'I Ditched HIIT For Strength Training And Squatted 135 Pounds In My Third Trimester'
I’ve always been quite active, playing sports and exercising. I've worked in the fitness industry for 10 years—teaching group classes, personal training, and managing a fitness studio. I got my first personal training certification at 22 and continued accumulating more certifications at 25 and 26.
Still, I was a bit stuck in my 20s, feeling like I needed to do tons of HIIT, all circuit-based weights, and cardio to lose weight. I would even go for runs after doing a super intense class or HIIT workout. My main goal was burning calories.
My expectation: “If you work out, then you should be super skinny, lean, and toned.” My body didn't quite look or feel the way I expected. I would preach the right things to people, but I still was struggling with my own perception of self. I felt like I needed to be smaller to be valid as a fitness trainer and as a female.
I overworked my body and felt inflamed.
I felt sluggish and slow when I hiked, which is my main passion outside of the gym. Plus, I was at my heaviest weight and felt uncomfortable in my body despite working out constantly and thinking I was doing all the right things.
I wasn’t taught the consequences of overworking in workouts. Studying for my certifications, I learned about implementing rest, but I don't think there’s enough information out there about each person's individual stress threshold. What works for one person is totally different for someone else. At a certain point, it's no longer effective and it can cause more harm.
I realized that my body doesn't respond well to tons of high intensity exercise.
I made an intentional change around three years ago when the pandemic started. It was a natural time for a reset. I stopped doing as many high intensity classes with low rest time, and I paused on running because it only upped the stress on my body.
I shifted to a hybrid training style: I lifted heavy and implemented progressive overload instead of just trying to burn calories in my workouts. I focused on getting stronger, to be able to crush big hikes and mountain summits.
I added more movement throughout the day outside of official workouts. I simply tried to move my body in a way that felt good. I was already active with walking and hiking, but I ramped that up even more to try to go every weekend.
At the same time, I altered how I ate and embraced moderation. For years, I was so fixated on being small, eating super low calorie and avoiding foods I deemed off-limits. I broke that cycle and all-or-nothing mentality. I allowed myself to have chocolate every day and a glass of wine midweek.
My transformation wasn't an overnight change, but over a few years of following a smarter workout plan and nutrition, my physique and strenth changed so much.
Three changes that helped me achieve my goals.
1. I learned to exercise without focusing on burning calories.
I used to perceive a “good” workout as being drenched in sweat or feeling like you’re going to throw up by the end. But that's not always the case—the things that feel hard might not actually be putting much mechanical load on your muscles to elicit any change.
I shifted the focus away from that and on slower lifting and doing compound movements like squats, deadlifts, lunges, presses, and pulls progressively. I tried to increase week by week or month by month instead of just doing randomized sweaty workouts every day.
2. I set non-aesthetic goals I was passionate about.
Now, I focus on working out for how I can perform in the setting that I love: the mountains. Enjoyment has to be there for me, otherwise, it's going to be hard to maintain long term.
Having that external goal of how my workouts would affect my hikes was huge for me in shifting the emphasis off working out for how I look.
3. I learned some movement is better than nothing.
We can get super caught up in seeing people on Instagram who have beautiful matching workout sets and go to the gym every day and are seemingly doing everything perfectly. When I removed the need for perfection and learned how to incorporate realistic fitness and healthy habits that fit my lifestyle, everything changed.
I used to think, “If I can't do it perfectly, then I'm not going to show up at all.” Now, I'll do a 10-minute workout because that's all the time I have, and it still counts. That all-or-nothing mindset—whether it's with food or with exercise—can be so harmful.
There's no such thing as a perfect month or week, but I learned to keep going and build sustainable habits that fit into my life even when it's busy—and to just keep showing up.
Now, I aim for three to four full body strength workouts each week.
Today, I’m the owner of Fit For Hiking and a holistic health coach with certifications in sports nutrition and pain-free performance. I usually lift three to four times throughout the week for 40 minutes to an hour. Now that I’m a working mom, I go to the actual gym once or twice a week and do compound lifts with weights I don’t have at home.
Some days, I do a heavy strength focus with compound lifts. For each exercise, I’ll do four sets of six or eight reps. One to two days a week, I do dumbbell workouts at home, which are lower in weight and higher in reps. I’ll do three to four sets of 10 to 12 reps with lighter weight.
My favorite moves are deadlifts, hip thrusts, squats, and step-ups, because they imitate that hiking motion. I’m also a big fan of back exercises—lat pull downs, pullups, and rows—because naturally, we're very forward rounded as a society, sitting in chairs and working at laptops all day.
I also try to walk every day, shooting for 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day. I hike between three to eight miles every weekend. I recently started implementing some running again because I'm training for a half marathon. Generally, though, I am a big proponent of a minimal effective dose of cardio—I don't want to overdo it and run my body down.
I’m most proud of hitting major mountain summits and squatting 135 pounds during my third trimester.
First, I hiked the highest point in the Rocky Mountains, Mount Elbert, a few years ago. I also hiked to the top of three volcanos: Volcan Tajumulco, the highest point in Central America, in 2020, Volcan Pacaya in 2022 while I was pregnant, and Volcan Acatenango in 2023. Personally, I love to see what my strength can translate to in the outdoors because that's where my passion is.
I implemented a hybrid of heavy strength training and a little bit of steady state cardio and muscular endurance for these feats. That way, I hit on all the different energy systems that I use while hiking. You need some strength and power, especially in single leg exercises and back strength to hold your pack. But then you also need the muscular endurance of stepping up a million times with weight on your back. On top of that is the aerobic endurance or what your lung capacity is, especially if you're going up to higher altitude.
My second, more traditional weightlifting feat is that I was still squatting plates weighing 135 pounds in my third trimester of my pregnancy. I kept up my strength training through pregnancy so that I didn't skip too much of a beat postpartum.
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