10/06/2026
LONG POST ALERT🖤 But if you’ve ever struggled with your fitness journey, read this.👇
I wanted to share these pictures because I think sometimes when you see a coach or someone in the fitness industry, you only see where they are right now. You don’t see everything it took to get there, and you definitely don’t see all the times they had to start again. These pictures are from completely different phases of my life and my fitness journey, and looking through them reminded me why I started Lifted by Lizzy in the first place.
I am the coach who has been in your shoes. I grew up being naturally skinny. I was underweight for most of my younger years and never really had to think about what I ate. Then I became an adult. I went to college and moved out. Life changed. I became pregnant young. I gained a LOT of weight.
At my heaviest, I was over 220 pounds. I gained even more weight postpartum. I struggled with postpartum depression, my mental health, my relationship with food, eating disorders, and just genuinely not feeling like myself anymore. Eventually, I decided I had to start taking care of me, and that’s when I found the gym. At first, my nutrition wasn’t perfect. I didn’t know everything I know now. I was simply learning how to move my body, learning how to lift weights, and realizing how GOOD it felt to have an hour that was mine.
Then I fell completely in love with it🖤 Over time, I lost around 80 pounds. I built muscle. I learned about nutrition. I learned portions. I tracked my food. I learned what my body needed. I worked my ASS off, and during one of the hardest periods of my entire life, the gym became so much more than somewhere I went to change my body.
The gym truly saved me.
When life was falling apart around me, I could have turned toward partying. I could have completely self-sabotaged. I could have gone down a very different road. Instead, I put my head down and went to work. Some days the gym was the ONLY place my brain was quiet. Eventually, I reached a physique I never imagined I’d have. I was the leanest, strongest and most muscular I’d ever been.
But here’s the part of a fitness journey people don’t post about as often: Life kept happening.
For a while, I maintained pretty effortlessly. I wasn’t tracking every calorie anymore. I wasn’t even going to the gym nearly as much. After years of learning about food and portions, so much of it had simply become second nature. Then this past year happened. Grief happened. Stress happened. Life happened, and slowly, I found myself reverting back to habits I genuinely thought I had overcome. Stress eating. Binge eating. Choosing convenience constantly. Putting myself last. Losing consistency in the gym. Saying I’d get back on track tomorrow, and then tomorrow turning into another tomorrow.
Then I looked at myself and realized: I have to take care of me again.
So that’s where I am in the last picture. I’m not at my leanest right now. I’m not at my lowest weight. I’m not pretending I’ve got everything figured out simply because I’m a coach. I’m rebuilding too. I’m falling in love with the gym again. I’m focusing on my nutrition again. I’m working on portion sizes, balance, binge eating, my mental health and learning how to take care of myself through life instead of only when life is easy.
That’s exactly what makes me the coach I am.
I’m a mom. I work full time. I have responsibilities. I have stress. I’ve dealt with grief. I’ve dealt with depression and anxiety. I’ve struggled with food. I’ve gained weight. I’ve lost weight. I’ve built muscle. I’ve maintained. I’ve fallen off. I’ve started over. I don’t have unlimited time to spend two hours in the gym whenever I feel like it. Right now, I wake up at 4:00 in the freaking morning because that’s the time I have available to take care of myself.
I understand when someone tells me they’re exhausted. I understand when someone tells me they don’t recognize themselves anymore. I understand when someone says they know what they’re supposed to do but can’t seem to make themselves do it. I understand starting at a weight you’re uncomfortable with. I understand being terrified of walking into a gym. I understand losing weight and still struggling with the person you see in the mirror, and I understand having made incredible progress once before and feeling embarrassed that you somehow ended up struggling again.
There is no straight line in a fitness journey. You’re going to have seasons where you’re killing it. You’re going to have seasons where you’re surviving. There will be pregnancies. Babies. New jobs. Breakups. Marriages. Grief. Stress. Financial problems. Injuries. Illness. Mental-health struggles. Vacations. Holidays.
Life does not stop happening so that you can conveniently work on yourself. The important part isn’t never falling off. It’s learning how to pick yourself back up, and that’s what I’m doing right now.
That’s also why creating programs for other people means so much more to me than putting exercises into a spreadsheet or numbers onto a nutrition guide.
When someone tells me they’re excited to go to the gym again…
When someone tells me they broke through a plateau…
When someone says they wish they’d taken a before picture because they can already see the difference…
When someone tells me their nutrition guide made them excited to meal prep and make healthy meals again…
THAT is what makes me happy, because I know what it feels like when that little glimmer comes back. When you start feeling stronger. When your confidence starts coming back. When you realize you’re capable of doing hard things again. When you start recognizing yourself again.
That is why Lifted by Lizzy exists.
My programs aren’t built from the perspective of someone who’s only ever known fitness while life was easy. They’re built by someone who has had to fight her way back to herself more than once, and if you’re currently in one of those seasons where you don’t recognize yourself, I hope these pictures remind you of something:
Your current chapter doesn’t have to be your final one.
You don’t need January 1st.
You don’t need Monday.
You don’t need to hate yourself into changing.
You just have to decide that you’re worth taking care of again.
I’m still working on me too.
Strong. Confident. Unstoppable.🖤
