I train, write, and teach so that women like me 1 can access the tools they need to develop healthier habits in a sustainable way.
Full disclosure: I rarely look this hot.
I’m not your average peppybunnyinlycra personal trainer. I’m not an athlete by nature and I’ve never been “skinny.”
I attended my first Weight Watchers meeting at age 5. By age 18, after years of losing and gaining, I was over 300 pounds. By my mid-twenties, I’d had it. I had been taught and fully believed that my weight was the source of my unhappiness. Desperate, I had weight loss surgery on a doctor’s recommendation.
The surgery changed my body, but it did nothing to my mind. I was still the woman I’d always been. I was still walking mindlessly through life looking for something to make me feel right. I still wanted to overeat, whether out of boredom, depression, anxiety, or just to take the edge off. Massive, dangerous surgery or not, that edge was still there, and so I ate. 2 I ate small portions at first, but the portions got bigger and bigger. Because it would be years before I addressed the root of WHY I did the things I did (SELF-SABOTAGE), I kept eating as much as I could, stretched out the pouch, and made my $30,000 surgery null.
The problem was never my weight. My weight was just a symptom of something deeper – the fact that I had spent a lifetime living in reflexive reaction to pain, and to the stories in my head. Thin, I found myself more miserable than I had ever been heavy. Finally, those stories and those mal-adaptive reflexes brought me to my knees, and that’s when this leg of my journey began.
I’ve spent over 10 years getting genuinely well. I’m still the woman I used to be, but I’ve developed the skill of making stronger, more caring choices. Every day I talk until I lose my voice and write until my arms cramp up so that women who relate to my story can get well. I put myself out there so that folks who have what I have – good and bad – can find me, and in finding me, have access to the tools that get folks like us happily grounded in healthier habits.
A Strong Coffey Sampler:
Notes:
- Women who default to one or more of the following: self-abuse, self-sabotage, self-criticism, addiction, compulsion, rage, shame, dirt-joke-telling, dead-sexiness, obesity, thoughtful introspection, self-obsession, extremism, questionable fashion choices, brilliance, honesty and/or vulgarity. ↩
- And drank, and smoked, and did every other damn thing resourceful people like me do to change the damn channel in our heads. ↩