If you are to meet Antonina Agata at a restaurant, she will first seek to know what is on the menu. Her eating, she says, is not dictated by what is available; she curates what she eats to suit her holistic health lifestyle, regardless of where she is.
“I don’t just eat the way I eat at my house; even when I travel outside the country, I will look for food that aligns with my nutritional standards.”
The 47-year-old certified health and holistic nutrition coach and founder of Emeri Holistic Health does not have fitness goals. No. She calls them standards.
“Standards are irreducible minimums that I have set for myself; I can’t go below them. Diet is a big part of my general fitness, and I take it with the seriousness it deserves.”
Her fitness journey dates back about one and a half decades. “In December 2011, I went for a hospital open day where I had my vitals taken, everything, I was told, was okay except my body weight. Before this, I was not sleeping well. I remember the doctor declaring that I was obese. This stuck with me long after leaving the hospital.”
Antonina Agata in Karura Forest on Kiambu Road in July 2024.
Photo credit: Pool
For the longest time, she was comfortable with her weight and body structure. “Growing up African, weight was never frowned upon. It was seen as a score of how good one was doing. So, it never struck me even remotely that I could have been facing a possible health problem.”
She weighed 96 kilos back in 2011. The following year, she sought the help of a nutritionist and a gym to rebrand herself and live a healthier life. “It wasn’t about losing weight, though that would eventually be a consequence of the change in my new lifestyle—it was more of dropping off the tag obese. I dropped out of the gym not long after.”
Weight loss and gain
Then, in her early thirties and working at a leading bank, she picked up walking. She walked around Upper Hill, where she worked at the end of every working day.
At home, she filled bottles with sand for weight training. “It never truly felt like working out. I lost 16 kilos just by minding what I ate and walking.”
So noticeable was her body’s transformation that a senior manager at her workplace noticed and asked. “I had just cut my hair bald, and with the massive loss of weight, my colleagues were concerned. A senior manager thought I was going through a tough season of life.”
In 2015, the weight started creeping back.
“I went through a season of mental and professional unsettlement. I was not happy at work. I did not know where I wanted to go with my career life. I moved industries — from finance to FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods). This rapid movement did not offer a learning period. For me, this meant I was learning on the job. My working hours were affected, I had gone back to school for my master’s as well, this meant I would at times have my evening meal at the university’s cafeteria on the go and mostly these were sugary snacks. The weight gain would hit me like a boulder at some point.”
Antonina is not one to let years of gains go down the drain. “I always go back to see what is changing, how it affects me and what I need to do to rise above it.”
The odds would have been against her if she had not adhered to her self-efficacy code.
“I could sit back in the comfort of not finding time to eat healthy or continue with my physical fitness regime, and let life pass by. But life is about making do with what you have as you seek to reach where you want to go. I call it self-efficacy.
“I started waking up at 4 am to do my high intensity interval training for about thirty minutes. I made plans for my meals. I almost never ate out. I used to carry my lunch and dinner. Before leaving the office in the evening for class, I would warm my food, and just before getting to class, I would sit down and eat.”
Return to the gym
From this part of her journey, Antonina learned something pivotal.
“Always find a way to incorporate balance into your life. Everyone, as it is commonly said, has the same twenty-four hours. What happens between waking up and going to bed is what sets people apart. Balance is found in being intentional about time and activities.”
This balance, she says, may not achieve a perfect equilibrium. “Opportunity cost is a key factor in this business balance. My social life was heavily dented because many times, I was too pressed for time to squeeze in additional activities. You choose what you can forgo and do what must be done.”
In 2018, she returned to the gym. “I needed to lift heavier. My muscles had grown used to the makeshift weights I had at home.”
Antonina does not consider going to the gym as working out. “I call it training, teaching your body to be strong. It’s teaching your muscles resilience. The gym is your body’s classroom,” she adds.
She got a personal trainer later on after recognising the need for one from her brother. “For this thing to work, you must create an environment that supports your growth. It is not a linear cast-in-stone process. You gain new knowledge on the move, and sometimes this new knowledge unsettles what you have held on to for long. The secret is in being flexible and adjusting with time. Besides, what worked ten years ago may well not work in the present. Once you realise this, you become more receptive to change.”
Her core started to build and look stronger. She is unable to hide her excitement when showing off her midsection’s six-pack abs.
“People see the results, no one sees the efforts. When I look at myself in the mirror and see these abs perfectly coming together to form a ‘six-pack,’ I see all the efforts I have put in training my body to look like it does right now.”
Her biceps are well-toned, and she feels good at accomplishing something not many people her age have.
Dark mental health pit
She added running to her extensive fitness repertoire in 2020. “It was what everyone did in 2020, but beyond this, I wanted to see how far my body could go. How much push it can accommodate.”
This is a part of the large build that is her constant movement.
“Movement is among my very first activities of the day. I wake up and move for about ten minutes in the estate, climb a flight of stairs three times before I can start the day.” During this interview at the Wadi Degla Club, she parked her car at the farthest corner just so she could walk. “I do this even in the supermarket, I always park the farthest I can. I watch movies standing up at times. I am a creature of habit. When I started moving, it became a part of who I am, and now I just can’t sit for stretched periods of time.”
Antonina Agata at the Wadi Degla Club Gym in Kiambu in May 2025.
Photo credit: Pool
Around the same time in 2020, she was diagnosed with depression, which may have led to body dysmorphia — a mental health condition in which a person spends a lot of time worrying about flaws in their appearance that are often unnoticed by others.
“Despite having lost significant weight, toning my body and attaining what many would consider an ideal body, I felt it wasn’t good enough.”
It was a dark pit that took great effort to extricate herself from. “I am now comfortable with the cellulite here, a wrinkle there, a dimple somewhere else, and the scars. It’s who I am, and if I don’t like myself yet I am the most important person to me, how am I supposed to be human?”
Up the mountains
In 2022, she looked beyond the gym and training.
“I started hiking mountains. Hiking has had tremendous benefits to my body, mind and spirit as well. It is where, besides shaping my character in terms of endurance and resilience, I hike to connect with a higher consciousness, what many would call God,” she says.
Her fitness journey has led her to embrace the World Health Organisation’s definition of health: “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
“When I got depressed and later when my father died in 2024, leaving me in a bad mental state, it was running and yoga that held me together. This worked for me. I can’t encourage anyone out there to dismiss pharmacotherapy, but I didn’t use antidepressants for treatment. I hit the road, and I did yoga. I got healed.”
Her motivation is simple: “I want to be 96 and still have the ability to walk and see the world.”
