A Little More About Me
My name is Ilona, and I have been a certified personal trainer and health coach for over 15 years. I started my fitness journey after the birth of my first child at the age of 19, but my love for fitness was brewing way before that! When I was only a few years old, I was doing daily workouts to Jane Fonda in front of the TV at my aunt’s house in Poland while my mom was at work. This was a daily affair, and I still remember some of the moves! While in elementary school, I was obsessed with watching fitness competitions on TV. I wanted to be just like those super fit girls with the abs doing all those flips. Then in high school I joined the weightlifting class full of football players. My friend and I were the only girls in the class! On top of those workouts, we also met up at 11pm every night to train at the 24-hour neighborhood Powerhouse gym. Needless to say, I dabbled in fitness and stayed athletic throughout my younger years, but it wasn’t until I gained a lot of weight and experienced postpartum depression that fitness became a necessity.
Long story short, after falling off the wagon for several years, getting pregnant with my son, and gaining about 75 lbs., I became very depressed and hopeless. A series of events, which is a whole other story, led me to pick up the weights again. Since then, I’ve had many ups and downs as far as my relationship with fitness. I’ve experienced many victories through training and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, such as healing from postpartum depression, staying super fit through my 2nd pregnancy, competing in many figure competitions, and building a successful fitness business.
But there were also many obstacles and a lot of downtime from fitness—when I got injured, dealt with body image issues, and suffered with anxiety and panic attacks. I also experienced complete burnout at one point and had to close my business for a while. There were times I couldn’t step foot inside a gym to train without having a panic attack; hence, time off was absolutely necessary. Anyway, I know that staying fit and healthy doesn’t come in a perfectly packaged box! It can be messy and look like it is wrapped in ugly newspaper, but it is so worth pursuing even if you fall off the wagon and bruise your butt over and over.
Blessings,
Ilona