Overcoming Obstacles and Loving Your Body - with Gym Owner, Author, and Personal Trainer Vanessa Bogenholm

### [00:00:00] Guest Quote

[00:00:00] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
So I go there and pick up a pair of shoes, tan and brown Nike's. I can tell you what they are. And the next morning I make this big plan.

So I decide if I'm such a hard worker that I can save enough money to buy a house. Why can't I run and not just 23 steps, but 24? So I turn around and go run. And I'm thrilled because that means I ran farther than I planned and I sit down rest for a minute and then run back home.

### [00:00:37] Episode Intro

[00:00:37] **Kevin Chang:**
Hello and welcome to the RaceMob podcast. This is episode number 64. I'm Kevin entrepreneur technology and fitness nerd. And I'm joined by the head coach of RaceMob and master motivator, the incomparable Bertrand Newson.

What can we say about Vanessa, this entrepreneurial bad-ass and bay area legend is here to tell it how it is. Her incredible introduction into running is quite literally the stuff that movies are made out of an overweight, an overworked 13 year old Vanessa decided to change her life and ended up losing over 60 pounds.

### [00:00:52] Guest Introduction

[00:01:14] **Kevin Chang:**
And then just two years later, competing in and then winning a marathon. This was before most races even had female entrance. The story highlights, the hard work and dedication that Vanessa just exudes, even though an Achilles injury derailed her running career, it didn't stop her from helping people as one of the most sought after personal trainers on the planet.

Vanessa has a long client list. And so many success stories that she's actually in the middle of publishing a book. After taking years away from the sport, she's back to dominating these long distance runs. And she has so many tips for athletes nuggets, for those people looking to lose weight and tidbits for those looking for some extra motivation.

Heck this driven entrepreneur even purchased a boxing gym during the middle of the pandemic. But she's the most proud of the charitable organization that she's founded that helps every single foster kid in Santa Clara. All the show notes can be found online at RaceMob dot com slash podcast and without further ado here's our conversation.

### [00:02:20] Start of the Conversation

[00:02:20] **Bertrand Newson:**
Hello, RaceMob family. We are in for real treat today. Coach Vanessa fitness, trailblazer, avid runner professional personal trainer business owner, gym, private studio, Las Vegas, California has a extensive, extensive running shoe collection. And as an adolescent, as a teenager finished her very first marathon and in that summer lost over 60 pounds and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Welcome coach Vanessa!

[00:02:54] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
Thanks guys. It's really great to be here.

[00:02:58] **Kevin Chang:**
Yeah. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. I mean the, the story is incredible. We want to dive right into it. Talk to us about growing up. I mean, I know that you have an incredible.

### [00:03:07] Vanessa's Origin Story

[00:03:07] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
So I grew up in Santa Maria, small town. My parents were awful. They couldn't keep a job. So I lived in a single wide mobile home and was a very fat child and picked on for it.

[00:03:21] **Kevin Chang:**
Hmm.

[00:03:22] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
So I grew up in a town. It was basketball town. Everybody wanted to play basketball. My mother hoped I would fit in. So I went to this camp to play basketball.

And this really nice coach said to me when I couldn't jump. When I was the slowest runner, when I shot granny goose style, literally, Vanessa, you probably want to get fit before school starts. Now, this is 1980 and my hero, even though it was a fat child, was Frank Shorter.

So I go to the library. I get every book on running I can, I'm already working full time. I'm an assistant manager of a boot store.

[00:04:00] **Kevin Chang:**
Wow.

[00:04:01] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
And the owner also owned a Footlocker and all the community college writers work there. So I go there and pick up a pair of shoes, tan and brown Nike's. I can tell you what they are. And the next morning I make this big plan.

I'm going to go out and run. I read these books all night. I look at what strike training is. I go out my front door and I run 23 steps and I die. I'm 200 pounds. I'm asthmatic. I have severe allergies, never exercise a day in my life. And I sit on the corner and I cry because I realized what a loser I really am. And I quit everything. And I just, I'm just gonna go home.

So I start to walk home. This is right before I turned 14. I just bought my parents a real house. We've moved out of the mobile home two weeks before and I walking up to a home that I've just purchased for my parents.

[00:04:59] **Kevin Chang:**
Wow. 13?

[00:05:01] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
Yeah. So it's. Craziest ridiculous stuff.

So I decide if I'm such a hard worker that I can save enough money to buy a house. Why can't I run and not just 23 steps, but 24. So I turn around and go run. And I'm thrilled because that means I ran farther than I planned and I sit down rest for a minute and then run back home.

My mother's leaving for work. And I said, what are you doing outside five 30 in the morning when she's leaving for work. And I told her, leave me alone. This was my own personal thing.

Within, I'd say a month I am running six to seven miles continuously within two months, I'm running this 11 mile. Around Santa Maria every day. And I ran my first race, which was that 10 mile road race.

So that's my running history. And I went to high school. I'm now 135, 140 pounds and grew four inches tall. And I'm an athlete. Now the funniest part about this Santa Maria was 22,000 Peele. So anytime that he was running around town, people would know, right?

So the cross country coach walks up to me and says, Hey, you must be coming out for my team. And I said, I don't know what cross country is. I'm marathon training. Now.

[00:06:25] **Bertrand Newson:**
Hmm.

[00:06:26] **Kevin Chang:**
Wow.

[00:06:26] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
I can't even imagine what this coach thought. And he said, Well, we run these three mile runs through the park and I go, what a waste of time. I mean, it just didn't strike me as something that would be great. And then I tell him I work full time, so I can't do that.

And he says, I see you around all the time. You don't have to come to practice to show up on Wednesdays when we have meets. And that's what I did. So I showed up on Wednesdays. I mean, you know what a cross-country race looks, people are running. It's crazy. I didn't know what this was. And I was like, they're all bumping into each other.

I'll just run in front of them. It just makes sense to me.

[00:07:09] **Kevin Chang:**
Okay.

[00:07:10] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
Just, it was the dumbest idea ever, but, you know obviously it worked out.

[00:07:18] **Bertrand Newson:**
many years did you run cross country coach?

[00:07:20] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
So I ran cross country. I have lots of cross country kids that run at schools, local schools. I had such disrespect for it because it was nowhere at the level I was.

I was running 80 to 100 miles a week as a 14 and 15 year old. And so I would run and I'd go to work. So I had to finish by five o'clock because I had to get to work by five 30. You know, it was just the way my life was.

And so I run, I ran and let me think. My junior year I won my state division. We were like division three. And so I won that and it was, you know, and it was like that the coaches now talk to you. And I remember the Cal state Fullerton coach said, didn't you just want a marathon?

And he was looking at me like, who's this kid. And because back then we did not know how to turn. I completely popped my Achilles tendon off my calf in my senior year and a cross country race. And it was surgically. So that ended my running career as a kid. And I did not run again for 30 something years.

So if you ever pop your Kili off your calf, it literally rolls down in your leg and they pull it back up and stitch it back to your calf. And most people don't recover very well. If at all, I think it took me a minimum seven or eight year to walk without a load.

And so never really thought I would run like I do now. So pretty lucky.

### [00:08:52] What's the Lure in Running?

[00:08:52] **Bertrand Newson:**
And you do run this. This is well chronicled. And not just casually, still competitively placing routinely in your age group. So what is it about running that really speaks to you? Coach Minnesota? That's kind of a broad open-ended question. But clearly it resonates with you on some things.

[00:09:12] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
And I'm going to go back to this weekend. So I ran a 5k on the track and you want to talk about being in a fishbowl with a couple of thousand people screaming at you. It was the weirdest experience, and I haven't had a track meet since I was in high school. And, you know, I can click my first mile and 6 59, I mean, wow.

Right. And some guy that I didn't know, but he knew me from Strava was screaming at me after he finished his race. Cause the guys laughed the women and he was like, she's 16 seconds ahead of you. And he's like screaming at me and I'm like, who was this guy? Right. You know? And then I win the race and I'm ready to puke and I'm laughing.

[00:09:53] **Bertrand Newson:**
Hmm.

[00:09:54] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
And he walks up and he goes, I'm so-and-so I follow you on Strava. And I'm laughing my head off when I says, this is what running is. It's pushing yourself past your capability and then somebody helping you. I mean, that was a beautiful moment. So there you go.

### [00:10:09] A Woman on the Run

[00:10:09] **Kevin Chang:**
Before we got on air. You, you talked a little bit. Marathon training, even as a teenager being one
of the, you know, and those were very, very early days, obviously we're talking about you know, they're not a lot of female runners during that time, especially not a lot of female runners doing the marathon.

So, I mean, talk to us a little bit about, like, I get a little bit of the picture, like the grit the grit needed to yeah. To do this marathon training and stuff, but yeah.

[00:10:34] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
Little other part of story. So I'm a stupid kid before the internet and I get these books and Frank, shorter's my hero. So I write them a letter and another letter and another letter I am running. I'm following what you do or, I mean, I'm certainly run a hundred miles a week cause we don't know any better.

And he writes me back and says, great job and sends me an autographed photo, right? From his 1972 Olympics. So it's fantastic. It's actually still in my studio here in San Jose. Got it. Since I was a kid. And years and years go by and I'm at an event and I walk up to him and I said, hi, Mr. Shorter, I'm Vanessa. He goes freaking heck.

[00:11:16] **Bertrand Newson:**
Wow.

[00:11:16] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
And it's such a moment. And he hugs me and I'm like, how do you know who I am? And he goes, you look the same. You sent me a picture of yourself. And I go at a race in a turquoise singlet. And it was like such a funny moment.

But I think. We just didn't have any clue how to train when Frank and these guys talk, they just ran a lot. I mean, if you read the bill Rogers book, he just ran out on the lake and read as fast as he could. And they didn't ever slow down and no taper, you know, that's what we did.

And women's bodies are different, but no one knew that, but the hips thing, or growing and no, we didn't know that. That's why we got, that's why they got hurt.

### [00:11:59] Marathoning

[00:11:59] **Kevin Chang:**
Okay. It talks to us about the marathon. So why a marathon distance or was it just to go? Yeah.

[00:12:07] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
so, so back then, there was no five Ks, 10, 10 Ks and a half now. So let's think about this as a runner, you did one of three things, the 100, the mile or the marathon, not a sprinter. I couldn't imagine doing the mile. And so that's what was left for someone who was a grinder. Right. So you ran a marathon.

And there was an occasional 10 miles or something, but there's not like there is now. That's not them like that. Yeah. That's why.

[00:12:36] **Kevin Chang:**
I mean, talk to us about the first marathon or first couple of marathon. Yeah.

[00:12:40] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
The first marathon I go down to the LA area and, you know, it's the first one. I have no clue what I'm doing. I don't have any friends there. I pick up my number and I'm looking at the sides and it says, you know, 7 45, 8 o'clock.

And I'm like, we're all starting:at eight. I'm like, like lost. And this guy says, how fast are you going to run a mile? And I go eight, 15. And he goes, you stand here. Now, all these guys were running up and down the side, jumping up and down. I didn't know why people would put all that energy out before running 26.2 miles?

[00:13:18] **Kevin Chang:**
Yeah.

[00:13:18] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
I'm baffled. And there's no women, right.

[00:13:22] **Kevin Chang:**
Wow.

[00:13:23] **Bertrand Newson:**
Oh, wow.

[00:13:25] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
So we take off the gun goes off and I'm running. Now we have no GPS watches. There's, there's nothing guys. And I completely hallucinate at mile 20 back then somebody would tell you if you are a front runner, what number you are.

I go to this water station and this guy says six. And I said, Where are the six ma how can we make the six mile? There's no way we're at the six mile and I'm losing it. And this older man says, no, honey, you're the sixth one.

[00:13:57] **Kevin Chang:**
Wow.

[00:13:58] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. I'm finished. I'm over. He goes, no, I'll run with you and I'll help you finish. So I run and I finish and pass out, end up in the paramedics area with an IV.

And so chafed, you will never, ever. And my mother is losing it. She's never seen someone pass out from exercise. You know, I've never came from an athletic Fallon who knows what the heck's happening. And the guy comes to the organizer of the race and he says, is she okay? Cause she's, you know, the 18 and under winder, can she come to the stage you know, that kind of thing. And I'm like, wow. And had no clue what I was doing.

[00:14:41] **Kevin Chang:**
Your very first marathon. Yeah. And you're 18 and under winner. That is well,

[00:14:47] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
Yeah, but I came back to school on Monday with the t-shirt on thinking I was the coolest thing to ever, right. Because nobody I knew had ever done a marathon. Nobody at school did no one's parents did. I know this is 1980. And then I knew three months later was a marathon near my house, right? Within 11 miles, which means I could practice on the course.

No, the course sleep well. Do all those things that the books talked about and I had experienced now, so I knew how to do it, and it was much better. And that's the one that I won, which I still have the t-shirt from hangs in my studio, in the bathroom. And it's pretty worn out. Cause I wore it for 150 times.

Cause it was like the coolest thing ever. Yeah. So.

[00:15:34] **Bertrand Newson:**
Inquiring minds want to know Coach V what was that first marathon time?

[00:15:39] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
I have no idea. Isn't that the funniest thing, you know, somebody else that the other day, cause I knew I was around three and a half nowhere. I did it. I mean, so you have to. So you guys, this is not 22. We're going to get the marathon, the 1984 Olympics. And do that. I had to get to three hours, right? That was the Olympic standard back then to get into the Olympic marathon trials.

Now it's 2:45 for women, but 2:30, whatever it was. And, no, it's 2:03. And I didn't couldn't get there. So I knew I couldn't get there. So my thought was 88 that I could get there by 88. Right. There was no way I could get the by, by 83 to get it there. So, yeah. But then I had to turn my...

[00:16:21] **Bertrand Newson:**
That was your level of drive and focus and vision. You talk about goal planning. Wow.

[00:16:27] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
But there wasn't that many women. So it wasn't like I don't get didn't seem so impossible, right? Not like today when you go today and there's women in my age group running six and a half minutes on a, on a marathon. So.

[00:16:43] **Kevin Chang:**
It's still it's. Yeah, incredible. I mean, it's incredible, especially self-driven without. Much coaching, you know, coaching via written mail and books that you could pick up and, you know, training herself and, and then getting there.

### [00:16:57] The Weight of the Mind

[00:16:57] **Kevin Chang:**
Can you imagine only it's just a couple of years earlier being 200 pounds and, you know, and, and, and that drive that grit, that determination, that ability to, you know, continue to push yourself.

Yeah.

[00:17:09] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
So, I mean, I've worked with a lot of overweight people. I don't look at it as this drive and grit. If you can find why someone's eating, eating is done to fix something psychologically. If I can find that psychological problem and they will admit to it, then we can tackle it. But if they say, I don't know how I ended up this, I never eat that much.

All that stuff that you hear, there's unhappiness somewhere and pain. I can find that place. I can get the weight off of somebody because that's what I got off my son. When I started to run, I no longer was bullied because now I was strong and cool. And it went away right now, became mentally tough. Right.

You cannot run 10 miles a day and not get mentally tough. And that's what I lacked as a team.

[00:17:53] **Bertrand Newson:**
And, Coach V let's. More so with a weight loss because a good portion of America's population is dealing with obesity in some level, especially with our youth. And I mean, Kevin...

[00:18:05] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
How did this happen? How did this

[00:18:07] **Bertrand Newson:**
Kevin I've talked about, we've had a couple of weight loss challenges or cut the crap 14 day challenges with a good nutritionist friend of ours coach Tony Julian, giving her a shout out.

From your perspective, you know, we've talked about the psychological, but ultimately there needs to be some changes in the diet, coupled with ag with that activity. And what are you seeing? What's the common denominator that you've seen with people when it does it, does it clicks for them and...

[00:18:34] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
So I have to eat for what I want to do. My goal today is to make fuel for tomorrow. If I drink six scotches and two cheeseburgers. I can not run eight miles in the morning bottom line. So when I start with a client and they are heavy drinkers, which I've had a lot of CEOs, a lot of heavy drinkers, I worked the hell out of them the next morning.

And then they think I'm going to see Vanessa on Tuesday. I'm not going to drink on Monday. That's the backwards principle. This works really well. Right?

So if I'm a person who's overweight and I'm super unhappy, and I decided to eat three quarts of ice cream had this happen and the seed of Vanessa tomorrow, she's not going to have any mercy and she's going to pretend it didn't happen.

And I can pretend you're ready for your workout and we're going to work and you're going to cry and hurt. And hopefully you kind of learn a little psychologically, that didn't work. Right. And at the end of it, we can talk about what the pain caused you to eat. And then we go from there.

So I take it the way that I lost weight. I give you a goal, a place you want to be a place you admit you want to be,
how do we get there as food, as a building block? Right. So that's a different thing.

[00:19:47] **Bertrand Newson:**
Have you seen a change in what is being consumed, you know, carbs, protein, fat, all that, just from that perspective. And what's working as you've seen the evolution of diet and consumption and activity, male, female.

[00:20:01] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
As most people that aren't like us eat huge amounts of processed food. My whole goal is someone to not eat processed food period, to understand what processed. It's very difficult for most people. Most people don't know how to cook. They don't like vegetables. They think it's too much work. So we start with, what is your diet?

Honestly, very hard for people to start. Yeah. And take the processed food out. If it comes in a box, you're not eating it. Tough, right. Then what do I eat, Vanessa? I don't know a piece of steak and broccoli. Wow. These are hard decisions. And you mean I can't eat cereal like the granola and the box? No. Could you make granola? Sure. Go for it.

And learning how to cook and learning that birthdays. Christmases Thanksgivings are not about food, but about celebrating with people. Everything in our society is based about food. Change the mindset to make it about being, spending time with people and not about the food. It changes everybody.

Right? So I have not had a client. I could not get the one off except for one woman. And that one woman was the only person that ever gained weight working out with me.

And I said to her, after a month, this was a working, right. I want to put you with somebody else that might help and. Just didn't care. So, you know, that was the only one.

[00:21:26] **Kevin Chang:**
Well, I was going to say it was, you know, we're a little bit tongue in cheek in, in saying that yeah, people might not know how to cook or. No, how to eat non-processed food. You know, probably because we learn about vegetables and cooking vegetables. And we've each had our own kind of journeys too.

You know, I think I was overweight awhile ago and, and it's taken us a while, but it's, it's probably true if we can just change a little bit of people's mindsets a little bit of what they're eating.

I love what you said about the gathering, I guess. Yeah. I always think about gathering around food around Boulder, where you're going to eat around all that. But it's true. It is about the people. If you can enjoy the people that you're with, if you can enjoy their company switching that mindset.

I guess that is a totally new way to approach things, to look at things and a totally different way. And just putting yourself in somebody else's shoes in terms of what are they going through today? You know, are they having difficulty finding things to eat? Are they finding, are they having difficulty? Where was I all these years ago? So I just love this approach. Yeah.

### [00:22:31] Coaching for Commitment

[00:22:31] **Kevin Chang:**
So, I mean, I guess, you know, you've had a lot of success with a lot of people who have lost over a hundred pounds. I'm assuming you get a lot of pushback kind of immediately early on right away.

Or do you not? Do you, do you get people that are bought into this program are ready to go? Do you have ways to get them over some of these hurdles of, Hey, I only eat things out of a box that's simple to, Hey, this is what you should look for.

Or these are simple recipes or this is, you know, the, the simplest way for you to be satiated. I guess what's kind of step one for you. And those people.

[00:23:05] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
Okay. So. My place here for almost 10 years, nine years, 10 years, whatever it's in San Jose. I'm very lucky. My schedule is completely full people call every week. There's no room. I charged a lot of money by the hour. I see everyone one-on-one and. No, I don't get pushed back.

I don't, if you come in, say you're Kevin say you're a hundred pounds overweight, right. Called me up. We talked, we met for a couple of minutes. You come into your first workout. I'm working out with you. I don't even discuss food with you at all.

We talk, we get you moving. I tell you how I'm going to monitor you. I have a, I use to coach what we're going to do. Tomorrow morning, you're going to drink 30 ounces of water when you first wake up and again, 30 ounces of water at three o'clock in the afternoon.

And as you walk out, you say, but Vanessa, what do I eat? And I said, you eat what you would feel comfortable eating in front of me. And I leave it at that. I don't pressure them. I don't say anything. And I leave it for three weeks because it takes three weeks to get the water down every day. And then we come back to the food, the food thing again.

Now what's your thing. I like pancakes on, on Sunday. We're probably going to take that out. Okay. How about if I have a fruit salad instead, and we start making substitutions, I'm a big believer in only eating an eight hour window of the day and doing that for decades in my own life. So how do we get there?

I arrange people's times. I'm a morning person. I go to sleep by nine 30 or 10 all the time. Wake up at four 30. I figured out what your time schedule is. So we fit it to fit your body, not mine and where your timeframes are. Some people work out really well in the morning. So do work out in the afternoon.

Somebody's going to be evenings. Where do you work out? What time we've picked your food around that? So I'm doing it around activities, not around the.

[00:24:56] **Kevin Chang:**
And that's incredible. And you know, one thing that, that you mentioned that is, I guess we, we kind of gloss over it sometimes, but it is at the forefront. It's, it's very apparent. You're asking for a commitment upfront because of, you know, the, the commitment on one-on-one coaching. So they've got to show up, they've got to show up for the coach.

You're asking for a, a dollar amount it's not cheap, right? So people are committing with their wallets. And when you commit to something, you know, then you are much more likely to see it through. So and I like that you're starting with activity first because activity sometimes is the. Right of like weight loss.

It's like, oh, we got to go in and do workout. We get to go see progress. The dieting part. Sometimes it can be the chore if you will, for, especially for somebody, you know, who loves to eat and that sort of thing. So I liked that you kind of play on the phone part, you play on the performance aspect of it, play on the activity level aspect of it.

And then, you know, people have to have that heart to heart with them. If I want to see better results, if I want to do better I'm going to, I may have to change the diet. So I love that approach.

[00:26:00] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
And everybody that I work with, I have to find their why. And so I have a new guy. I had to find his why, a little different he's twenty-five years old, taken about 40 pounds off of them is why is to go on to online dating. And so we're trying to make a muscular guy, right. With drop the weights. He'd never bit, he's a computer science guy work at a Google.

Right. And like today he goes, see my shoulders, Vanessa. It was the cutest thing ever. So I took a video of him tossing a tire, right.

[00:26:34] **Kevin Chang:**
good.

[00:26:35] **Vanessa Bogenholm:**
Put this on your profile. Cool. So this is what you do, you find someone's why, and then you moved from there and then you're not making food, the focus.