Growing up, I didn’t have the healthiest body image and I think I tried every fad diet/exercise of the time (Remember that belt thing that literally shocked your abs? Yup, I had one of those). I carried negative images of myself into adulthood as I see-sawed between what I perceived to be fit and fat. When we moved to CO, running became my main form of exercise and I ran more half marathons than I can remember; one time, even doing them on back-to-back weekends. I burned myself out and lost the motivation to keep training as a runner. I stopped exercising entirely and returned to my perceived fat phase. Then, in December 2017, a friend talked me into trying CrossFit. I fell in love with the sport and with the community aspect and, yes, became very competitive. Over time, I improved with the movements, got better at workouts, and started doing competitions, but I didn’t see any big changes in my body composition. I knew I still needed to lose some weight, my cholesterol was higher than it should’ve been, and I wanted to build a more fit physique, but CrossFit on its own wasn’t moving the bar. In 2020, I joined DeNovo CrossFit and in 2021, started nutrition coaching with Jenny. Learning about nutrition, that it’s fundamental to CrossFit (literally the base of the pyramid), and how to properly fuel my body was life changing. I started noticing bigger improvements on my workouts and my body transformed on the outside, and on the inside too (cholesterol dropped!). I couldn’t believe that I’d been a part of CrossFit for 4 years before learning how to incorporate nutrition into the equation…and that it didn’t have to be hard or complicated.