Fitness Motivation : Elise Spicer - REAL Talk

Elise Spicer: Motivation and starting your fitness journey.

Elise Spicer PT gives a very candid and honest account of her fitness motivation and what it took to take the first steps on her journey.

We promised you REAL talk on the subject, and she has delivered. In spades.

Check out Elise on Instagram

You are someone that knows all about motivation, and trying to find it. Can you remember what things you needed to change to find a sustainable path on your fitness journey? Was there a moment in time that you made the permanent switch? 

When I started going to the gym, I was overweight, had incredibly low self-confidence and felt pretty miserable.

I suffered from a few mental health issues which were exacerbated by a low sense of self-worth/confidence.

I was in a relationship where I wasn’t massively happy and had quit a full-time job to work self-employed as a writer from home full time, so as a result I was lonely.

I wanted to find a reason to get out of the house each day to help create a routine, plus find something to do which was ‘for me’ and meet new people.

A form of self-care. I had to accept the fact that anything I wanted to achieve in life had to come from within me – no one is going to give you everything you need. I wanted to be healthy, I wanted to feel confident in my body, and that had to come from inside me.

These feelings, plus a visualisation of the kind of person I wanted to be, led me to creating this permanent change towards a healthy lifestyle. 

You are open about not always being in the shape you are in now. Were you overly hard on yourself in the early days? If so, how do you help your clients through that negative headspace when they are starting out? 

I was very very self-conscious when I first started going to the gym. I was about five stone heavier than I am now.

I remember doing my induction and the girl that did it made me feel so small and so stupid, and I kind of wanted to just run away.

I had no knowledge of the gym at all.

I remember covering up with baggy tops when I went to the gym, and felt like everyone was staring at me thinking “what the hell is she doing?!” I’m sure they weren’t now looking back at it.

The way I managed to get through this was to keep facing my fear – the more you do something in life, the easier and less intimidating it gets – and the same goes for fitness.

To feel more confident I would also watch Youtube and Instagram videos of fitness gurus to get some exercise ideas particularly when it came to free weights, and this really helped.

With my current clients, I have many who come to me with the same lack of confidence, but who are now massively changed individuals.

The way I put my clients at ease is my being a friendly, non-intimidating face who they can trust – I would say I am good friends with nearly all my clients, and I think this really helps.

Plus, I write good, effective and non-intimating programmes for each client, so they come into the gym knowing exactly what they’re doing, so they don’t feel silly wandering around not knowing what to use. The rest of the confidence comes with time and persistence.

A before and After

Would you say that you did it all yourself, or did you have help along the way? 

I did it primarily by myself and through self-education.

The gym I went to at the time wasn’t massively helpful in giving advice and the staff weren’t approachable, so I didn’t want to ask. I could have got a PT but I couldn’t really afford it at the time.

So, Instagrammers and Youtubers were my main help, and that’s why I put a lot of content up on my Instagram now to help as many people as possible.

Did you set yourself 'goals' or targets or did you have a bigger picture in mind at the outset?

My main goal was to ‘get abs’ and lose 2 stone. The first goal was obviously a bit vague, so I wouldn’t recommend having a goal like that, it’s a bit wishy-washy!

My second goal was a bit better – more specific. But I didn’t set a date of completion for it, so that’s something I would always recommend doing.

Overall though, I just wanted to feel confident in myself – I also wanted to get my mental health to a point where I felt more positive and less prone to anxiety. So that’s obviously a much bigger picture which I am still working on now.

At some stage, you advanced and clearly were bitten by the bug for life. Are there habits that you know you can never go back to, but are glad they are gone?

I would say at the start, I was super restrictive in my diet.

So I would be like “Ok I’m never eating chocolate again from tomorrow”. Or “I’m never going to get a takeaway ever again now”. I thought these sweeping statements would make me more ‘fitness’, plus help me stay committed.

They actually had the opposite effect.

You can’t simply stop eating the foods you enjoy eating – that’s a sure fire way of setting yourself up for failure. Instead, just eat less of what you love.

If you normally have 2 biscuits with your tea, just have 1! Simple swaps or portion control is all you need to do to completely transform your diet and make massive leaps towards your goals.

This idea of spring cleaning bad habits can be a huge motivation, but also an unhealthy obsession if moderation isn't a strong point. How do you help teach moderation to your clients?

I encourage all my clients to track their food with an app such as MyFitnessPal, so we can check that their calories are on track and not super under their recommended intake.

I also encourage an atmosphere of complete trust, so I feel confident that my clients will be honest with me when I ask them about their diet or training intensities.

I frequently remind them of the importance of a well-rounded diet, fitness and rest programme, and the benefits this will bring to them and their physique/mental health.

I also remind them that overdoing it will inevitably lead to injury or burnout, so they won’t be able to train at all.

So for our readers that are looking to get started today, what piece of advice can you leave them from your own experience? 

When I started out, there were a lot of people who tried to deter me from getting fit.

I had some pretty horrible comments from men and women, those close to me and some random strangers.

Things like “you look like a stick”, “you’re wasting away” etc. I quickly learnt that not everyone will support you on your journey. In fact, they may try and stop you, or make you doubt yourself.

I received such comments when I was the healthiest I had ever been in my life, my BMI was finally just in the ‘normal’ category, and my confidence and happiness were finally starting to grow.

This will intimidate other people and remind them that perhaps they could do more to look after themselves but just can’t be bothered.

Don’t listen to critics, unless it is constructive criticism (ie. People who are qualified, who have been there done that, and know what they’re talking about). Keep doing you, blank out the haters and keep going.

On a practical note, if the roles were reversed and you were starting out all over again, is there anything you would advise not to do? 

I would not advise to go in all guns blazing.

If you don’t ever train and then suddenly start training every single day, you are setting yourself up for burnout or injury.

I would also advise not to set yourself unrealistic goals. For example, don’t say “Ok now I am going to go to the gym 6 times a week and meet my macros every day and run 3 times a week”.

These goals are unrealistic at the start, and if you don’t achieve them in one week (which is probably inevitable), you will feel like a failure and that you’ve let yourself down – not a healthy mindset to get into.

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