Getting fit means more than having a small waist. It also equates to improved overall health. Over the last few years, more and more people have become more self-aware of the importance associated with living a healthy lifestyle. This has led to fitness becoming a rapidly increasing trend amongst consumers.
Dairy Girl Fitness creator, Emily Shaw, wholeheartedly believes in exercise and healthy eating, but she also believes you can get fit without having a gym membership. Shaw launched Dairy Girl Fitness, a fulltime gig in 2019, an online personal training and health community that has a growing social media following – as women crave not only to get fit, but also to get healthy.
“My goal is to help empower women to find their strength and confidence,” Shaw says.
The 27-year-old’s happy-go-lucky personality often shows her healthy and balanced lifestyle in Instagram reels, which also showcase the important nutrition dairy delivers. From her social media presence and one-on-one coaching, Shaw reinforces that getting healthy doesn’t have to be extreme or confusing.
One question that she was asked on Instagram is what the best milk is to drink? Shaw underscores that all milk is good milk, but then goes on to explain the difference between skim, low-fat and whole milk.
Dairy Upbringing
While the founder and coach of Dairy Girl Fitness did not grow up on a dairy farm, the Pennsylvania native has multiple family members with operating dairy facilities. Her passion and interest in dairy began at a young age. Early on, Shaw became very involved in youth dairy organizations through her family’s show herd, Linden-Loch Holsteins.
Shaw’s dairy involvement included youth activities, like showing cattle, dairy judging and dairy quiz bowl. She brought that inquisitive and active dairy involvement to Penn State, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in agribusiness management.
“My dream job was to somehow be involved in dairy promotion or marketing,” Shaw says. “I knew I wanted to be an advocate and voice for the dairy industry.”
Southbound
Feeling frustrated and defeated after not landing a full-time job after graduating college in 2017, Shaw decided to head south to North Central Florida. Soon after, she took a leap of faith and started the Dairy Girl Fitness Instagram page in March of 2018.
“It started as my creative outlet to combine my love for the dairy industry and fitness, and to feel like I was doing something to help the dairy industry that I love so much,” she says. “I wanted to show others that you don’t need to cut dairy and other animal products out of your diet to be ‘healthy.’”
While her upbringing was filled with dairy-related activities, Shaw balanced her free-time playing year-round sports.
“Baseball, softball, basketball, volleyball-you name it,” she says. “We were always active, outside and on the go.”
Through constant physical activity and being on the go, Shaw learned to love feeling strong in her body. In college, she began weightlifting and realized how beneficial it is for women.
Intertwining her passion for fitness and dairy helped form the idea of Dairy Girl Fitness.
“Over time, I realized I could turn the Dairy Girl Fitness Instagram page into an actual online business,” Shaw says.
Since November 2019, Shaw has been a full-time online entrepreneur with DGF. While she is still heavily involved in advocating for the dairy and animal agriculture industry, her DGF business has been able to grow and impact thousands of women through her online health, fitness and nutrition coaching services.
DGF has quickly grown and now includes Shaw, along with three other assistant coaches. The goal is to help women reach their health and fitness goals through one-on-one and group coaching.
“I want Dairy Girl Fitness to represent a strong, confident and hardworking group of women,” Shaw says.
Moving forward, Shaw hopes that DGF will help thousands of women and continue embolizing strength, confidence and hard work – to help women succeed not only in health but in life.
Along with being on Instagram, Dairy Girl Fitness is also on Facebook, YouTube and TikTok.
