Inspiring Conversations with Allison Tibbs of Nourished Life Coaching & Consulting

Today we’d like to introduce you to Allison Tibbs.

Hi Allison, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I always say that “Fitness saved my life”, but the more I think about it, Fitness opened the doors for me to walk through and step into my calling and purpose.

Back in 2009, I was at a very low point in my life – depression, panic attacks, unhealthy habits, and extremely low self-worth. I was living in Brooklyn, NY, and felt like I was stuck. Stuck in a job that didn’t fulfill me, stuck in a situation that left me feeling unworthy of love, and stuck in a city that didn’t make me happy.

Emotionally, mentally, and spiritually I felt weak, and I remembered a middle school health teacher telling the class that exercise produced chemicals that made you feel good. So, I thought why not. One day, I made the decision to get a gym membership at the local Crunch Fitness and commit to taking whatever class was offered at the 6 PM time slot. No matter what class it was, I was taking it – from Hip Hop to Zumba to Capoeria to Pole Dancing (which I was awful at).

Each class left me feeling accomplished. As the weeks continued, I noticed that I started to cook meals at home instead of ordering from the Chinese food restaurant down the street. I started to read books and watch videos online that were motivational and inspirational. Things were changing, from the inside out and I began to feel stronger on all fronts.

By the end of that year, at the age of 25, I had quit my Corporate Job in Manhattan, moved out of NY, and decided to spend a year splitting my time between my childhood home in the suburbs in Chicago and visiting family in Switzerland. While in Europe, I spent a lot of time outside going for walks in the nearby pastures and vineyards of the small village I was living in. I continued to cook meals at home, my sleeping habits improved, and I was doing more bodyweight and yoga movements.

At the end of 2010, I came back to the states feeling lighter, happier, healthier and more fulfilled. I fell in love with taking care of my physical and mental health and it showed. I was hopeful, for what the new year would bring; however, when I returned back to Chicago, within weeks my anxiety returned, I gained weight, my skin broke out, and I started to feel like crap all over again.

It was then that I realized that the way of life in America was one that was pretty unhealthy and it required a deeper level of work, effort, and commitment to be the healthiest and happiest version of myself. In 2011, I started to use Twitter as my platform to hold myself accountable and share what I was learning and doing. That changed everything and soon people were asking me for advice, tips, and if I would train them. I eventually took a position to be an online fitness coach and started working with people all over the country. It made me feel like I was doing some good in the world while continuing to hold myself accountable.

Fast forward to 2013, I moved to San Francisco and got certified to be a Personal Trainer. I wanted to go even deeper into working with people. While I was personal training, I got certified in Nutrition, Life Coaching, Pre & Post Natal training, and many others in order to help my clients get the best results possible. I started to host workshops around the Bay area and speak at various tech companies and law firms. I was also teaching classes – Abs & Booty Bootcamp and CoreBurn – which was the perfect blend of working hard, having fun, and dripping sweat.

One day, I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize. The man on the line asked if I had ever heard of connected fitness and a company called Tonal. I told him that I was vaguely familiar and he said that my name came up in a meeting and he was wondering if I was willing to do a screen test to be an on-camera fitness coach. I reluctantly said “yes”, as I have done with every opportunity that has come my way in the fitness and wellness space.

What he didn’t know, was that two days before that phone call, I was training one of my clients who just got a Tonal installed and he wanted me to help him get set up with it. I was pretty annoyed that he had this “new fitness technology” that I believed was going to take my job. At the end of that session, he jokingly said “Allison, I would die if I turned on Tonal one day and you were up there.” We both laughed it off.

This is why that phone call felt important. This was in 2019.

I spent months screen testing and preparing to be announced as the newest Tonal Coach, then the pandemic hit. They halted filming and I felt like my dream job was over almost as quickly as it started. Luckily, they figured out ways to work me into the equation and I was finally announced as the newest coach in June 2020.

I was filming workouts and meditations in San Francisco, doing photo shoots and video shoots, and loved connecting with the members. Eventually, they moved to film in LA and I was flying back and forth weekly to film.

One thing I knew, was that I LOVED being in LA. I loved how I felt when my foot touched down in LA. I loved the energy. I loved how alive it felt. And soon enough, my partner and I made the decision to get an apartment in LA, close to the studio in Hollywood.

This summer, I launched my company Nourished Life Coaching & Consulting, which feels like a full circle moment for me. I constantly go back to that unhealthy, unhappy, and unfulfilled version of myself in that Brooklyn apartment and I look at my life now. What’s different? Honestly, it was transforming my mindset and my habits to support my physical and mental health. Doing things that feel nourishing…and my coaching business is all about helping others to develop the mindset and habits to live a life that feels nourishing to their mind, body, and soul.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The biggest struggles for me were my limiting beliefs and my fears. I often let my fears keep me stuck in things that didn’t serve me because I was afraid that I would not be able to sustain any success I achieved. I was afraid that people would judge me and the Imposter Syndrome kicked in hard. Being an entrepreneur isn’t just about skills. It’s about having a mindset that will support you. I was convinced that if I acquired more skills, took more classes, and secured more certs, then one day I would feel like a “real entrepreneur”. But that was just the fear.

The reality was, that I had to be bigger than my fears. I had to be bigger than what my Inner Critic, which I named Chloe, was telling me.

And if I am honest, my mental health really took some major hits. I often had weeks or months of really deep depression, where I didn’t even feel like I wanted to live. I remember moments when my parents would look at me and it felt like they didn’t even recognize me. There were nights when I would call my mom and just sob for hours. She wouldn’t say a word, she just held space for me to cry and come undone. There was a time when my stepmom convinced me to come to Palm Springs with her to take a look at a nearby art school for my brother and sister. She didn’t need my help, she just knew that I needed a few days away.

In those dark moments, I had to tap into something greater than myself. This is where my self-care practices started to develop. My daily self-care and commitment to self-care as one tool to help support my mental health became a part of my brand and my story. I didn’t want to pretend that I was 100% okay, I wanted to show people, using social media, the dark parts of my journey and how I was trying to help support myself.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Nourished Life Coaching & Consulting is the thing that brings me the most joy these days. During the pandemic, I had so many people reach out to me to share their stories or comment on my posts about how their mental health was really suffering. They were not moving their bodies as much, they were not feeling motivated, they were feeling disconnected from others and themselves, and they were feeling burnt out. The more people who reached out, the more I knew that I had something to offer and a way to serve.

I started to host virtual 15-minute workouts on Instagram every day for free as a way to get people up and moving then I eventually created a private group and hosted the workouts on Zoom and recorded them for people to do whenever they needed. The response was pretty incredible and the feedback was so insightful, as most of them said the workouts weren’t about losing weight, but about staying sane and how what I would say during the workouts really helped them get through tough days.

That’s when things really picked up. I started to have former personal training clients reach out to me not for training but for help with their nutrition or for accountability with their health goals. These sessions became a perfect combination of my personal training, nutrition, life coaching, and overall passion for helping people and that is when I made the decision to revamp how I worked with people and launched Nourished Life Coaching and Consulting.

My coaching is geared toward helping my clients adopt the mindset and habits that will help them become the healthiest and happiest version of themselves. We look at fitness and I will give them an exercise program to follow. We look at their nutrition and we develop principles and practices that will help them adopt healthier eating habits while also looking at the blocks and challenges that come with nutrition. We also look at self-care, stress management, sleep, relationships, and anything else that may be impacting their health and happiness.

While yes, many people come to me because they want to lose weight, what we discover in our time together is that when we focus on the mindset and habits, they start to focus more on who they are becoming rather than the weight. This is always a surprise, but the cool thing is that my clients do in fact lose the weight, plus the emotional baggage, unsupportive habits, and limiting beliefs. It’s been pretty phenomenal to watch the transformations happen and to see the confidence and self-love increase in my clients’ lives.

Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
Since being in LA, I’ve had the chance to meet some phenomenal people from personal trainers to tantric energy coaches to ayurvedic nutritionists to an Enneagram coach who has opened my eyes to all the ways that my clients get stuck and get in their own way of their healing and transformation.

This is what I love about LA and how it has helped me to grow beyond what I thought was capable. It stretches you and if you let it, you become even more of you who you were destined to become. I am and will always be grateful for that when I think about LA.

Pricing:

• 1:1 Coaching Session starts at $200
• Personal Coaching packages start at $2500/month
• Corporate Wellness start at $2,000

Contact Info:

• Website: www.AllisonTibbs.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/AllisonTibbs 

Image Credits
Kelly Robin, Chloe Jackman, Mikey Chang, and Caron Shahrestani