Meet The Trainer: Tamara Kelly

When Tamara was 14  her health was terrible. She ate badly, and over ate, because she loved food and wasn’t educated in good choices. Tamara didn’t know what was good for her, even though her mum cooked healthy food she served double sizes. There was lots of bread, pasta, and chips! When Tamara worked at Macdonalds, she ate half price food. Around this time she started hanging out with friends and drinking with them when her parents went away. She  was overweight, but it wasn’t until year 10 that she started feeling sick and sad. She says “I was bullied for my weight and for being boyish, and different. Highschool was tough for me as a girl, I was EMO but not “death” emo. People didn’t like that i was different“.

She was about 16 years old when she started working with her first personal trainer, she lost a bit of weight, But in year 11 she quit school to start managing a Macdonalds… this time with FREE food! By 2015 she was 106kg. Tamara says “I was always happy, and I never really hated myself of my body, but I was tired. I worked in to the night, 16hr days, and tried to exercise as much as I could.”

In 2016 Tamara went overseas and lived in England and Europe for 2 years. That was when she really decided she needed to do something about her weight. She worked with a PT called Lewis, and he guided her to stop having milk and other “healthy” foods that she overate. Tamara lost about 10kg and then joined a women’s group personal training studio when she returned to the Northern Beaches. Tamara says about that time “I suffered some confidence issues, and i didn’t want to go to a gym with men. I chose this studio because it was women and i had a friend who went there and was looking amazing! I really enjoyed the intensity, but as time went on i felt judged for the fact that i wasn’t skinny or “instagram worthy”. I was cut out of a promotion video that i volunteered for and i felt discriminated against for my size. I wondered why not show all the different sizes and shapes we came in. I do want to say that there was one amazing trainer that did really care for me, but the overall business made me feel unworthy. I was disillusioned by the emphasis on appearances and the “bikini body”; and the sales pitch that it would only take 12 weeks to achieve it. I went to a lot of effort to avoid some trainers, and booked in exclusively with that one fantastic trainer that i was comfortable with.”

Tamara left in that gym last year and decided it was time to take the reigns for herself. She enrolled to become a personal trainer. She felt like she had been educated by this great trainer, and that she wanted to help other people like herself achieve similar results, and change the way we think about life, food, and self.

Tamara has learned about food: she has experimented and learned what foods were easy, what she liked, and how to simplify – just eat real food! At one point Tamara had 3 jobs and her personal training study, and she needed to find foods that were easy, that gave her energy, and that also helped her lose more weight. Since then she have lost another 15kg… 25kg all up!

Tamara says about IntoYou “I am now at IntoYou and i am excited because it’s so different! It’s all in one, holistic, and you get all that you need in one place. You do not have to seek resources in other places. It feels fun, welcome, enjoyable, and like a family; rather than a fake family. You can come in all shapes and sizes and you’re still welcome. You’ve got older women, young girls, pregnant women; and we all come in and have a laugh and a chat.”

Down the track Tamara would love to work with teenage girls. She sees that change needs to happen at a young age; herself being bullied and teased at a young age, she wants to teach girls to love themselves, teach them resilience, to be emotionally strong, and not let that person steam-roll you. She wants to teach them what healthy is, what happy is, and to remain indifferent to a bully’s taunts. “There’s no such thing as a real instagram girl… they’re all fake.”

You’ll see Tamara around the traps on a Monday and Tuesday night! And whatever you do… don’t call her TAMMY!