About Samantha
Hello Gorgeous, I'm Samantha!
My titles include Transformational Health & Life Coach, Nutrition Coach, NLP Practitioner, Mindful Meditation Coach, Licensed Massage Therapist, Reiki Master, Future Personal Trainer & Yoga Teacher.
(You could say I'm a bit of a personal growth junkie)
When it comes to my body, I've lived in just about every size. From nearly morbidly obese to underweight and losing my cycle, and everywhere in between.
To begin my story, we must go back to where it started.
Confidence and self-love never came naturally to me. I always struggled with depression, anxiety, and self-doubt (along with some other challenges, hello ADHD & Borderline)
After losing a decent amount of weight from developing an ulcer as a young teenager, I quickly began receiving compliments and noticed boys paying more attention to me. So, I started to believe that being thinner was better and began obsessing over my weight. I would restrict my eating, purge after eating, exercise to the point of almost passing out, swallow diet pills hoping to curb any slightest sign of hunger, anything I could to be smaller. And guess what? It worked...for a little while.
But eventually, my body rebelled against all of the abuse I was putting it through, and I started to gain weight. No matter how much I restricted or exercised, the weight gain continued. This is when my relationship with my body took a turn for the worse. I started to feel disgusted with myself and believed that I was "fat", "ugly", and a "failure." I thought that if I could just lose X amount of pounds, then I would be happy, and my life would be perfect.
Then I had two babies and the weight piled on even more.
I felt trapped in my own body and completely hopeless so I self-soothed by emotional eating. At my heaviest, I was 217 pounds and a size 18/20. I was miserable and hated myself. I didn't want to be seen in public (I felt invisible anyways) and avoided social situations because I was embarrassed by how I looked.I thought my only option was to diet and lose weight. So, I tried every fad diet out there... slim fast, juicing, fasting, keto, 21-day fix, raw vegan, you name it. And while I would lose weight on these diets, I would either gain it back or be completely miserable in the process.
I eventually started to listen to my body and show her love which led to reaching my body's natural weight and even enrolling in health coach training (originally to help others lose weight). But unfortunately, I was still partially entrenched in diet culture and I became obsessed with losing weight (in the name of 'health' of course). My natural weight wasn't my goal weight, so I fell back into old ED habits like restricting, purging, over-exercising, and diet pills. Like before, my weight fell fast and drastically low ( so low I was classified underweight and lost my menses for a year) and like before, my body could only endure this for so long. After slipping into depression and once again falling back on emotional eating, I gained 20lbs in 2 weeks. I realized something needed to change or all the weight I had worked so hard to release would find it's way back to me.
Intuitively, I started listening to my body again and started to break free from diet culture. Somewhere along the way, I discovered the books Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Health At Every Size by Linda Bacon. These books were pivotal in my healing journey and I began to accept my body and myself for the first time. Now, I am on a mission to help other women learn to love their bodies and themselves while becoming the strongest version of themself.
No matter what size you are, you deserve to live a happy, healthy, and fulfilling life! If you're struggling in your relationship with your body, I want you to know that there's no wrong way to have a body. Your body is beautiful and perfect just the way it is.