We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Casey Samsel. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Casey below.
Casey, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
Way back in 2012-2013 I was a manager for a tanning salon. I worked my way up the ladder quickly and was making a sturdy $10.25 an hour. While I had about 10% of the autonomy that I do now, I was happy there. I was connecting with interesting people and was taken into their lives daily. The day that I quit my job at the tanning salon to become my own boss was the most terrifying decision and what felt like my biggest risk of all time. I was making minimum wage, had a paycheck, and NEEDED a paycheck to continue to get myself through college, pay rent, and well…survive. I’d also like to mention that I didn’t like college. It wasn’t stimulating and I had absolutely no passion to fulfill there. That was also scary. I was just working a job, to pay for college, just because my family didn’t deem me worthy of a good life if I didn’t go to college. In my head, if my next venture didn’t hold up, I knew my life would stop and I would be shamed for not pushing through.
After a very up and own childhood, all I wanted to do was find something to do that I loved and that gave me back exactly what I put into it. I had been competing for 2.5 years, already an IFBB Bikini Pro, and had truly found my calling. It was to teach women how to compete and succeed, win, and come out on top without taking away the things that they love to do, be, and eat, support them in keeping their relationships healthy, integrate superior mental health improvement strategies (because getting ready for a show CAN strip you of your personality and your happiness if you let it), and maintain overall optimal health and wellness while pushing their body to the extremes and learning so much about themselves. It was how I became very successful in Bikini bodybuilding in the years to come. With grace, balance, and tenacity I achieved many 1st place titles, an Arnold Classic – Bikini International 3rd place finish, and 4th place in the world in 2017.
I quit my job! I jumped. And I was a nervous wreck. Would I fail myself and ultimately fail my family? Would they think I am a low-life? How in the heck do I tell them that my intuition is calling me away from college and into ACTION?! After 2.5 years of college with no direction, just attendance, I left school. I had literally nothing supporting me. No job, no college, just a young girl looking and yearning for something to fulfill her heart, mind, and spirit.
The calling that I spoke of smacked me right in the face just a few weeks after severing ties with my old, unfulfilled, mentally stagnant self. The cut was SCARY. My true calling served me better than anything had in my life up to this point. Just by sharing my world with social media and my friends, my new title, “Coach Casey” really spread like wildfire and within months, I was coaching women from all over the United States and finally feeling like I had a purpose and that my work was my life! I did not know it then, but this calling was a gift. A gift that not only I can give to the women that allow me to be a part of their fitness journey, but a gift that gave back to me, again and again, keeping me fulfilled for years to come.
I ran my coaching business for 5 years by myself. When I had to continuously put women who really wanted my expertise, time, support, and mentorship on waitlists, I knew it was time to take what felt like another risk…hire more coaches.
Now we are a team of 7 spreading our word and mission daily. A team of 7 diverse and exclusively chosen representatives of what our brand and coaching are all about. Our full Fit Femme Project team is vast in education, experience, and lifestyle! There is not one rock we did not flip over in the creation of the Fit Femme Project Body, Mind, & Life Transformation team. We even Coach other Coaches with new perspectives and provide them with transformations and education that they can translate to their clients. Continuously investing in your life, career, and passions is multi-beneficial and a huge flex ♡
My dreams do not end here. Every single day I am working inside the Fit Femme Project, fulfilling my wildest goals for myself, my team, our clients, and beyond. I have invested over $100,000 in mentorships in the last 1 1/2 years, and have 10 years of experience with my own health and wellness journey, alongside 6 other courageous and devoted women who have made their own investments to perpetuate growth. We make these big moves together in order to continuously bring our client’s forever-growing mentors, guides, and coaches inside the Fit Femme Project so that client growth is truly endless.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am the very proud and grateful Owner & Founder of The Fit Femme Project and Owner & Coach of TEAM CASEY LLC since 2015.
- Certified Personal Trainer since 2015
- Fitness Nutrition Specialist since 2018
- 8 years of Women’s Fitness & Mindset Transformation mentoring and coaching experience
- 7 years experience in Bikini Bodybuilding & Coaching
- 10 years experience in Bikini Bodybuilding & Competing
- IFBB Bikini Pro since 2014
- Self Coached
- 4x Bikini Olympian
- Competed in 37 competitions
- Holds 4th place title for the 2017 Bikini Olympia
- Holds 3rd place title for the coveted 2018 Arnold Classic Bikini International
I am an Enneagram Type 8, known as “The Challenger”. Typically described as powerful, influential, self-confident, decisive, willful, intense, and direct. I am enthusiastic about pretty much everything in life while staying busy. I’m fun-loving, spontaneous, versatile, and easily amused. All of these characteristics and qualities make me one of the best friends you could ever have, a devoted coach and mentor, and a practical, authentic, fun-engineered business owner and person.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
ESCITALOPRAM & LEXAPRO…58% of the population knows what these are. I’m going to share with you how I made my depression medication my catalyst to a healthier, happier, and f*cking righteous life.
Rather than…a crutch.
I saw many psychologists over the course of my life for anger, depersonalization, derealization, and thoughts of suicide. Every single time within the first 10 minutes, I was -$300.00 with complete loss of dignity when told “we’re going to put you on medication to see if that does the trick”.
If I was writing this years ago, I would have banged my head against a wall or punched myself in the face just to feel something. Both I did frequently.
I felt more lost, embarrassed, helpless, and angry when I sought help. Years of lacking connection with people, myself, and the world around me came at me like a 100lb stress ball and I felt unfixable. I was no real benefit to the world due to what I called, “brain rot”.
Fast forward through years of vortexes, fake smiles, feeling inauthentic, and accepting that this was my fate…
After I got my self-harm tendencies under control, I thought I was doing “okay”. I became one of the top women athletes in bodybuilding praised for my independence and new ideas about dieting, and I built a business based on the MASSIVE desire, need, and demand from women all over the world to learn how to do what I do and how I do it. But the pressure to be everything to everyone led me back down my dark path.
Marriage showed its true colors and tanked. We caused each other so much trauma that we stopped communicating, forever…
I bought a house for everyone but myself. Instagram liked it though.
No sleep led to exhaustion and mental spiraling.
My health declined and I was broken down on a cellular level, inhibited from training and doing the things that made me happy.
My hair was falling out.
My body was rapidly changing from fit and happy to inflamed and unrecognizable.
I was in severe pain daily.
At this point, everyone in my life judged me (including my family), and said that I was distant and not the person I used to be – because they saw me hiding my pain, but I couldn’t hide it anymore. My face felt like a basset hound, my emotions were dead like Eeyore’s, and my heart was non-existent like the Tin-Man. I was empty, lost.
I didn’t see a way out. I didn’t want to be here. My body and my mind were in so much pain, scrambled, and I had so much neurological and physiological inflammation that I wasn’t aware I was even a real person anymore. But this time…I knew there was no coming back for me. I either wanted non-existence, contemplating who would take care of my cats once I was gone, or sitting in a mental institute to rot because I was still thinking about my family…but I didn’t care to get better anymore. I accepted that I was different, sad, flipped inside out, and gone. I was alive, but I was gone.
11 years of severe deep, dark depression in the making…the final spiral that was going to take me the f*ck out, and I was ready.
I lost all compassion for myself and for others. I had driven myself so far out of my reality that I didn’t care about a single thing except for my cats and even that was dwindling. When I realized that my love for my cats (who were my saviors a thousand times) was disappearing because I hated myself and my brain, my body, and my life so much…that is the ONE thing that made me realize I had one last inkling of hope of survival. Could I mentally and physically survive this? I didn’t want to…but I know that I had one more try left in me…so I sought out therapy one last time in the Winter of 2021.
My focus for therapy was myself. For the first time in a long time, I considered myself an option and began my work. I knew that I needed the strength to get back to me, so I could get back to everything that I love.
I spoke about my part in my marital issues, my family and childhood trauma, and my own personal victimization and imposter syndrome that kept me running down the same deep, dark channels time and time again. I walked the same brain and neural pathways for years and I knew nothing else. My work began there.
Mission: create new ways of thinking, new behaviors, and new habits so that I could create healthy channels in my brain that developed well-rounded and meaningful coping mechanisms, build structured boundaries, and continuously search for the light that I would eventually hold down the road for myself and hundreds of women everywhere on this planet.
There was weekly progress happening. I was understanding my tendencies, why they were there, why I did them, and how to cope with them and eliminate the heaviness they had on me. I began journalling regularly about my life and making room for more growth one day at a time.
I started to read more. Self-help and business reads became part of my daily regimen. My mind started building pretty pictures again, my creativity and passions began to grow, and I started feeling like a kid again.
But I wasn’t out of the woods yet…
My marriage was still disconnected and lost except this time…it was because I have grown so much with a person who was unwilling to grow with me. Once I had enough self-love to accept that I cannot change this person, nor would I want to…I began to find peace in what I truly needed to continue to fulfill my life. That truth was me. I needed more me.
I continued through the uncomfortable “ick” that was my traumas and behaviors conditioned through childhood, my close relationships, and my environment for the last 32 years. I continuously educated myself on the brain and depression, neural inflammation, central nervous system cleansing, and resetting, AND when I understood more, my body started communicating with me more.
I listened to my body, I rested, I ate well, and I moved my body. I felt like I was starting from ground zero after 9 years of progression. I was put on my f*cking ass for a reason and it was to relearn and learn more about what it takes and how to rebuild my entire physicality and mind up from the TRUE bottom.
Here is the part that finally pushed me…
I had grown so much, little by little in such a short amount of time because I just made the decision to start. That was all that I did. That was all I had the love and energy for. I just started…that’s it.
But baby, I grew. I grew into loving myself so much more. I wasn’t angry anymore. I wasn’t angry at my body, I wasn’t angry at myself, and I blamed no one for my shortcomings. I didn’t even blame myself, because I had the tools and resources THIS ENTIRE TIME to start digging and excavating bad growth and replanting new seeds of self-love, light, and trust…and I watered them daily. It was important to me now to show up and practice what I have taught myself so I could continue to make progress on my mental health and get back to running my business and creating the badass team of women we have today inside the Fit Femme Project.
My growth eventually came to a halt. I didn’t know this then, but the environment I was in physically had topped me out mentally.
After 3 months of rapid expansion of my heart, soul, and mind…I told my therapist that I felt like I wasn’t done yet…that I didn’t know what to do.
Ask for a divorce? Yes, eventually…but I wasn’t ready yet. This was the highlight of my current anxieties outside of storms, not locking the door or turning the stove off, caring what people thought, the quickly scaled-up success the Fit Femme Project was having, and being unnecessarily protective of my cats.
BOOM. Escitalopram.
I committed to a serotonin uptake inhibitor. I knew I needed help. I had some big decisions to make, but I didn’t want to make them without developing a clear thought process. With my current level of anxiety, while still healing and growing, I was very much considering divorce and I didn’t want to run from my feelings as I had in the past, because this person was very important to me even though he didn’t feel like my husband.
In about 3 weeks, the typical results of Escitalopram started changing my brain chemistry one day at a time. This allowed me to feel real, it brought me to planet earth after my commitment to just accept that I was different and wouldn’t ever feel like I was real. I was shocked…but also enlightened. I was thinking clearly and I wasn’t reactive. I could see better, the reality that I was in. And it was just what I wanted in order to continue my work.
Escitalopram put me in a headspace where I could be present and further evolve my mind, habits, and behaviors and take REAL note of them. Believe that they’re real, that they’re here to stay, and best of all ENJOY them! I was rebuilding my life stronger and healthier and I was SO MOTIVATED AND EXCITED for the first time in years.
(And trust me, I stopped and asked myself many times…is this f*cking real? No way that I have this much positive energy and desire to be alive.)
I poured the intention to grow, evolve, and learn into every single thing that I did from there forward. I wanted my time with medication to be limited and short-lived. My work started on week 3 and within 5 months I dedicated myself to myself and continued to rewire my brain with new thinking, creating healthy pathways, improving sleep, and structuring my self-care to match (bodywork, education/reading, writing, and mani-f*cking-festing my new life).
Sometimes it was hard to believe I could have everything I wanted, but I did it anyway – no matter how stupid I felt at the time…I can sit here today and tell you that everything I always wanted is present in my life today. Every single thing. Once I got out of my own way and poured into myself…I became the growth and the grower, watering what was for me and what I wanted for myself and letting the stuff that didn’t fuel my fire, die.
Change is hard. But do it anyway, because what else is there? Growth is hard, but do it anyway…because what else is there? Facing your own demons is f*cking scary…but do it anyways…because you will defeat those demons and feel safe one day with yourself…and because…what else is there!?
My daily habits became my behaviors. My behaviors became my happiness. My happiness became my most important goal and priority and now anything that is scary and in the way of my happiness is properly sorted through, defeated, and loved for its purpose in my life, and let go to make room for the things that I want.
My next goal was to come off of Escitalopram and utilize my habits and behaviors to continue to support my happiness in a world without medication. Without PRODFOUNDLY investing my utmost intentions to build consistent coping, decision-making, and self-care habits…while on depression medication I would not be able to come off of the medication until I did.
That was my promise to myself and to those I love.
It has been 3 months since removing my catalyst (Escitalopram). I could say that I wish I could have started it sooner, years ago…but I know that I wasn’t prepared for it then. My destiny with this medication would have been shifted so differently. I could have ended my suffering years ago…but I wouldn’t have taken as much ownership as I have in the few months that I was taking it. I would have relied on it as a crutch instead of using it as a tool and resource to get me to where I am now.
I am doing what I love again daily! But with all of my newly integrated happiness generators! Reading or journalling, working out and making progress NOT pain, caring for myself, and expressing all of my empathy and compassion that I have obtained for myself through my struggles to those who need it.
My life’s journey of emotional and physical pain, triumph, wins and losses, trial and error, and darkness…have led me to the most exciting journey of my entire existence thus far…
“Alex, I’ll take “The Most Profound Mind & Body Transformation Experience Alive Today” for 800.”
The Fit Femme Project and all of the relationships I have built with it. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for the Fit Femme Project that I wouldn’t do for myself. If I grow, it grows. If I educate myself, it learns what I learn. If I show up daily for myself, women all over the world see that through the pain and suffering I showed up, and they show up for themselves. The Fit Femme Project is my infinity and it is surely infinite in authenticity and development of mind-body connection and construction of powerful women all over the world.
It is my joy and my life’s story creation. It is what divine timing and the universe offered me as an opportunity and I took it.
The Fit Femme Project had come to life in the midst of the fire and rose through the ashes of my mental and physical demise. It is a resilient being all it’s own. It is the best thing to enter this universe since sliced bread and it has been growing and expanding ever since its birth. It is a business cocktail of my experiences with dieting and nutrition, my mental health rollercoaster, my journey back to good health, my shadow work, and my self-love expansion.
It is an explosion of growth emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically for every woman that it calls forward. That is all that I could have ever wanted in this lifetime. Everything up to this point was an ingredient in creating and founding the Fit Femme Project. It is everything I was, am, and will be all laid out in front of me.
Every ounce of darkness and suffering was worth it; not one gram of pain or success has gone wasted in building its foundation.
That is why I am one of the most positively impactful people that I know. I know my divine purpose and I refuse to sleep on it. I am here now to tell my stories…and I am not scared to share with you all of my hardships, my lows, and my times of dying…for they have led me to hold such a big bright light for women everywhere that want to find their purpose, enhance their health and wellbeing, and allow all of their inner hard work to glow brightly on the outside.
When everything is fit (body, spirit, mind) you become unstoppable. When you know what gives you the future you want and you know the unique thought processes, methods, tools, and resources that you need to make your dreams come to life and your vision a reality…you empower yourself to take on every big challenge with a smile and celebrate your losses just as much as you bask in your wins…because you now know that everything happens for a reason and unlocking a new level of badassery is on the horizon.
I just want to let you all know that my health is on the up and up. My love for myself is at an all-time high and I am more in tune with myself than ever before. I have discovered the true type of friendship I and my ex-husband have and we’re joining forces for a new Airbnb business venture. I am the strongest and most fearless I have ever been and with all this continuous and virtuous shadow work, I continue to dig through. I have found the person this particular lifetime who I can call my “Twin Flame”, whom I feel I have known hundreds of years. And we get to take on our own personal shadow work together, always meeting in the middle for love, support, safety, and encouragement. My adventure is just beginning and I’m taking you all with me.
The Big-Picture Take Home: Take action in your life today, you never know what is waiting on the other side.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
The Four Agreements Series – Don Miguel Ruiz & DMR Jr.
Think Like a Monk – Jay Shetty
The War of Art – Steven Pressfield
Atomic Habits – James Clear
Divine Feminine Energy – Angela Grace
I Am She – Cosmic Byron
The Coaching Habit – Michael Bungay Stanier
The Wisdom of the Enneagram – Don Richard Riso
You Are Here – Thich Naht Hanh
Contact Info:
- Website: www.fitfemmeproject.com
- Instagram: @casey.samsel and @thefitfemmproject
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/fitfemmeprojectfitnesscoaching
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseysamsel