Today we’d like to introduce you to Maddie Bigert.
Hi Maddie, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
To start, I’ve always been a person who enjoys sharing her experiences, feelings, and opinions with others. I’ve pretty much always been an open book. However, I never thought that I would begin posting my life on the internet for others to see.
Growing up, I followed so many different beauty and lifestyle influencers and had always hoped that I could one day be them. I would even do my makeup in the mirror and pretend I was filming a YouTube video or download different apps on my iPod to create music videos. I had a very wide imagination, much like many other children in the early 2000s with the start of the social media era did. But my story really started in middle school after 6th grade…
I grew up as a heavier little girl who LOVED food. I mean who doesn’t, right?!? Although I definitely took it a bit too far… Then one day in the summer after 6th grade, I became aware of how unhappy I was in my own body. So, I decided to make a change. I began watching what I ate and implementing some light exercise and saw changes quickly. By the end of the summer, I had lost 20 pounds and felt like a completely different person. It wasn’t necessarily about the weight, but I just felt more confident in my own skin.
Fast forward about 4 years, and now it’s the summer after 10th grade. I had lost another 40 pounds throughout that span of time, mainly with implementing healthier habits and really making health my lifestyle. Although, the biggest change really started at this time. In March of that year, I came across a fitness influencer, Kelly Yager, who I really owe a lot of credit to. I discovered and fell in love with strength training because of her. I purchased her first workout guide and participated in an 8-week health and fitness challenge, all about transforming your mind and your body for the better. After those 8 weeks, I knew that I had truly found what I loved doing.
March 2020 (just as it did for many others) brought along huge changes for me. I ended my dancing career of 14 years, was doing high school online, and finally unearthed my passion–nutrition, fitness, and living a healthy, balanced lifestyle. I began creating healthy recipes–cooking, baking, retesting them over and over, photographing them, and in the end, writing an entire cookbook named “Eat With Bliss” full of over 100 nutritious and easy breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, and dessert recipes. Around the same time that I finished my cookbook, I decided I wanted to share my passion for food and fitness with others. So, that July I started an Instagram account, @maddiejeanbigert, where I began posting some of my recipes and workouts that I created and selling my cookbook. From there, it was slow, but I stuck to it because it was never about how many followers I had or how many likes my posts got. If I inspired or helped just one person, I had achieved my goal and was happy. I continued my account and passion by creating a second cookbook (titled “Eat With Happiness”), my own daily workouts, more recipes, and shared it all along the way. Additionally, I began to post about my travels and everyday life, displaying how I like to find balance amongst it all. My Instagram account still may not be the largest out there, but I have almost hit 5K followers on my Pinterest account and am pretty much on every social media out there; just determined to continue to share my passion with others in the hopes that I can inspire people to move their bodies in a way that they enjoy, eat to fuel their body and soul, and live their best lives because we are all only given one life to live… so we need to make the most of it.
After 11 of years of working towards becoming an elementary school teacher, I completely shifted my career goal to becoming a registered dietitian, personal trainer, and health coach and will continue to share my journey with anyone who wants to follow it along the way. This fall, I will begin at The Ohio State University to pursue my bachelor’s in human nutrition with a focus in dietetics. In addition, I am currently working on attaining my personal training certificate. While it is a huge change for me to move from a smaller rural town in Pennsylvania to the vast city of Columbus, I could not be more exhilarated to continue pursuing my goals and living the life that I had always dreamed of.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, it has most definitely not always been a smooth road. Going through a health, fitness, and weight-loss journey is one of the most underrated things out there. So much of social media is people’s “highlight reels,” which I definitely share a lot of. But I have also made it a point to share my struggles too, because whether we post about it or not, life is hard, and we all go through difficult times. I could write novels on my struggles, but I’ll try to keep it short and sweet here…
First, on the health and weight-loss journey side of things, I struggled with body image issues. I compared myself to other girls on social media, wishing I had a body like theirs. But as I forged along through my own journey, I began to realize that I would never have a “body like theirs” because everyone’s bodies are different. No one is meant to look the same. By coming to this realization, I was actually able to start loving myself and my body for who and what it was, and instead of looking at other girls and comparing myself, I solely focused on just lifting one another up.
Additionally, in this aspect of my life, I definitely struggled with almost sliding into eating disorder territory. I won’t go too into depth so as to not trigger anyone, but I tried all of the restrictive diets out there, under ate, and at one point had lost too much weight–all making me develop a really unhealthy mindset around food. Luckily, as I sit here writing this, I have just gotten back from vacation in San Diego and can truly say that I have never felt so free around food. My mindset has completely shifted, and I feel the best I ever have. I primarily eat to fuel my body with nutritious foods that I genuinely enjoy, but I can also live my life and eat all of the yummy soul foods that are so important for living a balanced lifestyle.
Lastly, one of the biggest struggles along the way has been my mental health. Mental health is something that I don’t think is discussed or regularized enough. The stigma around it needs to be broken because one’s mental health is just as, if not more important, than their physical health. I still struggle with anxiety and OCD to this day, making everything in my journey just that much harder, and I’m not afraid to share it. I think the more that we all normalize the fact that mental health struggles are so much more common than we realize, the more we can all relate to one another and make the world a safer, less judgmental place.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a social media creator who shares her journey through life. I mainly create content surrounding my favorite recipes, daily workouts, and living a balanced lifestyle. Additionally, I currently work with two different companies, Coffee Over Cardio and Svelte Belle, where I share my love for their products and have discount codes that my followers can use to discover their love for them as well. Both companies surround two things that are very close to my heart–coffee and activewear haha!
It’s difficult to choose just one thing, but I am probably most proud of the following that I have gained on my Pinterest. Sitting at almost 5,000 followers, I receive daily messages from so many people about how much I am inspiring and helping them to eat better, workout, and/or live a happier, more balanced life–which is my ultimate goal being on social media. With each and every comment or message I receive (on Pinterest or any of my social media platforms), I personally respond to them, and they truly make my day. Every single one reminds me of my true purpose and keeps me grounded and passionate about creating more content.
Similarly, I think that is what sets me apart from others. I make almost no money doing what I do, and I’m not ashamed to admit it–I think that in itself displays how I am different from others. I have continued to post and share my life, build my online presence, and work with smaller companies for over 2 years now, despite barely gaining anything monetary from it. And that’s just it–I don’t care about how much I make “numbers” wise. It has been and always will be ONLY about the people that I help or inspire along the way.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
I think the only thing I have yet to share is cliche but needs to be said… Stop caring what others think about you. I know that you probably hear people say this all the time (and it is easier said than done), but once you truly stop caring, you are able to be your most authentic self and transform your life for the better.
The day that I created my health and fitness Instagram account is a day that I will never forget because it marks my first step into only caring what I think about myself. I stopped caring what the people at school would think about me or what I posted because I wanted to post it, and it made me happy. The only reason that you will ever get negative feedback is because people are insecure about themselves, and once you realize that, you will become the most secure person you ever have been. So, whatever it may be, whatever you’re holding yourself back from because you’re worried about what someone else may think, just go do it. Right now. Stop making excuses. Stop holding yourself back. I promise you and your future self will be so much better for it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://msha.ke/maddiejean/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maddiejeanbigert/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/maddiebigert
- Other: https://www.pinterest.com/maddiejeanbigert/?invite_code=79bbfe12d8814c35886db68f19a625ee&sender=560416884789397126
