What Prompted Me to Become a Personal Trainer at the Age of Seventeen
A flattering photo of me after having my tonsillectomy. Thanks mom.
So I, like many others who grew up in this era became a bit addicted to snack foods. In high school, I remember my boyfriend at the time and I would celebrate our youthful relationship by devouring rich foods in cheap restaurants - like East Side Marios’ bread and pasta, and brownie ice cream sundaes. We’d cook fettuccine Alfredo at home, and I remember snacking on things like Jos Louis (do those still exist?! Hopefully not.)
And I wondered… why was I falling asleep all through the day in class? Why did I go to sleep at 6pm and wake up at 6am, then fall asleep in the shower? My blood sugar was a PROBLEM. This was not normal. And then here I was, experimenting with starving myself, experimenting with vegetarianism, totally lacking protein and exercise.
I worked a job at an ice cream parlour (ha), and worked with a girl who was a gym enthusiast. She was so into fitness, always describing her workouts and her incline runs, and it led me to start picking up fitness magazines out of curiosity. I started experimenting with exercise in my parents’ basement, starting with 2× 5lbs dumbbells. Working out felt AMAZING. Even those few exercises I started with - overhead presses, a couple of pilates DVDs - started to change my body. They immediately changed my energy. I walked 20 minutes on the treadmill daily. All of a sudden, I was an enthusiastic person. I was optimistic and excited about things. I was excited about healthy foods! I started experimenting with more sandwiches and salads, I started paying attention to the real taste of whole foods, and identifying the flavours of additives and categorizing them as non-foods.
Slowly, I became an entirely different person. My boyfriend, who had affectionately (!) called me “fatty”, started calling me “skinny”. I had lost 30 pounds. THIRTY pounds at the age of 16. I have since gained back about 10 and have been floating around that weight, give or take a few pounds on either side, ever since. Admittedly, at first I took it too far. At times I started panicking when I’d indulged in something, and I do remember obsessively tracking calories in a journal, and trying to get them as low as possible, around 1200 at times. And then, that would lead to bingeing behaviour, of course. So while the road got a little rocky with some pendulum swinging, my passion for whole, healthful foods and exercise continued to grow immensely.
Because of the transformation I experienced, not just in what I weighed or how I looked, but in how suddenly confident and excited I felt about my life, I knew I needed to help guide others to make healthful changes that could spark their plug, so to speak. To ignite their own buried zest for life. At this point, I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of people move from despondent and complacent to go-getters, thriving in lives with more drive and joy. Personal training became the ONLY career I wanted. It became the most exciting opportunity I could even imagine.
And that feeling hasn’t wavered for a single day. There hasn’t been one day, in the last 25 years that I have wondered about doing something different. There are so many avenues of growth in this work I’ve been able to venture into. Corrective exercise, run clinics, pre and post natal, deep core mechanics, injury prevention, pilates, and of course Full Body Systems, my functional nutrition education. ELDOA spine & postural health, mobility, functional and systemic health.
When you change your body, you change your entire life experience. You can pick yourself up and move yourself from one location to another, from one partner to another, one job to another. But if your body, your true home is “off”, it’s all off.
Your health is truly the number one place to start when you want to experience improvement in ANYTHING. I always say, if personal training / nutrition coaching were only about fat loss, I’d never be able to remain stimulated for several decades. It’s so much more than fat loss.
It is moving from uninspired and flat, to empowered and excited about life. If you want to feel this shift, email me hi@jessicamanning.com and tell me where you are now, and where you want to go. And let’s make this change.
Top: me at 15, in a terrible pearl lipstick. We couldn’t find the full body picture I remember, but pretty sure you get the idea! Bottom: post transformation :)
I was a somewhat healthy child growing up. I had middle class parents (university profs), grew up in the country outside a medium-sized town, and overall was very privileged. I did, however, have a struggling immune system - mystery illnesses, repeated strep throat infections, constant tonsillitis, and severe blood sugar issues that left me completely lethargic.
Looking back with what I now know about functional health, it’s easier to understand why my immune system wasn’t too robust. Yes, I played outside a lot and had access to healthful foods. However, I do come from a hyper vigilant and generally anxious family. I think they’d forgive me now for exposing that we all were lacking boundaries, we were people pleasers, and excessive worriers.
There was a ton of stress - we were always rushing somewhere. Terrified of being “bad” or disappointing someone. So there’s that… and also, despite being fed whole wheat bread and some of the other foods that were thought at the time to be healthy, the 90s were also the era of booming processed foods. Low fat, high sugar processed foods. Which are incredibly addictive, of course - they are in fact designed to be.