Convicted drug smuggler Cassie Sainsbury’s new life as boss of a curvy new online fitness program
International drug smuggler Cassie Sainsbury has launched a new fitness program inspired by her time in jail in Colombia.
Fiona Byrne
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Convicted international drug smuggler Cassie Sainsbury has launched her own online fitness program inspired by her time in detention in Colombia.
“I would look at all the women over there and they would have these beautiful bodies, with the whole curvy figure, and I thought, I want that, so I started a process of elimination about how to build certain muscles to give that illusion of having that Latin body shape,” Sainsbury said of her Cassie Leigh Fitness Hour Glass Body Challenge.
“It is a process of working on your back muscles, your bum, your legs, to shape an hourglass figure and not appear too bulky at the same time.
“I will be donating 10 per cent of any sales to a rehab charity in Adelaide.”
Sainsbury, who was a personal trainer before she spent three years in Colombia after she was caught smuggling 5.8 kgs of cocaine in Bogota in 2017, said she hoped people would support her new venture and not judge her by her past.
“The program is something I am proud of, but I am a little bit nervous about putting it out there,” she said.
“I get a lot of people who do message me and say ‘you are looking great, when are you going to be dropping a plan,’ but obviously, I am always going to have that 50/50 scale where people go ‘it is just another Cassie thing’.
“I was talking to my wife the other day and I said whatever happened fitness had always been in the background of whatever I was doing.
“I have always found my way back to that industry.
“I like helping people feel good about themselves. I want to help people get to the point where they are happy and get into the mindset where they feel good about themselves.”
Sainsbury said further motivation to start her own business came from her struggle to find employment. She has dropped four dress sizes following the eight week program.
“I am not going to lie. It is hard getting a job in Adelaide,” she said.
“I got to the point where I decided that I needed to do something for myself because one way or another there is always going to be a box I don’t tick.”
Sainsbury revealed she had been attacked on the street in Adelaide after being recognised.
“I had an incident back in January where someone actually recognised me in the street and spat in my face,” she said.
“In the middle of the street they (the stranger) came up to me and said ‘Cocaine Cassie?’ and I turned around and they went, ‘You are a murderer,’ and they spat in my face and off they went.
“I changed my hair colour, I went into hiding almost, I went into a really bad state, I stepped away from everything after that.
“It was mid-March when I finally started to find myself again and started to work on my fitness again and my own personal issues.”
Sainsbury said she was learning not to take jokes or comments about her past to heart.
“I have learnt that I can’t take it seriously anymore,” she said.
“At first everything would offend me. I would make myself sick reading the comments (on interviews and stories) and watching things until I got to the point where I was like ‘I can’t do this.’
“There are some things now I can laugh about. I can’t let it keep drawing me back down to the depression stage.
“The people who are closest to me, they know the person who I am.
“People who meet me and don’t realise who I am, and then they kind of put it together, later they are like, ‘You are not the person I imagined you to be,’.”
Three workout programs are available via her Cassie Leigh Fitness business at cassieleighfitness.myshopify.com
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