Interview 6: “You are worthy.”
/You know that moment where you meet someone and you just KNOW that person was meant to be in your life? That was Christine for me!
Christine has the most incredible spirit, passion for health and fitness and is just down right a bad ass mom! She’s an example in her community and a pillar of strength (no pun intended) in her household. She is such a cool person and I’m excited for you to learn a few golden lessons from her journey!
Christine is from Denver, CO and has SIX, yes you heard me, SIX children! After having baby #1 she decided that being a full time mom was the most important thing she could do. However, this decision came at the cost of college and raising a baby while everyone else was in school felt very isolating. “You feel like you are the only one going through it.” And having six children is no joke! “For a while everything feels out of whack! When you FINALLY get into a groove….then you have another baby!” she shares with laughing. Every single time she had a child she had to re-focus and shift her mindset. Everything that was simple with her the old situation, like going to the grocery store or even cooking dinner, now had to be retaught and she had to figure out how to make it work all over again!
I was in total awe of Christine! She is an exemplary model of motherhood, calm amongst chaos and what I might love the most, she lives and breathes self care! Now her children range from 11 - 25 years old and she’s having a total blast.
If you follow Christine you know she works out! I mean girlfriend looks fantastic and you can tell she makes sure that fitness and health are a priority. Not only are here daily workouts crazy inspiring BUT she has even published at-home workout guides for women just like her! “I wanted to put something together for women who stay at home so they could see results!” Her guides are completely accessible to women who don’t have a lot of equipment and she has created meal plans to compliment the workouts.
She’s a total rockstar! But like every fairytale ending there was once a bumpy start.
Let me take you back a few years in Christine’s journey. For her, watching her friends go through college and earn degrees lowered her self worth. She felt like she didn’t have any credibility and struggled with finding an identity outside of “mom.” It was hard for her to feel like she should be taken seriously because she didn’t have a degree like everyone else. Now, she looks at her adult children and sees the incredible people they’ve become. She absolutely knows she had a big part in that! But finding her self worth has taken a long time to truly realize, understand and really LIVE into it! Finding balance wasn’t easy. She had a lot of guilt and at some points felt consumed by it. In the chaos of children there were times when not one, not two, but five cookies would be consumed and the guilt would make her feel really terrible.
It wasn’t until she saw that her son needed support in fitness and health that her journey began. She was never in sports and could put weigh on easily so, being the incredible mother that she is, she decided they would do it together in a healthy way! SHE would be his support! She set up a home gym and they worked out together. During these workouts her guilt began to diminish and her self worth began to increase. She began to focus her energy on what is really important…her son. She started viewing things from a big picture lens.
But it didn’t stop after the workout was over. She knew she could do more for her son and the rest of her family and so she started focusing on nutrition. The old Christine had tried every diet she was “told” to do but always ended up sicker. She realized that she needed to bring it back to basics. If she Kept things simple in the kitchen she would create a more balanced healthy body. So that’s what she did!
What I love about her thought process around food is that it is no longer wrapped in guilt. The majority of the time she eats simple and clean and fuels her body so it can do what she wants! But she doesn’t freak out if she goes off a bit! She’s super realistic and knows that knows she can’t follow her eating guides all the time. As her children hit milestones in their lives there will be parties and indulgences. But all the hard work she put in to learning nutrition and creating the guides allows her to always have a net to fall back into. She’s created a tool that alleviates the stress of food from her life. She has been the foundation of her family’s health and quite frankly I think that’s a huge thing to be proud of!
We had an incredible conversation that went deep in to my childhood, her daughters, an upcoming wedding and her ideas of maybe going back to school. But what I loved about Christine is she values her role so completely as a mother that she wants to be totally available to them! And to be the best she can be for them she has worked a great deal on matching her inner strength to her outer strength. She’s become the person she has always wanted to be and truly believes that she is worthy. Prioritizing self care, meditating and living as the person she wanted to be even before she was that person has created the Christine we see today!
As we talked about my youth, we shared our individual struggles with body image and eating issues. “We all have the guilt. You see that perfect body all the time. You get swayed and start straying to try to look like the magazines,” she said talking about how she used to read these magazines and compare herself to the modified images looking back at her. She is grateful that we seem to be making a shift towards HEALTH as opposed to skinny. While that is still out there for sure, she is glad there is a different example for her daughters to see!
Christine to me living proof that you can prosper where you’re planted. With kids came a different life path but that did not slow her down from making a huge impact in this world. She’s grown an incredible following of over 12K fans, has her own product and is truly helping people feel their best both inside and out.
Her advice for people who are just getting started was simple but so incredibly difficult for many of us. “Just as you’re working on your heath and body, you have to be working on yourself too. You have to do all of it to become who you really want to become.” She is living proof that this works. But for some that’s a hard pill to swallow. We think fitting in a workout and eating better will make all the difference. But until you focus on working on your mindset and soul you will always be limiting your potential and not allowing yourself to be the best version. For me, until I started doing meditation and investing in my personal development I was stagnant in all areas of my life. When I added this component to my life I started to see a shift! I went from constantly battling my body to loving my body. I went from always being broke to getting out from under the financial wet blanket. I went from being a tornado picking up the stress of others to simply letting it go. If you take anything away from Christine’s message I truly hope it’s to implement a practice of personal growth.
As you begin your journey or even if you’re so close to your goal you can almost taste it, I think her last bit of advice will help us all. “Don’t get consumed by the little things and let it become your life.” How often do we get hung up on a half pound or a meal we “shouldn’t have eaten?” We could all take a lesson out of her playbook and let the little things go! As I get older and older I have learned to not sweat the small things. There are way too many of them and it can totally derail your forward momentum.
As I envision who I will be as a mother, I only hope I can bring such a balance to my family. She has shown her children what it looks like to take care of yourself and others. I’m sure in the moment it didn’t feel like a momentous act or something to be applauded for but her impact and influence has sent ripples around the world. Christine is an amazing woman and I am so grateful to now call her a friend!
Thank you for taking the time to engage in my 6th interview of inspiring women! Please feel free to share your comments, feelings and send this to a friend you think would benefit from reading this! If you want me to interview someone you find incredibly inspiring, I would be truly honored to meet them! This is a journey that has no parameters or rules! Let’s have fun with it and continue to spread the message of empowerment, love and kindness - to ourselves and others!
You can follow Christine on Instagram @fitmamaof6 <– makes sense huh :)
xo
Becky