Meet Your Coach
Certified Fitness Trainer
and Personal Coach
Rachel grew up in a small town in North Central Missouri. Her love for fitness was ignited when her older brother invited her out for a run. From there, she was hooked. Rachel achieved her Personal Trainer certification through the National Academy of Sport Medicine (NASM) in 2016. In addition, she holds certifications as a Fitness Nutrition Specialist and a Corrective Exercise Specialist (NASM). Outside of personal training, she also enjoys teaching her two group class formats, PiYo and ACFit. Rachel has worked in the fitness industry since 2016 and achieved her status as a Master Trainer in 2019.
Rachel is on a mission to defeat the negativity that media and fad diets have placed on our society. She creates and operates all of her clients’ programs only with science-proven techniques. That is why her programs work 100% of the time.
When Rachel is not working, or working out, you will find her enjoying a hike in the mountains, basking in the sunshine, traveling to new places, eating delicious foods, studying a new language, and enjoying time with her family and friends.
How many of you were ever referred to as a chubby child? Maybe one of your friends said you were “fat” even though you really didn’t know what it meant. Maybe, you heard the phrase, “oh, it’s just baby fat,” from someone who loved you. Some people have the resilience to shrug that off. Some people have the self-confidence to know better than to allow how they look to form how they feel about themselves, but my sweet little, 6-year-old, self did not. At 6 I wrote down for the first time that I was too fat. And the self mental abuse didn’t stop there.
Through grade school and before puberty I was short (I still am!) and larger than the other girls in my class. I had “chubby cheeks” and glasses that moved when I smiled because of those cheeks. I had long permed hair and held a childish obsession with Winnie the Pooh (he’s still my favorite; let’s be real, he’s awesome). Suffice it to say, I wasn’t the most popular girl in class. I was the nice girl, the one everyone was friends with, but I put so much of my self-worth in my looks that I didn’t believe I was as good as or as worthy of love as the pretty girls. I saw myself as ugly and my mantra was “it’s only baby fat, when I hit puberty it’ll go away.” Puberty finally hit and it did, in fact, make me lose the baby weight. This was also around the time my brother forced me to go on my very first run with him. I was MISERABLE the entire time, but I made it. Little by little I started to actually enjoy movement over watching TV. However this still wasn’t enough to make me feel confident in my own body.
My "Why"
You landed here for a reason. You want to feel good in your body. You want to know without a doubt what “healthy” really is. You want to feel strong and confident, but you aren’t there yet. I get it. I get it because I’ve been there. Right there. At the end of my rope, after years of confusion and doubt, years of negativity towards my body, and hundreds of failed attempts at workouts and diets, none of which brought me happiness about the way I looked or felt.
I get it, because I was you.
But, let’s start from the beginning, shall we? Let’s take a look at my somewhat messy journey in all it’s beautiful glory. And for that, we have to go way back, back to Kindergarten to be exact.
Freshman year of high school my best friend died in a car wreck, and I experienced for the first time (amongst many other things) the option to decline food. I felt sick, I didn’t want to eat so I didn’t have to. I realized how nice it was to have control over something, eating or not eating was a choice I could make, and the ONE thing I could control in my world that was wildly spinning. Hunger became my best friend. If I wasn’t hungry, if my stomach wasn’t growling, I felt empty.
My new BFF Hunger and I spent all of high school together. We indulged in the Special K diet, eating somewhere around 900 calories each day. Hunger supported me in my efforts to be the flier for the cheer squad. Hunger let me be the girl with the smallest dress size and the most petite figure. And hunger kept my weight in check for my 3-a-day weigh-ins. It still wasn’t good enough though. Not good enough to win my own self approval. I always needed to be more, to look better, to be skinner, to have a flatter stomach.
Hunger followed me to college. I was SCARED. TO. DEATH. of the Freshman 15. However, with a little help from my other friend Stress, the 15 came on, and by my sophomore year I decided to do something about it. Sophomore year brought back the ever-functioning Special K diet combined with my new training plan, courtesy of my health class teacher. He told us how his wife developed an eating disorder and lost a lot of weight very quickly. Of course, all I heard was, “lose weight quickly” and the next day I was running 3 miles a day and making sure my calories were less than 900 per day. Then came a lot of changes. I got noticed by the cheerleaders and was invited on to the team. Once again, Hunger made me the flier. Being noticed felt good, being noticed reinforced that I was doing the right thing to look good enough to be a college cheerleader! I was sucked into a world where looks and size matter and it did not help my self-confidence issues. I was back to the bottom of the totem pole, feeling those same old feelings of “not good enough.” But I wasn’t going to give in and quit the team, I pushed myself to be “better,” and this, my friends, is where Hunger turned to full-fledged Anorexia.
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Dropping down to 86lbs, I still thought I had a gut. I looked like a walking skeleton. I could swear to you I was eating... I never consciously made the choice to starve myself, but my obsession with being thinner took me there. Luckily, I have parents who love me and forcefully pulled me out of this mess. They got me the help I needed, and because I am a “see the goal, accomplish the goal,” type of girl, I recovered and went back to school within two months. I was physically recovered. And I was eating for real this time. But the mental abuse, the negative self-talk, the self-hatred, didn’t stop. I knew I had taken it too far this time, but I still couldn't convince myself that I was good enough.
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I’ll spare you the ups and downs of the following years. I followed fad diets, just like everyone else. Bounced back and forth between gaining/losing weight. And just like everyone else, I became really confused by all the information I was getting from magazines and the internet. I didn’t know what I should be eating, how much I should be eating, and what type of workouts I should be doing. I just tried it all out, hoping trial and error would result in my favor.
But trial and error only took me deeper into confusion until finally I was done. Done with following mainstream media, done with guessing; so I decided to get my certification in Personal Training and specialize in Fitness Nutrition, hoping to get some clarification. Thankfully, it did give me the tools I needed to find balance in my training and eating. But it wasn’t until I started developing Love R Bodies that I finally found my self-worth, and I didn’t find it in the way I look either.
When the pandemic hit in March of 2020 I lost my job at the gym and I was forced to find a new path for myself. The BEST thing I did for myself during this time was start a daily Gratitude, Meditation, and Visualization practice. Taking time each day to focus on the positive and reminding myself how GOOD my life is, and how GOOD of a person I am, made me realize that I am worthy of love from myself and others, no matter what I look like. Building this program lead me to a place of peace within myself, of confidence with who I am, and excitement for all I can give to the world. Because this changed my life so drastically, I’m now sharing it in the way I coach; every client records daily gratitude in addition to their fitness and nutrition routines.
I haven’t followed any of the rules laid down in the step by step guide to a happy life, but I eventually found my way here, to happiness. And I’m excited to tell you I’ve found a way to pay that happiness forward to all my clients at Love R Bodies. I now know in every cell of my body what it takes to be healthy and see food as fuel. I allow myself to rest and tell my clients how important it is to go on this journey for themselves and not for someone else. At Love R Bodies we see our self worth and can stand up for what we deserve because of who we are, and not what we look like. No longer do we translate self-doubt to the hatred and mistreatment of our bodies or minds.
The journey to self-love and compassion is just that, a journey, and I want you to see that we’re on this journey together. I hope you enjoyed getting to know me. And I can’t wait to help you realize your worth, to help you write a happy ending to your struggles with self-doubt. If you feel like you can relate to my story, if you feel at a loss, confused, and at the end of your rope trying everything on your own, please reach out to me today so I can help you find your way to happiness too!
