When I first arrived in the USA, was used to being fairly active. I never did any planned exercise. I had tried running a few times when I was spending time with active friends, but I couldn’t keep it up for more than a minute and I decided it wasn’t for me. I had been living in Korea for six years though, and getting around by public transport, mainly subway, so that involved a fair amount of walking, and a lot of stairs! I was also teaching English to preschoolers, so I spent a good chunk of the day on my feet, walking around the classroom, and walking from class to class, so I wasn’t completely sedentary.

My life changed when I married my husband. Now I was living in the States, staying at home all day, watching TV, and enjoying the plentiful American food. I began to have stomach problems. I saw several doctors and they weren’t concerned, so I just continued on, sitting all day, eating when my stomach wasn’t hurting and taking laxatives when I felt blocked.

Eventually, I was admitted to hospital and by that time things had gotten really bad. I’ll spare you the gory details, but I had to have a massive surgery, which included a hysterectomy. The recovery was rough. It hurt to get out of bed and I couldn’t walk far before I had to take a rest. I wasn’t allowed to lift anything over 20lbs for a couple of months, so I mostly just went back to sitting around watching TV. Of course, now my stomach was doing okay, I made up for lost time enjoying delicious food!

Fortunately, my husband convinced me to start going to the gym with him. I wanted to regain my strength, so I agreed. I had always been intimidated by gyms, as I had never been a sporty person, and I didn’t know what all the machines did. I was afraid of looking stupid! But my husband had been in the army for twenty years, and had been forced to work out every morning, so he knew his way around, so I just followed him like a little puppy and he showed me what to do and he picked the machines, and I just had to do the reps.

I wasn’t interested in cardio exercise. I was only trying to get back the physical condition I’d been in before I got sick. I had no desire for improvement, and of course then I was unaware of the vital importance of exercise in maintaining health. So, if my husband did cardio, I would just sit on a bike going really slowly with no resistance while I read on my phone. And before long, I had slipped back into my old ways and stopped going to the gym at all.

Before long, I was living a pretty sedentary life, drinking too much and making poor nutrition choices. I would walk the dog, but that was about it. Around this time, my drinking started to feel like a problem. Looking back now, it had been a problem for a very long time, but it had always looked like either partying with friends or having a glass of wine at the end of the day. Of course, there was no more partying. I was drinking alone, and it wasn’t a glass, it was at least a bottle. I decided it had to stop. Instead of drinking in the evening, I would go for a long walk, at least an hour. If I felt anxious and wanted to have a drink, I would practice yoga to relax me.

I also started going to the gym again. I still went with my husband most of the time, but I was also confident enough to go by myself as I knew what all the equipment was for. I began to get curious to know more, and that is when the thought of becoming a personal trainer first occurred to me. I was becoming curious to know more than my husband was able to teach me.

After I had spent some time learning on my own, I decided to take my personal trainer certification. My husband was getting ready to retire, and I was ready to start a new career of my own. I spent the next year studying and passed the exam to become a certified personal trainer. I loved being able to relate what I was learning to what I had already been doing in the gym, and also use what I was learning to improve my training, by programming more effective workouts for my husband and I.

I soon realized that being a personal trainer limited the amount of people I could help. People who were at the start of their fitness journey are often intimidated to go into a gym, like I was. Nowadays I work out mostly at home or outdoors. It is much more convenient to be able to workout without having to waste time traveling. My Health Coach service is aimed at women who want to become more active and start working out, but who dan’t know where to start. People who are in the same position I was in when I first started my fitness journey.