Mindset, Health, Empowerment: The Unfiltered Trainer

Every book in this volume is hiding something.
A body with a story underneath it nobody was supposed to find. A woman inside an institution where the people meant to protect her are the ones she should fear. A neighborhood full of people who knew exactly what happened to a missing woman and said nothing. And a killer who narrates their own story directly to you from the very first page.
Four books. Four completely different setups. One obsession with the gap between what people present and what is actually true.
Volume 3 of The Unfiltered Bookshelf introduces two brand new authors to the shelf, delivers the biggest rating jump in this series so far, and has the most honest conversation yet about what happens when a beloved author does not land the same way every time.
In This Volume:
Dead in the Water by John Marrs: 4 out of 5. A new author earns his place immediately with a morally complex thriller that prioritizes character over plot mechanics.
The Inmate by Freida McFadden: 3.5 out of 5. The honest conversation about catalog consistency and what to do when an author you love does not deliver in the same way.
Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica: 4.5 out of 5. The biggest surprise of the volume and the most significant rating jump in the series so far.
When I Kill You by BA Paris: 3.5 out of 5. The most structurally unusual book in this volume and the one that asks the most of its reader.
Shop every book mentioned:
Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/ginamariefit
ShopMy Unfiltered Bookshelf: https://shopmy.us/ginamariefit/the-unfiltered-bookshelf
Stay Connected:
Listen on all podcast platforms: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/createdbyginamarie/
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginamariefit
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ginamariefit
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ginamariefit
Website and Blog: https://ginamariefit.com/
New Unfiltered Bookshelf volumes drop monthly. Subscribe so you never miss one. And if you have read any of these books come find me on Instagram and TikTok @theunfilteredbookshelf and tell me your rating. No spoilers. Just the number.

Money is one of the most avoided conversations in the wellness and empowerment space. Today we are going there completely.
Amy Powell CFA is the founder of AimWell Financial with over 20 years of experience in the finance industry. She combines analytical expertise with a deeply personal client-centered approach built on the belief that financial planning should provide clarity, reduce stress, and support a meaningful life. She is not here to talk at you about numbers. She is here to talk with you about the life you actually want to build and what it takes financially to get there.
This Built Different conversation goes deep on the money topics most people are carrying quietly. What your childhood money story is doing to your financial decisions right now. How to start building stability when you did not come from wealth and nobody taught you how. What the first real steps look like when you are currently living paycheck to paycheck. The difference between financial discipline and financial deprivation. And what financial peace actually feels like when you finally have a plan you trust.
In This Episode:
The most common money belief quietly destroying financial futures. What financial trauma actually looks like in adult decision making. How to build a financial foundation while also managing debt. What generational wealth actually means and whether it is realistic to build it from scratch. The biggest financial mistakes people are making right now in response to economic pressure. How to create a financial plan that accounts for real life including the trips, the dinners, and the things that make life worth living. And what being Built Different means to a woman who has spent 20 years helping people build something real from whatever they started with.
Connect with Amy Powell:
Website: https://www.aimwellfinancial.com/
Email: info@aimwellfinancial.comPhone: (727) 335-1874
Stay Connected:
Listen on all podcast platforms: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/createdbyginamarie/Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginamariefitFollow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ginamariefitWatch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ginamariefitWebsite and Blog: https://ginamariefit.com/

Tell me if this sounds familiar.
Your life is actually calmer than it has been in years. The acute crisis has passed. By any reasonable measure you should be able to exhale. And yet your body is still braced. Still scanning. Still finding it genuinely difficult to do nothing without your nervous system treating the silence like a problem to be solved.
You are not broken. Your nervous system is just still running from a fire that already went out.
This episode is not about burnout as a buzzword. It is about the actual physiological reality of what happens to your nervous system when you have been in survival mode for an extended period and why it does not automatically reset when the circumstances change.
In This Episode:
What the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems actually are and what each one feels like from the inside. What chronic activation does to the body over time and why you cannot think your way out of a nervous system response. How sustained pressure, health challenges, and years of high output wire the body for threat and why the body does not update when the circumstances change. What nervous system dysregulation actually looks like in high achievers including the version that gets rebranded as ambition. The difference between true regulation and distraction. One specific tool you can use right now with actual physiological evidence behind it. And what the longer work of building a regulated baseline actually looks like in a real life with real pressures.
This one is personal. And it connects directly to everything covered in recent episodes about chronic illness, the quieter season, and building a life that finally sends consistent signals of safety to a body that spent years being told it was not safe.
Stay Connected:
Listen on all podcast platforms: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/createdbyginamarie/
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginamariefit
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ginamariefit
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ginamariefit
Website and Blog: https://ginamariefit.com/
New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you never miss one. And if this episode named something you have been living with come find me on Instagram and TikTok at ginamariefit. I want to hear what resonated.

I want to tell you something I have not said out loud in quite this way before.
I do not know who I am in this season of my life.
Not in a crisis way. Not in a falling apart way. In the very honest, very quiet, very real way that happens when the life you spent years building is no longer available to you in the same form.
For years the answer to who are you was immediate. Trainer. Healthcare worker. Event host. Always building something visible and measurable. My identity and my output were the same thing. And when my health shifted my path and my physical capacity without asking, the identity went with it.
Now I am home by six. Dinner by seven. And then what.
Some days the quiet feels like a gift. Genuine gratitude for downtime I have not had in five years. Other days that same quiet feels like wasting away. Both on the same Tuesday. That is what an honest in-between season actually looks like.
This episode is not about having it figured out. It is a dispatch from the middle of something. And if you are in your own version of a season where the life you built is no longer available in the same form, you found the right episode today.
In This Episode:
What it looks like when the identity and the output were the same thing and one of them changes. The rollercoaster of gratitude and lostness living in the same body on the same day. The permission slip nobody gave you around rest, rediscovery, and not having a plan. What this quieter season is actually building even when it does not look like it from the outside. And an honest look at midlife not as a crisis but as a recalibration happening in real time.
Stay Connected:
Listen on all podcast platforms: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/createdbyginamarie/
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginamariefit
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ginamariefit
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ginamariefit
Website and Blog: https://ginamariefit.com/
Subscribe so you never miss a Tuesday episode. Come me on Instagram and TikTok at ginamariefit where I'm sharing the real version of this season in real time.

The shelf is growing. And this volume gets completely unfiltered.
Volume 1 of The Unfiltered Bookshelf started with a TBI that took reading from me for two years and the author who gave it back. If you have not listened to that one yet go find it first because it is the foundation of everything this series is built on.
Volume 2 is where things get honest.
I have read every Colleen Hoover book. I kept exactly two of them. And I am going to tell you which two, why those two earned a permanent place on the shelf behind me, and why everything else did not. Not as a pile-on. As someone whose reading taste has evolved and who is not apologizing for it.
And then I am going to introduce you to Alice Feeney. The author who has been quietly sitting in BookTok's shadow while Beautiful Ugly finally starts getting the attention her entire catalog deserves. She is a slow burn author who delivers twists that do not stop. And she earned her place on my shelf faster than almost any author I have read this year.
Plus two more Freida McFadden additions that pushed deeper into what she is capable of. One that is so completely unhinged it has to be experienced. One that gets mixed reviews because of its content but hit until the absolute final page with a final twist that is going to be devastating when it gets adapted.
In This Volume:
The Colleen Hoover conversation nobody is having without making it bigger than it needs to be. Why Confess and Verity are the only two five star reads in her catalog for me and what makes Verity the most interesting outlier she has ever written. The honest three out of five on Woman Down. Introducing Alice Feeney and why she deserves more attention than she is getting. The full style comparison between Alice Feeney and Freida McFadden so you know which one to reach for and when. Reviews of His and Hers, My Husband's Wife, Rock Paper Scissors, and Beautiful Ugly. Dear Debbie rated four out of five and absolutely unhinged in the best possible way. The Teacher rated four point five out of five and the twist that will haunt you.
Plus Lucy Foley and Mary Kubica join the stack for the first time.
The shelf is growing. Come see what earned its place.
Shop every book mentioned in this episode:
Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/ginamariefit
ShopMy Unfiltered Bookshelf: https://shopmy.us/ginamariefit/the-unfiltered-bookshelf
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginamariefit
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ginamariefit
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ginamariefit
Listen on all podcast platforms: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/createdbyginamarie/
Website and Blog: https://ginamariefit.com/
New Unfiltered Bookshelf volumes drop monthly. Subscribe so you never miss one.