 Hi everyone, Raif DeRozzi here and today I want to talk about something a little bit different than my normal subject matter, a little personal as usual and the ass to do with body image. And so I brought my good friend, Laura Mikatish. She's here with me. So just a little bit of background. I've known you for like what, two years now? I think it's yeah we're on two years now. Two years. We met through the fitness agency that we're both at naturally fit agency and that is our agent. She's amazing. She's a goddess. She's a goddess. Yeah and a mom and she doesn't just care that we are like you know good looking and we're fit and we're camera ready but that we're also socially conscious and we used to have these regular meetings pre-pandemic in-person at the offices and Laura oftentimes would be there and I was just moved by her energy and her passion and how well-spoken she is and just how how self-aware she is especially when it comes to her body and her mental health and well-being. So I've been struggling this past year and a half like majorly like never before in my life with my body and my weight and so I just I remember the last time I had a complete meltdown. I immediately thought of Laura. I reached out and I was like hey Laura can we please do this talk for my my YouTube because not only will it help me but I think it'll help so many people who are watching you are in a similar position and because I'm always just I want to support Laura and give her exposure and all that stuff. So all right I'm done ranting. Hi Laura welcome. Thank you for having me. Can you just start with telling us a little bit about your journey your story as it relates to fitness and weight loss and your weight journey? Sure. So right now I am a pro bodybuilding coach and also a health and lifestyle coach but I didn't start there I was over 320 pounds but by the time I graduated college and my health issues were really out of control so I was struggling with hypothyroidism. I was teetering on the edge of prediabetes and things like my heart and those conversations were coming up with my doctorate 22-23 and then I decided I considered having weight loss surgery which brought me to the idea of needing to be really strict and really well monitored and really focused and not binge eat which was what I suffered from and I tried it out and I started going to just be consistently in the gym and show myself I could be consistent with food and exercise and then I just fell in love with it and stuck with it. It's been like it's been seven years eight years of me doing this every single day and now I get to help not only pro bodybuilders who maybe are struggling with their relationship with food which is entirely common incredibly common but also I work with men and women of all ages who have been struggling with their weight their whole lives and have never had a space to really vocalize their thoughts their insecurities their issues and relationships around food and now we've kind of created a safe community for that. I have no idea that you train bodybuilders. I do yeah yeah yeah I'm a competitive bodybuilder as well I'm going to be training for the gay games in Hong Kong 2022 barring any like crazy circumstances but let's talk after this for sure. So I did my first bodybuild pro bodybuilding show in Muscle Beach Venice in 2019 place third and at that time I was 160 pounds stage weight obviously as you know that's not sustainable since then I went from 160 to the most I've ever weighed is like 175 over the course of the pandemic it kept going higher like 180, 185, 190, 195 I finally tipped over 200 I think 203 was my max and I was just like I can't I can't describe the despair that I felt hitting those numbers and then also feeling like a vain narcissistic asshole because there are other people who are obese and and people some people are looking at me like what are you talking about you're not fat and I'm I look at the mirror and I'm like I mean it it's it is it's actually 40 pounds of plus of fat so I'm not just making it all up but but yeah I have it's such a hard time I think that I think that the issue people miss when they're sort of trivializing that feeling because you're you're talking about a feeling that a lot of the bodybuilders that I work with have which is that they step off the stage and they look the leanest and the smallest that they're ever going to look and then over the course of time whether that be circumstance or bulking or whatever it is they're forced to shift from this identity themselves to another identity and what happened with the pandemic is you shifted from an identity of being somebody who felt like they were physically fit able an athlete to now not only have you put on you've put on some weight but you've actually had to shift your entire identity which people miss you've gone to feeling like you don't know how to control your feeling like you don't know how to be consistent with exercise and so the identity that you had as a bodybuilder as an athlete all of those things it almost gets shattered when not when you put on the weight but when you lose the control yeah and knowing that I'm supposed to be like a fitness model and a bodybuilder and I'm a representative of the fitness community then I also kind of like feel like a fraud also and that really it brings a lot of shame especially with dealing with a net and like trying to get work and working with her I've turned out a lot of things just because I can't and I think it came to a head when I recently did the today show and I saw myself and it was like this like achievement like I'm on the today's show talking about HIV and AIDS and it was supposed to be this like really joyous moment and I was with my boyfriend he was so excited with me and I was all I could feel inside was just just I felt so horrible um but looking back I realized you know I I lost my main means two main sources of income at the height of the pandemic restaurant where I was bartending for eight hour shifts completely went sedentary after that and then my partnership with AIDS Healthcare Foundation so I was in survival mode and just working what I could at a desk and so my whole lifestyle changed but um I'm wondering for you was there like a key turning point in your life where something kind of like triggered and then it you kind of set you off on a journey of rediscovering yourself or yeah how did that come about yeah um I was not a not athletic athletic child I loved sports I loved activities um I was just lazy so any time I got the chance to relax or sit or lie on the couch and watch tv I took it um and I was also the kid who was like such an athlete on the field but would not do cardio for the life of me I was known to hide in the shed or two to get out of it um wish that was a joke but I did everything I tried everything growing up I went to fat camp one of the coolest experiences I ever had was going to fat camp and being in a place where everybody kind of looked like me and had the same ability level um I did Jenny Craig I did weight watchers I did personal trainers I did all of those things they just didn't stick um and I was so so so desperate for them to stick which I think a lot of times we gloss over it's like I was so desperate for them to stick at the time I have no idea why this time it's stuck other than that it was the first time where it didn't matter if I lost any weight or looked any better it only mattered if I was consistent so what happened was I graduated college I had worked in the film industry since I was 13 like backstage doing sets and things so I immediately booked it to Los Angeles and I was in a relationship and my relationship stayed back in Vancouver um I ended up moving back to Vancouver to try to salvage that relationship and when it ended I was it was the first time in four years that I was entirely on my own I was making my own decisions and I just remember like that relationship ending and all of myself worth being wrapped up in whether or not he wanted to stay and when when I realized like oh shit he's not going to stay like this is really it this is over and I'm by myself then I realized I was writing my own story and that I just had to like I didn't like the story I was in so I changed it yeah it's interesting how so often like our ultimate low points are what kind of shakes this up and you mentioned something interesting that it was more about being consistent so it sounds like it was more you fell in love with the process versus the result yeah I was it was process not progress focused which I think is crucial I use this I have this conversation with my clients all the time like if you can develop consistency around your fitness you can always tweak and change what you're doing but it's the showing up good or bad that you have to learn you have it's the discipline that has to be in place it's not just you know you buy the perfect plan from the perfect trainer and you get the perfect but it's like no you show up every day on a good or a bad day and you're consistent do you have any advice for people when they're just having a really really off day and they're in that moment of complete despair because there's nothing you can do in that moment to change the situation so in those moments um habit is crucial so I actually have my clients that I know are going to struggle with this because we all struggle with it I front load them I have them pack their gym bag and their clothes and their spare outfit and they leave it in a bag at all times in the back of their car and they also have one in their house so there's a couple of things about habit that's really important to understand but the first is right now is we all have triggering behaviors that once they're done that activity will get done right so like if you have to go to a friend's party and you have to hail a taxi or a cab or get an uber once you're in the uber you know you're going to the party like if you're going to exercise once you're in your sneakers you know you're going to the gym or like once I'm in my car I remember when I was trying to when I was just starting to go to the gym and I was trying to make it a routine I was like how do I like sucker myself into going every day and I I remember that I loved the feeling of being on pre-workout I'm being on pre-workout like it's a fucking drug um so I was kind of so I put a cup of water and the pre-workout in the scoop ready to go next to my like nightstand and then as soon as I got up I'd be like I don't want to move I don't want to do anything all I have to do right now is put this thing in the cup and drink it and then the rest will take care of itself yeah that was your like yeah um so I think that is really really really important like from a habit perspective if you have the habit you have so much more of an opportunity to actually get there but if you don't have the habit and that's when the hardest thing is to show up when you don't see the results or show up when you don't have the habit I would say that also being willing to what I call I call it five minutes so no matter what you get into the gym for five minutes and you can leave it can be the crummyest workout you ever had and you can turn around and you can walk out but you just walk in the gym for five minutes even if you're just pacing around killing I don't care if you go to the bathroom go to the locker room go do whatever you need to do but five minutes will most of the time get you going that's so good because there are so many times when I think oh man it's like 7 p.m. right now this is like this is rush hour like I'm not even gonna get the machines that I want and talk yourself out of it but then sometimes I'm like just go and if the machines are busy then you can do something else you can go on cardio or whatever and so yeah that's super important and you almost never have a bad workout when you show up on one of those days you're like oh I remember that I kind of want to be here I don't think I've ever been like man I would really wish I hadn't like gone to the gym today I really regret it and during the pandemic you guys it's not just like oh I get it that this is in your living room it's not necessarily that you were going to a gym but even just putting your workout clothes on and starting the youtube video for five minutes will change everything yeah where can people find you they can find me on instagram at the iron giant s or iron giant test calm if you want to reach out about working together from food disorders or from you know trying to get healthy and always feeling like you're failing that's where you find me I'm on on tiktok on facebook all on all the things okay and that's the website is iron giant test calm yep okay great well thank you so much for coming on and joining me and talking to me about this weighty subject for me I would love to have you back periodically to like kind of deep dive a little bit into certain areas if you're if you're willing I would love that yeah I think there's conversations that need to be had out loud between friends and we can do that okay very cool awesome please like this video if you liked it subscribe if you haven't already check out Laura please please please her content is so valuable and so inspiring Laura thank you so much and we'll see you soon thanks for having me one more thing before I go if you have any comments or questions for Laura anything you'd like her to speak on discuss for us to talk about in our upcoming videos please put them in the comments below and we will be sure to look at them all right now I'm really gone peace