I’m Alli Covington, international fitness and health coach.
I grew up a chubby kid and I battled my weight from a young age, around 9, when my mom tried me on crazy diets to try to get a handle on my weight. She had me on fasting diets, juicing diets, Suzanne Sommers diet, all with short-term success, but long-term disaster. Each time I gained back a little more than I lost. I got teased by the kids in my class because I was bigger than the other girls, and that experience made me so insercure about my body that it took a good 15 years to start to change my identity. When I was growing up, my identity was one of a chubby kid with huge thighs and butt. I spent half of my summers body surfing at the beach and skied in the winter, so it’s not like I wasn’t active as a kid.
So why did I have a weight problem then?
I believe it was lack of teaching me proper nutrition as a kid, coupled with the fact that my mom wasn’t the least bit athletic, made for a poor example of exercise habits. The lack of a regular exercise routine made it difficult to get anywhere long-term with any of those diets. Finally, the fact that my dad was a good example of exercise with no diet, and my mom was an example of diet with no exercise, made it difficult to decipher what should have been combined for maximum effect. I’m sure that if that had been done, I wouldn’t have lived with such a negative identity regarding my weight for so long.
Do you ever feel like that?
Like you’re cursed to be the weight you are right now?
I’ll tell you, it wasn’t true for me and it’s not true for you.