94 Sep/Oct 2017 oxygenmag.com.au
WORDS BY ILDIKO BROWNING | PHOTOS BY DALLAS OLSENMotivation from Within
F
or as long as I can remember, I’ve always
been a ‘little bit’ overweight. I’ve always been a
member of a gym and went semi-regularly but I
didn’t know what I was doing and there was no
structure to my training; the same went for my diet. It wasn’t
until a few years ago that I realised I had become a bit more
than a “little bit” overweight. I had moved away from my
home city and fallen out of the routine I had formed and
slowly but surely, the weight piled
on. As a result, I lost all of my self-
confidence; not just in the way that I
looked but in all areas of my life.
There was a lengthy period when
just going to the local shops would
send me into an anxious panic out
of fear of people looking at me,
and in fact, I didn’t want to go out
anywhere. It's safe to say I was
miserable. My (now) husband has
always been into the gym and he
would often try and help me but
even the slightest mention of gym ormy diet would set me off; I just didn’t want to face what had
become my reality out of embarrassment, shame and fear.
I work in Human Resources and I remember one day
at work taking an online personality assessment we were
considering using as a recruitment tool, and on the self-
confidence dimension of the assessment I got 2 out of 10.
It brought me to tears, and it was then I knew I had to do
something to change the way my life was heading. I knew
my lack of self-confidence was causing so many problems
in my life and I didn’t accept that this was how things had
to be for me; I wanted more and I wanted better! I finally
acknowledged that the only person who could fix things
was me.
I didn’t have the confidence to go to a big gym, so I joined
up to a small all-women’s gym near my home. At my first
membership consultation, I had to weigh in and I was
horrified! I had never seen a number beginning with 8 on the
scale before (I’m only 162cm tall). This only made me more
determined to get stuck in and back into the routine I used
to have and get back to where I used to be in both mind and
body.
I began using training programs that I found online and
in Oxygen magazine, and I lost the first 20 kilos on my own
over a period of about 18 months. It seems so simple to just
say it like that in one sentence but it was very much a one-
day-at-a-time struggle. I was training at 4:30am just to fit it
in around my other commitments, working around a couple
of old sporting injuries as best I could and was playing a
guessing game with my diet. I think I tried every diet known
to mankind!
At times, I would throw in the towel with my diet
altogether and go on huge binges (‘cheat days’ I would call
them) that would run into weeks before having to pick up the
pieces and start again. Eventually, I convinced myself that
eating less was the only way I’d lose weight and before I got
some professional help with my diet, I was eating under 1000
calories a day. I was, and still am, really proud of how far I
came all on my own. Although I’d lost a lot of weight on the
scales, I wanted to turn my attention to dropping body fat and
gaining muscle and for this I knew I needed an expert.
I first learned about Hattie Boydle when she was on the
cover of Oxygen. I found her story so inspiring and I loved
how honest and real she was. I put an enquiry in for her
coaching program, The Sports Model Project, and I will be
honest – it terrified me; I was no sports model! It took a lot
of courage to press that “Submit” button. I thought to myself
“Why in the world would this woman want to work with
someone like me?!” I was absolutely gobsmacked when I was
offered a place in her program, and this was the real turning
point for me and my transformation.
I was on a steep learning curve from the moment I began
with Hattie – I had never tracked a macro in my life nor
had I trained in a very structured way. Some things wereOverweight, having anxious panic attacks
and realising her self-confidence had hit an
all-time low, Rebecca Beavon pressed the
‘Submit’ button and has never looked back.Feature