Everyone sees the aesthetic. The bookshelves. The brand partnerships. The content that looks effortless from the outside.

Nobody tells you the truth about what it actually costs — or why the lies you believe before you start are the exact things that will slow you down once you do.

In Episode 123 of Mindset, Health, Empowerment: The Unfiltered Trainer I am breaking down the three biggest lies about building a BookTok presence and a UGC creator business at the same time and the unfiltered truth behind each one.

In this episode we cover:

• Why you do not need a huge following to land brand deals and what actually matters to brands when they hire a UGC creator
• The real ninety percent of the creator life that nobody posts about: including what building looks like when your health does not cooperate
• Why choosing one niche might actually be the thing holding you back and how a thriller reading brain makes a better UGC creator than you would expect
• The most unfiltered truth about building something online when nobody fully understands what you are doing yet

This episode is for anyone building something in public who has ever felt like they are doing it wrong. You are not. Keep going.

Watch the YouTube video version of this episode: youtube.com/@ginamariefit

Follow on Instagram: @ginamariefit

Follow on TikTok: @ginamariefit

Book a UGC partnership: ginamariefit.com

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New podcast episodes every Tuesday. Book reviews every Friday on YouTube. Subscribe so you never miss either. 🎙📚

#MindsetHealthEmpowerment #TheUnfilteredTrainer #BookTokCreator #UGCCreator #CreatorLife #UnfilteredTruth #GinaMarieFit #ThrillerBooks #BuildingInPublic #ContentCreatorLife

Do you consider yourself emotionally intelligent?

Most people would say yes. And most of those same people have sent an email they immediately regretted. Have made a decision that felt crystal clear in the moment and looked completely different three days later. Have repeated a relationship pattern they could see clearly from the outside and still could not stop from the inside.

Here is what nobody told you. Being aware of your emotions and being intelligent about them are not the same thing. Knowing what you feel is step one. What you do with that knowledge is the actual skill. And most people have never been taught that part.

In This Episode:

What emotional intelligence actually is and why the wellness space has been teaching an incomplete version of it. The difference between emotional awareness and emotional regulation and why you can have one without the other. Why high achievers often have the lowest emotional intelligence despite the highest self-awareness. What emotional reactivity actually looks like in sophisticated high-functioning people and why it passes as strategy. Why managing emotions is not the same as suppressing them. The name it to tame it practice and the neuroscience behind why it works. And the single most powerful emotional intelligence skill you can develop starting today.

This episode connects directly to the nervous system conversation from Episode 119. The regulation work and the emotional intelligence work are the same project approached from two different angles. And understanding both changes everything about how you move through your own life.

Stay Connected:

Listen on all podcast platforms: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/createdbyginamarie/Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginamariefitFollow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ginamariefitWatch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ginamariefitWebsite and Blog: https://ginamariefit.com/

New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you never miss one. And if this episode named something you have been experiencing but did not have language for come find me on Instagram and TikTok at ginamariefit. I want to hear what resonated.

Every book in this volume is hiding something.

A body with a story underneath it nobody was supposed to find. A woman inside an institution where the people meant to protect her are the ones she should fear. A neighborhood full of people who knew exactly what happened to a missing woman and said nothing. And a killer who narrates their own story directly to you from the very first page.

Four books. Four completely different setups. One obsession with the gap between what people present and what is actually true.

Volume 3 of The Unfiltered Bookshelf introduces two brand new authors to the shelf, delivers the biggest rating jump in this series so far, and has the most honest conversation yet about what happens when a beloved author does not land the same way every time.

In This Volume:

Dead in the Water by John Marrs: 4 out of 5. A new author earns his place immediately with a morally complex thriller that prioritizes character over plot mechanics.

The Inmate by Freida McFadden: 3.5 out of 5. The honest conversation about catalog consistency and what to do when an author you love does not deliver in the same way.

Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica: 4.5 out of 5. The biggest surprise of the volume and the most significant rating jump in the series so far.

When I Kill You by BA Paris: 3.5 out of 5. The most structurally unusual book in this volume and the one that asks the most of its reader.

Shop every book mentioned:

Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/ginamariefit
ShopMy Unfiltered Bookshelf: https://shopmy.us/ginamariefit/the-unfiltered-bookshelf

Stay Connected:

Listen on all podcast platforms: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/createdbyginamarie/
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginamariefit
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ginamariefit
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ginamariefit
Website and Blog: https://ginamariefit.com/

New Unfiltered Bookshelf volumes drop monthly. Subscribe so you never miss one. And if you have read any of these books come find me on Instagram and TikTok @theunfilteredbookshelf and tell me your rating. No spoilers. Just the number.

Money is one of the most avoided conversations in the wellness and empowerment space. Today we are going there completely.

Amy Powell CFA is the founder of AimWell Financial with over 20 years of experience in the finance industry. She combines analytical expertise with a deeply personal client-centered approach built on the belief that financial planning should provide clarity, reduce stress, and support a meaningful life. She is not here to talk at you about numbers. She is here to talk with you about the life you actually want to build and what it takes financially to get there.

This Built Different conversation goes deep on the money topics most people are carrying quietly. What your childhood money story is doing to your financial decisions right now. How to start building stability when you did not come from wealth and nobody taught you how. What the first real steps look like when you are currently living paycheck to paycheck. The difference between financial discipline and financial deprivation. And what financial peace actually feels like when you finally have a plan you trust.

In This Episode:

The most common money belief quietly destroying financial futures. What financial trauma actually looks like in adult decision making. How to build a financial foundation while also managing debt. What generational wealth actually means and whether it is realistic to build it from scratch. The biggest financial mistakes people are making right now in response to economic pressure. How to create a financial plan that accounts for real life including the trips, the dinners, and the things that make life worth living. And what being Built Different means to a woman who has spent 20 years helping people build something real from whatever they started with.

Connect with Amy Powell:

Website: https://www.aimwellfinancial.com/

Email: [email protected]Phone: (727) 335-1874

Stay Connected:

Listen on all podcast platforms: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/createdbyginamarie/Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginamariefitFollow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ginamariefitWatch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ginamariefitWebsite and Blog: https://ginamariefit.com/

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

Your life is actually calmer than it has been in years. The acute crisis has passed. By any reasonable measure you should be able to exhale. And yet your body is still braced. Still scanning. Still finding it genuinely difficult to do nothing without your nervous system treating the silence like a problem to be solved.

You are not broken. Your nervous system is just still running from a fire that already went out.

This episode is not about burnout as a buzzword. It is about the actual physiological reality of what happens to your nervous system when you have been in survival mode for an extended period and why it does not automatically reset when the circumstances change.

In This Episode:

What the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems actually are and what each one feels like from the inside. What chronic activation does to the body over time and why you cannot think your way out of a nervous system response. How sustained pressure, health challenges, and years of high output wire the body for threat and why the body does not update when the circumstances change. What nervous system dysregulation actually looks like in high achievers including the version that gets rebranded as ambition. The difference between true regulation and distraction. One specific tool you can use right now with actual physiological evidence behind it. And what the longer work of building a regulated baseline actually looks like in a real life with real pressures.

This one is personal. And it connects directly to everything covered in recent episodes about chronic illness, the quieter season, and building a life that finally sends consistent signals of safety to a body that spent years being told it was not safe.

Stay Connected:

Listen on all podcast platforms: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/createdbyginamarie/
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginamariefit
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ginamariefit
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ginamariefit
Website and Blog: https://ginamariefit.com/

New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you never miss one. And if this episode named something you have been living with come find me on Instagram and TikTok at ginamariefit. I want to hear what resonated.

I want to tell you something I have not said out loud in quite this way before.

I do not know who I am in this season of my life.

Not in a crisis way. Not in a falling apart way. In the very honest, very quiet, very real way that happens when the life you spent years building is no longer available to you in the same form.

For years the answer to who are you was immediate. Trainer. Healthcare worker. Event host. Always building something visible and measurable. My identity and my output were the same thing. And when my health shifted my path and my physical capacity without asking, the identity went with it.

Now I am home by six. Dinner by seven. And then what.

Some days the quiet feels like a gift. Genuine gratitude for downtime I have not had in five years. Other days that same quiet feels like wasting away. Both on the same Tuesday. That is what an honest in-between season actually looks like.

This episode is not about having it figured out. It is a dispatch from the middle of something. And if you are in your own version of a season where the life you built is no longer available in the same form, you found the right episode today.

In This Episode:

What it looks like when the identity and the output were the same thing and one of them changes. The rollercoaster of gratitude and lostness living in the same body on the same day. The permission slip nobody gave you around rest, rediscovery, and not having a plan. What this quieter season is actually building even when it does not look like it from the outside. And an honest look at midlife not as a crisis but as a recalibration happening in real time.

Stay Connected:

Listen on all podcast platforms: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/createdbyginamarie/
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginamariefit
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ginamariefit
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ginamariefit
Website and Blog: https://ginamariefit.com/

Subscribe so you never miss a Tuesday episode. Come me on Instagram and TikTok at ginamariefit where I'm sharing the real version of this season in real time.

The shelf is growing. And this volume gets completely unfiltered.

Volume 1 of The Unfiltered Bookshelf started with a TBI that took reading from me for two years and the author who gave it back. If you have not listened to that one yet go find it first because it is the foundation of everything this series is built on.

Volume 2 is where things get honest.

I have read every Colleen Hoover book. I kept exactly two of them. And I am going to tell you which two, why those two earned a permanent place on the shelf behind me, and why everything else did not. Not as a pile-on. As someone whose reading taste has evolved and who is not apologizing for it.

And then I am going to introduce you to Alice Feeney. The author who has been quietly sitting in BookTok's shadow while Beautiful Ugly finally starts getting the attention her entire catalog deserves. She is a slow burn author who delivers twists that do not stop. And she earned her place on my shelf faster than almost any author I have read this year.

Plus two more Freida McFadden additions that pushed deeper into what she is capable of. One that is so completely unhinged it has to be experienced. One that gets mixed reviews because of its content but hit until the absolute final page with a final twist that is going to be devastating when it gets adapted.

In This Volume:

The Colleen Hoover conversation nobody is having without making it bigger than it needs to be. Why Confess and Verity are the only two five star reads in her catalog for me and what makes Verity the most interesting outlier she has ever written. The honest three out of five on Woman Down. Introducing Alice Feeney and why she deserves more attention than she is getting. The full style comparison between Alice Feeney and Freida McFadden so you know which one to reach for and when. Reviews of His and Hers, My Husband's Wife, Rock Paper Scissors, and Beautiful Ugly. Dear Debbie rated four out of five and absolutely unhinged in the best possible way. The Teacher rated four point five out of five and the twist that will haunt you.

Plus Lucy Foley and Mary Kubica join the stack for the first time.

The shelf is growing. Come see what earned its place.

Shop every book mentioned in this episode:

Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/ginamariefit
ShopMy Unfiltered Bookshelf: https://shopmy.us/ginamariefit/the-unfiltered-bookshelf

Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginamariefit
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ginamariefit
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ginamariefit
Listen on all podcast platforms: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/createdbyginamarie/
Website and Blog: https://ginamariefit.com/

New Unfiltered Bookshelf volumes drop monthly. Subscribe so you never miss one.

What happens when the very things that made life hardest become the foundation of everything you build? That is exactly the story Bianca, founder of Discolates, tells in this raw and unfiltered Built Different series episode.

Bianca was diagnosed with epilepsy, later uncovering ADHD and dyscalculia, a number-based processing condition that nearly kept her from graduating high school. She spent years feeling misunderstood, minimizing who she was to make others comfortable, and questioning whether there was a place in this world for someone who thought and moved differently.

Then she built Discolates.

What started as a creative outlet during COVID has grown into a full movement rooted in liberation, intentional fitness, and radical acceptance. But the path to get there included trademark infringement battles, burnout, building a business while holding down a full-time job in the nonprofit space, and learning to trust her intuition when everything around her said slow down.

In this episode we go deep on:

The late diagnosis journey and what it taught her about identity and resilience. How her disability shaped the very DNA of the Discolates experience. Why she almost quit more times than people know. The trademark battle that nearly cost her everything she built. What it really means to build a brand rooted in your personal story. The fine line between community and business and why boundaries matter. And why her brain, once her greatest source of pain, is now her greatest superpower.

This one will stay with you. Bianca is the definition of Built Different.

New Built Different episodes drop the last Tuesday of every month. Subscribe, leave a review, and let Bianca know in the comments what resonated with you most.

Connect with Bianca:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discolates

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@discolates

Sweatpals: https://sweatpals.com/host/Discolates

Connect with the podcast: Mindset Health and Empowerment: The Unfiltered Trainer Podcast by subscribing. Episodes drop every Tuesday.

When the debt is paid I will finally feel okay.

When the revenue hits I will be able to breathe.

When life calms down I will start taking care of myself.

How many of those sentences did you just recognize? Because every single one of them makes your happiness conditional. Every single one of them places joy somewhere in the future past a milestone, past a financial number, past a version of your life that the world told you was the acceptable place to finally exhale.

And while you are waiting to get there the actual life you are living right now is passing by.

This episode is about the when I get there trap. The pattern of postponing your own joy until the conditions are approved by a checklist you did not write for yourself. Where it comes from. What it is costing you in real specific measurable terms. Why high achievers are the most vulnerable to it. And what it actually looks like to start building joy into the life you have right now. Not the one that is coming. This one.

In This Episode:

What the societal checklist actually is and why it was never yours to begin with. Why the goalposts keep moving even after you hit the milestone. The specific cost of postponing joy until the conditions are right. What your life is missing while you wait. Why ambition and the inability to rest in a win are deeply connected. The difference between drive that builds you and drive that depletes you. What joy actually looks like in an imperfect life that is still under construction. And what Gina is doing differently right now in real time.

When you keep striving for life to be a to-do list or a societally approved checklist you lose the joy in building the life you actually have right now. This episode is about burning the checklist.

Stay Connected:

Listen on all podcast platforms: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/createdbyginamarie/

Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginamariefit

Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ginamariefit

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ginamariefit

Website and Blog: https://ginamariefit.com/

Subscribe so you never miss a Tuesday episode.

After my car accident and the TBI that came with it I could not read.

Not would not. Could not.

Letters came out backwards. Reading went right to left when the page went left to right. What my brain was thinking and what came out on the page did not match. Retention was gone. Concentration was fractured. Eye tracking was completely off.

For two years I could not finish a book. And for someone who grew up using intelligence as the one level playing field in an unstable world, losing access to reading was one of the most disorienting and frightening things I have ever experienced.

And then in January I picked up The Tenant by Freida McFadden.

And I finished it.

For the first time since my accident I finished a full book without struggling. Without the letters betraying me. Without breaking down. I read four books that month. And what I did not know when I picked up the first one was who Freida McFadden actually is.

She is a physician who specializes in brain injuries and disorders.

That is not a coincidence I know how to explain. I just know what it meant.

This is the first episode of The Unfiltered Bookshelf, a brand new monthly series on Mindset, Health, Empowerment: The Unfiltered Trainer. Every month I will share what I am reading, my unfiltered ratings and reactions, what you should pick up, and what you should skip. No literary pretension. No book report. Just honest opinions from someone who loves stories and wants to share them with the people who come here for exactly this kind of real conversation.

In This Episode:

The full story of my TBI and what it took from me cognitively. What two years without reading actually felt like when intelligence had always been my foundation. The moment I finished The Tenant and what that meant. Who Freida McFadden is and why that detail stopped me completely. And unfiltered reviews of all four books I read in January including The Tenant, The Crash, Never Lie, and The Housemaid.

Book Ratings:

The Tenant by Freida McFadden: 4 out of 5

The Crash by Freida McFadden: 3.75 out of 5

Never Lie by Freida McFadden: 4.5 out of 5

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden: 4.5 out of 5

CONNECT AND SHOP

Listen on all podcast platforms:  https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/createdbyginamarie/

Follow on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/ginamariefit

Follow on TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@ginamariefit

Watch full video reviews on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/@ginamariefit

Shop all books on my Amazon Storefront:  https://www.amazon.com/shop/ginamariefit

Website and Blog:  https://ginamariefit.com/

Subscribe so you never miss a Tuesday episode or a monthly Unfiltered Bookshelf drop. And if you pick up any of these Freida McFadden books after listening DM me on Instagram and tell her what you thought.