It's been a few months, but awhile ago via Facebook, I ran across the writings and services of a former figure competitor named Angie Gooding. I knew right away that I'd discovered something very different from the typical offerings for diet, training, and "coaching" typically available in the fitness industry.
Angie offers something very unique: a comprehensive coaching service designed to help you discover and embrace your authentic shape, not a stage-ready or photoshoot-ready or even necessarily a "lean" body, but rather the body you can live within, day in and day out, for the rest of your life.
So what does this process look like? Well, Angie has broken out her coaching into phases, with an optional final phase comprising ongoing membership assistance/coaching if you need it. First of all, Angie focuses on learning to enjoy exercise, a fundamental part of any wellness program. But it isn't about sculpting or changing how you look, it's about learning what you’re physically capable of doing with your body. Second, there is a focus on making peace with food, discovering how to eat in a way that nourishes and sustains without obsessing or “dieting” in the way we’ve come to understand it (deprivation, hunger, rules, and cannots). The third and fourth phases are about loving your body and managing stress, because for most of us, long-term weight management is about how we feel about the physical house in which we reside and how we do or don’t deal with the everyday ups, downs, pushes, and pulls of life.
Beyond providing online Coaching, Angie also conducts seminars. There’s something very powerful and unique to be found in bringing these issues out into the open with a group of women. The realization of just how connected we are through our shared body image experience comes to the surface in the seminar environment in a way that can’t be duplicated in any other setting. I haven’t been to one of these seminars yet, but I may have to join the ladies for the next Vegas weekend workshop.
Angie is providing a much needed alternative for women. We don’t need more guilt or browbeating, and we don’t need more deprivation, fads, and quick fixes. We need help to heal our relationships with ourselves and our bodies, help that comes in the form of someone who truly gets it, as Angie does. As a wife and Mom and someone who toyed with (okay, let’s be honest, lived with) an obsessive focus on the physical and paid the price for a time, Angie is someone I believe women can trust to keep their best interests at the center of all their interactions with her.
From day one I’ve had a very good feeling about Angie. And she continues to inspire and delight me as her business grows and evolves. If you’re tired of what hasn’t worked for you in terms of getting healthy, I suggest you check out the services Angie has to offer. At the very least, you’ll feel a little less alone…
Take care. Give thanks. Be happy.
