Gillian Faith when she was above her ideal weight, under it and as she is now.
Image Credit: fitfaithtransformation via instagram
July 22, 2016 - 1:00 PM
KAMLOOPS - A Kamloops woman’s path to fitness has taken her to New York, with an appearance on Good Morning America after People magazine shared her story of finding her ideal fitness.
Gillian Faith, 41, a mother of three and motivational speaker, says the recent media attention started after People Magazine found her website about fitness and health. They contacted her and asked if she wanted to participate in an article they were doing about weight loss and healthy living.
She travelled to New York for a shot with the magazine on June 25 and Faith's story and photos appeared in the magazine July 15.
Good Morning America sent a crew to her house last week to shoot a day in her life and while the shoot lasted five hours, she says they only used less than half a minute on an episode of the show this week.
Since then Faith has received plenty of media attention, with interview requests daily.
The interest from People Magazine was piqued by Faith’s weight struggles which started when she was a young mother. She had been an athlete while a teenager in Victoria, but when she and her husband had their first child things changed.
“I assumed I had to give it up,” she says. “I resigned my self to being a chubby mummy.”
Things changed when she had her last child in 2005 and she realized she could be an mother and athletic at the same time. She began to participate in sports with her kids, instead of watching from the sidelines.
“I liked being active, I like climbing to the top of the mountain, and my kids liked me being that mom,” she says.
When the family moved to Kamloops in 2012 she got into strength competitions and gained muscle mass. With few competitions to participate in, her focus changed to figure competitions, despite an early unwillingness to appear on stage in bathing suits.
The change meant she lost a lot of weight, whittling her build down to an unhealthy frame, which caused major health issues. Since then she’s recovered and refocused on a more well-rounded idea of fitness. Friends and family, who watched her recovery, encouraged her to start a Facebook page to share her exercises, inspirations and recipes.
“It’s not about losing the weight, it’s not about the diet and exercise. It’s about getting healthy and understanding why we do what we do," Faith says. “I think that’s why I didn’t lose weight successfully before, I was focusing on the diet, exercise and scale before.”
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