Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sonia Spil. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Sonia, thanks for joining us today. Covid has brought about so many changes – has your business model changed?

I was in the health and fitness industry for 4 years leading up to covid. I spent 6-7 days in a group fitness setting working with clients who would start out strong and see a good 5-10 lb. loss, and then suddenly stall. As a trainer, there was only so much I could do. I was with these clients maybe 3-5 hours a week, and they were in charge of the other 160ish hours of their week.

A lot of the folks I would see were working hard, stress filled jobs, or at home with young kids trying to manage soccer, dance, homework and dinner. Most Americans have high levels of stress, due to our busy is better mentality. How much can we fit in a day, how quick can we get one thing done so we can hurry up and do another thing.

This cortisol driven cycle can lead to some very successful people….but it can also take a serious toll on your health and hormones.

2020 itself added a layer of stress, so I am in no means saying that covid reduced stress, but it certainly slowed us down. It slowed us down from all the outside stressors that we had become adapted to. No more sitting in traffic with long commutes, rushing to after-school event, ect. Everything SLOWED down.

One thing I began to notice was my clients were having MORE success! They were sleeping better, recovering better, and losing weight at a much faster rate. Once I could see this happening I wanted to dive more into how stress and this busy is better lifestyle could be causing us to become overweight and unhealthy.

I began working more in depth with clients tracking stress, food, water intake, and movement. Moving to an online space gave me the opportunity to really see a clients week laid out in front of my eyes and help them navigate each and every obstacle from the previous week and to set them up for more success in the following week.

This led to not just weight loss, but overall health. Clients were coming off of their blood pressure medication, having better sex drives, feeling younger. As a coach, this is what sets my soul on fire.

Become an online coach has also helped me as a single mom, create a job where I can make massive impact and still make it school pick up on time. I gave up my 60 ours a week at the gym, plus commute time and I’m not looking back!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a functional health coach who lives in Seattle, WA but serves clients all over the world. I help clients with everything from sever digestive issues, to PCOS, to weight loss resistance. You name it, I have probably work with a client and helped them through it.

I get a lot of questions from folks asking “What is a functional health coach? How is it different then a regular coach?”
Well, a FHC is someone who has extensive training in the realm of functional medicine. We are trained to look deeper at things like hormones, immune function, and typically have more attention on biofeedback markers like hear-rate, sex drive, cycle length, hair loss ect.

Each client that is onboarded with me goes through a full intake where we figure out which bodily systems are affecting them the most, what daily setbacks they have, what stressors or burdens they are caring, and last but not least, we look at lab work. Letting go of “normal” and striving for “optimal” labs is my goal with all of my clients. “How can this person feel their very best?” is the question I ask myself each time I start developing a program for my clients.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Trying to put into words all of the things I had to “unlearn” would be hard. We are surrounded by constantly advertising about this diet, this new workout, the new supplement ect. Growing up in America, I have been surrounded by false information about hormones since I was a young girl. So you can imagine the amount of information I had to unlearn to start to step outside of the box, and work toward healing people. People who come to me have normally already tried multiple diets, supplements, and been plenty of different gyms, and yet they are STILL stuck. Which means…stepping outside.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

I have a platform where I communicate with clients weekly. Each client has a biofeedback tracker where all of their weekly information is logged. Sort of like a daily diary of food, stress, water, mood, digestion, ect. This gives me the ability to see everything on a macro level, and macro adjustments as needed for that individual client. Verse just saying “did this client lose weight?” Do I need to lower calories and up cardio?”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://integrated-muscle.com/bio/
• Instagram: @soniaspil

Image Credits
Jen Speer