Post by Karin on Aug 20, 2007 16:01:49 GMT -5
Karin Miller
ACE Certified Personal Trainer
B.S. in Exercise & Sports Science-Magna Cum Laude
American Heart Association Adult & Child CPR & AED Certified
NPC Figure Competitor
BIOGRAPHY
Childhood
It’s been a very long journey from where I came from to where I am now, so I will start from the beginning. I grew up as an active child and loved being outside and playing sports. My childhood friends and I used to play games outdoors, basketball, baseball, jump on the trampoline, and run all around. I remember playing baseball in our backyard with my Dad and having so much fun with him tossing the ball around and having my own coach. I played softball up until fifth grade and then began gymnastics. When I discovered gymnastics, I just fell in love with the sport from the conditioning exercises, to learning new skills and perfecting them. Gymnastics also allowed me to unleash all of the pent up energy I had and I had finally found something I was good at where my height and small stature were advantages. I was always the shortest and the tiniest kid in school or in sports. Aside from be little, I was very, very shy and quiet, unless I was best friends with someone. I always felt embarrassed and had very low self-esteem and self-confidence.
My eating habits were not the best in childhood. I learned how to cook when I was about six years old. Both of my parents worked full time and my siblings and I would usually fend for ourselves on most nights for dinner. Breakfasts were boxed sugared cereals and milk, Breakfast Bars (Carnation brand) or I would make pancakes, eggs, and hashbrowns on the weekends, lunches were deli meat sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or beef jerky, Caprisuns, chips and cookies, snacks were cookies, brownies, chips, Kool-Aid or sodas and dinners consisted of homemade pizza, spaghetti, chicken breasts, sloppy joes or frozen dinners. Despite the poor dietary habits, we were all thin kids.
Junior High & High School
I became obsessed with my weight throughout junior high and high school. I remember spending several New Year’s Eves exercising on a homemade aerobic step and planning out my “diet” goals for the next year. I was in gymnastics at this time and I felt it was important for me to be as small as I could. It was during this time that I began my battle with anorexia and exercise addiction. I think I was the only 7th grader who owned and used a food scale to weigh and measure all of my food. If I ate an M&M I would immediately go outside and run seven to ten miles. My best friend and I would almost compete with each other to see who could weigh the least; I thought I was “fat” if I weighed more than 68 pounds. I wanted to be in control of everything and excelled at academics and wanted another way to control myself.
I quit gymnastics when I entered into my freshman year of high school and wanted to run cross country and track, but I quit that after a year. I had to take the dreaded P.E. course in high school in order to complete my athletic credit requirements and I hated every minute of it! I began to gain weight my sophomore year in high school because I was not active and ate a poor diet void of the essential nutrients that my body needed; I went from 90-100 pounds up to 135-140 pounds by the time I graduated high school.
Every year my parents gave each child $200 for his/her birthday and when I turned 16 I used my birthday money to join the gym, World Gym (changed to Gold’s Gym and now closed down) in Round Rock, Texas. I remember the first day I stepped into World Gym. I was in awe of the muscles, the machines, the dumbbells, the sweat, the clanking of the weights, the grunting from the men pounding out the last few reps. I had just quit gymnastics, cross country, and track and I needed an outlet for my endless energy. The gym became my solace, my home, a place where I felt comfortable in my own skin. My workouts became an outlet to relieve stress and to deal with the self-loathing, body image issues, and eating disorders I had suffered. The gym was my tool of choice to sculpt my physique into the body I always admired and always knew I had underneath what I was given.
I began weight training every other day; however, I only trained my lower body. Every other day I would perform leg extensions, leg curls, leg press, several types of squats and calf raises. I performed cardio five to seven days per week and averaged 30-40 minutes per session. Despite the fact that I had joined a gym and worked out regularly, I was still eating poorly. In high school and junior high I decided that I did not want to eat meat anymore and I thought I was a vegetarian; however, I ate a lot of pasta, breads, pizza, fried cheese sticks and foods rich in refined carbohydrates. There was not a protein in sight, but there were a lot of carbohydrates and fat. I can recall sneaking food into my room late at night and eating entire sleeves of saltine crackers, granola bars. I would chow down on chips and queso on Friday nights after I got home from the gym.
When I graduated high school I reached an all time high of 135-140 pounds and I hated myself. My Mom would not let me go on spring break with my friends unless I went to the doctor. My blood pressure was through the roof due to my newfound love of MINI-THINS (an asthma medication containing ephedra) that gave me a lot of energy and which I took extreme doses of for about a year or so. My family doctor sent me to an internist who told me that I was fat and that I needed to lose weight, but gave me no helpful information on what I needed to do to help myself. I was embarrassed, humiliated, and mortified. I stopped taking MINI-THINS and my blood pressure went back down as I expected and I began to take my health more seriously.
College
I lived with my parents after I graduated high school while I attended The University of Texas and majored in Accounting; I lost 15 pounds during a time when most students gain the “freshman 15”. In 1997 I received my first issue of Oxygen (a women’s fitness magazine) that I just could not put down. I had watched fitness competitions on ESPN and wanted to compete in fitness for as long as I can remember and I fell in love with the fitness industry. I left UT after my freshman year and transferred to the local community college for about 2 years and changed majors from Accounting to Exercise and Sports Science when I transferred to Southwest Texas State University in 2000. I was fascinated with nutrition, weight training, cardiovascular training, and basically anything health and fitness related. I felt like I was HOME! I not only used my education as a way to change my own lifestyle, but I truly believed that helping people live healthier lives was my calling.
I was still shy during college, but I was venturing outside of my comfort zone more and learning more about myself as I grew older. However, I will admit that I almost dropped out of college completely because I had to take speech class as part of my curriculum to graduate and I was deathly afraid of public speaking. After I made it through speech class and passed with an A, I decided that I could accomplish anything I wanted to achieve. I have enjoyed school and academics for as along as I can remember and I truly loved the curriculum in college in my new major. I read anything and everything health and fitness related that I could get my hands on and began to implement new things into my own nutrition and training programs. I even stayed an extra semester or two just so I could take more nutrition classes. My self-esteem began to increase and I truly enjoyed giving presentations on my research and performing tests in the lab for my classes.
I finally graduated with a degree in Exercise & Sports Science, with a minor in Business Administration, Magna Cum Laude, in August 2003; I also did not attend my college graduation ceremony because I earned my ACE Personal Trainer Certification on the same day.
After College
A week after graduation I received a custom diet from Manning, my best friend’s friend. He changed my entire outlook on nutrition and totally revamped my diet. I began to drop even more weight and my body changed drastically in just one week. I met my future husband the next month and a year later he encouraged me to finally get up on stage and compete in NPC figure competitions. At this point in time, I had not been in a swimsuit in more than five years. Overcoming my stage fright was a huge ordeal for me to accomplish; it was a struggle to get up in front of hundreds to almost a thousand people in a bikini to be compared to other competitors in my height class and have my body critiqued and subjected to criticism from myself and others.
Present
I am currently competing in NPC figure contests and I am looking into competing in obstacle course and fitness skills type competitions. I am constantly looking to expand my client base and help a variety of people achieve their individual health and fitness goals. I look forward to the day when I can call personal training my full time career and my husband and I hope to open our own gym or personal training studio in the next several years.
ACE Certified Personal Trainer
B.S. in Exercise & Sports Science-Magna Cum Laude
American Heart Association Adult & Child CPR & AED Certified
NPC Figure Competitor
BIOGRAPHY
Childhood
It’s been a very long journey from where I came from to where I am now, so I will start from the beginning. I grew up as an active child and loved being outside and playing sports. My childhood friends and I used to play games outdoors, basketball, baseball, jump on the trampoline, and run all around. I remember playing baseball in our backyard with my Dad and having so much fun with him tossing the ball around and having my own coach. I played softball up until fifth grade and then began gymnastics. When I discovered gymnastics, I just fell in love with the sport from the conditioning exercises, to learning new skills and perfecting them. Gymnastics also allowed me to unleash all of the pent up energy I had and I had finally found something I was good at where my height and small stature were advantages. I was always the shortest and the tiniest kid in school or in sports. Aside from be little, I was very, very shy and quiet, unless I was best friends with someone. I always felt embarrassed and had very low self-esteem and self-confidence.
My eating habits were not the best in childhood. I learned how to cook when I was about six years old. Both of my parents worked full time and my siblings and I would usually fend for ourselves on most nights for dinner. Breakfasts were boxed sugared cereals and milk, Breakfast Bars (Carnation brand) or I would make pancakes, eggs, and hashbrowns on the weekends, lunches were deli meat sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or beef jerky, Caprisuns, chips and cookies, snacks were cookies, brownies, chips, Kool-Aid or sodas and dinners consisted of homemade pizza, spaghetti, chicken breasts, sloppy joes or frozen dinners. Despite the poor dietary habits, we were all thin kids.
Junior High & High School
I became obsessed with my weight throughout junior high and high school. I remember spending several New Year’s Eves exercising on a homemade aerobic step and planning out my “diet” goals for the next year. I was in gymnastics at this time and I felt it was important for me to be as small as I could. It was during this time that I began my battle with anorexia and exercise addiction. I think I was the only 7th grader who owned and used a food scale to weigh and measure all of my food. If I ate an M&M I would immediately go outside and run seven to ten miles. My best friend and I would almost compete with each other to see who could weigh the least; I thought I was “fat” if I weighed more than 68 pounds. I wanted to be in control of everything and excelled at academics and wanted another way to control myself.
I quit gymnastics when I entered into my freshman year of high school and wanted to run cross country and track, but I quit that after a year. I had to take the dreaded P.E. course in high school in order to complete my athletic credit requirements and I hated every minute of it! I began to gain weight my sophomore year in high school because I was not active and ate a poor diet void of the essential nutrients that my body needed; I went from 90-100 pounds up to 135-140 pounds by the time I graduated high school.
Every year my parents gave each child $200 for his/her birthday and when I turned 16 I used my birthday money to join the gym, World Gym (changed to Gold’s Gym and now closed down) in Round Rock, Texas. I remember the first day I stepped into World Gym. I was in awe of the muscles, the machines, the dumbbells, the sweat, the clanking of the weights, the grunting from the men pounding out the last few reps. I had just quit gymnastics, cross country, and track and I needed an outlet for my endless energy. The gym became my solace, my home, a place where I felt comfortable in my own skin. My workouts became an outlet to relieve stress and to deal with the self-loathing, body image issues, and eating disorders I had suffered. The gym was my tool of choice to sculpt my physique into the body I always admired and always knew I had underneath what I was given.
I began weight training every other day; however, I only trained my lower body. Every other day I would perform leg extensions, leg curls, leg press, several types of squats and calf raises. I performed cardio five to seven days per week and averaged 30-40 minutes per session. Despite the fact that I had joined a gym and worked out regularly, I was still eating poorly. In high school and junior high I decided that I did not want to eat meat anymore and I thought I was a vegetarian; however, I ate a lot of pasta, breads, pizza, fried cheese sticks and foods rich in refined carbohydrates. There was not a protein in sight, but there were a lot of carbohydrates and fat. I can recall sneaking food into my room late at night and eating entire sleeves of saltine crackers, granola bars. I would chow down on chips and queso on Friday nights after I got home from the gym.
When I graduated high school I reached an all time high of 135-140 pounds and I hated myself. My Mom would not let me go on spring break with my friends unless I went to the doctor. My blood pressure was through the roof due to my newfound love of MINI-THINS (an asthma medication containing ephedra) that gave me a lot of energy and which I took extreme doses of for about a year or so. My family doctor sent me to an internist who told me that I was fat and that I needed to lose weight, but gave me no helpful information on what I needed to do to help myself. I was embarrassed, humiliated, and mortified. I stopped taking MINI-THINS and my blood pressure went back down as I expected and I began to take my health more seriously.
College
I lived with my parents after I graduated high school while I attended The University of Texas and majored in Accounting; I lost 15 pounds during a time when most students gain the “freshman 15”. In 1997 I received my first issue of Oxygen (a women’s fitness magazine) that I just could not put down. I had watched fitness competitions on ESPN and wanted to compete in fitness for as long as I can remember and I fell in love with the fitness industry. I left UT after my freshman year and transferred to the local community college for about 2 years and changed majors from Accounting to Exercise and Sports Science when I transferred to Southwest Texas State University in 2000. I was fascinated with nutrition, weight training, cardiovascular training, and basically anything health and fitness related. I felt like I was HOME! I not only used my education as a way to change my own lifestyle, but I truly believed that helping people live healthier lives was my calling.
I was still shy during college, but I was venturing outside of my comfort zone more and learning more about myself as I grew older. However, I will admit that I almost dropped out of college completely because I had to take speech class as part of my curriculum to graduate and I was deathly afraid of public speaking. After I made it through speech class and passed with an A, I decided that I could accomplish anything I wanted to achieve. I have enjoyed school and academics for as along as I can remember and I truly loved the curriculum in college in my new major. I read anything and everything health and fitness related that I could get my hands on and began to implement new things into my own nutrition and training programs. I even stayed an extra semester or two just so I could take more nutrition classes. My self-esteem began to increase and I truly enjoyed giving presentations on my research and performing tests in the lab for my classes.
I finally graduated with a degree in Exercise & Sports Science, with a minor in Business Administration, Magna Cum Laude, in August 2003; I also did not attend my college graduation ceremony because I earned my ACE Personal Trainer Certification on the same day.
After College
A week after graduation I received a custom diet from Manning, my best friend’s friend. He changed my entire outlook on nutrition and totally revamped my diet. I began to drop even more weight and my body changed drastically in just one week. I met my future husband the next month and a year later he encouraged me to finally get up on stage and compete in NPC figure competitions. At this point in time, I had not been in a swimsuit in more than five years. Overcoming my stage fright was a huge ordeal for me to accomplish; it was a struggle to get up in front of hundreds to almost a thousand people in a bikini to be compared to other competitors in my height class and have my body critiqued and subjected to criticism from myself and others.
Present
I am currently competing in NPC figure contests and I am looking into competing in obstacle course and fitness skills type competitions. I am constantly looking to expand my client base and help a variety of people achieve their individual health and fitness goals. I look forward to the day when I can call personal training my full time career and my husband and I hope to open our own gym or personal training studio in the next several years.