Strength Training as a Way of Life with Heather Cameron

In this episode with Heather Cameron, we discuss how she uses local space and resources to create Cameron Fitness Beach Boot Camp, why baby buggies and boot camp do go together, growing from injury, her favorite surfboard, learning to surf the old school way, fear and motherhood, why strength training matters, and how to create a passion project. Heather reminds us that good things come to those who practice and train as a way of life.

Highlights:
[0:00 - 10:09]  Cameron Fitness Beach Boot Camp

[10:10- 13:20]  Growing from injury

[13:21 - 13:47]  Baby buggies and boot camp

[17:08 - 25:07]  Our surf session

[25:08 - 29:06]  Learning to surf old school

[25:08 - 29:06] Fear and motherhood

[29:07 - 35:02] Strength training matters

[35:03 - 38:26] Creating a passion project

Quotes:

“During all that alone time running on the beach near the pier. It just dawned on me, I should probably do some fitness by this beach. This beach is amazing! When you're in that flow state of running, all kinds of ideas come into your head.”

“I didn't have a wetsuit, so I would be freezing. It'd be the middle of winter and I would just be in my bikini. But I didn't even care. After, I would have to have somebody help me start my car because I could not move my hands.”

“It's empowering to feel strong, even when you're just doing something like changing your furniture around in your house, to be able to move things. If anybody needed you for something, you have the strength to do it. I guess it's just a way of life for me now.”

Get in touch with Heather

• Instagram cameronfitnessoceanside
• Facebook Cameron Fitness
• Website CameronFitness.com

More about Christine Foerster

• christinefoerster.com
• Instagram @christinefoerster

Transcript

Christine: Welcome to the podcast, Heather. 

Heather: Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

Christine: A few Sundays ago, I attended your Cameron Fitness Beach Boot Camp, which was an ingenious blend of using local space and resources. We used the bleachers, the steel poles that line the perimeter of the bandstand, our own bodies against the cement floor, and then we grabbed rocks in lieu of weights. All of this to create a really neat set of resistance training exercises and hit workouts. I would love to know how you came up with this idea. 

Heather: Me too. Just many, many years of being down there and using what I have. I used to bring a lot of equipment with me and it was a lot of schlepping with my car and weights and equipment. Sometimes I do bring equipment down there, but I just found it was easier to use what's already there and use our own body weight. And it gives me an opportunity to get in tune with my creativity. Sometimes I just go with the flow and I just feel out the participants and see where they are as far as their energy levels, and I go with it from there. And sometimes I have a plan in place before we start and ultimately it's just a flow. As far as coming up with the ideas though to answer that it's pretty tough. I've never really thought about where it all initiates from but I think that any of us who do any kind of work that we enjoy and are passionate about we find our self in that state of flow and it's it's something that's almost unexplainable.

Christine: I mean my mind is going to all these places, I'm thinking gosh we are you using those rocks and then we're leaving our sweat on them and then I don't know how to say it but it just feels like you can't actually replicate that anywhere else because it is so particular to the set of elements that are at the Oceanside Pier.

Heather: That's a good point. Yeah, I never really thought about it like that.

Christine: It's almost like you've made your mark there in so many ways, right? Like transporting all this equipment, I could set this up anywhere. But it's really not like that, it’s very space dependent. Which is kind of neat!

Heather: I like very local workouts. I've been doing this for so many years that it almost just kind of takes a life of its own. 

Christine: I think you're incredibly good at connecting with each client throughout the duration of the class and then you told me later on that you're actually naturally an introvert and so I was thinking how is it that you started off so shy and yet you're hooting and hollering at this very public place on the Oceanside Pier. How did you do that?

Heather: That's funny because once we start our class the whole rest of the world is just completely shut off from my mind and it's just me and the participants. It's funny because from time to time, I'll look around and go, Oh, wow, we are kind of in a fishbowl right now, but in the moment I don't even think of other people watching us. I guess I get into a different realm. 

Christine: So it's another one of these flow moments. Do you have  performance anxiety a little bit beforehand or maybe now you've done it for so long…

Heather: If it was a new group of people that I didn't work with, cause that happens from time to time, I'll get called in to do a class for maybe a church or a community where I don't know the participants and I've never met them before and I have to go in and give them a class. I do get anxiety before that, but when it's everybody that I've been working with for so long, they're like family. So I don't get anxiety, I just get excited. 

Christine: That's a much better way to approach things. Let's hear then about this journey to becoming an entrepreneur, because it is quite a long, neat story of how you got to this point of leading these beach boot camp fitness groups, that actually get about 20 25 people sometimes.

Heather: Sometimes, it's been dwindling a little bit, it's not the same anymore. There was a time when there was like, 20, 30 people, but now it's more of a smaller, closer knit group of people. But you never know, people pop in and pop out. People come from out of town. Tourists will call me, trying to supplement their fitness while they're on vacation and call me up. You just never know. I never know how big the class is gonna be. 

Christine: Oh, that's neat.You actually have people that are visiting Oceanside and they find you. What a neat way also to enjoy this. They've driven across country to be on the beach and then they get their work out in too. It's great. So tell us the whole story. 

Heather: Let's see. Where do I start? Do I start from the time I was in my 20s and I decided I wanted to be a fitness instructor? It was something that I aspired to because, I started getting into fitness pretty heavily in my 20s and I always surfed. Well, not always, but in from my early high school years is when I started surfing, and I hiked but I wasn't a gym rat until my 20s and for some reason I became interested in working out at the gym. None of my friends were doing it at the time. I don't know where it came from. Maybe watching my brothers as I was growing up in the gym, but something had encouraged me to go to the gym and start working out. It just became like a passion, like the group X. Because I wasn't sure what to do in the actual gym with all the equipment, but I knew when I went into the group exercise room, they would lead you through it. And I thought that was such a cool concept that you're in this room with a group of other people aspiring to get fit, and there was an instructor in the front that was coaching you. I liked that dynamic of a class setting and I thought someday I'd like to do that. I don't know if I could ever be in front of a group of people like that and have the courage to be standing up there but it was something that I wanted to try. It took me another 10 years before I actually did it and once my son was born I was like, okay that's it, I'm doing it.

Heather: So I got certified when he was just a baby and he's 24 now. Once I got certified, that was before the internet, you know, so you couldn't just go online and find places. I would literally get on the phone and call every gym in North County asking if I could be a teacher at their facility and it worked. I started teaching all different types of classes in different facilities from 24 hour fitness, LA fitness, all those kind of box gyms.

Christine: What are those classes like? Is it weight training or is it more like dynamic movement?

Heather: Back when I started, it was a lot of aerobics, you know, cause it's like old school, there was step aerobics.

Christine: Out of jazzercise? 

Heather: Yeah, totally. 

Christine: What year was that?

Heather: That was, let’s see, 98? well no, 90s is when I got into it, but 98 is when I started training to teach. When I first started taking classes, it was step aerobics and cardio blasts. They’d call it and you'd be doing different movements with your body, jumping around and pushups and stuff like that. Then Group X started developing quite a bit. There would be school classes and they even had kickboxing classes and they do this class called Piyo, at the gym I worked at. And it was kind of funny because I have always been fascinated by yoga, but I wasn’t into yoga during those years, but I was kind of intimidated by it. How could you get into those positions? 

Christine: When you're looking at the advanced sequences.

Heather: Yeah, but when I was an instructor, they said we need another Piyo instructor, which is Pilates and yoga. It's kind of a watered down version of Pilates. Both of those things, but in a group format. And so I remember I was working at one of those box gyms and they said, we're going to pay for you to go get certified so you can teach this. And I'm like, great. it was a two hour class. And after two hours I was certified to teach yoga and Pilates and they gave me the certification. And I'm like, No. I don't think so. Thank you so much, but I'm good on that. So I never ended up teaching it because I felt like a fraud. But, there's all different kinds of group formats now. You see Orange Theory and F45 and I love the the group aspect of it. That's always been intriguing to me.

Christine: I've never really liked gyms but the only way I think I could get into that, and I've gotten a little bit more into strength training, is to be with a group of people. You need that motivation. I think if you've never done strength training or weightlifting, you don't really know where to begin. You need a lot of form training. It's so important that you don't hurt yourself.

Heather: I'm a total form geek. Yes I just love form, like you could do a bicep curl and then you could do a bicep curl. There’s several different aspects to a bicep curl.

Christine: So you're working, you're asking for all of these different shifts and working at different gyms. How do you make that leap to start to create your own?

Heather: I got injured. I had a shoulder injury and ironically got injured throwing a football with my son and I didn't know how to throw. I was throwing like a girl, sorry if I offend anybody by saying that, but I didn't know how to properly throw a football. I was trying to practice with my son, a couple months of that I just completely jacked up my shoulder. I got to the point where I could not move my arm. I would literally have to use my opposite hand to pick up my arm to put it on a table. It was so messed up. 

Christine: And this is after having so much strength training knowledge and stuff. It really tells you, right? That there are ways that we can just mess ourselves up.

Heather: Absolutely. And just over doing things. Anyway, I couldn't do anything. I had to quit all my classes, had to go on a temporary leave. I had never been to a physical therapist until then in my life, I'd never had an injury. This physical therapist gave me a list of exercises to do that in my head, in my ego head, was like, this is the most ridiculous thing ever. You want me to lift a pound in this position? I thought it was ridiculous, but I was so irritated by the exercises that he gave me that I'm like, I'm going to do them and I'm going to show you that they don't work. I was such a brat about it. And so I did my physical therapy every day like he told me, the exact amount of reps.

Heather: And I'm like, this is so tough. Within two weeks, my injury was almost gone. He knew exactly what he was doing. I just had to strengthen the muscles around the injury and get it back so that the injury didn't keep perpetuating. Now I have a whole different idea about physical therapists. Happily, the only time I've ever had to go. But anyway, during that time, I did take more time off, even though it started feeling better after a couple weeks. I took more time to make sure it was properly healed. And during that time, the only thing that I could do was run. That was the only movement that didn't hurt, which was weird because I was swinging my arms, but it didn't hurt the shoulder. So I spent almost every day, at least a couple hours a day on the beach, just jogging and running when my kids were with a babysitter. I actually got a babysitter so I could go run. During those hours and all that alone time running on the beach near the pier. It just dawned on me, I should probably do some fitness by this beach. This beach is amazing. And I guess it started to develop there when I was running and, you know, when you're in that flow state of running, all kinds of ideas come to your head.

Christine: Running is the best. I don't do it enough anymore, but I feel like all my problems are resolved when I go for a run.

Heather: Absolutely. I don't run much either anymore, because if I have the time, I'd rather go to a yoga class. 

Christine: Yeah, right. I know. 

Heather: But I was employed by all these different gyms, so eventually I was going to go back to them. And when I went back, one of the classes that I was told to teach was a stroller class at the YMCA. And I'm like a stroller class?What do you do with that? They already know how to push a stroller. So I had to get creative again. I would take these ladies for a walk with their strollers and then we'd stop at different stations, and you probably know stroller strides? 

Christine: Yeah, I watched this right out of part of my eye for years and it's so fun. And I finally meet the inventor! 

Heather: Yeah, but I didn't even know about it. The YMCA had me teaching that class. Anyway, I taught those classes and it was kind of fun. Once I met those ladies, I realized they needed more. So I said, well, I've been thinking about this class I want to teach at the beach and do you guys want to come experiment with me. So I just invited these ladies to come to the beach one day. And we all had babies at the time. One of the women had asked her mother in law if she'd come watch the babies. We had this big playpen set up on the beach, the grandma was watching the babies, and I was doing this little mini, what then was one of the first boot camps I've ever done.

Heather: And then a therapist approached me after we were done. He said, what are you ladies doing? And I said, we're doing a fitness class. We're from the YMCA. And he's like, this is something that my clients would really benefit from them. They were postpartum and depressed women. They were in the military and they moved here from out of their hometown. They didn't know anybody. They had this baby, their husband's working, and they're just depressed and they go to see him. And I said, well, fitness would be a perfect thing for them to do. So I actually created a class for his clients at the pier, specifically to help these women that were going through this depression and didn't know people. I thought it would be a great opportunity for them to meet people and get fit and feel good about themselves. I made flyers and I gave them to him to put in his office and not one of those moms ever came.

Christine: Oh, you're kidding! 

Heather: You know, when you're down, you're down. And I couldn't go in there and encourage them and ask them to join me because it was confidential. But I did put the word out to the rest of the community. My class became really popular and I called it Mother to Mother Outreach. It was a really fun class. It was free to the community. People would come with their kids. It was every Thursday. And that kind of got the ball rolling on my classes. And then I thought, okay, well we're doing that on a Thursday. Let's meet on a Saturday. But then I started charging for the Saturday class. And some people came to that and then other people on the beach would see us. And then it just kept snowballing. Then I'm like, let me do a Tuesday and Thursday class and let me do a Saturday morning. I just kept adding classes to my schedule and people kept coming. It was really fun. One thing leads to another always with things like that. 

Christine: And you have an in house studio. Right? And then you have the place on the beach, obviously. Then during COVID, you started doing classes online. 

Heather: Exactly. 

Christine: So at this point, are all three still running?

Heather: Yeah, they are. I've had the studio for about 10 years now. And the Zoom classes are going strong still. I mean there's some people that are on there every day and there's some people that pop in from time to time and it's kind of fun. But it's always an option for the studio classes and I teach eight studio classes a week.

Christine: Great. We’ll, definitely put it in the show notes. Cameron Fitness. Let's move on to our surf session. We went out together about a month ago. And it was, had been a while for both of us. I had taken off some time for some personal reasons, but what I noticed when we got in the water was that you are such a strong paddler. And you had said you hadn't been out in the water. I'm not sure how it's going to go. You just charged out. 

Heather: Well, I guess many years of getting stuck in the impact zone will do that. You just gotta get out there as quickly as you can. 

Christine: And you were riding a nine foot long board that you can fit under your arm. I would love it if you could tell us a little bit about this board. Because I think this is the kind of board I've been dreaming about.

Heather: Well, my favorite is an Ellis board. And I've gone through two of them. I like nine foot boards. I like them to be kind of narrow. And I like them to have some performance. Meaning, they're not hard to turn. They're thinner. I'm not a super big expert on boards. But I know that that size just seems to work for me. I like to be able to turn without having to walk all the way to the back like a normal long board.

Christine: So you never want more volume or width when you're out there. 

Heather: I'm just out there having fun. I don't know a whole ton about boards. What that would feel like? 

Christine: Well, because people have been suggesting it as I still haven't gotten the longboard. I’m trying to finally save some money for it. But it's been suggested to get the biggest board with a lot of volume and everything. But... 

Heather: Well, it's easier for sure. It's more stable. You can paddle faster. You know, the only thing is, is if you have too big of a board, you can't duck dive it.

Christine: Mine's seven foot, I can't duck dive that thing anyway. To me, it seems like there's this balance. You've got to be able to handle your board. And part of handling your board is leaving your car and walking your board to the ocean. All of those things. I think if it's this big, huge board, and if you can't even handle it that well walking on the beach, it's going to be even more difficult out in the water.

Heather: That's a good point. 

Christine: But I’m tempted, every time, especially when I go to Terramar and I see everybody on these long boards, I really want a little bit more board. 

Heather: Well then you just need to get a more narrow board, so you can as you said, fit it under your arm.

Christine: Mine is a mid length. It's not a short board and it's not a long board. But good for learning. So I think I'm gonna go follow your lead and try this length out. 

Heather: Well, you can try my board if you want. 

Christine: Can you tell us a little bit about your history with surfing? When you started and any challenges in the early days?

Heather: I started when I was a sophomore in high school, and I had lived in Northern California for about two years prior, although I grew up in Orange County. 8th grade and 9th grade I moved up to Northern California. When I came down to live in Rancho Bernardo, is where we settled for high school, and that was before R. B. high school was built, so I went to Poway High. Anyway, I decided when I come back to Southern California I'm going to learn how to surf. I've lived in Southern California my whole life and I never surfed. I body boarded and body surfed, but it's time. So when I came down, I met some friends I said, hey, teach me how to surf. This one girl in particular, she was one of the only girls at my school that surfed because I lived in Poway, like Poway, Arby area. But there were a lot of surfers in that area. 

Christine: I think you and I were in high school about the same years. Is that right? I graduated in 90. 

Heather: 90, yeah. You too. 

Christine: Because I'm remembering, I went to Oceanside High and I only remember two girls, really, in my whole high school that were really surfers. It wasn't that big yet for girls.

Heather: Yeah, it was starting to come up, but it was definitely…the early days for girls. So this girl, she wasn't actually the nicest girl in the world, she didn't teach me how to surf, but I'm going to stick with her. She brought me to her house. I didn't even have a car, you know, and she brought me to her house and she's like, here, you can use this board. And I'm like, okay. She gave me the most jacked up board. Now that I know, there were so many dings on it. It was a weapon. It was a literal weapon like how many times I could have been sliced by that board, but I didn't even care. I'm like, that's it. I'll take it. I didn't have a wetsuit. So we drive out to the beach and she's like just go in and paddle out and get waves and I was like, okay. She takes off and leaves me there I had no idea what to do. People would be, guys mainly, would be coming out to surf and they'd be looking at me going look at this girl! So out of pity one of them would give me a little tip and then another one would give me a little tip. It took me almost a year to learn how to surf, sit on a shortboard. I just had no idea like where to sit, where to lay. And it took a good year just to get used to having a board underneath me. 

Christine: Well, good for you for sticking with it. I had this guy I was seen for a little bit and he was a surfer and same thing. He gave me this beat up board and I remember it was kind of hurricane season. Same thing, got into the water and he was like off with all his friends and I just had this giant board. I didn't know how to handle it. I think it was like a 10 foot big thing, like all waterlogged. I was just getting thumped. I was getting, you know, hit and I just, I got so frustrated with it, and then I didn't see the guy after that. I was like, this is not worth it. Not the surfing, not you either. 

Heather: That's funny. Yeah. I did start and I ended up meeting other friends that were a little nicer and cooler about helping me and, I did learn how to surf eventually and just kept trying. I lived in Arby's and when I did finally get my car, I would get up almost every morning before school and drive all the way to the beach before school on Del Dios Road, which was dirt, and you didn't know what the surf was gonna be like. You would kind of count on... Del Dios. 

Christine: Where is Del Dios? 

Heather: Del Dios is coming out of Escondido, by the Escondido Mall, and then it's like this back road that takes you to Del Mar. Now it's all paved and nice, but back in those days it was a total dirt road, like you're just flying through bumps and stuff. It was fun. 

Christine: So why, from Escondido, why Del Mar rather than Oceanside? Why would you go that route?

Heather: Um, it was just where we went. We used to go to 8th Street in Del Mar and it was like our little spot. There was a group of us that would go. And I just remember driving down that road and you wouldn't know what the surf was going to be like. 

Christine: It's kind of better that way, right? I think when you're learning because you just go.

Heather: Because you're excited to go and you don't even care. But it was funny because there would be this little signaling as you're driving to the beach. Other people would be coming back from the beach and you'd know they were surfers because they'd have their boards on the car and they'd give you the thumbs up or thumbs down, like it was kind of fun, like, Oh God, then you would be excited the whole way there knowing it was going to be a good day.

Heather: But then I didn't have a wetsuit and my parents weren't super supportive of me surfing, like they didn't realize how into it I was. So I would go and I would be freezing, it'd be the middle of winter and I would just be in my bikini. No, no wetsuit at all. But I didn't even care. I was like, I'm going. And I would have to have somebody help me start my car because I could not move my hands.

Heather: Oh, right. So I'd be like, Hey man, can you just grab my key and just please turn the key for me and just get the heat going. Thanks. And then I would yank it off. 

Christine: You're a hardcore Heather! 

Heather: Back in the day I was, now I'm like, it's cold. But yeah, it was fun. Just kept with it. It was pretty much the only thing I did for fitness for a long time.

Christine: So you started on a short board, but then did you move on to the longer board? 

Heather: I got into longboarding after my kids were born. Something happened with my fear level. After I had my kids, I was a little sketched out by big waves. I mean, I was never a big wave surfer anyway, but for some reason, I just felt like if something happens to me, my kids don't eat. 

Christine: Did you have an incident happen or anything trigger that?

Heather: I did have something happen after my daughter was born. My son was like five and my daughter was just born and it was in Hawaii. I went out to a place called Lonnie's on the North Shore of Oahu. It was a regular day and you know, you hear stories about how even if you're out there on a small, moderate day in Hawaii, all of a sudden, a big set can come, and you think, yeah, right, how big can it be if it's a small day? Well, I was out there, I was actually out there with my husband and my brother in law, and it was a moderate day, we were having a good time, and we were in the lineup.

Heather: All of a sudden we were in a major impact zone, like getting drilled. I don't know how my husband, I guess he saw it before me and my brother in law saw it. So he paddled out pretty far and my brother in law and I were just like getting drilled. We did, we talked about it later, but one wave would come down and just drill you so far down and hold you down for so long that you didn't know which way was up. I would hold on to my leash because I because whenever that happened in the past I would just grab my leash and follow my leash to my board and eventually my board would be on the surface, right? Well in this case the board was getting drilled too, so I didn't know which way was up, and it just came out of nowhere. When I came up to grab a sip of air, another one was right after it, and it was like taking me out. I remember thinking when I was under the water, like, if I go up one more time to try to get air and I get drilled again. I don't know that I'll be able to get back up. I just don't know that my body will be able to handle it. Luckily I came up and it was white water instead of a lip. So I knew when I saw that white water I was going to be okay.

Heather: And then it just kept pushing me back in and by the time I got to the shore my brother in law was in the same situation and, we were almost in tears. We like looked at each other and he's a really good surfer. We're just like, no words, we gave each other a hug and I went and grabbed my daughter. I was like, okay, I'm going to chill out for a while, you know?

Christine: Well, that makes sense. It's pretty scary. Yeah. These moments that just change your life and your perspective on a lot of things. I was also thinking about your shoulder injury too. They always say, sometimes there's that blessing in the injury, because that completely changed you. Then you had to run and you can see like all the possibilities of that bootcamp that you create. But we get humbled with these experiences that test us. I grew up swimming in the ocean. I did triathlons for a while, so I was also swimming in the winter without a wetsuit for a while when I was in college age and stuff. But I remember moving back to Oceanside, and I had been living in El Paso for a while and I didn't have that regularity with swimming. And, just like any day, I would just go out and swim out beyond the breakers. Only I got out there and then I realized, I don't have the same kind of conditioning and it took me for a moment. It wasn't like there were big waves or anything, but it's just that feeling of check yourself. You can't just swim out there and assume you're not going to get caught in a rip current or that, if you haven't been swimming regularly for eight years, it's not, worth it.

Heather: And then once your mind starts going there, like you panic and then your breath changes and your heart rate changes and then you're like.., 

Christine: Then you got to get on your yoga and then you're thinking of your kids. And it changes your behaviors from then forward. 

Christine: Because you teach strength training classes, and that's the main thing that you do, would you consider at this point that that is your main sport? Or do you think of strength training as more of like a means to an end where you just want to be ready to practice any sport or just ready for any kind of life situation? 

Heather: I guess I think of it as just bone density as I'm getting older and muscle definition keeps you healthy and keeps you lean. And it's empowering to feel strong, even when you're just doing something like changing your furniture around in your house, to be able to move things. If anybody needed you for something, you had the strength to do it. I guess it's just a way of life for me now. Whenever I'm strength training, I think, these muscles are going to help me hold that warrior pose longer. And these muscles are going to help me with my chaturanga. A lot of it is focused on that too. And then in yoga, I'm thinking, this flexibility is going to help me lift that weight better. So I just love how it makes my body feel.

Christine: This longevity piece is really important, right? They say that as women particularly, I think that there's been so much misconception that women don't want to bulk up and they don't want to eat so much protein. But it's a losing battle as we get older that we have to really consciously eat enough protein, just to maintain muscle. It's work. 

Heather: Yeah, it's it's hard to bulk up. You're not gonna go lift a couple weights and then bulk up. Although some people do have that body type and you have to be careful not to lift too much weight. Like a mesomorph body they would have to go lighter weight and higher repetition. Depending on what they want, but yeah, it’s hard to bulk up. Most people are not going to bulk up by doing my classes They have to work pretty hard at it. 

Christine: I've seen you in yoga practicing a lot and I'm always impressed by you because you are very strong and you're so flexible.

Heather: I don’t see myself that way. It's funny.

Christine: I feel like I'm probably stronger and I'm always working at trying to be flexible. Like I've never been able to do splits or any of those things that I'm always trying to work at it. Maybe I should work harder. It seems to me like you are quite flexible.

Heather: It's always been a challenge for me. I'm constantly working at it. I feel like I have a long way to go before I'm really flexible. Every day is different too. Some days you're like, wow, I can get into that split. Other days it's like, no way, I can't even think about getting that. And it just depends on how sore I am, how tight I am, how much I've been lifting, or how hydrated you are, what your nutrition's been like. How much sleep you've been getting, so it's all so connected. 

Christine: Yeah, actually, on that note, you said that you were a vegan for many years, and you said it messed you up. 

Heather: It did.

Christine: I was curious, if you could talk about that a little bit. 

Heather: It's funny, I feel bad that I said that it messed me up, because it didn't mess me up, I messed me up. I didn't do it properly, and I know a lot of people who are plant based 90s. And there weren't a lot of options for people like me. You could go to the grocery store and get pre packaged food, which I don't think is the healthiest. Do like a tofu scramble or whatever, but there weren't a lot of options like there are now. If you go to a restaurant, there's so many great vegan options. I started out real strong, my vegan diet, and I had the right macros, everything was... I measured everything and mixed, combined my foods properly to get protein. But then I got really busy and really lazy about it and I would grab a bagel and then I would grab a bowl of rice. I didn't do it right toward the end and I started getting really emaciated and didn't have the proper protein and nutrients that I needed to do for my lifestyle, for anybody's lifestyle. So it was really me just being like a lazy vegan and not doing it properly. I realized I had to start changing my diet. started eating fish and more vegetables and... 

Christine: You think it's easier to sustain by just bringing in back animal source protein?

Heather: For me, it is. And my body just likes animal protein. I respond better to it. Right. I try, every once in a while. I'll try to go vegan for a couple days, just because I know it's better for the environment and stuff, but when it comes down to it, my energy level just thrives off of animal protein.

Christine: Well, the sourcing is so challenging, right? But there are a lot of studies that show that when animals are raised, really, truly pasture raised, they're actually better for the environment. Because they're actually helping the soil to return to a prairie. They are fertilizing. They're not using all the water that a traditional feedlot, because it's the rainwater, basically that they're using. And this land actually was roamed by buffalo. And that's when the land was at its healthiest. It's a question then of money too, right? It's hard, it's expensive, but the conversations are so much about the environmental and what's better. But I tend to feel better too with animal protein. I mean, you get concerned about all of the ethical questions. It's so hard. There's so many aspects. 

Heather: When I was a vegan, I got so into the whole environmental thing and trying to be sustainable. I’m like, just want to crawl into a hole, but I might hurt the dirt, how far can you take it? And I didn't wear leather. I mean, I could get pretty extreme about things.

Christine: Well, let's move on to your passion project because you're working right now on a yoga certification, and I'd love to hear what's inspiring that. 

Heather: I don't know anymore. I talked to you about that and now I don't know what up my passion project is.

Christine: That's okay!

Heather: My daughter just moved out this week and I became a complete empty nester. A hundred percent empty nest. I feel like everything has flipped on its head in my life as far as what I want to do next. I don't know what it is. 

Christine: How does it feel? 

Heather: It feels very, very strange. It just happened so fast because my son moved out earlier in the year, and then my daughter. She lives in Santa Barbara now, and my husband travels all the time. He's in Mexico more than he's at home. Surfing, that's his passion. So it's kind of just me and the dogs. And yoga, and my classes, and... I know something's coming, like I can feel it in my bones, I had that feeling that I felt when I started Cameron Fitness, like something's coming and I'm really excited to find out what it is and honestly, I don't know what it is, but I would love to talk to you about it when I figure it out.

Christine: Okay. That's how these things are. I get all kinds of different ideas and you have to let things simmer. When the right one comes, you can sail away with it. 

Heather: I can feel it. That's good. 

Christine: Just one last question. How do you work through this process? What is your process to taking an idea and then actually making it into something? 

Heather: It's just a drive that takes over. This next project that comes along, which I know it's coming, I'm going to take better note on how it all comes together so I can answer that for you next time. Because up until now, everything I've ever done in my life is just been like a natural fluid flow toward it. And it's different every time because I've done a lot of different businesses in my life and they've all come about in different ways. Just like yoga, breath by breath, movement by movement. It's like every day, where am I driven to today? That didn't work. Move over here. Course correct. I think just to listen to your intuition and listen to that inner guidance. And if you really listen carefully and know that it's coming from a place where you're following your passion and you're trying to help other people and try to make the world a better place and all that good fluffy stuff. I think as long as you stay on that path, it's gonna work out no matter what, even if it doesn’t look the same as you thought it would look.

Christine: I think that's a perfect place to end. I'm super excited for you. Yeah, I can't wait to hear.

Heather: Yeah, awesome. I'm excited. Thank you so much for having me. 

Christine: Thanks Heather. Great talking with you.