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Strength Through the Messy & Beyond launches in eleven days. Before it does, I wanted to show you what’s actually inside — not just the story behind it, but the book itself.

It’s built in three parts: a foundation to build on, guidance through the phases that change everything, and — saved for a post of its own, because it deserves one — the messier seasons that don’t go to plan at all.

Here’s the first two parts.

Part One: The Foundation

Why most fitness advice fails women, and what actually works instead.

• Chapter 1, From Passion to Purpose — my own story, starting with a modelling scout telling fifteen-year-old me I could be discovered “if I got skinnier.”
• Chapter 2, Why Most Fitness Plans Don’t Work for Women — most plans are built for ideal conditions real life rarely offers. I call it your life load.
• Chapter 3, Training for Capacity, Not Perfection — the philosophy the whole book runs on: adjust, don’t quit.
• Chapter 4, What Strength Training Actually Looks Like — stripped back to what it really is, and why carrying a child already counts.
• Chapter 5, Building Your Base — building strength without chasing a smaller version of yourself.
• Chapter 6, Core & Pelvic Floor in Real Life — properly explained, because “just do more kegels” was never the whole answer.

Part Two: Through Change

Your body through the five phases that change everything.

• Chapter 7, Pre-Pregnancy & Conception — preparing your body doesn’t begin with a positive test. It begins years before it.
• Chapter 8, Pregnancy — training with your changing body, not chasing “what am I still allowed to do?”
• Chapter 9, Postpartum — the chapter I feel most strongly about. Nobody tells you the hardest part isn’t the birth.
• Chapter 10, Motherhood, Identity & Real-Life Training — the years most books skip entirely, when nobody warned you it wouldn’t just “get easier.”
• Chapter 11, Perimenopause — the systems affected postpartum keep mattering through midlife, and for many of us now, these phases arrive closer together than anyone warns.

And then, the messier seasons

Part Three is different. It’s where I write about training through setbacks, the red flags worth actually acting on, and — in the chapter I don’t talk about often — the year my body taught me that food is support, never punishment. That part gets a post of its own, coming soon.

How to actually use it

You don’t have to start at Chapter 1. The book works front to back, or you can jump straight to the chapter for the season you’re in right now — there’s a “find your chapter” guide at the front for exactly that.

It’s not just a book to read, either. Behind the fifteen chapters sits a full exercise appendix with every movement on video: fifteen ready-to-use sessions — gym, home, babywearing, and a “Quick 10” for when that’s genuinely all you have — plus a movement library with phase modifications built into every exercise. Pregnant? Go straight to the adjusted sessions. Ten minutes today? There’s a session for that.

Why it’s one book, not five

Every phase-specific chapter was reviewed by qualified professionals — an OB/GYN, a pelvic floor physiotherapist, a clinical nutritionist. And these phases, once separated by decades, are now often separated by a handful of years, sometimes overlapping entirely. The support should live together, the way these stages actually live in your body.

Eleven days to go

I wrote this for the woman who’s tried to stay consistent and kept hitting the reality of her own life. If that’s you, I built this for exactly that.

Strength Through the Messy & Beyond launches on 19 August 2026. If you’d like it the day it’s out, now’s the time.

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Daniëlle van der Leest
Women’s Strength & Wellbeing Coach | Founder of ActiveWomen | Mum of 3