Have you ever faced a decision so monumental that it altered the course of your life? Today's episode explores the extraordinary journey of Tracy LaMarche, a woman whose pivotal choice didn't just change her life path—it transformed her very identity.

Many of us grapple with the fear of making life-altering decisions, wondering if we're capable of enduring and thriving through the aftermath. This episode connects directly to that universal challenge, offering insights and inspiration from someone who navigated her darkest moments to find renewed purpose and passion.

Episode At a Glance

In this gripping episode, Tracy LaMarche shares her transition from a non-athletic young mother to a competitive bodybuilder and amputee who refused to let physical limitations dictate her life's potential. Her story is not just about physical resilience but also about mental fortitude and the profound impact of embracing change with courage.

What You Can Expect to Gain

1. Strategies for overcoming seemingly insurmountable challenges.

2. Insights into maintaining mental toughness in the face of adversity.

3. Inspiration to pursue passion and purpose despite life's obstacles.

Ready to be both inspired and empowered to conquer your own challenges? Hit PLAY on today’s episode and come away with a whole new appreciation for resiliency in the face of adversity!

LINKS & RESOURCES

• MyPillow $25 Extravaganza! Use Promo Code 'KEVIN' to get any of the following for $25: 2-pack multi use MyPillow’s, MyPillow sandals, 6-pack towels sets, 4-pack dish towels, Giza Premium MyPillows with all new Giza fabric!
• FREE Rise & Thrive: Personal Development Tracker
• Follow Tracy on Instagram: @barefit_girl
• Visit Tracy's Website

TODAY'S AWESOME GUEST

TRACY LAMARCHE

Tracy LaMarche is a renowned bodybuilder and fitness coach, whose journey through adversity has reshaped her life and career. After sustaining a career-threatening injury, Tracy made the courageous decision to become an amputee, subsequently leveraging her experience to empower others facing physical challenges. She is not only a competitive athlete but also a passionate advocate for adaptive physical training.

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Guided by Faith. Inspired by life itself.

© 2024 Grit, Grace, & Inspiration

0:00:37 - (Kevin Lowe): And yet, here's what's powerful, is the decision that Tracy made was empowering because it set her free. And she knew it. Today you're going to hear the story of a woman, a bodybuilder, an amputee, a woman who did not let the tragedies of life stop her from fulfilling her passion for living out her purpose, for doing the things that she loves. Today, you are going to be inspired, empowered and motivated by none other than Tracy Lamarch, my friend.

0:01:55 - (Kevin Lowe): You know what gets me pumped up like nothing else? It's to be able to support an american owned and operated company. And that is why we are sponsored by Mypillow. Now, thanks to today's sponsor, you get to take part in their dollar 25 extravaganza. Use promo code Kevin to get an array of their best products for only $25. Check out today's show notes. I'll leave all those details below. And remember this, whether you want the $25 extravaganza or any of the other 250 products on their website, you use promo code Kevin.

0:02:43 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): I am a little bit of a different case study than your average fitness enthusiast or fitness professional, where I did not play sports as a child. Growing up, I was the kid who, for gym class or PE class, I would do anything that I could to get out of it. And I was the last one picked when we had to pick team sports, I just. Physical activity and me, you would not have associated the two of us together at all.

0:03:38 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): And I thought, that's the kind of mom that I want to be. I want to be that person that's there for my kids and has all this energy and still has a life of her own outside of her children. So I started going to aerobics classes with these moms, and I have a little bit of a, some people might call me a control freak. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but it was not too long before I was in these classes. And I thought, I don't want to be a student in the classes. I want to be the person up there instructing the classes. I want to be the teacher. So I got certified as an aerobics instructor, and then I had an opportunity to open my own aerobics studio.

0:04:32 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow, wow, wow, wow. I love that so much. And, I mean, talk about just a natural evolution, which is amazing.

0:05:01 - (Kevin Lowe): Amazing. Now, at what point did you actually get into, like, competition?

0:05:42 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): So running took off for me, and then it ended up being longer and longer distances. I was doing, you know, ten milers, half marathons, full marathons. It got up to 100 milers. And then I did one race that was 300 miles long. It was, it was so many. And I was just built by bit by this competitive bug. But that running that long distance started to wear me down a little bit. And then I transitioned over to bodybuilding so that I could work on muscular endurance as well. And same thing. Just started to see how fun it was to compete. And, you know, I'm a competitive person, but also, it was just a lot of fun being with other competitors, kind of sharing that, that drive and that fire and that passion to get out there and just be your best self, even if you're only competing against yourself. It was a very empowering feeling.

0:06:40 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): Yeah, yeah, I know that. The common response that I get is, wow, Tracy, I don't even want to drive 300.

0:06:53 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): Yeah, it's a ten day road trip if you're running it.

0:07:03 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): So a lot of the really long distance races like that, they're usually across a state or down the coast of a state or trying to circumnavigate something. So I ran down the state of South Carolina. I started up in the north Carolina border. I ran through South Carolina, and I ended in Savannah, Georgia. And then I did a similar event in north Carolina, where we kind of hugged the coast of north Carolina.

0:07:40 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, yeah, no doubt. My goodness. Now, as a runner, I guess I'm kind of surprised. I don't think of somebody who's into running like that to then switch to, to bodybuilding, because I feel like that would be two different kind of physiques that you're, you're going for. How did that kind of transition take place?

0:08:40 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): It's very extreme. It's a huge physical challenge, but also there's so much mental strength that, that comes with it as well because the diet is extremely regimented. The fact that you, you kind of need to be in the gym every day and focusing on whatever your workout plan is that day if you're going to compete. There's not a lot of room for error, and there's not a lot of time to say, I'm going to take a day off or I'm, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to phone it in today. So, although the physiques are very different, the fact that it is a very extreme mental challenge is similar. And so, yes, there was a complete body overhaul for me, but because I thrived on that mental challenge, I think that's what helped me bridge that.

0:09:38 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): They were older. They were kids. When I was just teaching aerobics and running my own business, they would come with me to the studio. They learned a lot of my aerobic routine with me. It was adorable that I had three little kids that could do aerobics with me. But once I started to get more competitive, they were a little bit older, I would say, you know, 10, 12, 13 years old. So that it wasn't a huge ask for me to be able to leave my house for an hour or two.

0:10:42 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, well, I guess my thing that also kind of blows me away by this is the fact of you had three children, you're a woman, and yet you're now doing fitness modeling. I mean, competitions. I mean, like, I mean, I think, like, every woman's like, whoa, talk about a badass.

0:11:25 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Oh, my gosh, I love it so much. Now, at some point in this journey, you would sustain an injury, though, to your leg. Talk to me about that.

0:12:12 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): I take off, I try to sprint, and I felt something go in my knee, and it didn't feel catastrophic. It was just, I was like, that's a little pop. That doesn't feel too good. And long story short, it ended up being a simple injury, but we addressed it with surgery. I had complications from that surgery and then more surgery to try to fix that, and I was just the unfortunate person where when you go into surgery, they say, you know, there are risks, there are complications, and a lot of them happened to me. So, yeah, that kind of started my trajectory into a whole new life.

0:12:53 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): It was a meniscus tear in my knee, a tiny little meniscus tear.

0:13:02 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): So we initially repaired it with a couple of stitches. The stitches held, which is. This is the interesting part, is that little repair was just fine. But then my meniscus started tearing all around it, and we didn't really know why. I had another surgery that we then had to pretty much just remove my meniscus because we saw that it was getting so damaged. I think at the time, we didn't necessarily notice that there was also damage to some of the connective ligaments, ACL, PCL, not major tears. So we didn't. We didn't really notice them, but. But they were starting to get damaged.

0:14:10 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): And really what it did was change the trajectory of the bone into my knee. To think, we were thinking, maybe my biomechanics are off. We've got to kind of change the alignment of the knee so that I don't continue to sustain the damage. That's where it started to go south. The hardware broke. I had screws that were broken off in my. My tibia bone that we couldn't get those screws out. I had more surgeries to put in, more hardware, so I had more screws, a huge metal plate in my leg.

0:14:52 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. Wow. Now, how long was this process going on for?

0:15:15 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. Now, during this time, I'm assuming, was you completely sidelined from. From fitness?

0:15:48 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): So the one thing that I was able to keep doing through all of this was teach cycling classes, because I realized you can cycle with one leg. Indoor cycling, you can do that with one leg. So that was one thing that I was able to maintain. But as far as running, bodybuilding, because leg workouts really just didn't happen for me. Even being able to go for a walk, I could not just walk comfortably, even the times that I wasn't on crutches. So, yeah, a lot of it just felt like being completely sidelined. And all the times that I was in the hospital, you know, each surgery you're in the hospital, they keep you overnight for a few days.

0:16:24 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, well, that's. That's kind of what I was wondering is, is just the mindset aspect during this time to go from the level that you were at to this, what was the mindset emotions like during this?

0:17:18 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): You just keep saying, we're just going to operate and you're going to be fine, and I'm never fine. You know, each time we're expecting the surgery to be the one that's going to make me all better, and it's not. I'm just coming out of surgery feeling worse off than I was before. So, yeah, I was getting pretty angry.

0:17:38 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): So, like I said, I was starting to joke with my surgeon. I used to tell it because I was saying all of this about, you know, we keep doing this and not getting good results. In the beginning, I was saying, you know, doc, I wake up and my leg is not attached to me anymore. I'm okay with that. I started telling him, this is feeling like a dead, useless, non functioning leg. I'm dragging it around. It's holding me back.

0:18:35 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): And eventually, he did refer me to a different surgeon and a surgeon who deals with trauma and cancer patients who does quite a bit of this type of amputation. And that surgeon did say, you know, yep, given your history and given how much time this has taken and the fact that we're really not getting results and we, we don't know if any subsequent surgery would be conclusive for you, we have no guarantees that you'd be able to walk comfortably again or ever run again at all.

0:19:25 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow, wow, wow. What was your reaction after the surgery?

0:20:06 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): I felt so free and so happy and so relieved. Like, just this. This nightmare is over. And I know for some people they would be like, nope, nightmares. Just beginning. You now have no leg. But no, it was the opposite for me. I felt amazing.

0:20:38 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): Not at all. I did meet with an amputee peer counselor prior to this. She gave me a lot of information about what it's like to live as an amputee. Things to know about navigating the insurance process and mobility, you know, being able to get a handicap plate and all different things to know about being an amputee. But still, it's a very personal experience for each person, and I didn't really know what it would mean for my career, for my personal life. Like, that was.

0:21:10 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. So at that point, then, what kind of happens next? How do you get back into the scene?

0:21:45 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): And it opened. I don't want to say it opened a lot of doors for me. I'm going to be a little bit selfish here. I opened a lot of doors. I sought opportunities, and I charged through them. One of them was I realized there's not a lot of athletic knowledge and training and coaching for people who are suffering from limb loss or limb difference or really just having any kind of permanent limitation that changes how they can move and how they can work out.

0:22:37 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): I'm still learning how to run, but I'm back to coaching cycling. I'm back to coaching running. Yeah, I just, I kind of looked for, how can I possibly adapt and move forward? And then I, I went after it.

0:22:56 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): So there's a healing process. You know, I wanted to be in a prosthetic leg right away, but here, you know, you're dealing with a major surgery and you have to heal from that. It ended up being about six weeks for me, I think, before we could even start that process. And even when you start it, it's a long process. They have to take essentially a cast, a mold of your leg, and then they make a prototype for you, and you have to try the prototype. And usually the prototype is not perfect. We go back to the shop and it's a lot of back and forth to get the right fit.

0:24:26 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. What was it like for you getting back on stage after this happened?

0:24:59 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): I feel like the community just welcomed me back with open arms. I didn't get any, like, funny stares. It was, I expected it to be a difficult transition, and it wasn't. People were just like, we're so happy to have you here. We're so proud of you. And they treated me as an equal, as an equal competitor and not a special competitor. You know, I got out on stage and the judges judged me fairly along with everybody else. They just could only judge three quarters of my body. You know, I'm missing a leg.

0:25:49 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Wow. Wow, wow. Incredible. Now, that was one question I had, and I guess you kind of answered. It was, did you stay in the same realm, or did you have to go to, I don't know, like an adaptive sports type scene?

0:26:34 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): So, yep, I am up there with, with everybody else. There's no special, no special categories for bodybuilders that are amputees, and I don't think I would want one. You know, I, I enjoyed being judged among my peers.

0:27:03 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): I don't think so. You know, if you'd asked my friends and family, they might tell you otherwise. We don't always perceive ourselves the way others perceive us. So I feel like I stayed super positive. I feel like my attitude and personality stayed pretty much the same. I don't remember going through a grieving process. I do remember every once in a while when I was frustrated with my leg, my prosthetic leg, if I had trouble getting it on or if it felt uncomfortable, I remember getting angry and really just wanting to pick it up and throw it across the room. And to be honest with you, I still have those moments.

0:28:02 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Now, how long has that been since that happened?

0:28:18 - (Kevin Lowe): Jeff. And that's when we all just went, what? I mean, you. I mean, oh, my gosh, this is crazy that it's not even been a year since this happened. And look at you today. That's incredible.

0:29:30 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. I love it so much. Now, in your competition, you haven't just competed, just as anybody, you've actually gone and won some titles, correct?

0:30:11 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): And then I competed again a few weeks later in Georgia at the Georgia state championships. I missed out on the overall title for figure, but I did get the title for women's physique, and both of those qualify me for nationals. So I'm not sure if I'll go to nationals this year or next. That's a. A longer process to really prepare for it. I don't want to step out there on stage unless I feel like I've given it my best and done my all and taken the time that I need to get prepared for it. So either this new year or next, I'll be out on the national stage again.

0:31:06 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): You know what, though, Kevin? We all have a story. You know, we all have our own journey. Mine is very visible to everybody else. I walk out on stage and you know what I'm dealing with, or you think you do. You know, you. You know, at least part of what I'm dealing with because it's. Because it's visual. Everybody's dealing with demons. Everybody's battling demons. There's probably people out there that are going through a divorce or maybe have lost a loved one or are struggling, trying to make ends meet by working four jobs. You know, we just can't see the journey that they're on in the struggles, but we're all dealing with something, and I've learned that, that, you know, some people will come up to me and say, wow, Tracy, I have no excuses. Like, I look at you and.

0:32:15 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Yeah. That kind of really segues into the next question I wanted to ask you is going through what you have and sitting where you are today, what would you say to the person listening today? Who, who, they've gone through something serious, too, a life altering incident. What would you say to them?

0:33:07 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): I was so blind to the amputee community and the limb loss community or even, like, on a greater scale, the disability community, if we want to use that word. And I know that's a polarizing word, but I'm going to use it because I feel positive about it. But if you're experiencing some major sort of trauma or loss, you can focus on the loss, or you can focus on the space that this makes to bring new people into your life and new opportunities into your life. And, and I think that, that we're allowed time to grieve and we're allowed time to go to a dark place. You just can't live there. So take a few moments, acknowledge what you're going through, but then look for opportunities to, to make your life richer because of it.

0:34:00 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): Yeah. So, you know, like I said, I started as an aerobics instructor a long time ago, and that, that really snowballed and kind of catapulted me into the fitness industry. And especially once I started bodybuilding and with the explosion of social media, you know, now each person can be on a world stage if they want to be, you know, because social media has. Has shrunk our world and exposed us to everybody.

0:34:47 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): So I have an online coaching business, which is for bodybuilders or runners or really just anybody that wants to learn more about nutrition and physical fitness and have someone customize some workout programs for them. I am now married to a man who has a very similar background to me. He's not an amputee, but as far as fitness and nutrition and the education that he and I both have, we both have master's degrees in the field.

0:35:25 - (Kevin Lowe): How fitting. I love it. Oh, my gosh. So I will be sure that anybody who's interested, I will be sure that that website is left in the show. Notes for easy access. Tracy, last question for you is, back when this whole thing started, when you first had your injury and when you started to realize that it wasn't a simple fix, looking back at it now, what would you tell yourself now to encourage you to keep going forward?

0:37:13 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Amazing. Tracy, thank you so much for being here today and for sharing your story. You, as I said, you're an amazing, amazing woman. And even more so, just an incredible example of what we are truly capable of. As people hear the fact of your story, you went from somebody who wasn't into fitness to being on stage, winning competitions to a woman who sustained a life altering injury, and yet you have done everything but allow it to alter your life.

0:38:00 - (Tracy Gariepy LaMarche): Thank you. And thank you so much for the opportunity to share my story. You know, I feel like I'm living my best life, and I enjoy what I do, and I enjoy talking to people about it. And if this inspires one person to go out and live their best life, then my job is done.

0:38:52 - (Kevin Lowe): I encourage you to take what you heard today, put it into action in your own life. And, hey, let's all be inspired. From Tracy to all, all be badasses in our own lives. Until next time, I'm Kevin Lowe. Get out there and enjoy the day.