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Mikia McGowan of Specialist Fitness enjoying some roller skating (Photograph by Jessie Moniz Hardy)
Mikia McGowan from Specialist Fitness offers Fit Queens coaching (photo by Jessie Moniz Hardy)
Mikia McGowan’s weight got out of hand after graduating from college.
The kids in Brownie’s troupe she was leading wanted to touch her baby bump, even though she wasn’t even pregnant.
“I worked as an administrative clerk,” she says. “Colleagues were telling me to go to the gym.”
She found out that she liked to go. As a child, she was semi-athletic, playing soccer and running.
“At the time, my interest was not high, so the sport fell by the wayside,” she said.
Now she has focused on fitness, doing boot camps and fitness classes.
“I started out by doing three classes a week,” she said. “I ventured to do about 12 hours of training per week.”
She started counting calories and the weight started to drop.
“I stuck with three plates and two snacks a day,” she said.
And she drastically cut back on sugary drinks.
“In college, I easily drank 2 liters of soda a day,” she said. “Today I probably have 20 to 40 ounces of soda at most, maybe every two weeks.”
She started to gain weight in high school. In college, she went on a Slim Fast diet and lost a lot of weight, but got it all back, and more, when she returned to Bermuda after graduation.
“For me, I didn’t really notice it because I was ‘in love’ and comfortable,” she said. “I was eating way too much and didn’t notice it. I reached my highest weight after the Slim Fast diet. I weighed about 250 pounds.
His weakness was large meals.
“I liked to eat well,” she says. “If it was good, I would finish my plate. Then I would go back for more. I was following this rule, clean your plate and ignore any feeling of fullness. “
During her fitness journey, she discovered that she enjoyed helping others take control of their bodies. Three years ago, she started her own business, Specialist Fitness.
She started offering Fitness Queens Coaching for women last year but had to stop due to Covid-19. Now she is running the program again.
“This is the first time that I have offered Fit Queens coaching on this scale,” she said. “I have a client that I took through a private version and she did it in an incredible way.”
Ms McGowan said that when many women start their fitness journey, they jump into a fad diet or fitness craze.
“They see someone on social media who says I lost 30 pounds in 30 days, and they go right down that avenue,” Ms. McGowan said.
She said that health and fitness is a multi-billion dollar industry that promotes the idolized body type with techniques that are more unnecessary than useful.
“I tell you that your body is good if you are willing to take good care of it,” she said. “I work in partnership with women to teach them about their bodies. In turn, they make informed decisions based on evidence-based science, avoiding lint. “
Ms McGowan said getting in shape is about changing your lifestyle for a lifetime, not 30 days.
“Even though this is a group coaching program, your nutritional goals are specified to you,” she said. “The fitness program is tailored to your abilities. It’s not about fitness and nutrition, it’s about the mindset we have when it comes to eating right and being consistent with our workouts.
Fit Queens coaching sessions take place at Energize Wellness, 11 Parlaville Road in Hamilton, on Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays at 6.30am.
She also teaches pole dance lessons at Aerial Therapy, 16 Market Lane in Pembroke.
She said pole dancing is great workout.
“No matter how fit you are, you haven’t used all the muscles you use in pole dancing,” she said.
She was addicted the first time she tried it, despite her muscles aching for days afterward.
And she liked pole dancing to be seen as a bit risky.
“I said I don’t know why pole dancing is rubbing people the wrong way,” she said. “Feeling a little rebellious, I decided that not only was I going to take the pole dance class, but that I was going to be amazing. “
She continued, doing whatever was necessary to get better.
“Whatever physical condition I needed for pole, if it was flexibility I would train,” she said. “If it was endurance, I would work on it, while still trying to lose weight.”
Since becoming fitter, her own lifestyle has evolved to include more active hobbies such as roller skating.
“It’s something I always wanted to do as a kid,” she said. “One Christmas my parents brought me a pair of Fisher-Price roller skates. I took them twice, then decided they weren’t for me and threw them in the back of the closet.
But during the pandemic, she saw a friend of her roller skate and decided she wanted to try again.
“The Tuesday before the lockdown in April I rented a pair of roller skates and have been roller skating ever since,” she said.
She primarily roller skates with a group called the Bermie Skaters at TN Tatem Middle School in Warwick.
She admitted that learning to roller skate was not easy.
“I started on my porch and lasted as long as possible,” she said. “I was hunched over which caused my back pain. “
It took him two weeks before he could do it without injuring himself.
“It’s a good workout for the legs,” she said. “It teaches you how to use the muscles in your thighs that you don’t usually use. “
She is also training to run the Bermuda Half Marathon Derby, for the first time, on May 27, 2022.
“So far I can run 5K steadily,” she said.
She trains early in the morning.
“I will be running early in the morning until I become proficient enough to be able to run in the heat,” she said. “Then I’m going to change my race times at midday. For some reason every day in Bermuda it gets very hot. If I train in the cold all the time, I will have to change it so that my body can tolerate the heat. I walk a lot in the summer so I get that heat.
For more information visit specialistfitnessbda.com, call 599-0676 or send email [email protected]
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