Meet Tara De Leon, an Edgewater mom, wife, personal trainer, speaker + author of “Hot Mess to Hot Mom”. Tara has helped hundreds of women feel capable and confident by teaching them how to lift weights and get strong, healthy, and empowered.
As a weight-neutral, plus-size personal trainer, Tara is redefining societal norms around health and body standards. Tara empowers women to embrace their bodies and take up space without apologizing. Although she was initially concerned about being a trainer in a larger body, she soon became the busiest and most successful trainer in the area, earning the National Strength and Conditioning Association’s Personal Trainer of the Year award this year!
Tell us a little bit about you and your family! Where did you grow up? How long have you lived in the area? How many kids do you have?
Hey Hey, everyone! I’m Tara De Leon, born in Annapolis, but raised in a military family, so I’m kind of a “citizen of the world.” I have lived in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Germany, Maryland, Hawaii, and Costa Rica. We did most of the moving when I was very young though, so I consider Annapolis my home. I now live in Edgewater with my husband Marcus, our 4-year-old son, Maverick, and our Aussie pup, Chula.
You’re a personal trainer, speaker, and author of “Hot Mess to Hot Mom”. How did you get to your career today? Tell us how you got started!
The start of my career as a personal trainer was rooted in diet culture. I was in a larger body my entire life, despite playing sports, exercising, and eating a wide variety of foods. When I got to college, I ended up in a class for coaching majors, which I was not, but I loved it. My professor was so passionate about what he was teaching that it ignited a fire within me and I had to dive in. I thought that if I could become a personal trainer, I would learn “the secret” to being skinny for the rest of my life. You never see personal trainers in larger bodies, right? (trick question, of course we do! Case in point: me!)
Little did I know that there is no secret (sorry to burst your bubble!) and that people, even personal trainers, come in all shapes and sizes. I worked as a trainer for several years before becoming a collegiate strength coach. Eventually I realized that I wanted to start a family, and that job at that time was not compatible with the way I wanted my life to be.
So I quit my job, started working as a personal trainer again, and bought my first house, all in the same day. I worried about being a trainer in a larger body, but my fears were largely unfounded. I quickly became the busiest and most successful trainer around, even winning the National Strength and Conditioning Association’s Personal Trainer of the Year award this year.
I realized that as much as I love training others, I needed to diversify my income a little bit. I launched a podcast with Elizabeth Harris and Maria Winters, a dietitian, and mental health therapist called Wellness Rebranded. We named it Wellness Rebranded to highlight our mission of cutting through the noise of diet culture and wellness fads, offering a fresh, inclusive approach to health that’s rooted in real life. Our goal is to help you redesign your relationship with food, fitness, and feelings in a way that’s sustainable, practical, and most importantly, true to you. I also started doing online training, corporate wellness, speaking at fitness and personal training conferences, and I wrote a book!
LOVE the title of your book – tell us all about it!
It was the morning of my son’s first birthday and we were having a party. I hopped in the shower, hoping to be out by the time guests arrived. I was running through the party checklist as I showered, serenaded by a toddler screaming and banging on the door when I looked down and realized it had been weeks or maybe months since I had last shaved my legs. “You gotta get it together! You’re acting like your baby was just born and he’s a year old,” I thought. It was then that I knew- I was a Hot Mess. I wished that there was a checklist of sorts for me to just work through as a new mom, so that I’d know that I had it all together and could feel like myself again. I could be HOT- Health, On-it and Thriving.
I searched the internet, but nothing quite fit. I wanted a safe, effective, and time-efficient workout. I wanted healthy meal ideas. I wanted sleep help, mental health help, body image tips, and my libido. Where did that go? I wanted an estate plan and will, a college savings plan, and childcare help. I just needed to breathe a little. I needed a village.
So I decided to create what I needed. I enlisted the help of experts to contribute chapters and now we have created the go-to gift for new moms. All moms deserve to feel like themselves again. Hot Mess to Hot Mom: Transformational Tools for Thriving After Childbirth and Beyond will help them get there.
What are some tips for staying fit as a busy mom?
Ah, an easy question- finally! Haha. So to stay fit, we actually need way less exercise than we all think we do. Honestly as a busy mom, if you can get in 30 minutes of weight lifting twice a week and a couple of walks in your neighborhood, you’re doing great. And if you’re not sure what you’re doing, reach out! I’m happy to do a free consultation to get you started on the right foot. (Also, there’s a 16 week workout plan for moms in my book, so go buy that and enjoy!)
It also helps to reframe your mentality around exercise. Your body just did something amazing! It grew an entire human being! We don’t need to erase all the evidence that that miracle happened. We just need to be healthy enough to be able to live life on our terms. The weight lifting twice a week and a few walks per week plan will get you there!
If you love exercise, by all means, do more, but as long as you’re getting that in, you’re doing good!
How has your job shifted your perspective of Motherhood?
Being a mom is tough, being a working mom is super tough. Not only do you have the stress of caring for your family, but somehow we have to keep up at work too.
Motherhood actually makes me so grateful to have my job. It’s so flexible that if my baby is sick, it’s not a problem. School event? No prob. It’s all doable. Still stressful for sure, but so much less stressful than if I had a job that was very structured.
What’s one thing people would be surprised to know about you?
Two surprising things about me….I am an introvert, even though I’m chatty and appear outgoing. Nobody ever believes me, but I thrive off of alone time. (which, as I’m sure you can imagine, with a 4 year old in the home, there isn’t much of it!)
And secondly, I am a reef keeper! We have salt water aquariums in our home and have lots of coral, fish, anemones, crabs, snails and shrimp. I’m a science geek at heart and this hobby plays right into that, plus it gives me living art in my living room. And looking at an aquarium for 20 minutes per day actually reduces stress and lowers blood pressure, so if I ever find 20 minutes, I’ll have that going for me lol.
What’s something you love that’s just for you?
Reading. When I was a kid, my dad told me that books can take you anywhere you want to go and it got me hooked on reading. So now I make a point to read every single day. (Vince Flynn is my favorite author, but I also love fun easy reads, like Colleen Hoover or Farrah Rachon)
Best mom hack that makes your life easier.
My best mom hack is to outsource the things that don’t really matter, if possible. I have a cleaning lady (shout out to Crabtown Cleaning) who comes every Friday and cleans and does my laundry. My house is a disaster most of the time, but for those 6 hours in between her leaving and us arriving back home, the house looks great and I don’t have to find time in my already busy schedule to do it.
I also pack a week’s worth of lunches at a time so I don’t have to be disappointed that I have to do that every night.
I would look for things you don’t enjoy doing and see how you can take them off of your plate.
Name something you hope your children look back and remember about their childhood and you as their mama.
I hope my son just has this unwavering knowledge that I love him so so so much. I also hope that he sees that sometimes I do put myself first and that I matter as a human too, not just as his mama.
What’s your favorite family activity to do in the area?
We are super lucky to live near the water so we love spending time walking, looking for herons or other birds, playing at the beaches or soaking up the sun. (with our sunscreen on, of course!)
What have you learned from your son?
Becoming a mom truly taught me patience. I am a pretty chill person, it takes a lot to get me fired up, but whew! There were a couple moments there in the toddler years that I had to dig DEEP into my patience. Now I feel like if I can handle that, I can do anything!
I also feel that my son has deepened my ability to forgive, be kind and unconditionally love someone.
Greatest gift about being a mom.
I tried to conceive for five years before it finally ended in a viable pregnancy. I remember going to get my newborn for those 3am feedings and just sitting there in his room, holding this gorgeous, perfect, sleeping baby and SOBBING with gratitude and awe. Just being able to have the opportunity to have him and be his mom is amazing to me.
Best advice for mom guilt.
Momming is hard, you know? Like it’s physically difficult, mentally difficult and emotionally a roller coaster. I think we need to realize that all of us suck at something, everyone’s kids are wild sometimes, and that we are all doing the best that we can. It’s so difficult to believe the good things about ourselves sometimes, but so easy to believe the bad. It’s easy to see how all the other moms appear to be killing it and how we are over here just barely staying afloat. Remind yourself that we don’t see everything behind the scenes and all we need to worry about is ourselves and our families.
The TLDR version: let that shit go. It serves nothing and no one.
Tara De Leon has helped hundreds of women feel capable and confident by teaching them how to lift weights and get strong, healthy, and empowered. As a weight-neutral, plus-size personal trainer, Tara is redefining societal norms around health and body standards.
Tara also recently launched @wellnessrebranded, a podcast with a mission to cut through the noise of diet culture and wellness fads by offering an inclusive approach to health rooted in real life.
Set up a FREE consultation with Tara – she would love to help you thrive as the HOT mom that you are!
Get Tara’s book – “Hot Mess to Hot Mom: Transformational Tools for Thriving after Childbirth and Beyond”
Listen to the Wellness Rebranded Podcast
We love supporting local businesses! What are your favorite places in the Anne Arundel County area to:
Get coffee: I’m actually not a coffee drinker, but I love getting a juice from Rutabaga
Go on a date night: Harvest Thyme is always delicious
Go out for a girl’s night: Pirates Cove
Go out to dinner as a family: Julep is super yummy and Fuji Japanese Steakhouse is fun
Get your hair done: Chris at C5 in symmetry is a miracle worker
Shop for your kids: haha mostly I shop on the “Buy Nothing” group but occasionally I’ll hit up Carter’s, Target or Dream Baby Decor
Get your nails done: Adore in Edgewater is fantastic!
Have fun as a family: Quiet Waters is always fun, so is the Truxton park playground, followed by Always Ice Cream in Edgewater
Photography by: @maureen.porto.studios + @bethanyswain
