When Lucinda Viljoen embarked on her fitness journey, she slowly found that her restrictive eating and over-exercising was pushing her further to the lighter end of the scale. Tired of the negative impact it was having on her health, she decided to switch things up. With the help of weight training, yoga, moderation and pure determination, she went from skinny to strong. Here’s how she did it…
Lucinda Viljoen
Time required to reach goal
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Getting started
“My journey started with subsidized Pilates classes during lunch, joining all ladies gym and eventually upgraded to my own home gym lounge setup with minimal equipment accompanied by exercise DVDs during the first 4 years of my journey. It was tough forming the habit of daily exercise and I quit many times during those first few years,” she explains.
Ups and Downs
It was this realisation that helped her to make the shift to aim to be comfortable and confident in her skin.
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A healthy mindset
Having to reset her approach to health and fitness,
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Everything in moderation
Aiming to live more of a balanced lifestyle, Lucinda avoided restrictive diets and instead began eating the rainbow.
As for feeling guilty about certain foods — that’s a thing of the past. “I give myself the headspace to enjoy my food, whether it is a fresh salad and steak or a few slices of pizza and beer. Food is also fuel for my workouts so eating enough is very important to me, especially on high-intensity training days. I try to avoid restriction and guilt at all costs, and when I do feel like I’ve perhaps indulged too much, I will drink more water and include more greens at my next meal or snack,” she explains.
Strong, not skinny
In 2015, Lucinda says she fell in love with plyometrics and weight training. “This was the perfect combination to get my mindset out of wanting to be skinny to wanting to be strong enough to lift more, run further and have enough energy to push through boundaries I set myself mentally,” she tells us. ” I’m always keen to try new workouts and have had phases where Yoga has saved me mentally, running has made me grateful and weight training has made me feel empowered,” she adds.
It’s taken Lucinda five years to reach where she is now, but through it all she’s learned some valuable lessons, pushed herself to the limits and changed her health for the better.
It’s also showed me that I am capable of so much more than I thought, that I am strong enough to make it through life’s challenges, to try again and again when I fail.
Lucinda’s Tips
- Be flexible in your approach to movement but prioritize it to make sure that you do move.
- Start by making small changes to your lifestyle and your eating habits.
- Find healthy food and exercises you thoroughly enjoy, it will help you to remain consistent.
- Ignore the scale, health fads and your social feeds’ idea of what is considered beautiful. Healthy lifestyles are different for everyone and will look different to everyone, and that’s ok.
- Do not fear weight training, it is the most empowering type of exercise I’ve ever tried.
