Completed a spartan beast (13 miles and 30 obstacles)
NASM CPT
Health & Mindset Coach Cert
BS Culinary Nutrition & Dietetics
A big part of who I am stem from my mom. She was a single mother who raised three kids while working 2-3 jobs at a time. As the oldest daughter in a first-generation Vietnamese American family, I was taught to work hard and be self-sufficient at a young age. This taught me that as long as you're willing to put in the work, you can get where you want to be. That plays a part in how I approach so many things in life. I never played sports growing up beside what we played with the neighborhood kids or in gym class. My mom couldn't afford for us to do most extracurriculars. Plus who would take care of my siblings if I was busy? The last gym class I took was the required one in 9th grade. I was a party girl and stoner. My idea of exercise was the dancing I did in the club. I didn't "exercise" until I started dating my ex-boyfriend. It was very sporadic and I hated it but it helped with my body image issues. 2 years later I began Culinary school and gained 10 pounds, I knew I had to do something to counterbalance this. Exercise became more regular and with research, I started eating better and realized that I felt better overall. From there, I decided nutrition was my route. After moving to Colorado in 2018, I found Crossfit and fell in love. As I was still a broke college student, I had to drop it and trained on my own for a bit. After college, I got my NASM CPT and went the whole bodybuilding route. I ended up developing even worse body image issues. Once I got the job as a nutritionist at a Crossfit gym in North Carolina, I decided to stop bodybuilding and go back to training Crossfit more. The owner of the gym ended up offering me a coaching position and helped me get certified to coach Crossfit. I fell in love with Crossfit again because I finally found something that made me worry less about eating and training to look a certain way but rather to feel and move a certain way. Crossfit has shown me that I can do so many things. Being an unathletic person growing up - I continue to surprise myself with the things that my body is capable of doing as I age.
Most recently, I would say when I made the shift from bodybuilding to CrossFit full time. My mental turning point about food and my body happened here. I stopped forcing my body to overtrain and undereat. I listened to my body's signals to rest, recover, and eat, whenever it needed to. As much as I thought I knew the importance of taking care of yourself - truly putting it into action was always the hard part. I stopped beating myself up over small things. I started talking to myself positively about my body image and I ended up getting where I wanted. I learned that when you take care of your body, your body will take care of you.
My purpose for coaching is to help people feel empowered. To show people that they can live the life they want to live, eat the way they want to eat, and train in a way that is enjoyable to them while maintaining the body that they want. As someone who has dealt with injuries and chronic pain, I am always fighting to make sure that people do whatever they can to keep from injuring themselves. And of course, to just be an overall badass because who doesn't like being the strong one?
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