NEWTOWN, PA — Kirsten D’Angelo had always struggled with weight gain during adulthood.
It wasn’t until 2013, six years after she gave birth to her third child and her weight still hadn’t gone down, that she decided to take action.
“I realized I couldn’t use that as an excuse anymore,” she said.
She tried everything, including buying Zumba videos (that went unopened), doing p90x workouts, going on a a cabbage diet and even getting HCG injections. It wasn’t until she found a group online that she was able to stick with a program that worked for her.
“I stuck with it generally because of the community,” D’Angelo says. “I almost quit two weeks in because I hadn’t seen results. It was really the support of the group that held my feet to the fire.”
After six weeks, she started seeing results and hasn’t looked back. At the urging of her fitness coach, she started lifting weights and entered her first bodybuilding competition. She would go on to compete in four more shows.
A mother of three, the 49-year-old Newtown Township resident splits her time as a registered nurse and a fitness instructor for Ignite Fitness, where she offers a six-week program that includes a meal plan, classes, coaching and a Facebook support group.
She’s currently competing for first place in the 2021 Ms. Health and Fitness Competition. The winner will get a feature story and appear on the cover of Muscle & Fitness HERS magazine and win a cash prize of $20,000.
Voting for the current round ends Thursday, with a final winner to be determined August 5. You can vote for D’Angelo here.
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