Kelsey Bachinski

My Image

The first time I can remember thinking about my image was when I was 10  years old.  A family member on my birthday said to me as I had a second piece of cake, "every bit you eat goes straight to your belly".  At the time I was a little overweight and the talk of exercise had already come up with my family.  I was aware I needed to be healthy but that day when someone else looked me in the eye and said those words was the day I began my unhealthy relationship with self image.

It this is a hard topic for me to talk about because I spent my entire life HIDING it from my friends and family. But I have learnt over the last two years the importance of reflecting, accepting and embracing your life experiences.  As many of  you know I went through times of overeating and then severely under eating.  The one thing I have never talked about was the fact that it started when I was 10 years old.  At the age of ten I would eat less and less during the day and then at night sneak containers of icing, ice cream and cookies into my room.  I would then turn around and try not eat for days.  I would switch lunches at school to then NOT eat it.  As I got older I became simply obsessed with being skinny because of "skinny" meant active and active meant able to play sports.  THAT was what I though being healthy was.  At age 13 my parents bought a treadmill.  I secretly became addicted to it.  I thought if I ran on it every second and didn't eat I would finally look athletic and be captain of our sports team.  I started running 45 min everyday after school and then would get up in the middle of the night and do it again when everyone was sleeping.  Overtime I picked up some NEW routines in order to get skinnier.  I started doing 100 crunches a day, 50 push ups a day, and started doing workouts I found online.  I started doing these during the night so no one would know.   After a  year of NONE stop work I finally reached a goal of 110 pounds.  I was so proud of myself --- no eating and LOTS of exercise got me to my goal.   --- BUT with unhealthy lifestyles comes LACK of health.  I ended up coming down with micro plasma pneumonia and become very ill for over a month.  I dropped down to 100 pounds at this time and struggled to get my strength and health back after my sickness.

Ten years later I still struggle with the scale and constantly comparing myself to other women.  I have to remind myself each day that I AM UNIQUELY me.  I will never have long muscular legs because I am not 6 feet tall.  BUT I could have muscular legs.  Sometimes we focus on things we CAN'T have instead of the things we can.  We pick the negative over the positive.  Today I want to tell you that YOU can be the healthiest and strongest VERSION of YOU .  You CAN take action and love your body IF you are willing to see YOU instead of an image of someone else.  WE all have a different journey.


I started working positive self image 18 months ago AND it is just in the last 3 months now that I can SEE me when I look in the mirror.  I don't rely on a scale and I don't have a goal of being a certain pant size.  THOSE are not positive scales of success.  When I am unhealthy skinny I am size 2 and a 117 pounds. When I am lifting wights and eating healthy I am size 6 and 134 pounds.   When I eat low calorie and do cardio only my butt is flat and it its into even a size 0.  After only 6 days of weights my butt is rounding and become firmer which gives it size which DOES not fit into size 0.  When I think about being healthy I think of having the strength to live an active life, the health and energy to enjoy my life, and the endurance to keep up with future kids.

I am CHOOSING to view myself as a healthy which means LIVING a lifestyle of health and not aiming for a certain image.

My goal as a coach is to help EVERY woman see themselves as beautiful when they look in the mirror because they are HEALTHY!