Julie Gerrish Fitness

04/11/2026

Perfect spring day in the park ☀️

03/11/2026

Proud beyond words of my daughter . Her band played last weekend in Phoenix and they were amazing. They shared the stage with some big names and more than held their own and got the crowd dancing along with all their own original music. It reminded me of all the times I proudly watched my daughter singing on stage since elementary school.

02/15/2026

What brings you joy?

Joy is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I’m trying to bring more joy into my life. What I realized is that joy can be in the small things, but I have to be mindful to notice them. Sometimes I’m too busy moving toward the next thing to see tiny moments of joy right in front of me: ice frozen on the tree branches, tiny mice tracks in the snow, or the gaggle (is this the correct term?) of turkeys nesting way up in the trees.

One very cold morning I decided to go for a run in Riverside Park in NYC. I bundled up as best I could and off I went. Though frigid, the sun was so bright in a vivid blue sky, and lots of people were out running along with me. I stopped to watch the dogs playing in the dog park. The river was actually rimmed with mini glaciers of ice that were so surreal and magical. I didn’t feel the cold in those moments; I only felt this swelling of joy that I was alive and witness to such beauty, that I could get up and go for a run on a 10-degree morning and be a part of this beauty.
Despite all of that, I will say that my run back to my apartment was a little less joyful and more just frigid. But I did it!
Exercise brings me joy. It always has. Being able to move my body and feel my muscles is such a privilege and I do not take it for granted.

02/13/2026

Yummy healthy lunch at Peacefood Cafe NYC!

02/05/2026

I wrote this 2 years ago, when I was forced to stop working due to illness. A lot has changed since I wrote this but I still wanted to share it. The person that wrote this 2 years ago was in the thick of a huge pivotal moment, confronted with some hard truths but still fighting with that part of her that felt she needed to do everything “right” and “perfect,” whatever that meant. I still fight with the old Julie who kept going no matter what, putting other peoples’ needs before mine, and draining my energy. I am learning, slowly, to be different: to be aware of what I’m thinking and feeling, to be kind to myself, and to find the small moments of joy in the littlest things. It is a hard lesson I have learned, and am still learning every day, but I am glad this illness, whatever it is, happened to me to force me to really take stock in how I am living my life.

“Listen To Your Body”

Wow, that’s a loaded phrase. Listen to your body. I don’t think I know how to do that. I am so used to pushing my body through workouts and runs and races and tennis matches. I sprained my ankle on a run and taught a step class the next day, and did the whole workout. The crazy thing was that I didn’t have any pain in that class and my recovery was the quickest it’s ever been. So what did that teach me? That I should -and had to-keep going. I
had plantar fasciitis and taught a one hour dance class that I had advertised with lots of people coming, so I taught through that pain, and it really hurt, not to mention that I set my recovery back. Why didn’t I cancel the class? I couldn’t let everybody down. They paid to come; it was a special event; I had to do it. Another time, I woke up with vertigo, so bad that I couldn’t get out of bed without violent spinning and vomiting. I taught my first day of boot camp the next day. I couldn’t look down because the spinning would start up. Here’s another instance: I got home from my son’s soccer tournament after a looooong and sh*tty drive straight through from Indiana at 4:30 in the morning, slept for a half hour and then went and ran a 6 am boot camp and worked the rest of the day training people. And another: I got home from a long flight from Paris to NYC and a long traffic-filled ride to which I almost fell asleep, and got up at 5:30 am the next morning to teach a 6 am class. During the pandemic lockdown, I taught a virtual class EVERY DAY at 9 am so I wouldn’t lose clients.

But here’s the craziest one: Fresh off an anaphylactic reaction to an antiobiotic in Paris, with a crazy cough, I continued to work my regular schedule and worked out, resting a bit but then amping up the workouts when I started to feel a bit better, over and over again, until I got so sick that I finally had to stop work and rest because I can’t do my job anymore.

Resting. It sucks. I have often said I don’t know how to rest, and it’s true. I am usually exercising or cleaning my house in my spare time. I rarely rest.

But now, I am resting. Resting is not easy. Resting is hard. Not resting is easy for me. I am so conditioned to believe that resting is lazy, that if I don’t exercise every day I will get fat, or flabby, or old, or sick. Now, I can’t exercise. Ironic huh? Exercise was making me sicker.

I’m not quite sure how to listen to my body. What is it telling me? If I am truthful with myself, it is telling me I’m not ready to get back out there yet; that I still need to rest.

As you can see from my writing 2 days ago, if I’m going to rest I’m going to do restful things with purpose, so I don’t “waste” this time, things like learning French, learning more about what’s going on with my body and my health. Even this very thing I’m writing RIGHT NOW is one of my goals: writing more.

I am a trainer who would never tell people to push themselves to the limits that I have. So why did I believe I had to? The same reason everyone does: because they believe they have to be perfect, and this is how you do it.

This is a journey for me. I am determined to get better, and I see that I’m making it my full-time job now: drinking celery juice, eating the “right” foods to get rid of the virus, taking Epsom salt baths, resting, and doing all the things I think I should be doing to get better.

I still can’t give Julie a break. Not if I want to get better. I need to find the right doctors, eat the right combinations of food, do just the right amount of the right exercises, read all the books I can about auto-immune diseases and how to fix it. I have made it my mission to recover. And, if I’m honest, most of the time I’m not really enjoying the journey.

So, that’s my first goal, and honestly, the absolute hardest one: Give Julie a freaking break. She’s doing the best she can.

01/25/2026

Used this snowy Sunday to meal prep some protein and veggie packed egg bites for a quick and healthy breakfast! Here’s how to make it: Spinach Egg Bites

Ingredients
Olive oil to grease muffin tin
2 ten ounce packages frozen chopped spinach, thawed
4 scallions, chopped thinly crosswise
6 large eggs
2 cups (16 ounces) cottage cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Pinch of ground nutmeg
Salt and pepper
6 Tablespoons flour (I use oat flour or almond flour but you can use all-purpose flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder

First:
Preheat oven to 375. Grease a 12 cup muffin tin with olive oil and place on sheet pan

Squeeze spinach over sink to remove as much water as you can. Drain well and add to large bowl with scallions, eggs, cottage cheese, Parmesan cheese and nutmeg, then season with salt and pepper. Stir until well combined. Add flour and baking powder and stir until just mixed well.

Fill muffin tins with spinach mixture, and bake until set, 20-25 minutes. Allow to cool completely before removing from tin with a knife around the edges to loosen from tin.

Can be stored in the fridge for up to 3 days, but I freeze them and reheat in the microwave for a quick and healthy breakfast!

01/21/2026

There is no magic pill. For a long time I wished there was something I could do, some drug I could take to make myself feel better. I read so many books about different auto-immune diseases, visited so many specialists to try and get a diagnosis or a drug that would help me, took so many supplements and tried so many special diets. There was something really wrong with me, and it was my mission to figure it out, so I dove all in.

What was frustrating was none of that really did anything to help me feel better, although it took me a long time to figure that out, and if I’m honest, I’m still figuring it out. I trusted that doctors and experts knew better than me how to fix me.

The best thing for me was rest, and calm, going easy on myself, being kind and understanding to this new me and this new body.

Instead of the crazy hard workouts that I was used to, I had to do small, easy workouts at first throughout the day and build my strength back slowly. The super-restrictive diets that some of the experts recommended were making me weaker, and it turned out that the way I always ate was really the best to restore my energy level and help me heal: lots of fresh fruits and veggies, very little sugar, good fats, and protein in many different forms.

Listening to my body was not something I had done before, although I thought I had. Being kind to myself was not something I had done before either, although I would go out of my way to accommodate clients, to my own detriment at times.

I am learning to listen to the little Julie inside me, the one who has that Dorothy Hamill haircut and is sassy, open and free. She’s still in there, and sometimes I feel like that little girl. And that’s the real magic.

01/20/2026

This is me 2 years ago, on the left. I was very sick and very scared. The photo on the right is me now, a much different person than that gal in 2023.

Two years ago, we went to California for Christmas, a long-planned trip. I definitely didn’t plan I would go to feeling so sick and scared. I had returned from another long-planned October trip to Paris with my sister and mom, the trip of a lifetime, where I had an allergic reaction that caused my immune system to go haywire. I had been sick ever since that trip, very sick, so sick I had gone to the Emergency Room and various doctors and specialists to try to figure out what was wrong. I ended up being diagnosed with quite a few illnesses at once, a perfect storm of crap.

My body, always so strong, a body I pushed to its limits, was no longer able to do the things I had always done. I didn’t trust my body at all, and it was such a scary feeling.

That woman who landed in California with an arsenal of medications was so scared, scared she was dying, scared of the unknown, and blaming herself for getting sick.

Contrast that woman to me now. We went back to California for this past Christmas, 2 years later, and it was a much different experience.

The biggest change? Loving myself, just the way I was. Listening to my body and giving myself rest when I needed it and healthy, nutritious food. Realizing my body is amazing and being grateful for all the wonderful things in my life. Being kind to myself in a way I had never been. Learning to trust myself.

I went for a run on the beach in La Jolla on the day after Christmas, a beautiful, sunny day, full of other people enjoying the beach. I had the biggest smile on my face, realizing how far I’ve come since that Christmas two years ago.

I am on a journey, and it has its ups and downs. It is not always easy, and I still revert to the person who is critical of herself or thinks she should be doing more than she is. But I recognize it now, and know that only I am able to change that mindset. I really love me. ❤

01/15/2026

Suns out…

12/04/2025

Golden hour at the studio.

12/04/2025