What it's like to be a trainer in a larger body in the fitness industry. Part 2

The one thing I did like about movement was that I was good at it. I wanted to help people like me that didn’t know where or how to start. Thats when my trainer at the time told me what to do to get certified. She encouraged me and I signed up. I got my first “client”, a friend that volunteered. I learn through doing, so it was easier to teach and work out side by side. Exercise had always been a punishment. Like, if you’re going to eat those fries, you’ll have to exercise even more! I would still feel the guilt and shame of overeating, no matter how much I purged through exercise. I was bartending and training at the time and that encourages bad behaviors, I was smoking at the time and drinking way too much. Bar food was convenient. My trainer introduced me to a gym owner and he thought I was there to do marketing. He didn’t recognize me as a trainer, even though he’d been told multiple times that was why I was there. I started working at Starbucks to become a morning person and worked really hard to learn and grow at this gym while receiving zero support from management. My period started to become very irregular, ranging from once every six months to twice a month, so my doctor put me on birth control. At the same time my responsibilities at the gym increased. More and more was piled onto my plate. Within a week or two I began to see changes in my personality. I started to cry constantly, I was on an emotional rollercoaster. I was on birth control for 3 months and I gained back all of the weight I had lost. I looked puffy and swollen. The gym owner began taking responsibilities away. Once I was off the birth control pills and had chilled out, he continued taking responsibilities from me even when I did well.

Once I would start to excel, I would get to a certain level of pay and popularity. All of a sudden little responsibilities here and there would be taken because: “oh, well I don’t wanna stress you out, I don’t wanna stress you out”. I would push myself even more. and then, again, things would get taken away. I didn’t think anything of it, I was just like “whatever”. Even though he occupied my mind all the time. That’s the reason I started therapy, to learn how to draw boundaries to fix myself and so I can have the healing tools to help myself and create those boundaries.