MEET COACH KATE

Last week was our first week without a regular blog post because I legitimately spent so much time debating between writing about how KLN came to be or writing about my own personal nutrition journey that I just quit writing.  Eventually I settled on both because they are both so incredibly intertwined and interdependent.

I have worked in the fitness industry for a long time now. My high school graduation gift from my parents was a spot in the Crossfit Level 1 trainer certification course - I was 17, still in high school, and really didn’t have a clue what I was doing. That gift set me up to coach at several different gyms throughout college, and those experiences led to meeting my now-husband, creating some of my closest friendships, and starting a little side gig in nutrition coaching that eventually evolved into where I’m at today.

When I started tracking my macros in 2014, I did so with with the primary goal of changing my body composition. Even though I was coaching crossfit and leading other fitness classes, nutrition wasn’t always on my radar. I was studying exercise science in school but never really thought about the link between the complicated metabolic processes I learned in my sports nutrition classes and my own personal nutrition.

I WAS 20 YEARS OLD AND ALREADY A CHRONIC YO-YO DIETER.

I had been a vegetarian for 10 years and had tried countless other diets - from quick-fix juice cleanses and tea detoxes to keto, paleo, and SCD. I was active in the gym and just felt that, no matter what I did, I would never look like my hard work in the gym was paying off. I chalked it up to the fact that "my metabolism was broken" and "I just didn't have the right body type.

Like every other diet I had tried, I read a success story or two online and then decided I had to know more. I consumed as much information as I could and then dove in headfirst; I hired a coach (a huge deal at the time since I was a poor college student), bought a food scale, and got to work. I had intentions of changing my body composition and didn’t think about much else. Many months later (after a lot of hard work and some major habit changes) I had achieved my initial body composition goals. Along the way, I also acquired new knowledge of my personal nutrition, a brand new mindset about my eating habits, and a drastically different relationship with food.

MY NUTRITION JOURNEY HAS BEEN A LONG, BUMPY ROAD AND IT IS STILL EVOLVING.

Over the past few years I have learned again and again that it’s ok for goals to change and for motivation to waver. I have learned to break old habits that have been instilled in so many of us after years and years of yo-yo dieting. I have learned to move away from the idea that more restriction is better, and have learned that focusing on flexibility can lead to better changes than trying to constantly punish ourselves for our “food sins”. I have learned that trying to be my leanest all the time only makes me grumpy and takes the fun away from the things I love to do and I have learned to eat not only for aesthetics but also for hiking, camping, climbing, long runs, travel, and all the other adventures that are far more important to me.

WHEN YOU LEARN SOMETHING THAT GOOD, YOU WANT TO SHARE IT WITH OTHERS.

The inkling of an idea that coaching others in nutrition came about after my own positive experiences with changing my diet and learning that this flexible approach to nutrition wasn’t just another quick fix. I started with simply sharing what I was learning with clients I was already working with at the gym. Then, as I fumbled my way through grad school, I threw together a website and tried to make it a little more “official” and was able to tailor my research in school to the real-world things I was doing outside of the classroom. The possibility that coaching nutrition could be a full time endeavor came after moving across the entire country to start a doctoral program at a new school and realizing it wasn’t the right choice for me. I had spent so many years thinking that working in health and fitness was just a phase until I moved on to a “real” career and was ignoring how much I absolutely love coaching and educating others. So here we are today! Still learning, still growing, still sharing, still evolving. I still occasionally feel like I don’t know what I am doing (don’t we all), but I am committed to a life and a business built on helping others feel their best and I have a badass team behind me to make it happen.

Have any questions about my nutrition journey, coaching, or the team at KLN? Drop ‘em below!