HI! I AM LISA! Welcome to my first blog post! I am excited to share more of my journey here with you. Before going any further I am going to have to warn you, THIS WILL GET REAL, RAW and WEIRD! JUST THE WAY I LIKE IT! Haha. Like good kind of weird, the cool kind of real, and the growth kind of raw. For I am quirky, authentic, fun and most of all ME! But I haven't always been this way. Lets dive deeper into what got me to where I am today! :)
WHO AM I?
Before we go any further in this relationship I think it's important to get to know each other a little better ;). As you know my name is Lisa Marie Bernardi. I am 32 years young. I am a child of God, registered nurse, personal trainer, health and wellness coach, mom, wife, entrepreneur and all together rock star. The journey I took to reach this place of self love has been a rough and long one, one that is forever evolving. But I wouldn't change it for a second because every failure, every disappointment, every mistake made me the woman I am today!
Transformation is much more than a physical process. It is a mental one. One that requires a ton of grit, reflection, focus and positive vibes.
Starting at the only place that feels right. The Beginning.
I was born and raised in a family of 5 in Michigan. My parents were hard working, loving and gave us kids everything they could. Myself being the youngest of three kids and the only girl got spoiled a bunch by my father. My mom was home all the time, as after she had me she couldn't imagine leaving such a perfect little girl to go back to work (haha) so she started an in home daycare. One which has been very successful til this day. I grew up with people around me all the time and always found myself taking the lead (or being bossy) in many situations early on in life.
We were a middle class family that believed in Jesus, love and helping out others at any cost. Being the only girl I longed for a female connection which I was blessed to have found in my girl cousins who were the around the same age as me. Jamie was a year older than me and Tania was about 7 months younger than I. We are three peas in a pod when we were together. Which was pretty frequent as our family celebrated all holidays and birthdays together. My cousin Tania and I were extremely close as she always lived within 2 miles from me when we were young. I spent countless days, nights and weeks with Tania, as there is not many childhood memories that I don't remember her being in.
Tania was not like others though. Tania was born with a mild case of cerebral palsy. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a disorder you are born with that affects posture, movement, cognition, and muscle tone. She also had hydrocephalus (water on her brain at birth) and had a shunt that was put in for that. With this condition she walked with a limp, and had to wear ankle braces to support that as well as multiple surgeries to try to improve it. She also had a lazy eye, one which required patching from time to time. Tania was so special to me. Related to her differences I felt like it was my complete and utter job to protect her. And that is what I did.
We grew up going to neighboring schools until finally going to school together in 6th grade. This was so exciting. Finally being able to see each other everyday! Although hormones and middle school drama didn't always allow us to feel that way, oops! But just like that when everything was going great our families both decided to move. We changed schools and went to different schools. Everything that we had seemed to be taken away.
This was a very pivotal time frame in my life. We moved from an area where our family had above average income and things, into an area where we were below average income and things. The advanced classes I was taking at my old school district were now regular classes! I felt like my clothing, popularity and intelligence got downgraded MAJORLY!
I knew NO ONE! I was AWKWARD as hell! Not to mention I had just hit puberty so my previously straight red hair, got curly and frizzy in no time! I got braces and wore glasses. Oh and my freckles were INSANE! I tried so hard to wear the cutest clothes and makeup yet still felt like I would never fit in! Everyone had their clicks. My confidence, which was pretty decent until this point took a huge plunge downward. Insecurities about my voice (something I had been made fun of a ton by a elementary school friends older brother) hit my so hard, that anytime I did try to talk to others it would crack or squeak.
I found myself SO desperate to fit in. SO desperate to be liked. SO desperate to be good enough for these girls who seemed to have it all. They dressed in all name brand clothes (hello Abercrombie and Fitch, and BEBE), had expensive purses, passed notes using their super cute gel pens and were smaller and smarter than me. I begged my mom to buy me some cool clothes to fit in (I got two outfits), got the cool pens and white eyeliner with colored mascara, found some friends (who because they weren't cool never felt, "good enough" for me, I wanted more).
I thought that my worth was based on what these others thought of me. In complete and utter desperation I began to tell stories about what I had done, where I had gone and other things just to seem cool. I thought that if I had what they had then they would like me. Well that didn't work. A girl in the cool group did "befriend" me but looking back it is clear it was to use me as the butt of jokes.
I can clearly remember the embarrassment and pain I felt when I was called out on a story I told at the lunch table in front of all the cool kids. Or when my "friend" asked me what kind of eyeliner I used, and I told her I didn't use any and she said "oh it must be your great mascara job than, HAHAHA" and everyone else laughed as well. I shrunk a little more and more every time something like that happened.
This is when the negative self talk started. The conversations in my head, that would progressively become worse and worse throughout the years.
Fast forward a few years. Some of the friends I had were true but many were not. I felt like the Lisa I was, was not good enough, so I many times pretended to be something different than I was. At the age of 16, my person, my best friend, the only person who knew ME for ME and LOVED ME, Tania, got hit by a car and died. That moment she died so did a major part of me and my REALITY!
I always viewed emotions as weak growing up. My mom, a wonderful woman, is a very emotional woman as well. She cries when she's happy, when she's sad, when she's stressed, what can you say she's a cancer! My entire life I watched her selflessly give of herself and others not do the same. From my perspective it seemed like she was taken advantage of a lot. I saw her hurt many times by those around her and I vowed I would not show others my pain. So I spent much of my time mourning in private. Although I did shed some tears in public, I spent much of Tanias funeral (which I remember so clearly, crazy how moments like that can impact your brain so sharply) chatting with others, making them smile and laugh and reminiscing about Tania.
I was determined to be STRONG. To NOT show emotion. To be tough and NOT LET anything bother me. I faked my happiness and so much of my life that I began to loose site of what was real or not. I was kind of just going through life. I overate frequently and used food to help comfort me during my stressful times. I never felt comfortable in my body, and began to really notice that I was bigger than many of my peers.
Shortly there after I got my first serious boyfriend. He was in the cool crowd, especially compared to me. Hung out with totally different kids then me, and slept during classes, which was not my style at all! But since he wanted to date me and I desperately wanted to fit in I jumped in! He made a comment to me at lunch at school one day about eating a salad instead of bosco stick that it would be good for me. That was the moment I began to associate shame with eating certain types of foods.
This is when my disordered eating really took root!
I instantly viewed myself as a slob and less then at that point and vowed to never eat bad food in front of people again. This was something I held onto with new people and with some people for the rest of my life until about 5 years ago. This created a complex with food and my body image.
I put foods in two categories at this time, GOOD or BAD food. Skinny or Fat food. I got in my head a ton about what others thought of me and was super aware that I wasn't thin. I then associated all my "unworthiness" with the fact that I was not skinny.
After graduating high-school I decided to nursing school. The thoughts about food became more and more present, as I found myself friends with some very smart yet very body conscious woman. Food and exercise was always a topic of conversation and became a way for me to control my weight. I finally felt like I fit in and had a group of friends who seemed to get me more. Although I did not share with them about my mental health struggles we did share the obsession over food and exercise.
This is when my exercise journey for weight loss really began. You see throughout my life I was always and active child. I had a ton of energy and LOVED to play. I would spend entire days as a child out on my bike with my cousin and friends riding through the neighborhood. I figure skated for 8 years competitively and played basketball school and recreational. I spent the 8 years of my skating career with long days at the rink, doing off ice training and ballet, hours upon hours of on ice training daily. The time I spent moving was extensive, and I LOVED every minute of it. So when my sports ended it was an easy transition to the gym.
But this mindset around the gym was different then the mindset I had around my sports. For although I was body conscious and lacked real self esteem I never associated the calorie in and calorie out thing. I had seen my mom go on many diets in her day and do workout tapes at home or go to classes here and there but nothing consistent and nutrition was never really discussed.
Being resourceful and smart I began to educate myself on how to get skinny. You see that was my main focus. With the help of my new friends I adopted an adkins style diet, with extremely low carbs (30G or less a day) and spent much of my time restricting calories so drastically. I hired a trainer in hopes to get skinnier which helped me workout hard (so hard I would almost pass out from the minimal to no calories I was eating, many days I ate 500 or less calories in a day). I lost some weight, felt better, started making new friends, and began to associate these positives with restriction of calories and extreme workouts.
Thus began the cycles of YO-YO dieting that would continue all through nursing school well into graduation and my nursing career. I would eat foods like lean cuisines and lean pockets drink 2-3 sugar free monsters a day, eat pizza or taco bell and binge drink 3x a week, I was unhealthy and unhappy. I felt stuck. I knew how to be skinny, because I had "gotten there" one summer but I could not maintain it. Years passed by with endless binge and restrict cycles, cycles that every time made me feel more and more like a failure when I didn't reach my goal.
After years of this happening, and way too many nights spent with the refrigerator door open spraying spray butter in my mouth (because it was calorie free and I hadn't eaten) I finally decided that maybe being skinny just wasn't meant for me. I couldn't do it. I wasn't strong enough or had enough will power to be like these other woman. All of this time letting negative self talk get the best of me. Beating myself up for everything that didn't go right and getting more and more anxious.
I had no idea what i was doing. I was just getting by. Pretending that everything was okay, when in reality I was very unhappy. I would talk poorly about others, gossip and put others down to make myself feel better. I started becoming awkward and anxious in social situations, and found that I needed to drink to socialize. I spent many nights out at the bar and partying trying to find my worldly peace and acceptance.
This carried on for much of my 20s. Even after meeting Ron, paying him to be my trainer, I then began dating him, which turned to marriage. He taught me much of what I needed to understand about nutrition and proper training. He also gave me results which I could sustain (although I told him it would never happen, he did it). At that time I got intrigued. Like why is this working? I'm eating so much and LOOSING weight! He showed me that my old thoughts associated with weight loss and restriction wasn't true. and helped me develop a new mindset around food.
This is when the dorky side of me kicked in. When I decided to research and understand why this was working. I started to feel empowered. Strong and capable! I wanted to help other women do the same. Over time I began to realize that health was much more important than any number on a scale, and started using the science to support my decisions.
The road to health and wellness has been full of highs and lows. It has been a journey. Ive made many mistakes along the way and have grown exponentially over the years. I became a personal trainer and health and fitness coach to help other woman not struggle alone. For I spent much of my journey hiding and struggling in silence. I kept much of my disordered eating and thought patterns to myself in fear of being judged. I took extreme measures in attempt to reach my goals and came out on the other side. I know what it is like to feel uncomfortable in my own skin and to hate myself when I looked in the mirror. I know this kind of pain is not seen but it is felt so deeply. I believe that no woman should have to feel like this.
Over 2.5 years ago we had our daughter, Vivian. She brought an entirely new set of challenges and excitement. The realization of what I did now impacting her has completely transformed my desire and why. She brought Jesus back into our marriage (see another post about that). You see I had always been a believer. But I found the ways of the world more appealing then following the laws of God. Growth and excellence began to bound from my life after I returned to my knees and asked Him to be center again. I realized that the life I had lived was all based around me being center. I was the priority. Being skinny was my obsession and my I was very suck. Ive learned to realize my anxiety, to change my thinking and to place emphasis on positivity and growth.
I competed in two WBFF shows when Vivian was 1 year old (2016). I was the leanest of my life. This process thought me so much about myself (another post).
So I have just gone over much of the process (but not all of it) that got me to where I am. I shared with you things and insecurities I never have with others before. I have told you a lot about who I was in hopes to let you know that who you were does NOT define WHO YOU ARE or CAN BE!
So who am I now? I am a wife, a mom, a personal trainer, a nurse, a health and wellness coach an entrepreneur, a self love and self development junkie, a recovering binge eater, and a philanthropist who LOVES JESUS and is determined to spread HIS word and DO HIS WORK! I love traveling, meeting new people and all things health and wellness. I am evolving everyday and growing into the woman I am designed to be. It is my passion to touch others lives on multiple levels and to inspire others to do the same.
I help moms find their truth, live their truth and prioritize their health as well as the health of their families.
Because of who I am in this blog you will expect to find all the tools I have used throughout the years to change my life physically and mentally. I will also be adding in health and wellness posts for prenatal and postnasal periods as well as toddler nutrition. I will share with you guys my favorite life hacks and mental breakthroughs! As well as travel tips, stories and holistic health approaches.
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