Lisa Fong built a business based on exercise making you feel good. Then she realised she might have to change her tune. Photo: Stacey Cavalier
By Emily Brookes
Lisa Fong has "banged on" about how women should take time to exercise to make themselves feel good.
She's built a successful business out of it. The 41-year-old is known to many as the founder of Move It Mama, the virtual fitness platform that began when she was at home in Christchurch with four boys under five, doing high intensity workouts by herself.
"My arms were drawn like an octopus because I had so many children, so it was the only thing I could do to pick myself up and get a bit of a boost just for me."
Move It Mama has a thriving online community of women trying to fit exercise into their lives. Photo: Supplied
When other mums found out what she was doing, they wanted in. "This was before exercising at home was a thing," Fong says.
What began with Fong leading a few others over video in a Facebook group has become a subscriber service with over 5500 members and several employees, built on the core message that exercise makes you feel good.
But she's been forced to rethink her attitude after her husband, Dan, received a shock cancer diagnosis.
Alarm bells rang on Mother's Day when builder Dan, an attentive husband and father, couldn't stay upright long enough to make his partner of 16 years a coffee.
Lisa and Dan Fong have been married for 16 years. Photo: Supplied
Two weeks earlier, Dan had wiped out badly while surfing on Australia's Sunshine Coast, where the Sydney native and his Kiwi wife moved their family in April last year.
He had been experiencing dizziness and muscle pain since, but physio had not helped. Now, he was bedridden.
"I said, I think we have to get you to hospital," Fong recalls.
"I think I've blocked a lot of what went on (after that). I don't even know how to articulate it.".
Dan was admitted to the neurological ward under suspicion of a stroke. Then came a barrage of tests, each more invasive than the last, none revealing a definitive diagnosis.
"I remember the room was spinning many times," says Fong. "I would feel dizzy and fall to the ground when they would tell us a new thing - we have to get new biopsies, new tests, new punctures."
As Dan continued to deteriorate, the couple sat down with their sons - Rico, nearly 14, Louis, 12, 10-year-old Carlos and Teina "Tei", 8 - and told them their dad was probably going to die.
Dan Fong with his four sons. Photo: Supplied
"We got to rock bottom," Fong says. "It was hell on Earth."
On top of everything else, "I felt like a fraud."
Fong had always used exercise to boost her mood, but now - when she thought she would need it the most - exercise wasn't working.
"It was so ironic," she says. "I've built this business on exercise to make you feel good. I tried and it didn't make me feel good at all."
She only wanted to be with her husband and children. Instead of reducing her stress, taking time to exercise was stressing her out, and Fong didn't want to associate exercise with negative emotions.
"For so many years I've banged on about 'exercise to feel good'. Now nothing is going to make me feel good until we're out the other side."
The other side isn't guaranteed, but it looks much closer than it did a month ago.
Dan was eventually diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma and thyroid cancer - "a very unusual representation," Fong says.
He has undergone several rounds of treatment, and the aim is to get him to Brisbane hospital for a bone marrow transplant, with his two brothers as donors.
Dan has been in and out of hospital - he was readmitted on Father's Day, after developing a fever - but, Fong says, "he's beaten the odds already. They told him initially there was only around a 30 percent chance he could get to where he is now, and he's done it".
Dan Fong and his four boys before his diagnosis. "He's beaten the odds already". Photo: Supplied
Throughout, Fong has been there for Dan, and Move It Mama has, in turn, been there for her. She's been open about what her family is going through with the community and inundated with messages of support. When members wanted to know how they could help, Fong's younger twin sisters and sister-in-law, who work for the company, organised fundraisers.
No one, it turns out, thinks Fong is a fraud.
With her parents and siblings back in Aotearoa, "Move It Mama is like my family… I get so many messages like: 'You've shown up for me during my darkest days, now I'm showing up for you," she says.
Going through this experience has expanded Fong's empathy for her followers.
"If someone's going to work out with me there's no pressure. I don't know what's going on behind doors and everyone's got a different story."