At one time, I ran a blog called Fitterverse: A universe of fitness. One of my favorite features of that blog was an interview series I did with a variety of people at different stages in their fitness journey. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, I’ve been able to recapture the text of those interviews. I’ve published them here on their original publication dates.
Samantha C is a 30 year old transplanted Yankee living in the south, a fitness club owner, and professional woman.
FV: What made you start your fitness program? How did you get started?
SC: I started taking Zumba classes almost three years ago. I was still the new girl in town and really isolated. It was through Zumba that I really started to find a community. When I started teaching, I was really surprised to find that I became popular, that people wanted to take my classes. I was teaching in six places, as was my business partner, Sue. We were all over the place. It made sense for us to pool our resources and put all of our focus in one location. So Trio Fitness was born of three instructors, three people who really wanted to see a combined, united front for people in our area.
FV: What does Trio offer in the fitness realm?
SC: In terms of classes, we have Zumba. We also have Hip-hop Hustle and Turbo Kick. We have an instructor who does P90x and Insanity, and we also have Piloxing, Barre Fusion, and Dance Fusion. Oh, and hula-hooping! Can’t forget hula-hooping!
FV: Outside of Trio, what made you start your own personal journey?
SC: When I went to the doctor and I saw a number close to 500 pounds, I realized it was time to get serious. At that point I really started looking at things that had happened when I was younger that didn’t treated. I was put on thyroid medication when I was about 16, 18 years old. I got really sick, I got worse on it. My hair fell out. I couldn’t brush my hair without getting winded. I decided I’d rather be fat and have hair than be thin and bald.
FV: I’m not sure I wouldn’t have made the same choice.
SC: Yeah, I’m a vain girl about my hair. It was not a happy time. So I found an endocrinologist who worked with me to actually find a treatment that worked for me. That really spurred me towards “Well, I feel better, now what do I do?” I started running, which I hate and won’t do unless I’m forced. Then I joined a gym and found Zumba.
FV: Was some of your weight gain part of a medical condition?
SC: Yes, I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, which actually fights off the thyroid-stimulating hormones. To give you an idea of how bad mine was, your labs should generally be between 0.3 and 3 for your thyroid-stimulating hormones. Mine were 35. The doctor said “I don’t know how you’re walking around talking to me.” I said “I’ve been like this forever.”
FV: So were going to lose some weight anyway from treatment, but you felt you needed to do something more?
SC: It was more mental than physical. I lost 60 pounds relatively quickly on the medication, but mentally I felt wrong. I had energy I’d never had before, and it felt really depressing to just be sitting there. So I needed an outlet, something that kept my mind off of it. It was like this disease had consumed me. I was constantly thinking about “What is this going to do to my thyroid medication?” So I needed a different outlet.
FV: So you started going to Zumba classes – how long before you decided to become an instructor?
SC: It was about six months. The instructor that I started taking classes with, she and I bonded very quickly. If she was running late, she’d ask me to run warm-up. I danced until I was thirteen, so I had enough general knowledge to help get things started. Then I started doing choreography to songs, and asked “Can I show you this?” She really pushed me to step out of my comfort zone because I was very much the girl in the back corner. It took her six months to drag me out of that corner up to the front row and get me teaching.
FV: It’s great to have a mentor like that! So what are your current goals?
SC: So I’ve lost the average adult human male, about 200 pounds. I’ve had some medical stuff going on the last five or six months, and gained about 40 back. At this point it’s readjusting and reassessing the medication. My idea goal is to be under 200. I’m sitting between 290 and 315, kind of going back and forth in that area right now, which is so frustrating. Once I get things back on track, as long as I get under 200 pounds, as far as I’m concerned that’s goal weight for me. I’m definitely more muscular than a lot of women, and 200 pounds on me is going to look different than it does on a lot of other women.
I think the doctors are kind of unrealistic when they look at me. They’re telling me 130 and I’m saying “no.” I’m 5’5”, but I’m built like a linebacker, wide shoulders, broad rib cage, always kind of stocky. Good Irish breeding stock, my mom used to call me. I know my body, and even when I was younger I was bigger, and I’m comfortable with that. I just want to be a healthier… bigger.
FV: How are you measuring progress outside the scale?
SC: I’ve been benchmarking physical things. If I can master a pushup, that would be huge for me. That’s something I’ve been working on. I started with wall pushups, and then I started getting lower to the ground, but once you get me on the floor, I’m useless. I get on my knees to try to do to a pushup and my upper body says “nope.” No matter how much I engage my core I just can’t support the weight. I will feel better about myself when I can control my body enough to do that.
FV: Do you have any other personal fitness goals?
SC: There are a couple of certifications that I really want to get, and some specific classes I want to get certified to teach. I want to round out the Chalene Johnson trio and teach PiYo, which is a Pilates and yoga hybrid. I want to be able to run a sub-30 minute 5k. I don’t love running, but it’s something I can do when I have little spare time for me. And I do love being able to run with my friends. My best friend has just committed to doing a triathlon next year. I can at least go run with him. I can’t bike because I broke my ankle and it doesn’t like the repetitive motion, but I can run and swim with him. I like to support my friends in their fitness goals.
FV: I would think that level of empathy would make you a really good trainer.
SC: I’d like to think so. I like helping people. It’s really nice to see students come to class and they’re in big, baggy clothes and they’re hiding in the back, and then slowly but surely they’re coming to class less and less dressed! They’re in tank tops and shorts instead of baggy sweatpants, and they start to become more comfortable not just with the moves but with their bodies. That’s a huge push for me to keep teaching. I love seeing that happen.
FV: Do you feel like your size, the fact that you can do this at 300 pounds, is encouraging to people?
SC: Absolutely! I love it when people come up to me and say “I wasn’t going to take a Zumba class, but then I saw who was teaching…” They’ll say to me “I don’t feel comfortable with my body, I don’t want people to see me moving like that. But if you can do that, I can do that. Why can’t I step out of my shell if you’re willing to put yourself out there?”
I think a lot of people see Sue and I and can relate to us because they see we are going through the same things they are. Sue has two kids and still has a “baby pooch” and is a curvy girl, too. Some of those super-thin, über-fit instructors can be off-putting to them because the students don’t think they’ll understand.
FV: You’re teaching a lot of classes, but what are you doing for yourself for workouts?
SC: The P90x boot camp is the first real workout that I’ve done for myself since I started teaching. When you’re getting 10-12 hours of cardio a week teaching you don’t really want to do much more. Since we opened the studio and we’re able to condense classes and co-teach a little bit more, it’s freed me up to do stuff outside. If there’s an afternoon there’s nothing going on in the studio, I’ll go do some weightlifting, or I’ll go to the studio and do some yoga. P90x is the two hours a week that are completely my workouts.
Weight training has been a recent addition since I started doing the P90x. I’ve always wanted to do more weightlifting. When my best friend was training for his 10k I’d be his gym buddy and barely able to bench press the bar, but I was there and I did it. With the studio we have kickboxing bags in there, and weights up to 20 pounds, so at least I can get in a little something that’s just for me when I’m not being a cardio bunny.
FV: What do you find the most difficult to do?
SC: I think right now the most difficult thing for me is mentally dealing with my limitations. I hurt myself a month ago in the studio. A speaker fell over on my toe and I broke my toe. Big old Y-shaped fracture, and it’s my big toe, and you don’t think about how much you use that. It became emblematic of this overall issue I have with people saying “You can’t do that.” At 300 pounds, not being able to do pushups, I may want to put something into a routine that does that. How do I get them to do it while modifying it for me who doesn’t have the ability?
FV: How do you accomplish something like that?
SC: For me, I use a lot of my more fit students, our front-row divas, who have been coming for a while and they’re more fit, they’re more engaged, or when we co-teach, Sue can do all of those things. I’ll walk her through the routine and when it comes on, I drag her up and say “Okay, if you can do a plank, if you can do a pushup, you go with Sue, if not, you stay with me and I’ll modify it.” I have one specific routine where you hold plank, and then four pushups. Not a lot, but enough to make them work. So when we get to the point where it’s planks or pushups for those people who can’t do pushups, I have them hold a low plié squat and do pulses with that, giving them a lower body option if they’re not comfortable with the upper body workout.
FV: From one of your other responses, it sounds like there are people who have told you that you can’t do this, that you shouldn’t be doing this.
SC: Yes. It’s really weird to me that where I find the pushback most is actually in the fitness community. I had a really bad experience last year when I went to the Zumba instructor convention in Orlando, where four very fit, very, very pretty instructors took it upon themselves to pass judgment on me verbally, because they thought that someone like me shouldn’t be teaching a class that they teach. I was in a master class and I was dancing and having a wonderful time and they started talking behind me. I was mortified. The more I thought about it and the more I tried to reason it away so it wouldn’t ruin my trip, I thought to myself “I can’t imagine how they talk to their students.”
FV: What is the part of this that you enjoy the most?
SC: I love the people. When I first moved here I didn’t have anybody. Zumba kind of gave me a family. I’ve got older students that I started out as a student with who are like my local moms. I’ve got peers that I took classes with that I now teach who are like sisters to me. 90% of the Zumba class is the feeling of community to me, because we’re all feeling like we look like complete idiots together! We get through a hard physical song together. There’s one nearly 3-minute song that I have, and almost a full minute of it is one continuous squat, and it’s my favorite fitness song right now because they hate it! They grunt and they groan, but we do it together, because I’m standing up there on stage holding my squat in the same amount of pain that they are and we all band together. We hoot and we holler and yell at each other and it’s really encouraging. I always leave class with a smile no matter how bad of a mood I’m in, I leave happy because I got to hang out with my friends for an hour and dance around like an idiot.
FV: If you knew somebody coming from where you started, finding themselves in a bad place with their weight, what kind of advice would you give them?
SC: Don’t think too much about it. If there’s a class you were looking at and you were interested in, just take it. I tried a bunch of other classes before I found Zumba, because I said “Hey, that looks interesting,” then took it once and decided it wasn’t for me. It was trial and error. I walked into my first Zumba class, took it, was completely lost the entire time, but I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face… the music, the energy… something clicked. I’m always trying something new, trying to find the next best thing.