icon-account icon-glass

Popular Products

The Lean Protein
Whey protein powder for weight-loss.

How to Set Goals And Achieve Them, With Courtney Smalley

3rd March 2023

3rd March 2023

By Innermost

We sat down with Innermost Insider, Fitness Coach and Theatre Performer Courtney, to discuss the importance of recognising our own achievements, how to set goals, and celebrating ourselves and those around us.

Hey Courtney! Can you introduce yourself to our readers?

Hey there beautiful people! My names Courtney and I am an online fitness coach and professional theatre performer currently living in South Wales. 

How did you become an Innermost Insider and what’s your goal as an ambassador for the brand?

I have been following Innermost on social media for a while and became a big fan of their products and outlook towards health and fitness. As an Insider I aim to share with others their amazing products and helpful knowledge and insights of the fitness industry. 

Our topic this month is Women’s Achievement. What does achievement mean to you and how does it play a part in your life? 

Achievement plays a huge part in my life. I am constantly setting myself new goals to hit and new adventures to conquer. To me achievement means being happy with the world you have created around you. You have the ability to choose your own path in life and achieve what you want. It is an amazing opportunity to have, so make the most of it!

What do you consider your greatest achievement(s) so far?

My greatest achievement so far has to be that I have never stopped chasing my dreams and working hard. I am so passionate about what I do and I am in love with the fact that I have found this passion in my life.

How do you go about setting goals in order to achieve your goals?

When it comes to setting my personal goals, I always make sure they are achievable and maintainable within my lifestyle. There’s no point setting yourself up to fail team, trust me! I write these goals down in a book (I love stationery), so I can keep referring back to them, especially when I’m feeling less motivated. Keeping accountable for my actions and journey throughout plays a huge part when progressing towards my goals. At the end of the week/month/year, I love looking back at my journey so far, and seeing all the goals and achievements I’ve hit throughout that time. It only makes me want to work harder and achieve more!

Why do you think it is important to celebrate achievement (specifically as a woman)?

Celebrating yourself and your achievements can only have a positive effect on your future and your journey in life, so let’s celebrate together! It’s going to help boost your confidence and self-esteem, and please never think that celebrating yourself is selfish... it’s self love and self care. As women we have been given so many more amazing opportunities over the past few years, so we MUST make the most and enjoy every minute of that. Let’s celebrate ourselves and what we have been given the ability to achieve in this world!

What advice would you give to others about setting goals and achieving them?

The biggest bit of advice I can give you when setting goals and working to achieve them is BELIEVE IN YOURSELF! You have to believe you can do this, and you have to be doing it for the right reasons also. Every goal you set should benefit you and create a more positive lifestyle.. if it doesn’t then it’s time to rethink.

How do you go about dealing with failure? And what advice would you give to others for overcoming setbacks?

Failure is never easy to take, but I do believe that everything happens for a reason. Either it’s not meant to be right now, or there’s a lesson to be learnt somewhere. Instead of taking failure as a negative, I try to turn it into a positive and learn from it (I won’t lie, sometimes this it is harder than others). But I try to think ‘what could I have done differently?’, ‘did I approach it the best I could?’, ‘is there a lesson here I must learn here?’.

If you’re overcoming a setback right now, please don’t lose hope or faith in yourself. YOU HAVE GOT THIS. When putting your mind to something you are capable of almost anything, so please don’t let this moment right now define the rest of your journey in this world. You are stronger than you think, you are more powerful than you think. I believe in you... believe in yourself too!

What are you aiming to achieve this year?

This year I aim to keep growing my online coaching business and help women across the UK reach their ultimate health and fitness goals, creating a perfectly balanced lifestyle. I want to make decisions that are going to benefit myself and my future, and trust myself throughout the entire process.

What Innermost product(s) have you been loving recently? 

I am a HUGE fan of The Fit Protein in Vanilla!! I have been using it since the beginning of time and love how creamy and delicious it tastes. I use it in smoothies, overnight oats, porridge, pancakes... you name it and it’s in there ha!

Courtney, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you! Our final question is ... What’s your innermost desire that you’re hoping comes true this year?

Innermost desire this year... okay that is a question! My innermost desire this year is to make the best decisions for me and take more time for myself. It’s easy to get caught up in a world that’s running 100mph, but this year I refuse to do that and instead I’m taking full control.

Thanks Courtney, that's a wrap! To keep up with Courtney, check out her Instagram or book onto a program with her via the Keeping Fit With Courtney platform.

Need Expert Advice?

Other Insights

What Happened To My Training Over Summer (Honestly)
I did not train well this summer. A holiday to spend time with my family, a run of work trips, a couple of injuries I was trying to cope with (left shoulder and right forearm for those who are interested). If you'd asked me in June how consistent I'd be over the summer, I'd have said very. I was wrong. Most people quietly assume the founder of a wellness brand has this figured out. The truth is I run a brand, I try to have a life outside it, and summer is the season where routine goes to die for almost everyone I know. I don't think that's a personal failing. I think it's just what a normal year looks like. What I want to talk about is what actually happens to your body when this happens, because the research here is more reassuring than you might expect. What detraining research actually shows There's a real body of science on this. Strength and cardiovascular fitness don't decline at the same rate, and they don't decline anywhere near as fast as people fear. Cardiovascular fitness is the first thing to soften. Your VO2 max starts drifting down within a couple of weeks of stopping structured training, because your heart and blood vessels adapt to demand quickly in both directions. Strength is a different story. Studies that track people through a few weeks off training consistently find that measurable strength loss is small, often barely noticeable, for the first three to four weeks. The muscle itself takes even longer to shrink in any meaningful way. Several studies looking specifically at detraining periods found that visible loss of muscle protein and structure often doesn't show up until somewhere between five and eight months without any training at all. A summer of patchy sessions is nowhere near that. The reassuring partThe part I find genuinely reassuring is what's called muscle memory, and it's not just a phrase people use to feel better about a break. When you train, your muscle cells add nuclei, essentially more control centres for building protein. Research shows those nuclei stick around for months after you stop training, well past the point where the muscle itself has started to shrink. When you come back, you're not starting from zero. You're reactivating machinery that never actually left. That's a large part of why people who return to training after a long break tend to regain lost strength and size far faster than it took to build in the first place, often within four to eight weeks depending on how long the layoff was. Some of you might remember this happening post-Covid. So if you had a summer like mine, the honest scientific answer is that you probably lost less than it feels like, and you'll get it back faster than you think. What I'm actually doing this month Nothing dramatic. I'm not doing a reset week or a punishing comeback programme. I'm just going back to five structured sessions a week, prioritising the compound lifts I know well, and being honest that the first couple of sessions will feel harder than they did in June.  Don’t forget your proteinThe other thing I'm paying more attention to is protein, simply because it's the one lever that makes the rebuilding phase more efficient. Adequate protein intake supports the muscle protein synthesis that's doing the actual work of restoring what softened over summer. I've been leaning on The Health Protein for this. It's plant-based, built around pea and brown rice protein for a full amino acid profile, with glutamine in there to support recovery. If you'd rather stick with a whey based option, that's a completely reasonable choice too, and The Strong Protein remains built for exactly that. If you had a messy summer, you're not behind. You're just at the start of a normal, unremarkable return to routine, and the research says that's a far shorter road back than most people assume. Forward this to anyonre you know who is dreading their first session back. I'd genuinely like to know what generally works for you post-summer. Structured plan, just showing up once, anything. Reply and tell me. Even if it’s a one-liner, I’d love to hear from you. Read more
The Glow Blend: A Confession
I need to tell you something I've never said publicly, and it's not flattering. When our product team first brought me a plan for a collagen supplement, my honest reaction was no. Not "let me think about it." A flat no. And if I'm being fully honest about why, it wasn't the science. It was that collagen felt, in my head, like a beauty category. Something for someone else's brand. Not ours. I built Innermost around performance and evidence. Protein, creatine, mushrooms, electrolytes. Things I could point to a study for and feel comfortable talking about at a dinner table full of people who workout regularly. Collagen sat in a different mental folder. Skincare aisle. Jars with gold lids and brand sponsorship by one of the Kardashians. I'd absorbed a version of what "beauty" meant without ever examining it. The argument in the room So we had the argument internally. A proper one. A few people on the team pushed back hard, and rightly so. One of them put it to me plainly: we started Innermost to follow the evidence wherever it goes, not to follow it everywhere except the places that feel awkward. That line stuck with me. Here's what changed my mind, and it wasn't a feeling. It was the research. What the evidence actually says Collagen is the most abundant protein in your body. It's structural, it's in your skin, your joints, your gut lining, and production declines steadily from your mid-twenties onward. That's not a marketing claim, that's basic physiology. The question was never whether collagen matters. It was whether supplementing it actually does anything, and that's where most of the category falls apart. Most collagen products on the market use whole collagen molecules, which are too large to be absorbed effectively when you drink them. The ones that do use hydrolysed peptides, which are broken down into smaller chains your body can actually take up, still run into a second problem: dose. A lot of labels list collagen content that sits well below the 2 to 10 grams used in the trials that show measurable effects on skin elasticity and hydration. You're paying for a placebo with good branding. The ingredient most brands leave out The third problem is the one that convinced me completely. Vitamin C isn't a nice-to-have alongside collagen. It's a required co-factor for your body to actually synthesise collagen at the cellular level. Without adequate vitamin C, the enzymes responsible for stabilising collagen structure don't function properly. You can take a perfectly dosed hydrolysed peptide and still get a fraction of the benefit if the product doesn't include enough vitamin C alongside it. Most don't. They sell you the raw material and leave out the one thing your body needs to use it. Once I saw the category clearly, laid out like that, the decision stopped being about how I felt and started being about what the evidence supported. That's the whole operating principle of Innermost. I couldn't defend saying no to a legitimate, well-evidenced product category. What we built So we built The Glow Blend properly. Hydrolysed collagen peptides at a dose that reflects the research, alongside vitamin C, hyaluronic acid for hydration, biotin and folic acid for hair and nail health. Nothing in it that doesn't earn its place. What surprised me after launch The part I didn't expect was the response once we launched it. A good number of the messages came from women, as you'd expect, and they were generous and specific about what they'd noticed. But a surprising number came from men. Customers writing in to say they'd felt exactly what I'd felt, that awkward little flinch at "collagen," and had quietly bought it anyway because the ingredient breakdown made sense to them. That response told me more about why this category needed an honest voice in it than any research paper did. I'm not going to pretend I have this fully figured out. I still catch myself, occasionally, hesitating slightly before I mention it in a room. Old habits sit deeper than good evidence sometimes. But I take it, and increasingly a lot of men I respect take it too, quietly, without needing to make a thing of it. If this sounds familiar If any part of this resonated, and you've felt that same small resistance to a category you assumed wasn't for you, hit reply and tell me. I'd genuinely like to know I'm not the only one who had to get over it. And if you know someone, a friend, a partner, who could use this exact reasoning rather than a tesimonial, forward it on. It might do more good coming from someone else's honesty. Read more