Meet Coach Karen

I've spent my life learning what it means to be strong.

And somewhere along the way, I learned that strength has very little to do with being perfect.

For more than 30 years, fitness has been part of my life. I've been an athlete, competitor, coach and nutrition professional.

But some of the most important lessons I've learned about health didn't come from a textbook, competition stage or gym.

They came from living through the seasons that challenged everything I thought I knew about my body, food, fitness and myself.

Before I was a coach, I was an athlete.

I grew up on a small hobby farm in Peterborough, Ontario, usually either riding horses or at the rink practicing figure skating. Sports became a huge part of my identity.

At 13, after getting my first taste of weight training at a figure skating camp, I begged my parents for a gym membership! I still remember that first training session and how strong, confident and energized I felt. I was hooked.

But my relationship with my body was already becoming complicated.

At 5'7" and 115 pounds, I was being told by coaches that I was too big.

I loved what my body could do, but at the same time, I was learning to question what it looked like. I didn't know it then, but both experiences would shape the coach I would eventually become today.

FITNESS BECAME COMPLICATED...

I knew how to train my body

My athletic career eventually took me from figure skating into fitness competitions.

For years, I competed in bikini, figure and fitness model competitions while building my career in the fitness industry.

That career opened doors I once dreamed about. I was featured in fitness publications including Natural Muscle, Physique and Inside Fitness, appeared in magazine spreads and fitness features, and wrote about training, nutrition and life after competition.

I wasn't just living the fitness lifestyle. I was teaching it. From the outside, it looked like I had it all figured out. But behind the photos, competitions and magazine features, my relationship with food and my body had become increasingly complicated.

Competition required a level of restriction that was difficult to maintain once the show was over. I could be incredibly disciplined leading up to the stage, then struggle with bingeing afterward.

Eventually, I found myself coaching women on how to build healthier lives while privately struggling with some of the very behaviors I was teaching them to move away from. That disconnect changed me.

FINDING A NEW WAY FORWARD...

I stopped chasing perfectionism.

For years, I knew how to follow a plan, push harder and get my body into incredible shape.

But I also knew what happened when maintaining that result required too much of my life. I started looking at health differently. Not as a diet to follow perfectly. Not as a body you have to maintain at all costs. And not as something that requires your entire life to revolve around food and exercise.

I began focusing on the bigger picture: nutrition, strength, recovery, mindset, stress and habits that could actually be sustained. I didn't leave everything I had learned behind. I just learned how to use it differently.