12/08/2023
I’m 29 yrs old. I’ve earned my doctorate of physical therapy, gathered numerous certifications, competed in bodybuilding, run several half and full marathons, traveled the world and am building a business that I have had a dream about for nearly a decade….
Here’s some of the mistakes I’ve made, lessons I’ve learned, and what the journey really looked like…
👉From 10 - 16:
I grew up in an active and outdoor loving home. It’s one of the reasons I eventually got interested in fitness and longevity but we’ll get to that part later…
Mostly during those formative years I was incredibly self conscious (as most teens are) but that anxiety about my body image had me scared to do a lot of things…
Scared to run because I thought I wouldn’t be “good” or didn’t have the “right body” or scared to be competitive because I didn’t want to be judged by others or let them down…
Scared to do any exercise in fear of looking strange or doing something wrong so I ended up just walking or maybe doing the elliptical at the gym in the summers when I got older…
I used to lay on my bedroom floor and do 20 min of crutches just hoping that one day I would have abs…
👉From 17 - 18:
I went to undergrad and eventually found my major in food science - now for those who don’t know, this is not nutrition it's much more on the food production side of things and I went down this path thinking that I would go to med school….
Well long story short after the hardest B I’ve ever worked for in bio-chem I decided that was NOT going to be for me because somebody told me that med school was like having 6 of those at one time….
So I then thought well maybe I’ll go to PA school instead…
By this time in school I had gained about 10lbs in my first semester of my freshman year, and I really started to freak out about my body image…
So I started going to the gym and running some, I NEVER had run before - I felt like I was awkward at it, but somehow being at a really big school where I had less of a chance of anybody knowing me I got on the treadmill and would just go…
And then I slowly got into taking some classes like Zumba or yoga here and there…
At some point somebody also wrote me a workout plan and I used to take dumbbells into a back corner where normally people would stretch to lift weights…..
Let me tell you I had no idea what I was doing…
I also started to pay a bit more attention to what I was eating… I ate more veggies and less carbs… tried to eat more protein in the morning instead of sugary cereal they had in the dorms…but who knows how much butter they put on the crazy amounts of broccoli I was eating…
By the summer I had lost some of the weight I had gained but was still over where I wanted to be….
👉From 18-19:
In my second year I really got more into running - I had kept it up in the summer and felt like I was more comfortable running outside so I incorporated more of that…
I continued going to the gym and doing more workouts with a bit more confidence… but NEVER would touch a barbell because that was definitely too “scary” to me because I was afraid I would hurt myself…
Then probably one of the most impactful 6 months of my life came around that changed the course of my life…
I had the opportunity to study abroad in New Zealand for a semester.
Now this time was incredibly impactful for so many reasons… leaving the country, traveling without my family for the first time, getting to explore the most amazing country and make so many new friends… all of these things were amazing, I really was having the time of my life…. But also a few other things crept in… worrying about having to spend more money on food and travel…
Not having a gym or a scale and being so worried that I would gain back the weight I had worked hard to lose….
So instead, I used not wanting to spend money as an excuse to not eat and running as a way to make sure that I didn’t gain it back….
By the end of my time there I was running about 6 miles every day and probably eating about 800 calories…
I had become so obsessed with food (or lack thereof) and running at this point that I actually added a nutrition minor at this time (the irony is not lost on me…now.)
But I was anorexic and actually incredibly unhealthy… I even remember one of the nutrition teachers saying that statistically if somebody lost more than 10lbs then within 5 years there was a 95% chance that they would have gained it all back… and in my head I thought “that won’t be me!”...
👉From 19-21:
Coming back from my travels I knew that maybe I wasn’t doing things quite right but didn’t really see it as a problem…
Then I remember my mom asking me if I could even push myself up off the floor… and I couldn’t… I started to see that even though I was thin… I was not functional…
I had chronic knee pain and my shoulders would constantly get pinchy…
But I didn’t want to change or didn’t really see the problem fully… I thought that I was just super healthy and kinda weak.
So I kept running but also got back into the gym - doing more strength but mostly just machines and some dumbbell stuff…
It wasn’t until I went to one of my brother’s rugby tournaments when the second most pivotal movement happened … I met a local guy Eddie Reymond (of Eddie's Health Shoppe) And talked with him for a few hours about health and nutrition….
Long story short that summer I started working at the Health Shoppe.
Soon I was surrounded by collegiate athletes and bodybuilders who looked AMAZING, were performing at the highest levels and were EATING so much.
This allowed me to see a different path and a different way….
Over the next few years being around truly healthy people I learned so much and gained a whole new perspective….
I ate more to fuel myself… learned how to get under a barbell - squat, deadlift and get stronger.
Back in school I started to question what it was that I really wanted to do… PA, RD, PT?
I ended up shadowing each of these professions and settled on PT…
I knew it was a world wide job in case I wanted to move internationally and it also was a profession that I knew would allow me to one day be my own entity because over these years I had really started to see how holistically everything works together….
Running… strength… mobility… food… health…and even mindset - though I don’t think I had the word for it yet.
👉From 21 - 24:
After graduating summa cm laude with a bachelors in food science and minor in nutrition I still had to take some additional classes and get shadowing hours to get into PT school…
So in the next year I took classes, worked multiple jobs (including at Eddie’s), got shadowing hours at 3 different clinics, studied for and took the GRE, got into hot yoga as well as trained for my second ½ marathon…running a 7:30 mile pace and I was so proud!
At that time I was surrounded by more body builders at work so I thought… well now that I’ve run my race… I could do that (bodybuilding) - I know I have the discipline because when I commit to something - I commit…
So then after a bit of a bulking session I trained and dieted for my competing in Figure Bodybuilding. (During that time I gained back 34lbs but with a lower body fat % then when I was at my skinniest)...
Now this is when most people develop eating disorders… for me it was the opposite.
It really showed me the amount of work and crazy-ness that somebody has to go through to get “photo shoot ready” to be on a magazine cover or model, cutting water and doing all the things…
After my competition - I was again super proud of what I had accomplished and it just showed me a whole other side of training.
At this point I had been accepted to my PT school of choice and finally had the time for the gap year that I had always wanted…
So I bought a one way ticket to Bali for a yoga and surfing retreat and then backpacked through southeast Asia for 3 1 ⁄ 2 months meeting so many amazing people!
And guess what, I didn't lose all my gains and I didn’t go crazy - I finally found a small piece of balance..
When I took my flight home I decided that I wasn’t done yet so after just one month back in the states I bought another one way ticket to Portugal and did another 3 ½ months in europe. Again meeting some of the most amazing people!
These trips showed me that while I had just run a ½ marathon, competed in bodybuilding and been so hyper focused on health…
The real reason I wanted to be strong and fit was so that I could travel with ease, carry my backpack, walk 20 miles around a city, hike mountains and feel alive…
👉From 24 - 27:
I pretty much just saw the inside of the white walls of our building, my apartment and the gym.
I just lived and breathed PT school. If you know you know.
This was a difficult time… balancing school, life, trying to be active and stay healthy and to top it off I was diagnosed with Thyroid cancer…so free time was then spent going to doctors appointments… being in the hospital for 2 different surgeries and then recovering from all that. I am forever grateful for my supportive family and friends and especially my mom who was able to take the brunt of the stress because I didn’t have time to even think about what was going on. And I'm clean to this day 🙂
During this time I really learned a lot… I gained so much knowledge but being in the school environment I always felt like when I tried to think of things outside of the classroom it still felt like a test - like if I said one thing wrong that I would fail (remember fear of failure or letting people down is a big anxiety trigger for me…).
I had so much anxiety about not being good enough at a profession that I was just scratching the surface of and continuing to learn so much about still…
And while I had great mentors I never really loved the job whenever we had our clinicals… just kept thinking it would get better outside of school…
Graduating at the top of my class felt like finally getting to the top of the mountain but the pot of gold at the end was empty… I still felt empty.
After graduating I got to travel again! Living in a van with my partner and hiking and loving life brought back some of that joy. 🙂
And I thought that joy would last if I was doing travel and PT at the same time.
Well - I learned a lot and met some really amazing people, but it still didn’t fill me up…and I had this overwhelming sense of imposter syndrome…
I just saw more and more how broken our health care field was… so separated…
People dealing with physical issues, but were so overweight and had no idea about how their nutrition was affecting them or were so depressed they had no idea how their mindset was impacting their ability to recover….
At the end of my time - I knew that traditional PT wasn’t for me… I just didn’t know what life would look like exactly…
👉From 27 - 29:
In the next year I traveled and had so many opportunities to see the world. I loved the new experiences, hiking, being outside and exploring…. But I also had this nagging feeling that I was missing something…
I went to spend a month in Thailand to get my yoga teaching certification and there I realized… wow I actually know a lot, and people were receptive and interested to learn more about the body, nutrition and mindset components that I had the ability to contribute. I had the ability to have so many amazing conversations with people I still am close with today…
I came back to the states determined to teach some yoga and figure out how to incorporate my knowledge into something I actually enjoyed…
That’s when I reached out to Kyle House and managed to get a job…at first just working the front desk, then personal training…. And slowly I saw the aspects of what I really had enjoyed about being a PT in training and educating.
I knew then that I wanted to open my own practice where I could be around motivated and active individuals and set my intention to open a cash based clinic at the beginning of 2023. And I did!! Movement Mantra Physical Therapy, PLLC was born! Then the struggle of figuring out how to do all the business stuff came crashing in…
While I called people, emailed, talked and went to hang flyers in local businesses I didn’t feel like I was seeing much traction for all the work I was putting in…
👉Current:
So I decided something needed to change once more - I hired a business coach to help me set up an online version of Movement Mantra and learn the in’s and outs of marketing.
And that’s what I’ve been doing!
Over the last few weeks I’ve had over 20 calls trying to figure out what people would want in a coaching program and really what it comes down to are the things that I have been searching for since I was 10 years old and have spent almost 20 years muddling through…
Feeling strong in their fitness, feeling balanced in their nutrition, feeling good in their mindset and having a happy and active life for as long as possible to travel, play and do the things they love for longer.
So if that’s you…
Or maybe you’re a different point in your own journey but resonate with mine…
Know that the ones that never give up make it, and that’s the biggest lesson I think I can offer…
Never give up… don’t be afraid to ask for help like I was…, and always be open to learning something new…
Hope this helps someone out there
Much love - Libby 💕❤️💕
