Hey! I’m Amy
and I run this joint

I’m a neurodivergent health coach, Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, somatics practitioner and proudly HAES-aligned. Strong Inside Out is a space for all those who want to rebuild their health outside of diet culture and stigmatized mental health narratives.

Acceptance over shame.
Fun over punishment.
Peace over perfection.

I believe that health is equal parts physical, mental and spiritual, and that each person’s health journey should be a unique, tailored experience.

Extreme fitness and diet culture tell us that we need to meet metrics to be “good enough,” but we at SIO believe that metrics aren’t as important as how you feel inside and out. Getting healthy can be a fun, dynamic, flexible experience that cultivates greater self acceptance and love, but it’s so rare to find that nowadays. I hope to change that.

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4+-+About-Jema.jpg — Food Freedom

Working toward a loving relationship with food, eating when you’re hungry, neutralizing food choices and body image.

5 - About-Laura.png — Body Attunement

Honoring your body’s need for movement and rest, developing a deeper relationship with your body, moving for non-aesthetic benefits.

You can’t hate yourself healthy and expect to love yourself as a result.

If there’s one way to sum up what SIO is all about, it’s LOVE.

I base all our content and coaching on the premise that you are worthy of love from yourself and others as you are right now without changing a thing. SIO is the place you can come to remind yourself what’s real:

Getting healthy isn’t about getting “good enough,” it’s about feeling better being YOU.

In fact, basing our motivation to get healthy on being enough by someone else’s standards–be it a parent or society–is a recipe for forever lack: the feeling we’ll never live up because we can never be perfect enough.

That’s where I come in to ra ra you into rebellion against diet culture and mental health stigma, and support you in your quest for True Health; the health that makes you feel good inside and out.

Wanna join our love-fest? Sign up for our Weekly Feels newsletter. You’ll get regular encouragement and validation sent to your inbox plus updates about fun stuff I do through other mediums.

Wanna know more about Amy?

I’m an unapologetic nerd, forever cyber punk hell bent on a mission to free people from diet culture shame and rigidity. The story of how Strong Inside Out (SIO) came to be goes a little deeper into my recovery and healing. Got a minute or two? I’ll tell you all about it…

My Mental Health Wake Up Call

TW: suicide

I’ve enjoyed what I like to call “The Mental Health Cocktail” (clinical depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, anxiety, trauma and eating disorders) for most of my life, but I haven’t always had this stellar toolbelt and support system to back me up. In fact, it got so bad that in 2005 I was hospitalized under suicide watch.

It woke me up to be stuck in that hospital with no freedom. It started dawning on me that I couldn’t do it on my own anymore. I had to reach out for help if I didn’t want to end up in a place like that for the long term.

Over the next few years after I was released, I roller-coastered up and down trying to find methods that worked. Some stuck, some sank me deeper. No matter what, though, I got back up.

One discovery was the key to my mental and physical transformation: Movement.

Finding Movement

When I went to the gym, I felt a personal power I didn’t feel outside in my everyday life, and it stuck with me afterwards! Plus, all the work I was doing with my therapist stuck to my bones a little better when I moved consistently. I became such a believer in the power of Movement that I dived head-first into life as a personal trainer, but I had no idea how much work I still had to do…

Healing My Relationships with Food and Body

Through working at the gym where aesthetics were king, my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and eating disorder flared up big time.

I became obsessive about the “perfect” body and addicted to the need to conform to an unhealthy standard of “fitness.” I needed that fix, and I’d hurt myself to get it. Starving myself, purging, poisoning my body with diet pills, overtraining to the point of injury and hormonal imbalance: all of these were the norm for me.

I hit rock bottom yet again when I super-restricted for a video shoot, then promptly binged every day for weeks. I just couldn’t stop. With help from my supporters, I got back into recovery and fully committed to healing my body, mind and spirit. I found Intuitive Eating and somatics through my eating disorder therapist and was shocked that the food obsession finally released its death grip! After a lifetime of it! I discovered body neutrality through social media and was so grateful there was a name to what I always wished I could feel about my body!

Through my personal healing, I learned more about how to help people who go through similar struggles. And now, it’s what I do. :)

Strong Inside Out’s Evolution

I started Strong Inside Out in 2011 with the simple desire to talk about how beneficial movement is for mental health. What I didn’t expect was how needed this message would be, and how supportive the world was of it!

In 2013, I crowdfunded over $18,000 to do a 30-city tour teaching fitness classes to raise money and awareness for suicide prevention charity, To Write Love On Her Arms. The 30x30 Project was a hit and really kicked things off for SIO as we know it today, but as you can see, we’re not just a fitness and mental health blog anymore. Now, we’re a force.

We’re your non-diet guardian angels coming in to remind you that you don’t need to look or eat a certain way to be “good”…and that being “good” is overrated anyway.

I’m really proud of what SIO is now, and I’m honored you’ve chosen to experience it with us. If you ever have any questions, feel free to hit me up with an email or a DM on Instagram.

Here’s to a world where you can be you, fully. Without shame, restriction or punishment. 🤘