My Unlikely Fitness Journey - Fitness Incentive

“I was not an athletic kid. I was overweight. I hated sports. I dreaded gym class. I spent most of my time doodling and daydreaming. My mother had been a track star. My father was naturally athletic. My brother excelled at basketball, baseball, and soccer. Naturally, my parents enrolled me in every sport imaginable — soccer, softball, gymnastics — and I hated all of it. I was perfectly content being “the artsy one” in the family.”

Theresa Christensen

What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been

A few months ago, I was invited to speak at the North Babylon Lions Club’s Annual Women’s Symposium, held at the West Babylon VFW Hall on May 15th. The event was organized by a longtime Fitness Incentive member who has been taking my spin class for years, Denise Heegan. This year’s theme was Health, Wellness, and Fitness. The event was wonderful. Denise did such a marvelous job with the food, decorations, raffles, and filling the room with about 60 amazing women. After I spoke, many women introduced themselves to me and told me how relatable my story was and that they were leaving the event inspired to start their own health and fitness journey. My best friend of 47 years was there with me, and she said, “You need to put that speech in writing. You should put it in that Fitness Incentive newsletter!” So here it is.

“Hi everyone. I’m so excited to be here with you tonight.

Lions Club Speech

When Denise invited me to speak, I felt both nervous and excited — nervous because I haven’t spoken to a group this large in quite some time, but excited because I’ve been given the opportunity to share my journey into fitness, health, and ultimately self-acceptance.

I’m a certified personal trainer at Fitness Incentive in Babylon, and I’m also the owner of The Christensen Gallery, a fine art gallery located next door to the gym. Those two careers may seem completely unrelated, but in many ways they reflect the two sides of who I’ve always been: creativity and movement.

My story isn’t like many others I’ve met in the fitness industry.

I grew up in North Babylon, right off Deer Park Avenue on Pickwick Lane. I actually lived just down the block from Denise, although we wouldn’t meet until many years later. I graduated from North Babylon High School in 1996 alongside some truly amazing people.

I was not an athletic kid. I was overweight. I hated sports. I dreaded gym class. I spent most of my time doodling and daydreaming. My mother had been a track star. My father was naturally athletic. My brother excelled at basketball, baseball, and soccer. Naturally, my parents enrolled me in every sport imaginable — soccer, softball, gymnastics — and I hated all of it. I was perfectly content being “the artsy one” in the family.

Then came the 1990s.

If you remember that era, you probably remember the diet culture that consumed it. SlimFast shakes. SnackWell’s cookies. Fat-free everything. Diet pills. “Heroin chic.” Unrealistic beauty standards everywhere you looked. Young girls were taught that being thin was the ultimate achievement.

And sixteen-year-old me absorbed all of it.

By my early twenties, I was living on SlimFast shakes and diet pills. Eventually, I stopped eating almost entirely. I became obsessed with running — four or five miles every single day. First, I cut meals. Then I cut more. At one point, I was surviving on half an avocado a day.

I lost 60 pounds very quickly.

I was finally skinny.
But I was also very sick.

It wasn’t until more than half my hair fell out that I realized something was seriously wrong. I had developed an eating disorder. Secretly. Quietly. Even the people closest to me didn’t recognize it.

Thankfully, fear forced me to begin nourishing myself again, and somehow, I managed to pull myself out of those behaviors on my own. What I didn’t realize at the time was the damage I had done to my body — especially my heart.

I discovered I had been born with a heart condition called Supraventricular Tachycardia, or SVT. It causes episodes of rapid heart rate that can lead to dizziness, nausea, and anxiety-like symptoms.

I had experienced episodes since I was a teenager, but doctors repeatedly dismissed them as anxiety. Over time, they became more severe. By my early thirties, the episodes were so frightening that I stopped exercising altogether. I left my wonderful gym, Fitness Incentive, after five years of being a member.

Shortly after, I became pregnant with my daughter, Hanna. Interestingly, during that pregnancy, I didn’t have a single episode. But after she was born, I was too afraid to return to exercise. The weight slowly came back.

Three years later, while pregnant with my son Van, the SVT returned worse than ever. I was admitted to the hospital repeatedly during my seventh and eighth months of pregnancy, and at 37 years old, I finally received the correct diagnosis. My condition became so severe that my doctors decided to deliver my son three weeks early via C-section because they feared labor would place too much strain on my heart.

Thankfully, my son was born healthy. A year later, I underwent a cardiac ablation procedure, and it changed my life.

The procedure was successful — but I still wasn’t healthy.

Years of fear, poor eating habits, and inactivity had caught up with me. I was severely overweight. My blood pressure and cholesterol were dangerously high, and doctors wanted to put me on medication immediately. I begged them to give me six months to try to change my life naturally.

So in early 2017, I walked back into Fitness Incentive in Babylon — the same gym I had left years earlier out of fear.

And this time, everything was different.

I approached fitness not as punishment, but as healing. I lost nearly 70 pounds through a reasonable calorie deficit, strength training, and spin classes. No starvation. No obsession. Just consistency.

Then something happened that I never could have imagined. The owner of the gym, another North Babylon girl, Corinne Brown, asked me if I wanted to become a spin instructor.

Me.
The kid who hated sports.
The woman who once believed she needed to survive on half an avocado to be worthy.

But I said yes.

I became a certified spinning instructor in 2017 and started teaching in January 2018. In 2020, I became director of the cycling program. Then, during the pandemic — when gyms shut down and many trainers left the industry — another opportunity opened up.

Fitness Incentive needed trainers.

So at 42 years old, I decided to study for my certification through the National Academy of Sports Medicine. After nine months of studying, I passed my exam and became a certified personal trainer in April 2021.

At first, I thought I’d simply help out here and there. Instead, I quickly found myself training nearly 30 clients a week.

Since then, I’ve continued learning everything I can about fitness and nutrition. I became a certified nutrition coach and earned certifications in TRX, mobility training, balance training, and women’s fitness specialization. Today, I teach strength classes, indoor cycling, and hot sculpt classes, and I currently have a waitlist for personal training.

But honestly, I think my greatest strength as a trainer comes from my past.

Because fitness did not come naturally to me, health did not come naturally to me. And even after becoming a trainer, I found myself slipping back into disordered thinking at times because this industry can place enormous pressure on people — especially women — to look a certain way.

What I’ve learned over the years is that health cannot exist without balance.

Today, I no longer obsess over the number on the scale. I work out consistently, but I also eat pizza with my kids, enjoy ice cream, and have the occasional gin and tonic with friends. My blood pressure and cholesterol are now perfect, and my cardiologist jokingly calls me his “poster child” for cardiac ablation success stories.

At the end of my fitness classes, I always joke with everyone: “Eat clean and don’t have any fun whatsoever.” Then I immediately tell them I’m kidding — because life is meant to be lived.

I believe in what I call the 80/20 lifestyle: 80% discipline and 20% joy. And honestly, sometimes it’s more like 60/40 — and that’s okay too.

I believe in training with intention. I believe in building strength instead of shrinking ourselves. I believe women should not be afraid to lift weights or take up space in the gym. Strength training doesn’t make women bulky — it makes us stronger, healthier, more capable, and more confident.

At 47 years old, I am the strongest and healthiest I’ve ever been — and definitely not the skinniest. Hello, perimenopause.

And as I watch society drift back toward the extreme thinness trends of the 1990s, I think often about my 13-year-old daughter. I hope she never grows up believing her worth is tied to a number on a scale the way I once did.

I try to set an example for her — and for anyone willing to listen — that your size does not determine your value. Fitness should be empowering. It should be joyful. It should never be a punishment.

I truly love what I do. I love training people. I love teaching classes. I love helping others discover strength they didn’t know they had.

My business partner at the gallery is always asking me when I’m finally going to quit “that other job” at the gym. And my answer is always the same:

Never.

Because after everything I’ve been through, helping people feel stronger, healthier, and more confident is no longer just a job to me. It’s a privilege.

Thank you so much for having me here tonight.”