Transcript: From Morbidly Obese Teenager to Fitness Expert: Domenic Angelino's Story
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Ashley introduces the episode format, explaining she invited Domenic Angelino back to share his fitness journey via voice note.
So you're like really, really smart. What's up you guys, famous Asha Grant here. Welcome to More Movement Please, the podcast where I hope to inspire you to move your body more. Today I have a voice note for you from Dominic Angelino and he was on our show recently and I asked him to come back on because I find his fitness journey absolutely fascinating and I want to just share it with you as is and then we'll go from there.
So here's what Dominic had to say. So I actually grew up morbidly obese and when I was about 14 years old I lost over 130 pounds in a pretty short period of time. And so when this happened, all of my friends and like, you know, the other people around me in high school saw that and they were like, hmm, you must know a lot about fitness stuff because like clearly you did a fitnessy thing that worked. And so they all started asking me for advice. But, you know, being a high schooler, I had no idea what the heck I was doing. So I just Googled a bunch of stuff and tried to help them as best I could and started pseudo personal training them. And that eventually led me to study exercise science in college.
Domenic describes growing up morbidly obese, losing over 130 pounds around age 14, and then being asked by high school friends for fitness advice — which led him to start pseudo-training them by Googling everything.
When I was an undergrad, I studied kinesiology was like the first thing I focused on. But one thing you kind of had to do when you're earning that degree was take a few psych classes. And I found that when I had to take psych classes, they really worked naturally the way my brain worked. I was like, you know, I want to take more psych classes. So I ended up double majoring in exercise science and psychology, which ended up working out because when it comes to fitness, personal training, etc., both like the psychosocial and physiologic aspects do matter for facilitating the type of outcomes that, you know, you want to facilitate when working with people. But after that, I went to grad school twice. Did kind of want to cover both by bases. I had a degree in physiology, master's in physiology, and then I also did a master's in public health focused on health communication and health behavior change.
Domenic explains how required psychology classes in his kinesiology degree clicked naturally with how his brain worked, leading him to double major and later pursue two master's degrees in physiology and public health.
So, again, kind of balancing out things with the physiology and psych perspective. And, yeah, I mean, I also went the public health route ultimately because I found it to be a lot more fulfilling for me to... have a larger scale impact on a lot of people at the same time, as opposed to just working one -on -one with somebody. Like, I know that, you know, a lot of people start their fitness career working with individual clients primarily, like through personal training, and you can have like a very, very big impact on somebody's life in a very personal and intimate way. And that is valuable. But for me personally, I found that I liked having a less intimate impact on a much larger number of people. That just felt very valuable to me. So with the public health route, I've worked in all areas of the field. I've worked with research teams. I've worked with AI -type labs. I've done a lot of writing, ghostwriting. I've worked with a lot
Domenic describes why he gravitated toward public health over personal training — preferring a less intimate but wider-scale impact — and how working across research, AI labs, ghostwriting, and content creation keeps him improving across different areas of the fitness industry.
of YouTubers, influencers, content creators, all that sort of stuff. I've done research. You know, just been all over the place. Worked on like product design, et cetera, et cetera. And I do like that I'm able to have a positive impact through a variety of different channels. I mean, like personally, I do really like that I get to do different things with my day. I find it fun, valuable. I get to always like problem solve and get better. Because there's always this sort of like diminishing return thing that comes up when you work in one narrow area over time, right?
You tend to improve less quickly as your skill sets look more saturated. So one way that I kind of like sort of that is just by doing a bunch of different things, you're getting better at a bunch of niche things, which then allow me to, you know, translate what I learned and what I get better at from. one thing like working on x fitness app to like then working on y fitness game or whatever it is um and also i find it's nice right because it gives you a much more uh nuanced understanding of the industry and all of its aspects including like that not just like from the business side and from the like professional side but from the audience side right like there are totally different clients and types of people that rely on benefiting from let's say a certain type of fitness app that's designed for people new to fitness as and that's different than the audience that might be passionately following
a really big fitness youtuber and working in both those areas you get to understand both types of people who are you know both real and have their own unique spaces within the industry and can be served by the industry in different ways. So can you believe that Dominic actually started his fitness journey when he was a teenager? I mean, how cool is that to, you know, basically decide at that young of an age that you wanted to do something in fitness? I have to confess that it's kind of crazy to me because I didn't really get serious about fitness until I was about to turn 41. And, you know, it's not to say that I didn't move before then, because I said before on this podcast that whenever I was in my youth, I was actually really big into dance.
Ashley contrasts Domenic's teenage start with her own path — 12 years of dance, Taekwondo driven by being bullied, going inactive in college, failed attempts at bootcamp and Zumba about 12 years ago, and finally committing about a year ago after something her instructor said finally stuck.
I was a dancer for 12 years. And then after dance, I was obsessed with all things taekwondo. I think the reason that I became kind of obsessed with Taekwondo was twofold. It was first because a lot of people don't know this, or I think I've shared it on the podcast before, but I can't really remember. I was actually bullied quite a bit in high school and middle school. And that's actually why I started doing Taekwondo is I had some mean girls that I was kind of afraid of.
My parents decided to put me in Taekwondo because they wanted me to be able to defend myself, which is a sad reason to join something like that. But it was good for me at the time. And so, you know, all through grade school, I was pretty active. And then it seemed to basically come to a halt whenever I got to college. And I guess that's somewhat normal. But I regret that I ever let myself become inactive. Because I feel like I would have been in much better shape throughout my life if I had continued on with being active.
And so it did take me a really long time to find my way back to fitness. And I did have a couple of, I guess you'd call them bumpy starts trying to get back into it. I've said before on this podcast that about like 12 years ago, I tried doing the... pills and shots and all that crap. And, and at that time I was also trying to do like bootcamp and I was trying to do Zumba and I was trying to do a bunch of different things, but nothing really stuck. And I know a lot of that had to do with the fact that I was so out of shape and so, well, yeah, I'll just say I was so out of shape that I just had a hard time committing, but that's not a good excuse. And so I'm really glad that about a year ago, my instructor kind of said something to me that she had said before, but it finally took. And I'm really grateful that I started putting in the work because it really has changed my life.
It has changed my life in a way that I never expected. I never knew I was going to start a fitness podcast. I was never, I never knew that I was going to do so much in the fitness space. I'm grateful to be a contributor to this space. And so, Dominic, I want to thank you for sending in your voice note, sharing your journey, because I find these things absolutely fascinating. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I find learning how people got into fitness just fascinating.
And so I want to hear from you all, too. Head over to FamousSashaGrant .com backslash fitness. I would love for you to send me a voice note sharing your fitness journey, how you got into fitness. what it is that inspires you to keep going. If you work in fitness, I want to know about that. Or if you're just trying to get fit in your 30s, 40s, 50s, whatever, I want to know about that too, because I think that the more that we start talking about what really led people to getting into fitness, the better. I want more transparency and more discussions and more talking about. what it is that makes us move. I hope you enjoyed Dominic's story and there will definitely be more coming. I have a bunch of voice notes in my queue that I can't wait to share with y'all. Onwards and upwards, my friends. Have you worked out today?
Ashley thanks Domenic, invites listeners to submit their own fitness journey voice notes, and closes by asking whether they've worked out today.
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