THE IRON EAGLE

People have asked me why the eagle became my symbol.

It goes back to a chapter of my life when fitness wasn't simply what I did.

It was where I was going.

I grew up in Sweden, but I had my eyes on California.

I wanted to go where the best were. I wanted to train at Gold's Gym. I wanted to surround myself with people who had taken physical development to an extraordinary level.

I didn't want to admire that world from a distance.

I wanted to earn my place in it.

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TRAIN WITH THE BEST TO BECOME ONE OF THE BEST

My real transformation started on February 17, 1999.

I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger on the cover of a magazine and was completely blown away.

Yes, I saw the body.

But what fascinated me was what I believed had to exist behind that body.

The mind.

The discipline.

The ability to decide what you want and repeatedly do what is required to build it.

At the time, I didn't have that discipline.

I was struggling with my weight. I had been yo-yo dieting, trying to change my body without understanding how to consistently control my own behavior.

That image gave me something bigger to pursue.

I wanted to become an IFBB professional fitness figure athlete.

I wanted California.

And eventually, I wanted to build my life there.

Those goals were so far beyond my current reality that I couldn't simply make a plan and check off the boxes.

I had to become the person capable of accomplishing them.

That became the real transformation.

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I DIDN'T WANT THE POND

The eagle started to mean something to me because I never felt comfortable accepting the size of the world immediately around me as the size of the world available to me.

I wanted to see what was beyond it.

I wanted the sky.

I wanted freedom.

I wanted to test myself.

I wanted to know how far I could go if I developed the discipline to carry myself there.

Eventually I made it to California.

I trained at Gold's Gym among people I had once only seen in magazines.

I was surrounded by extraordinary physiques, champions, athletes and people who had devoted enormous parts of their lives to physical mastery.

I loved it.

I flexed.

I posed.

I trained.

I learned.

I belonged there.

The photographs from that time aren't just pictures of muscles or people I met along the way.

They document a period when I was living inside something I had once only imagined.

 

THE EAGLE ON MY WRIST

In 2003, I had to fly back to Sweden.

I remember looking through the airplane window at Los Angeles at sunset and feeling that I was leaving the place where I belonged.

Before leaving, I had acquired a watch with an eagle on it.

That eagle became more than a symbol.

It became a promise.

I'll find my way back.

I didn't know exactly how.

That was the point.

An eagle doesn't need someone else to build the road.

It has wings.

That idea became deeply connected to the way I approached my life.

When I couldn't see the path, I kept looking for another way.

When something took longer than I wanted, I kept building.

When I wasn't yet capable of doing what the goal required, I worked on becoming capable.

Seven years after beginning my transformation, I was able to leave for California.

And I kept going.

On July 23, 2013, my birthday, I raised my hand and became an American citizen.

What had once existed only in my mind had become my life.

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THEN THE DREAM CHANGED

I spent approximately twenty years living and breathing the high-performance fitness lifestyle.

It gave me an extraordinary life.

It also taught me that achieving a dream doesn't mean you have to remain the same person who originally dreamed it.

Eventually, what I wanted changed.

Competition, achievement, appearance and external success had driven me for years.

I still loved training.

I still loved muscle.

I still loved the discipline required to build a body.

But I wanted more from the life surrounding it.

In November 2019, I began meditating every day.

That practice changed my perspective.

I often say:

Meditation is to the mind what bodybuilding is to the body.

Bodybuilding taught me that strength is developed through resistance and repetition.

Meditation taught me that self-awareness is developed through practice too.

One taught me how to build my body.

The other taught me how to observe my mind.

Together, they changed what transformation meant to me.

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FROM BODY TRANSFORMATION TO A WAY OF LIFE

I had spent years in the fitness industry selling and promoting body transformation.

Eventually I realized I was interested in something much bigger than getting someone from a before photo to an after photo.

I wanted the after photo to have an after.

What happens when the challenge ends?

What happens when nobody is counting the weeks?

What happens when motivation disappears?

What happens when life changes?

Can you still find your way?

That's where my philosophy lives today.

I don't want fitness to be a temporary period of restriction, obsession or suffering that you tolerate until you've earned permission to stop.

I want training, nutrition and taking care of your mind and body to become part of a life you genuinely want to keep living.

I don't train because I'm still chasing the California dream.

I train because training became part of who I am.

The dream evolved.

The practice remained.

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THE IRON EAGLE MINDSET

That's what the eagle means to me now.

Not winning.

Not being better than everyone else.

Not pretending to be fearless because nothing scares you.

The Iron Eagle is the part of me that knows:

I will find my way.

I may need to change direction.

I may need to learn something.

I may need to start again.

I may need to let go of something that once mattered enormously to me.

I may need to fly higher before I can see where I'm going.

But I don't hand responsibility for my life to someone else.

The body changes.

Goals change.

Countries change.

Dreams change.

Life changes.

The mindset that carried me through all of those chapters is still here.

When I look at these photographs now, I don't only see the physique I built or the people I stood beside.

I see the young woman who wanted something that seemed impossibly far away and decided to build herself strong enough to reach it.

She didn't know everything that would happen next.

She didn't need to.

She knew how to keep going.

And so do I.

I'm strong.
I'm fearless.
I always find my way.

That is my Iron Eagle mindset.

Seize the training day.