For Fitness Entrepreneur Kat Novoa, You Must Love Your Body First | Pinkafé

For Kat Novoa, loving yourself starts with loving your body—at every stage.

As Founder and CEO of Babes of Wellness, Compton’s inaugural women’s queer-inclusive boutique gym, Novoa exercises a gentle and trauma-informed approach to fitness and well-being. With a background in advocacy, this Nike-signed trainer is reimagining what working out means for women.

“I was in the fitness industry, and I realized, like most industries, [that it was] male-dominated,” she says on LATV’s Pinkafé. “It didn’t have this gentle approach that I was personally needing at the time.”

So, Novoa charged herself with the task of creating what she didn’t see, and founded Babes of Wellness in August of 2021.

Photo courtesy of Kat Novoa

Fitness has traditionally been tied to aesthetics: Work toward that action-hero six pack! Build the best arms! Focus on getting the right curves in all the right places! Especially for women, there is societal pressure to look a certain way and not accept yourself until you get there.

Goals at the gym are not necessarily a bad thing, but, for Novoa, affixing self-love to your future body is not the way to get started. Your fitness journey, from her view, starts with loving yourself as you are today.

“You can’t know your purpose if you don’t know yourself, and it starts [with] knowing your body,” she says on air.

As a trauma-informed practitioner, Novoa not only empathizes with her clients’ struggles, but helps them to explore how their pasts show up in their bodies, and, ultimately, uses this physical awareness as an engine for holistic healing.

Novoa felt a need for her entrepreneurial spirit in Compton, a city characterized by its own history of trauma, violence, and stigma in the media.

“This is our people,” she goes on to say. “They’re struggling and also in need of wellness services.”

Novoa is actively filling that gap. Babes of Wellness offers an array of classes, including Yoga, Pilates, and powerlifting. They recently launched an initiative she calls ‘Café and Connection,’ which cultivates community conversation around gentle self-love. The through-line: teaching women how to feel safe and strong in their bodies.

Life will always be demanding. It is practically impossible to avoid the overlapping schedules and lists of responsibilities that govern those day-to-day grinds. However, from Novoa’s view, it’s paramount to make gym time (or meditation time) a non-negotiable appointment with yourself. Carving out that space to love your body, to work on your body, will offer self-induced therapy, healing, and peace.

Novoa and Babes of Wellness is here to make that fitness journey more accessible. Check out her full exclusive Pinkafé interview on the LATV+ App, out now!