Meet Catherine Tellez of catherinetellezfitness

Today we’d like to introduce you to Catherine Tellez.

Catherine, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I didn’t grow up hearing people celebrate their body. I don’t think I ever heard one woman say something positive about herself.

From the start, it was an instinct to criticize what I looked like and use it as the reason why I was unhappy with myself. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the extra weight that made me unhappy, but my defense was to make that connection. If I could somehow lose the weight, everything would be better. I went to college, and I started running, dancing, kickboxing, anything to get active and eat healthier. I didn’t just decide one day to be healthy; it just happened because of the social aspects of group fitness and health.

I lost a massive amount of weight, and I was proud, but I still didn’t feel that happiness I thought I should be entitled to if I just followed the formula and got smaller. Years later, I was at my smallest. I was working out three hours a day, eating very little, and everyone was complimenting how amazing I looked. I wasn’t “small enough” to look like I had a disorder, so no one caught it except my doctor. She was the one who helped me understand my anorexia athletica and body dysmorphic disorder- and that’s where my story really began.

I’m not afraid to say that at the time I was almost proud of the health deterioration I was facing. I saw it as a badge of honor until it wasn’t a joke anymore. Until I realized that if I didn’t receive help, I could face even greater challenges that I may not be able to fix. I went back to school to get my Masters in Health Psychology because I was inspired to help people understand the relationship between the mind and body. You can’t be fully healthy without the balance between the emotional, physical, and mental self.

I began to find my happiness in myself and what I could offer as a person, not just as a jean size. So when I teamed up with Beachbody as a fitness coach, I wanted so badly to offer more than physical transformations. I wanted to help other people discover that where they are at is perfect. It’s okay to want to develop a physically healthy routine and attain fitness, but there are so many other factors that need to fall into place before that happens. I wanted to uplift and inspire people who faced the same issues as me.

And I think I’ve done that through the honesty I project and the support I offer. If someone looks at my page, they see me, my bad jokes, my sad days, good days, things that make me happy, and I hope they see me cheering on the community I’ve built as they attempt to find the balance that I work every day to achieve as well.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road, as I stated, I’ve had a lot of missteps in my journey toward health and wellness. I think I misunderstood what healthy was and assumed that a thinner frame was the answer to all. I struggled, and still struggle, with my body image and obsession with being fit.

Before I confirmed that I had an eating disorder, I was eating a tablespoon of peanut butter for breakfast, a 100 calorie pack of oatmeal for lunch, and two tablespoons of tuna for dinner. And trust me, I was tracking those calories on my app to make sure I wasn’t overeating (which sounds ridiculous, but that’s where I was). I was running for an hour in the morning, going to group fitness classes at night, working out on my own, and sometimes I would for a second run around midnight if I couldn’t sleep. I was exhausting my body for the sake of perfection. I was having intense dizzy spells.

Leaning against walls for support, headaches, amenorrhea, my skin was bad; I wasn’t sleeping… I was basically losing control. I’m so thankful I found recovery, but even that is an everyday choice. To be honest, over one year after I had “recovered” and found balance in my life, I purged. I found myself back in that place where I was reduced to nothing more than a number on the scale. I knew the detriments and science behind bulimia, but I did it anyway. I immediately called my mom and told her what I did. And that’s one of the hardest conversations I ever had.

It’s an everyday choice to love yourself and to recover. On the opposite side, some people think the fact that I made fitness coaching and being a healthy individual is sending the wrong message as well. That perhaps I’m promoting the very culture that caused me pain. I don’t see it that way. For me, it’s reframing the perspective. Trust me, when I say I want a salad, it’s not because I’m trying to be dainty. I want to run; I want to eat clean.

My message is to be healthy in the mind and heart first. So eat or do what benefits your life. If that’s a cookie or if it’s kale, that’s your choice. But don’t sacrifice what you want because someone told you that you’re not worthy of it.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about catherinetellezfitness – what should we know?
I’m a Beachbody coach, but I’m working toward attaining my own yoga certification in order to teach courses and work as an independent instructor. Through Beachbody, I coach people who sign up with me, and I set them up with meal plans, workouts, and individualized attention and support in order to help them achieve their personal goals.

Although I love doing that, what I love even more is the emotional transformations I’ve seen in some of the people who aren’t official clients of mine. That’s what I’m most proud of. What I mean is, I frequently seek out girls in the body positivity and body dysmorphic community, and I speak with them about their recovery, wellness, and mind.

Whether it’s a small “You got this” or a long comment, I’m known for my connection to the community. This isn’t a business tactic or a way of getting clients for me; these are people I have no intention of selling to. I think that’s what sets me apart. I don’t want to connect with people about their recovery story and have them follow me and only see bright pictures of me working out, telling them they need to come to work out too.

I connect with people, ask them how their journey is going, how their families are, encourage and serve them. I don’t have a huge social media following, but I see every single person who clicks follow as someone who is trusting me with their journey. It’s funny, but I recognize my followers. I know who most of them are by the conversations I’ve had with them. If we’ve talked, I remember it.

No one is just a profile image to me, that’s a person with a story and a life. So if one of those people comes from a place of recovery and decides to become a client, which happens more often than you’d think. I try to show them the same care I needed when I made the decision to achieve health and wellness. I like to go beyond the hustle for the muscle and get to the mind and heart.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
My most important quality is always my humor and honesty. I post a lot of nice, edited, curated pictures in my feed (I hope), but that doesn’t tell people anything about me.

Everyone who looks at my page knows I post long captions. I like to talk. I like to write (sorry by the way for these long answers, you deserve a medal). I write in song lyrics, awkward jokes, and real discussions about what I’m going through or have been through.

If I didn’t, people wouldn’t know that I represent body positivity, sing loudly to Disney music in the car, eat an absurd amount of salad, eat an equally absurd amount of cookies, or that I actually enjoy working out. My success can be linked directly to my unashamed display of my personality. People will follow you if they see a pretty grid on your feed, but people will engage and hire you if they can trust you.

You can’t trust someone you don’t know. So I let it all out there. Who I am on my page is ridiculous, self-deprecating, has a past, and a future… I always call myself the ambitious imbecile, and that’s exactly who I am in real life as well.

Contact Info:

• Email: ctellezfit@yahoo.com
• Instagram: catherinetellezfitness

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