Hi, I’m Nikki.
I’m a strength and nutrition coach who prefers diet coke over green juice and while I enjoy training, some days I’d much rather snuggle my dog and watch the Bachelor instead of going to the gym.
Hi, I’m Nikki.
I’m a strength and nutrition coach who prefers diet coke over green juice and while I enjoy training, some days I’d much rather snuggle my dog and watch the Bachelor instead of going to the gym.
As Seen In
My Approach as a Strength Coach
After 15+ years in the industry, if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that there’s no one right way to do things. Nutrition and fitness are deeply personal and YOU get to choose what’s right for you.
It’s not my place to tell you what you to want for yourself. Rather, I create a supportive, non-judgmental space for you to figure out your shit, provide education so you can make informed choices, and work with you to develop practical strategies that get you where you want to go without sacrificing your physical or mental well-being.
On the fitness side. I can help you get strong AF, explore your physical potential, and move beyond pain and injury. As a member of the bendy weirdo club, I have a lot of knowledge around strength for hypermobility, but I work with people who have a myriad of interests, including building or maintaining muscle mass, aging better, and moving with less pain.
On the nutrition side, I can help you develop an approach to eating that feels calm, secure and sustainable that also aligns with your goals - be it breaking up with chronic dieting, repairing your relationship with food, supporting your body in all of your activities, or losing weight without the misery of restrictive diets and obsessive tracking.
Fitness and Nutrition Certifications + Education
B.S. Exercise Science | B.S. Journalism
Certified Functional Strength Coach | Licensed Massage Practitioner (license #MA6040661)
Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certified | ACE Group Fitness Instructor
Like the Avril Lavigne song, my relationship with food, exercise, and my body has been complicated.
I’m not one of those people where everything lined up easily and I haven’t always been kind to myself.
My short list of “body stuff” includes hypermobility, an autonomic nervous system disorder, PCOS, and fuck-tons of anxiety - yes, that’s the clinical term. 😉
These things created a variety of challenges in the realm of health and fitness where simply “putting in the work” didn’t work for me. I’m predisposed to pain and injury. I need extra recovery and it takes me longer to build strength...or really do anything related to fitness or body composition if I don't want to wreck myself in the process.
As I hit each of these roadblocks, I didn’t meet myself with compassion or even common sense - despite all the knowledge I had about how to adapt and troubleshoot things for other people.
Rather I fought and resented my body every step of the way. Spoiler alert. It didn’t go well. It just tanked my physical and mental health and left me with more pain and increasingly disordered eating behaviors.
One day, I got fed up with trying to fix myself. That’s when things shifted.
I stopped trying to beat my body into submission and instead used exercise as a way to explore what I was capable of while honoring my needs.
Nutrition shifted from being a way to make myself as small as possible to a tool that I could use to support myself in all areas of my life and actually feel good.
I also realized that I didn’t have to white knuckle my way to being okay and it wasn’t cheating to use medication in addition to therapy to support my mental health. I started taking an antidepressant and it was the first time in my life that I'd ever experienced a true moment of mental peace.
I share these messy pieces of my story as a strength coach with the hope it helps you realize three things…
1. You are not broken and changing your body won't make you happier.
I'm not one of those people to hate on fitness goals, but I refuse to uphold the lie that changing your body will make you happier. If you can’t find a way to be at peace with yourself and enjoy your life now, you’re not going to be any happier when you lose “the last 10 pounds” or hit that strength PR. Finding peace with yourself is internal work. It’s not about what you look like or what you can do.
2. If your current approach to diet or exercise is harming your mental health, it’s not health. It’s dysfunction.
How you feel matters more than any gold star you could ever chase in fitness. If what you're doing makes you miserable, then not it's worth it, no matter the outcome.
3. Plan for the life and body you have, not the one our dumpster fire culture told you that you should have.
Self-acceptance isn't an act of settling. It’s a place of honesty that allows you to understand where you are and what you need. It allows you to make practical decisions from a place of compassion. It helps you choose behaviors that are self-serving and reject what isn’t working for you. It’s a way to make lasting progress from a place of relative ease.
Being a human is hard, but nutrition and fitness don’t have to be. There’s a way to approach this stuff where it makes you feel better, not worse AND you're allowed to have some fun in the process.
And if that sounds good to you, I'd love to help you get there.
Work with Me as a Strength & Nutrition Coach
Ready to make strength + eating healthy feel easy?
Hop on my list to get Strength & Nutrition Simplified!
A FREE minimal equipment beginner weight training program + guide to establishing foundational nutrition habits.
