How fitness changed these people’s lives

IT’S a story many of us can relate to: Feeling overworked and never having the energy to get out there and exercise. Here are three people who did something about it.

‘How fitness changed my life’

IT’S a story many of us can relate to: Feeling overworked, tired, and never having the energy to get out there and get fit.

Snippets of information, like the fact that we need 150 minutes of exercise each week to maintain our health, become just that: Information. Head-knowledge that we file away until, one day, everything catches up to us.

That’s a position 36-year-old Donna Sparx found herself in as a young professional living in Melbourne. Recognising that she was stuck in a bit of a rut, she found her way out by joining the circus — literally.

“Before I started getting into fitness, I wasn’t overweight, but I wasn’t fit,” she tells news.com.au. “I was burning the candle at both ends. I wasn’t sleeping enough, I wasn’t eating well, I was tackling too much and not looking after myself. I was really tired and had big peaks and troughs in my mood. Because of that, I guess I was really stuck in a rut.

“About three years ago I started training with an all-female circus. It was super scary at first, but I gave it a go and I just loved it. I love that most of the time you’re working with your own body weight and it was a supportive environment. It was great both physically and mentally. I was supported through my fear and had to push through that I was suddenly doing things with my body that I never thought were possible.

“Physically, circus was a real challenge and I just developed so much strength. Being able to trust my body and have it do these amazing things impacted on me mentally as well. I just believed in myself and I knew if I could suspend my body from this giant apparatus in the air and move around and not fall out of it, then maybe I could apply that to the rest of my life.”

Donna went on to do just that. She took the lessons and principles she’d learnt from circus training, and began to overhaul her life.

“I talked to my partner about leaving our relationship,” she explains. “For me, it was about finding my voice and knowing my needs and wants. I guess finding a voice at circus meant I could find a voice in my relationships. I started becoming a whole lot more communicative about what I wanted and needed and what my boundaries were.

“I was in an executive role with a national charity for three years and at the beginning of 2014 I decided to leave that job and start my own business. A big part of that decision was I didn’t have time for physical activity. I wanted to make my life better, to feel more inspired and I wanted to have more energy for my physical activities.

“I set myself a goal. I said if I’m not supporting myself with this business in three months, I’ll get a job. But within three months I was supporting myself. One of my businesses is hula hooping and that’s about taking my passion for fitness into the community and inspiring others to change the way they think about themselves and life.”

48-year-old Peter Pierre also came to the realisation that he had the power to change his life, but for him it wasn’t a circus performance or a hula hoop that convicted him — it was the moment he tipped the scales at 109 kilograms following back surgery.

“I experienced much of the same issues that most overweight people would tell you they struggled with — constant feeling of being out of breath at the slightest exercise; walking up or down stairs, walking on the beach with family, swimming or just participating in general,” he tells news.com.au.

“I went to see my GP to get a blood pressure script and we had a fairly challenging conversation. He challenged me strongly on the basis that my health was deteriorating quickly and that I would either not be around to enjoy my retirement at all, or at a minimum would be too ill to enjoy it. By the time I got home, I had decided that come hell or high water, something had to change.”

Peter, who lives in Perth, signed up for the CSIRO’s Total Wellbeing Diet Online, because he knew he needed to tackle what he was eating and how he was exercising. 30 kilograms later, his life has been turned upside down — and his appearance has changed so radically that he had to get a new ID photo taken for his work’s intranet system because security didn’t recognise him.

“In no small way, my change in eating habits has been very similar to the process I went through 15 years ago when I stopped smoking,” he explains. “I get cravings for the foods I should avoid these days but just like stopping smoking, it gets easier every day, week and month.

“Like good food intake, exercise is something that has become a habit that I miss when I don’t do it. I try to remain active throughout the day; I walk across the building instead of calling or emailing, I take the stairs. I also walk, mainly during the weekend as I don’t normally get home until after dark during the week.

“My wife will tell me often that I’m back to being the person I was when we first met; before my back injury. I’m much more active and prepared to get out and do things even if those things are the mundane things most of us take for granted — walking, wandering around Perth scoping out a new location for lunch. In general terms my health has improved so much, but in so many small ways and increments that it is hard to quantify exactly how much it has changed my life,” he says.

Despite now running a fitness empire, Sophie Guidolin once found herself in much the same place as Donna and Peter. Since losing 28 kilograms — and gaining 500,000 social media fans — she is still surprised by just how much her fitness overhaul changed her life.

“I used to be very lethargic, I was quite unhealthy, and I used to get chronic tonsillitis — one year I had it ten times,” Sophie explains to news.com.au from her home in Burleigh, Queensland. “I was booked in to have my tonsils out several times, but each time I went in for the operation I had tonsillitis, so they couldn’t operate. Since getting fit, I haven’t had tonsillitis since, so that’s a huge change for me.

“I had never done any kind of weights before, I’d never set foot in a gym. I don’t think I could have even done one pull up! I was anaemic, so I had to have injections for that. I was also low in B12 and had to have injections for that too, but that’s all no longer the case. I’m much more positive now, and I’m a lot happier,” she says.

Sophie firmly believes that a healthy lifestyle “is not just all about weight. A lot of people associate exercise and healthy eating with a physical transformation, but there’s so much more to it.” Indeed, she’s so passionate about the affect healthy eating and exercise can have on a person’s life, that she turned it into a career.

“I really enjoy helping people make an impact in their lives, because exercise has been hugely beneficial for my overall lifestyle,” she says. “Once I had lost all of the weight, I went on to win state and national bodybuilding shows. People started asking me for advice, and while I knew how I did it, I wasn’t qualified to be able to answer their questions. So I started studying so that I could make a career out of it. Six months later I left my job, and now my husband and I own a gym, Hold your Own. I studied to become a Personal Trainer first, then I went back and did a nutrition degree.

“I never thought that by going to the gym, my life would change as much as it has. It’s not just health or weight or fitness, it’s everything — career, overall positive thinking, everything. There are so many opportunities out there for people who are ready to change,” she says.

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