“From Breaking Records to Building Lives: A Conversation with Kim Rahir”

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Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show podcast, the podcast show where we unlock potential one dream at a time. Today we have another guest whose journey is truly worth hearing. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the Moneyway experience.

What's up, my good people? Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show, the podcast that brings you stories behind the success Today we have on the show European weightlifting champion, health coach, and former journalist. We have today on the show Kim. How you doing today, Kim?

I'm doing great. I'm very happy to be here.

Uh, thank you for taking the time out your day today to come on the CJ Moneyway Johnson Show. Appreciate it. So Kim, tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your background.

Yeah, so I'm a 60-year-old mother of 3. I'm a German I live in Spain, lovely Spain, where the sun's always shining. And right now I work as a health coach for midlife women. But it wasn't always that way. I used to be a journalist, as you mentioned, and we were traveling around the world all the time, dragging our 3 kids from country to country. My husband had the assignments, he got, you know, assigned to countries, and I followed and I worked as a freelancer, started from scratch always. Built my client base and stuff. And I quite liked that. I was good at it. I enjoyed discovering places and people and, you know, looking for stories. I think you can relate to that. You're always looking for stories as a journalist. And then one day I got very ill from one day to the next. It started with a one-off autoimmune disease that's called Syndrome Guillain-Barré. It's named after the French doctors who discovered it, and it's pretty scary because it's like really super rapid. It knocks you down. I was seeing double one day, sent to the hospital. After 3 weeks, I was paralyzed from the hips downward. I couldn't wiggle a toe. They couldn't quite figure out what it was at the beginning, which is super scary, and you find yourself in hospital like wishing for a diagnosis, which is sort of, you know, like absurd, but uncertainty is even worse than knowing what's going on. But they finally figured it out. I got better, came out of hospital, got some treatment for a year or two. Then I was said, uh, told I was okay. But a year after that, I felt my left hand going numb, and it's numb to this day. And more tests, more checkups, and this time it was more serious. It was still autoimmune, but it was an attack of my immune system on the white matter in the nerves, which is called MS, multiple sclerosis. Which is a very, very scary diagnosis. Dark times. I remember like when I think back to those days, I remember some kind of darkness and I think the darkness was in me. It was not around me. And one thing that I wanted to do, especially after my experience at hospital 2 years before, I wanted to become physically strong. I had no serious damage. My hand is numb, but I could walk. And because I had been paralyzed in hospital, I appreciated being able to walk very much. And I started going to the gym and becoming insanely strong. That was my one plan, that was the thing that I wanted to do. I don't know where this desire came from, but I think it's got something to do with this total helplessness. When you're paralyzed in a hospital, you have zero power. I mean, In a hospital anyways, you don't have any power because people are in your room when they decide to be in your room. You know, they turn the light on, they turn the light off. You decide nothing. But when you can't walk, you can't walk to the toilet by yourself, you can't go to the shower by yourself, you have even less power. And I think that created this desire in me when I had this second diagnosis, which was such a low blow that I didn't know what my future was gonna be. But as long as I could move, I wanted to become really, really strong. And that's what I did.

That sounds like a story of perseverance and resilience, you know, to go through what you call— I know I can imagine not only the physical part of it, but the mental aspect of trying to battle that as well, of what you went through had to be troubling as well, you know, not thinking what Sometimes I know when we get into certain situations, we think of the worst, you know, the worst situation that can come out of it. So that's resilience. And it's amazing how you overcame that and became and did the things that you did. So, Kim, let me ask you, what inspired you to transition from being a journalist to a health coach?

Yeah, that's an interesting story. So as I got physically stronger, I got better. I had to take treatment and I had been told it would be for life for MS. But I got better. They told me like certain reflexes, you know, during the relapses they had disappeared. You know, the thing when you hit the front of the knee and the leg shoots up, that had gone and doctors had told me, you know, that's never going to come back. And I mean, it's not dramatic, you can live without that reflex, but it's also, you know, not very inspiring. And anyway, I trained, I became stronger, and these things all came back. I got really better and better. And, you know, we were moving, still moving countries all the time. My first illness was in Germany. The second diagnosis was in France. And then we moved to Spain where we are now. And I found this amazing neurologist after 3 years with me getting this lifelong treatment, like injecting myself 3 times a week. And he's seeing me during my checkups, like just being so fit and happy. He actually said, "Do you want to stop the treatment? I think it's fine for you to stop the treatment." And I said, "Hell yes, absolutely, let's stop this." Now, this is 7 years ago. I've been without treatment, without relapses ever since. And it was at that moment that I felt that maybe I was onto something. And it was not, you know, I'm not claiming that you can cure MS with strength training or becoming muscular, But I know, I felt from my own journey that what it does to you when you become physically strong to your overall health, and especially to your mental health, you feel so good about yourself. Yeah, I thought I need to share this message with as many women as possible, especially my age, because it's so easy to think that this is as good as it gets downhill from here. You're invisible. You don't count anymore. Your body starts sort of letting you down. And I mean, my body had let me down big time because that autoimmune thing feels like a betrayal. You think, what? Why are you attacking yourself, you stupid thing? So I thought I need to share this muscle message because it's also so simple. It's like you don't need complicated protocols. You don't need supplements, you don't need herbal teas. And in my case, I don't even need medication anymore. You want to go out there and you don't have to go to a gym, you can do that in your home. That's what I do with my clients nowadays, they train in the comfort of their home because it's much easier, much less inner resistance. Also, when you don't have to leave the house, you train for strength, you look after your muscle mass, and so many things sort of take care of themselves with that, you know, stuff you don't have to worry about anymore.

So you say that the clients that you treat right now that you got, that they do it from home. How did that come about? Was it during the COVID season or, you know, when people start just working out at home and doing things like that? Or was it something that you had already started doing prior to that?

Yeah, I think it's sort of parallel to my evolution as a coach because when you start out, The idea is, and it's an— it's the idea that so many people have when they think about a health coach or a fitness coach or a personal trainer. You have this idea, like, you know, you just tell people what they need to do. Like, you know, how to train, how to eat, how to recover. And then they will have great results, which is— it is true in theory. But the main problem that people have nowadays is not knowing what to do. No one is running around thinking, oh, you know, if I eat pizza from all day long, I'm going to be like super muscular and healthy. Everybody knows this. The problem is, how do you actually start doing it? That's the hard part— doing it, not knowing what to do, but doing it. And I found that if I reduce the time they needed to exercise to 15 minutes, And this is what my starting clients do. They just do 15 minutes a day. And if they can do it at home, because I work mostly with women and they— so many, they just don't want to go to a gym. They don't feel at home there. They find it's a scary place, an intimidating place, or just a very distressing place. They feel like everybody's looking at them, then they don't know what to do with the machines. So this idea of having them do the workout at home, make it short, as short as possible, is really a strategy to get them to do something. Otherwise, the resistance, the inner resistance, and also the outer resistance will be tremendous. Just imagine, instead of, you know, packing a gym bag, getting into your car, driving through traffic, finding parking, getting out of the car, getting into the locker room, getting changed, walking onto the gym floor, all you do is you get up in the morning and you can do those 15 minutes in your pajamas. How much easier it is to actually execute on what you know you need to do. And this really works amazingly well. And many of the women that I work with are surprised because they feel different and much better in a very short amount of time, like 2 weeks maybe. Sometimes after 1 week, they say, oh my God, I feel so much better. And how, how can just 15 minutes have this kind of effect? But it really doesn't take much more because the most important part is actually doing it.

Mm. So Kim, you say how you help other women and it's a 15-minute process, which is amazing in itself, and you say 2 weeks. So that leads me to this question too about your strength. Can you share with us the story of how you went from being in a wheelchair to becoming the European master weightlifting champion.

Yes, I actually love that story. So, you know, I shared the first part when I had my diagnosis and I started to go to the gym to become strong. I started lifting. I was a journalist, so, you know, I got myself a book. I did this with a book. We like texts and reading, and I looked out for proper form. I started lifting. I got stronger and stronger. And then we were already in Spain. I was training with a personal trainer who loved working with me because I was one of the women who wanted to lift heavy stuff in the gym and not, you know, dabble with pink, pink dumbbells, or stay on the elliptical. So he was like, really, he liked working with me. And one day he said, hey, would you like to try Olympic weightlifting? Because when we say weightlifting, many people think about bodybuilding and Schwarzenegger and powerlifting. But weightlifting, weightlifting is, it's just two movements. You have to put the bar overhead, either in one go, which is the snatch, or in two movements where you put it on your shoulders first and then overhead, which is the clean and jerk. And I remember when the trainer asked me, would you like to try this? I remember this from when I was a kid with my dad. We used to watch the Olympic Games. And I remember those were mostly overweight, hairy guys in totally weird leotards, lifting heavy stuff overhead. I had a very precise memory of that. Because at the time, I mean, the outfit you have to wear still is not super amazing. But at the time, it was outright ridiculous. I mean, half naked. But somehow, you know, it sort of tickled my interest. And I said, okay, why not? Let's try this. So we were in a commercial gym, and he showed me how to snatch and how to clean and jerk. And I totally sucked at it. It's really difficult. I was already very strong. But it's technique, you know, you have to outsmart gravity, and you have to make the bar travel in a very vertical path. But it also has to be as close as possible to your body. And when you create power with bent legs, you know, you jump up. Yeah, your body's not vertical. So you have to sort of trick the bar to move as vertically as possible, but as close to the body as possible too. And it's, it's every single lift is sort of a new challenge and a different challenge. You always have to focus 100% on the next lift. But I was somehow hooked because of the challenge. And I switched to a pure weightlifting gym. I left the commercial gym, I went to a weightlifting club. After 2 weeks, they asked me, oh, great, Kim, that you're here. Do you want to compete? And I was 55 at the time. I said, come on, guys, are you serious? They said, of course, you know, we have people all ages, they are competing. We are like a gym for competitive lifters. And I said, yeah, well, what the hell, why not? Let's do this. And I think it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I remember my very first meet, it was a local meet. I thought I was about to cry all the time, not because I was sad, but the emotions I was experiencing was so powerful, so strong. It's like so exciting, so exhilarating, and scary at the same time. I loved it. And because I was, you know, physically strong, I realized after my first meet that I had like the minimum requirement to lift in an international competition. So that was 2019. I went to a European Championship for the first time. And I've been every year since, and last year I won. That was just amazing. And this is such a— it's joy, it's sort of vindication. But what I feel most of all is actually gratitude.

Yeah.

To be able to do that when you've been somewhere in the hospital bed and you couldn't walk, and now all of a sudden you're stepping on that platform and you're lifting It's such a gift. I just love it.

Yeah, I could just imagine. God is good. I mean, I'm not surprised. Well, first of all, congratulations on the win. And I'm not surprised just listening to your story so far that you had the resilience to keep going. As you said, when you first started, you was terrible at it, but you kept going because of the early struggles that you had, the earlier struggle that you had, and you fought through that to get to where you where I'm not surprised that you was able to keep going and become a European weightlifting champion. And for the record, if I ever come to Spain, Kim, and I run into you, I hope I don't bump into you because I don't want to feel your power. I don't want to feel your strength.

I try to use my power for good, so don't worry.

Hey, 'cause a weightlifting champion at 60 years old is amazing in itself. So, so Kim, we talked about this a little earlier. We briefed on it about the mental aspect of, you know, what you went through and what you endured at that time. So how did you take care of your mental health during that time?

So I started, I took up meditation pretty quickly. You know, when you have such a diagnosis, you start looking around for stuff that you could do it's so, you know, it's not curable, it's not really manageable. And, you know, you start looking for solutions, you start looking around. And one of the things that I found was definitely mindfulness and meditation for inner peace and dealing with stress. And I started that at the very beginning of my journey when I had my second diagnosis, I started meditating. And it helped me do something that is really, I think, the only rescue that you have in a situation like that when the future is so scary, the big picture is so scary. Even today, I mean, I've been without a relapse for 7 years, but I don't know what's going to happen to me. And if I think, oh my God, where am I going to be in 20 years, I could be very scared. So what I learned from this meditation practice was to focus really just on today. Today's the only thing that we're given. And I also learned from the day when I, you know, was picking up my kids from school, then next day I was in hospital when I first fell ill. I understand, like, in my bones that tomorrow we might not be here. And it could be for any reason, you know, it could be, it could be an earthquake, it could be whatever, it could be an accident, you know, you could just not an illness, anything. We could not be here tomorrow. There's no point in, in living in the future. And in my case, it would have been too scary to think about the future. So I really learned to focus on the present moment. And then the lifting part, the strength training part, helped me feel confident, like in control again of my body, being able to rely on my body that had betrayed me so weirdly So it's a mix actually of mindfulness, doing something with your mind, and lifting and building confidence, or doing something with your body.

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Yeah, I was listening to what you were saying, and one point that you said was that, you know, we never know. And it puts me in the mind of where it say that we shouldn't worry about tomorrow because we don't know what a day may bring, you know. So we should just rejoice in the time and in the day that we're here because we think ahead, but we don't know what tomorrow brings, you know. It has its own things that's going on for tomorrow, so we just don't know. So I think what you said, that was a great analogy to those out there listening. Just be focused on the moment because we don't know what tomorrow may bring. We may not even be here, but, you know, be thankful that every day that you are, that, you know, we're blessed to still be here and we have another day to do things that we weren't able to accomplish yesterday. But if I wasn't here today, the things that I was looking to do yesterday, I wouldn't be able to do it then. So we have to be thankful. But, you know, just the present moment. I agree totally what you said. So Kim, you said that you live in the present. So what was some of the doctor's advice did you choose to ignore and why?

Yeah, it was the very first doctor who diagnosed me and said I was going to need lifelong treatment. First thing, I didn't want to accept that. So I started asking him questions. And he was not used to that. He was kind of just writing the prescription to send me on my way with my lifelong treatment. And I said, hang on, can we talk about this? What do you mean lifelong treatment? It was, it's scary because you've, you know, your power is taken from you again. And I asked him so many questions. Um, and I said, my second relapse was so much milder. Maybe I'm getting better. We're never going to know if I have this treatment. Maybe I'm getting better, but maybe it's the treatment. And he was not used to this. He didn't want to hear any of it. And first he was answering nicely, but then he got very impatient, I could tell. And then I asked him if I could exercise. And he didn't say no, you can't exercise. But what he did say was, well, you want to be very careful. So to this day, I'm not sure what that means. It's somehow a way of, you know, we want to be careful means there's some hidden danger there. So, you know, what is it? What— and what's the hidden danger? Either you tell me exactly what can happen, or you don't. But like this ominous thing, though, be careful. I thought that was super unhelpful, super unhelpful. And, and anybody who wouldn't have like the same strong desire to go train and become strong again, and who could benefit from training and becoming strong again, they might be scared away. By this kind of remark. You say, okay, I have to be careful, so maybe this is dangerous, I'm not going to do it. I was lucky and I'm grateful again because I met a nurse 2 days after that. She showed me how to inject myself. And she said, oh, exercise is great for MS, don't worry. It makes you fatigue resistant. And fatigue is a big problem for MS patients. So 'Yeah, go ahead and exercise.' And that was my green light. And the doctor— it makes me sad because I think that so, so many patients, and especially women, might be just afraid to do something that would help them because of like very vague, scary remarks from doctors.

Yeah, because we take the doctor's word because we look at them as professionals and that they know more than We know, but you know, we know who gives the final say, even over the doctors. And you know, just thank God that you didn't listen to certain aspects, or that, as we talked about earlier, uh, didn't let it beat you down and deter you from, you know, saying, you know what, I can beat this, I'm an overcomer, you know. So that was the most important thing, because like you said, sometimes we will— you get a diagnosis, you like, hey, wait a minute. And so you just thinking the worst, you just thinking the worst, and it takes your mental, and it takes your, you know, the mental takes your physical, you know. And so by you doing what you doing with the resilience that you had and not letting that get in the way from where you was trying to go, because like I heard you say, you know, you got a husband, you got, you got children. So a lot of times we look at things like, you know what, I got a lot to fight for, I still got reasons to be here, and so I'm going to keep— and whatever happens happens. So it just Turned out that it happened on your behalf. And that's— so Kim, tell us, what inspires you to be on an empowering muscle mission, especially focusing on women? You talked about it a little earlier, but elaborate on that for us a little bit.

Yes, of course. So you might have understood by now that I think that building muscle is like a health elixir. It's like a one-stop shop for your health. And it's something that women desperately need, actually, because women lose muscle mass at an alarming rate from their 30s onward, that women are not culturally sort of primed to aspire to. We are not taught as little girls, you want to be strong, you know, you want to build muscle. It's not part of the virtue catalog that's, you know, presented to us. We supposed to be cute, pretty, slim, elegant. Maybe we have nice parents, and they want us to be educated. Nobody ever tells women, you know, you need to be physically strong, even though we are. I mean, we make humans. Yeah.

Yeah.

That's like quite a feat of strength. And then also, we carry them around a lot, you know, when they're born. Nobody would ever wonder, oh, this woman, she's carrying a 30-pound kid? Is that not too heavy for her? Nobody will ever say that. But in our, in the, like, the narrative and the culture for women, it's still, oh no, that's, you know, that's like Schwarzenegger stuff. It's not for me. And I really want to change that. I want women to understand that building muscle, first of all, you know, it doesn't make you big, it makes you like really toned and great looking. And it will increase your quality of life. I think that's the part that so many still don't get, the quality of life that you have when you, when you're strong, because you don't have aches and pains, because you can eat normally, you don't have to diet because you have a healthy metabolism. You sleep well because you train and you're in this rhythm. And this is my mission. I want to help women understand that this is a very, very simple solution to so many problems. And I think it's also very, very democratic in a way because you don't need a gym. You don't need equipment. You can get stronger without equipment for years. There's no real obstacles or entry barriers to this except, you know, your thought process, your preconceptions, and maybe your fear, your mindset. And that's what I want to help you change.

You said something that leads to my final question. But before I get there, I'd like to thank you for taking the time out today and coming in and sharing your story with us, which has been truly amazing. I hope that it helps not only women but men as well, as far as muscle mass and the things that you need to do to be fit, because you said something about, you know, the way that you eat. But before I get to that final question, I'd just like to ask, is there anything that you're working on right now? Matter of fact, I forgot to ask you this. What does your health coaching program entail, Kim?

So when you work with me, it starts with a physical assessment where I look at how you move, because I work with women from their 40s onwards. So everyone is really different, has a different history, different mileage in their joints. And this is also a problem with all these great workouts out there that you can find on YouTube. They really are great, but they are mostly not made for people who are not 20 anymore, and you can get hurt really easily. So I, first thing, I look at how you move exactly, you know, your mobility, your strength. And then I design a program for you that will be challenging, but that you can do without getting hurt or frustrated. The second part is we talk about eating, you know, how to eat, to be strong and to be able to perform. So there's no dieting, there's no good or bad foods, it would really turn it sort of around and ask, you know, what do I actually need to eat to be like, feel strong and satisfied with my meals too? And that's such a game changer because so many women come along and say, okay, and sometimes they ask me, yeah, so what can't I eat? I said, you can eat anything. You just need to, you know, have a, we build a blueprint for a good meal that will make you strong and healthy. And then, you know, the rest is, you can, you can eat what you want. And then the third part, and I think that's really important in health coaching, is support. So we have the training, we have the eating, we have the support. Because in midlife, many women, and this is something also I learned over my journey as a coach, we're not quite aware of this usually, many midlife women feel quite alone. They're surrounded by people, they're helping people all the time, they're always there for everyone. And they thrive in those situations. They love being there for people. But when it comes to their own well-being, their own situation, many are quite alone and, you know, get easily lost or confused when it comes to training or eating. So the support, the connection with me, the contact, the direct contact is really important and sort of makes the whole thing perfect because it helps them stick with it. Even when life gets in the way, which is a big one.

So in that question right there, you answered my last question was, what do we need to eat to build muscle? And you actually said we can eat whatever we want to eat.

Well, when you say it like this, it can be easily misinterpreted. So that's one thing is, is very clear, and there's way too much food in our lives. I know it sounds crazy, But mankind struggled with starvation forever. And now we have the opposite situation. There's too much food and food is actually, it's not only available, it's actually pushed on us. And we have this old brain from thousands of years back that still fears going hungry. So we're kind of helpless when it comes to these food attacks, food assaults. So we need to learn to deal with this instinct, with this knee-jerk reaction that we have towards food. And if we want to build muscle, we need to eat lots and lots of protein, which is also not so easy for many women. Lots of protein, tons of vegetables for the right nutrients, and, you know, whatever is left in terms of energy needs, You know, you can eat whatever you want. But in the limits of your energy needs. So it doesn't, you know, you don't eat like your protein, you have a big steak, you have a big pile of vegetables, and then, you know, you put, I don't know, a huge chocolate cake on top of that. I don't think there are many people these days who need that much energy because it's become so hard to move in everyday life. We're glued to our computers. Our environment is set up for us to not move. So We have to sort of balance our energy needs a little bit.

I'm laughing right now, Kim, because you must be in my household because that's exactly what we're having today. We have steak and a big old piece of chocolate cake.

Well, lucky you.

So, so Kim, like I said, I appreciate you coming on the show today and sharing your wisdom and your insight on these issues. Is there any other endeavors that you're working on that we can look forward to in the future?

Well, what I'm working on right now, what I've been working on all summer, is the world championship in Finland in 10 days. I'm going to lift again in a big competition. And the summer was very hot here, but I had to keep training. That was, you know, quite challenging. So that's my— for my personal life, that's my closest goal right now.

Wow, you said 10 days. So what I'm going to text you and I'm going to hit you up on PodMatch to see how that match went. I want to know, you know, how did you fare in that match? I'm definitely going to reach back out to you and I wish you good luck in this competition and all the things that you do moving forward. So just one more thing, Kim, where can people find you at on social media, your social media handles?

Yeah, so the easiest way is to just look for my name. I'm with my name on Facebook and on Instagram. And my website is also KimRahir.com. And on there you can find a first free health assessment where you can check out, you know, how am I doing actually when it comes to strength and health? How am I sort of functioning in my everyday life? And, you know, when you fill that in, that assessment, I will give you a few pointers to what you can do next.

Okay. Well, on that note, Kim, is there anything else that you would like to share with us before we leave?

I just would like to encourage everyone to keep doing stuff, to not give up. It's never too late. Don't think that you have to move heaven and earth to get better. If you can do one small thing today, that's progress. That's a step in the right direction. And I would really like you to, you know, do just that. A small thing today is all you need.

You heard it right here on the CJ Moneyway Show. Small things is all you need. You heard it from Kim, the European weightlifting champion. Now she's going to Finland to try to go do something else, another accomplishment to put in her resume. And we wish her well. You have been listening to the CJ Moneyway Show with your boy CJ Moneyway and my guest Kim. We thank you for tuning in. This your boy. I'll holla at you. Peace.

Thank you for listening to the CJ Moneyway Show. Don't forget to share this episode with your friends, leave a comment, and drop a review. Be sure to tune in every Tuesday and Friday for more inspiring journeys. Who knows? Your story might be next.