The Tender Parts

She walked back into the world that almost destroyed her. On purpose. With her eyes open.

Mila de Biaggi is a performance-driven movement specialist, fitness concept creator and Head of Training & Development at PLATFORM Studios in Dubai, bringing over a decade of international coaching and performance experience.

Today, alongside her team of Coach Developers, she leads the education, development and performance standards of over 180 coaches, building environments where high performance, growth and genuine support go hand in hand. She is also the creator of IGNITE and ATHLETIC SCULPT, two movement concepts bringing together her passion for movement, performance and an understanding of the human body beyond just its physical capabilities.

But long before stepping into the fitness industry, Mila spent years performing internationally in musical theatre productions including Cats, Dirty Dancing and Singin' in the Rain. Having started performing as a child, the stage became a place where her passion, discipline and love for movement came alive.

What nobody in those theatres knew was what it cost her to be there. Behind the performances was a story far more complex than anyone could see, yet her love for what she did kept her going.

In this episode, Mila and I go to places most conversations don't dare go:

• 4:00 How a world built on praise, discipline and silence taught an eleven-year-old girl that being loved meant becoming someone else
• 27:00 What anorexia actually sounds like from the inside, and why that voice felt safer than the alternative
• 45:48 The log in the river: the image that changed everything, and the two choices that got her out
• 1:06:02 Why her doctors told her never to go back into fitness, and why she went back anyway
• 1:13:44 What it means to coach women through their bodies when you know what it is to be at war with yours
• 1:13:44 The real reason she does this work, and who the next girl is

I don't just ask the questions. I show up too.

The conversations that happen after everyone else leaves.

Each episode is one woman and one long conversation. Two of us in a room, faces visible, no microphone to hide behind. Every woman in this series has built something the world calls a success, and she knows exactly what it cost her.

So we skip the part where the LinkedIn reads well and the Instagram looks good. All of that is true. It's simply the part that was safe to publish.

We talk about the version of herself she had to leave behind and still misses. What ambition does to love. What the body quietly absorbs while you get on with your life. What we'd tell ourselves at twenty-five, if we'd have listened, which we wouldn't have.

I'm in it as much as she is. She asks me the hard questions back, and I answer them.