Nutritionist and fitness coach Jacinta Cari has tips for people on a health and fitness journey.
Photo by
Rechelle Zammit
For many, the beginning of a new year brings about health and fitness goals.
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The motivation to lose weight and move more usually comes after a month of overindulging during festive celebrations and being so time poor that exercise took a back seat in December.
The reset is usually promising in the beginning, but it often falls off when normal life and routine return after holidays.
Shepparton health and fitness coach Jacinta Cari says the key to success is to start slowly.
“Start small, don’t put everything in at once, then you’ve got room to add more or make it fit in with your lifestyle,” Ms Cari said.
“While people are still on holidays, they think they’ve got to do everything at once.
“Then when life starts happening, it falls off and then there’s that all-or-nothing approach.”
Jacinta Cari earned Pro cards in the Wellness division with Natural Bodybuilding Australia and iCompete Natural in 2025, also competing in the ICN Pro Sports Model line-up, and went on to win the overall title at the Australian Natural Bodybuilding National Championships.
Ms Cari, a natural bodybuilder who earned her Pro Card in the Wellness division with both Natural Bodybuilding Australia and iCompete Natural last year in October, has a passion for helping women achieve goals a little less extreme.
“It’s all about long-term sustainability and creating a healthy relationship with food,” she said.
Ms Cari first studied vision science to become an optometrist before doing her masters in teaching and eventually finding her calling in the health and fitness industry and completing her Certificate IV in Fitness to complement her nutrition qualification.
Jacinta Cari at Origin Athletics, where she coaches clients.
Photo by
Prue Peters Photography
The 30-year-old now offers face-to-face personal training and nutrition coaching out of Origin Athletics in Shepparton, as well as online coaching, and is an assessor for Clean Health, an internationally accredited registered training organisation for fitness professionals.
Despite her own set of skills and years of experience in the industry, Ms Cari said it was important that she also had a coach to help her achieve her goals.
“It just takes the guess work out of it; you just tick the boxes and you don’t think twice about it,” she said.
Ms Cari said there were many things people did to lose weight, but not all of them were healthy.
To binge and restrict food, take weight loss drugs or cut out certain food groups could be damaging to a person’s health, according to Ms Cari.
She said often people expected quick results or feared becoming bulky, so would go to extremes to lose weight, but that it could be detrimental to their health in the long run.
“Movement for health and strength training is great, but once it’s taken to the extreme, obsessing about looks or missing out on social occasions because they can’t eat is not ideal,” Ms Cari said.
To get true and lasting results, she said people who set out on a health and fitness journey should avoid focusing on a quick fix.
“It’s going to be a long-lasting change, you need it to take time,” she said.
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