BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
STARKE— What started off as a hobby to help mothers deal with postpartum depression has grown into an internet business with followers in 36 states in addition to Canada and the United Kingdom.
Abbie Tucker, who has taught at Lake Butler Elementary School and has run a cake-decorating business from her Union County home, is the owner of A-TeamFitness.com.
Tucker said her clients are mostly mothers but include a variety of people like college students and premenopausal women.
She coaches them about eating habits and how to feel better about their bodies.
She also has an exercise component that she will soon be upgrading.
“I am going to be launching a subscription soon where women can come in and watch me work out with them live every day five days a week,” she said.
Tucker said the business arose out of a personal struggle she had after the birth of her second child.
I was very scared
“My journey started mostly because I had severe postpartum depression to the point where I was going to admit myself to a mental health facility,” she recalled. “I was very scared.”
Tucker said that one night, when the depression was particularly acute, she talked to her husband Corey about it and he advised her to see her physician the next day.
“He said, ‘I’ll stay home with the kids, and you take time to figure out what’s going on.’ So, I went and saw my OB and she told me I had postpartum anxiety and depression.”
Among the treatments the doctor prescribed was more movement.
“She just told me: ‘You need to walk every day for 30 minutes,’” Tucker said. “’Take the kids outside; they need that Vitamin D you need the Vitamin D, and it allows you to escape being stuck inside of your home all the time.’ So, I did, and she checked in on me every day for two weeks.”
Tucker said the daily walks worked.
“Until that point, I had not ever really moved my body with an intention other than losing weight,” she said. “I was actually moving for my mental health, to keep me sane, and then it just kind of grew from there.”
No longer struggled to get out of bed
Tucker said that as she started to feel better, she had more energy and could play with her children. She no longer struggled to get up in the morning because she looked forward to the events of the day.
Then she noticed her waistline shrinking.
“As I started to lose more and more weight and get deeper into it, I started to ask myself, how can I feel my body and lose weight and also nurse my baby at the same time?” she recalled.
Her quest for more knowledge led her to learning about exercise and nutrition science.
In April 2020, Tucker met a friend who was using an app to work out.
“She told me there’s an app that allows you to track your nutrition and it gives you a workout every single day kind of based on where you’re at: if you’re at home or in the gym and what you’d like to do. I was like, all right, let’s sign up.”
The following June, Tucker started sharing her journey on Instagram and other social media platforms.
“From there, it kind of just took off,” she said. “People wanted to know: Okay what are you doing? How do you look so good? How can I look like you, or what can I do to lose weight and still breastfeed? That’s a big concern for moms.”
Feeling exhausted at the end of the day
The first women that she helped were all new mothers, around Tucker’s age.
“And they were all struggling with the same things,” she said, “like either, they’re in that newborn phase or past the newborn phase and they are wondering when and how to start working out. Others were several years removed from that stage and just still carrying around excess baby weight and feeling just awful. Some felt exhausted every day, feeling like they had no excess energy left over to play with their kids at night after working a full day. They were in the same boat I was in, and I guess they experienced some success because they are still with me.”
Tucker now has a community on FaceBook that includes 500 men and women.
“It’s a community of encouragement,” she said. They’re women who are making friendships with each other across the country through this group that would never meet in real life.”
She added that the benefit of coaching remotely is that she can help people all over the world.
“As of the last time I checked, my community is in 36 states, which is pretty exciting, and in two countries: Canada and the U.K.”
Husband: What are we doing here?
In January of this year, Tucker started to transform what had been a hobby into a business.
“Just the amount of people that I was getting to work with and realizing, wow, this takes a lot of my time,” she said. “I really enjoy it, but I never realized necessarily how much time it was taking because I just enjoyed doing it so much. I was constantly answering a message or researching something for someone else or creating content or a workout or a recipe. Then I think in January just kind of hit me.”
Around the same time, she also got some help in reevaluating her coaching activities.
“My husband was like: ‘What are we doing here?’” Tucker recalled. “He said I was spending a lot of time on this and that I should consider making it a legitimate business.
Tucker said that since February, the growth in the business has come in waves.
“But it’s been bigger than I expected and quicker than I expected,” she said. “Obviously, there are still days that I wish I was further along, but then I think back to November when I was helping one person and now I’m helping hundreds of people.”
