like, ‘okay I need to get out of the house.’ I get out at 3 or 4 in the morning and go on a run because that was the only thing that calmed me down was the cold air. The running would just calm me down and make me feel at peace again, like I could actually catch a breath rather than feeling like there were hands around my throat from the crazy anxiety. It’s weird to say but that’s what I felt. That helped me but after that I felt like I needed something else, I needed more. I wanted to feel stronger so I got into the gym. I ended up working with my first personal trainer, he made a joke saying, ’you seem like a very angry person, you seem like you need to get a bit of anger out.’ We started doing a bit of boxing and weight lifting, got into it that way. I finally felt strong again, I felt like I actually had courage, I was able to feel better about myself and feel like I wasn’t weak anymore.
Then obviously it took a little bit too much because I wasn’t ready mentally for it I guess? I took it to an extreme, started controlling what I was eating too much. Ended up struggle with an eating disorder that took me once again away from the thing that was saving me, the exercise, the feeling of confidence and strong was saving me. Yet, I had that taken away because I wasn’t eating properly, I wasn’t taking care of my body. Once I saw that was getting taken away, once I saw my body was shaking again, I was feeling like absolute garbage, couldn’t dance anymore, couldn’t train, couldn’t see my friends, I was absolutely a wreck because I just felt like garbage. I couldn’t keep my mind out of, ‘oh this cracker is this many calories, this that everything’, I couldn’t get it off my mind. Once again I was able to step up, talk to someone and get out of it thank god before it got me in the hospital. I was very lucky I didn’t get to that extreme and I was able to take charge and control of it. Once again, I did it because I wanted to feel strong again, I knew I felt strong when I was in the gym prior to that. I got back into the gym, got back into eating health and used that as something to learn about nutrition. I wanted to stop seeing things in a certain way, and stop obsessing and start learning about how to improve my body with good food, and strengthen my body again.
I was getting better again and that’s when another speed bump hit me, my back quit on me. In first year University, I was there for a couple months, I was working as a lifeguard, I was in school for Kinesiology, I was in the gym, I was absolutely doing amazing and one morning I was walking fine, the next day I couldn’t walk. Had to drop out of school, had to quit my job that I absolutely loved. Had to stop training again. That left me for 3 months not doing anything, and it really took a toll on me again, anxiety and depression. Just feeling like ‘ why me, why does this have to happen to me.’ I don’t regret a single one of these things happening to me because it taught me so much. Once I started to get better, once I was able to get myself back into training after healing my back a bit more, that’s when I got into a bit more personal training, wanting to help other people.
I can’t handle having something like this happen to me and not doing anything about it. I’ve been able to help myself out of it so I wanted to help other people out of it. I wanted to be able to touch a couple more people and help someone who is in a abusive relationship and help them get out of it, and know there is a safe way out and there are people that can help. No one understands what that’s like unless you’ve been in it. I want to help people who are going on a path, especially young women (men as well), but typically you get a lot of young women obsessed over what they are eating, what their bodies look like so how can I help you get out of that? How can I teach you at a young age there’s so much you can do with your body, you got to eat the proper foods, you got to put that food into your body, you got to know that you’re strong and you’re beautiful and can do so much. You don’t need to obsess and restrict. What is causing that restriction and obsession because 99% of the time it is not you obsessing over your body, it’s something that’s happening in your life. So what is it and how can we get you out of that.
Same with the back injury, I’ve had a couple of clients come up to me, ‘ oh I can’t do this, I can’t do that, I have a back injury.’ I say, ‘Yes you can do it , but how can we modify it.’ And if you can’t do it then don’t worry, there’s a million exercises you can do. Don’t worry about that one thing you can’t do, don’t worry about that one guy in the gym that says ‘you do that weird, you don’t squat low enough.’ Who cares about him? He can squat as low as he wants to but you are going to do the way that works for you, you are going to improve yourself, you are going to improve your strength and that’s what matters.
I kind of take myself in a way, I don’t want to just be a personal trainer that helps someone lifts some weights, make their body look good or feel good and tell them to eat good food. That’s not where I want to leave it. I rather spend that extra hour on the phone with a client to have them know that they can trust and talk to me. Yes, not to the extreme of therapy but have someone that they can trust. Because fitness is so much more than just your body. It’s about feeling strong, it’s about feeling confidence, it’s about know you are not alone, and knowing you can do so much with yourself.
If you talk to any of my clients, they’ll know I don’t end it at just leaving the gym. Especially with my online clients. I tell them all the time that I’m available 24/7, if they are local and I know them I would tell them to call me, give me a call at 3 in the morning. If you are stressed and you feel like something is going to bring you into more of a downward spiral of maybe you want to eat bad, or you feel stressed. Give me a call, because what’s causing this, what’s triggering this, how can we deal with it in a better way. Do we need to go on a walk? I’ve gone on walks with clients at 2 in the morning because they are stressed and they don’t want it to affect what they’ve done but they don’t have someone to explain that to. So I’ll go on a walk with them late at night, I’ll be on the phone with them for half an hour if I have to because I know what it’s like to be where they are. To have no on really understand them, to have no one understand what you’re going through. Yes fitness helps you to a degree but it can also be so hard to stay there so how can we keep you in that health mindset and not feel discouraged when something comes up.
Especially the people with injuries. Fitness is the thing that saves you because it makes you feel strong, makes you feel confident but sometimes that gets taken away. So what can you do during that time to make yourself still feel strong, to make yourself still feel confident, to make yourself deal with your anxiety. Well often we can still go on a little walk, we can still eat healthy, we can still do the right thing so how can we push you in that right direction so you feel strong and you feel confident no matter what is taken away from you. There is no perfect moment in life, there is never a perfect moment in life, it’s just how you see it and how you can perceive it as perfect, it how you make it perfect.
As I explained with my story, 3 bad experiences that happened, bad relationship, eating order and depression, and the back injury. There is never going to be a time where it’s just perfectly set for you. And if you keep waiting for that time that’s perfectly set, you’ll be waiting for a while and you will just keep yourself going down which will make it harder to get to that perfect time. It’s about how you make it, it’s about how you twist the situation into something that can be a good working environment. How can you take ‘I can’t do this right now’ to ‘I can do this.’ Yes I can’t do that at the moment but I can also learn about something for the future, I can learn something new, I can try something new. I can learn more about a different passion of mine. That’s how I see things. Life’s not going to be easy, stuff’s always going to come up, how can you make it the best, how can you look at the bright side in a bad situation, how can you help someone else in a bad situation because you know helping others is going to make you feel great. If you can spread that positivity, you put out positivity you’ll get it back. Sometimes you got to share a negative story to bring something out because you can open up to more people, you can touch more people and have them be able to trust you and understand, and open up. You build this relationship where you can bring that positivity out in the person because often it’s hidden so much behind this bit of a shell, this bit of fear of ‘oh you don’t want to share something that’s bad, you don’t want to let it out or want people to know.’”
Amanda DuPlessis, Trainer.