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, a 1983 Detroit Lakes High School graduate, was a runner who believed her body was built wrong — runners were supposed to be lean, and she was naturally muscular.
By about age 13, a negative voice in her head started telling her she wasn’t good enough. It grew into anorexia she would fight for decades.
“Through some of those dark times, I think I’ve become a stronger female, one that feels more confident, one that loves themselves more,” she said.
Forbes has spent the years since learning to love the body she was given — enough to become a world champion bodybuilder. Now she has opened a gym called
in Arden Hills, so girls can learn that lesson sooner than she did.
“Will I always deal with (anorexia) in some sense? I will,” she said. “Will I always know how to combat it? Yeah, I think I will.”
For 21 years, Forbes trained in the garage of her Arden Hills home. There was no heat in the winter and no air conditioning in the summer.
“Growing up on a farm, it taught me that no matter what, you should feel fortunate for what you have,” Forbes said. “I had equipment, I had space. … I could get up early and walk down to my garage and work out. I felt lucky.”
That garage is where she trained for the 2019 International Pro Elite World Championships in Liberty, Missouri, where, at 54, she became the oldest competitor ever named World Champion of Pro Women’s Bodybuilding.
Contributed / simonabphotography
Forbes transformed that 650-square-foot garage into The Girls in the Garage — now a warm, closed-in gym where Forbes coaches women and girls in strength and confidence. It officially opened this month.
“My goal is to reach as many women and girls as I can before my time is done,” she said. “I really want to make a difference.”
The plan took shape right after her world title, when Forbes sat down with her oldest daughter, now 33, and mapped out the gym. They were well along when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Forbes left a job at St. Catherine University to help her husband, Michael, run a dental practice. She left the practice in January and decided to go all-in on the gym. It was a point of purpose for Forbes.
“As I spoke at colleges about eating disorders, or worked with different youth groups, I always said, ‘One day I’m going to give back,'” she said.
Her children kept the dream alive, she said, along with women who kept asking when she’d open her own place.
Her daughter designed the gym’s logo, which Forbes painted on the wall by the entrance, and gym flooring now covers the old concrete. Another wall is painted with the words “love, brave, radiant, resilient, courage, empowered and believe” — each one offered by a woman or girl in Forbes’ life that gave her strength.
Stepping inside brings “a powerful feeling that you accomplished something,” Forbes said, and “that you’re here to make a difference in the lives of women and girls.”
After running cross country and track at Minnesota State University Moorhead and later running marathons, Forbes turned to bodybuilding in 2008, learning to embrace the muscular build she’d once tried to hide.
“I never really liked the muscle I was given,” she said in a
with the Tribune. “I was supposed to be a lean machine.”
That history shapes how she coaches nutrition, which she calls her favorite part of the work.
“It’s taken me so many years to get to the point where I’ve realized that eating is fuel,” she said. “To perform anything, you have to fuel your body.”
Part of the job is clearing out myths, from the idea she absorbed as a college runner that “the thinner you were, the faster you were going to be,” to today’s grocery aisles, where “protein” is printed on everything from pop to popcorn.
Contributed / simonabphotography
She’s candid that bodybuilding’s strict pre-show dieting has, at times, stirred up old patterns. More than once, she stepped back from competing when the mindset of the eating disorder crept in. She still lifts but isn’t planning a return to the stage, and she isn’t eager to steer clients toward it.
Forbes is also clear about where her role ends. If she sees signs that someone is struggling, she’ll help the family find specialized care in the Twin Cities, as she already has for several families, rather than try to treat it herself.
“I’ve gone through it,” she said, “but I don’t have the credentials.”
Forbes said she will never consider herself fully recovered. She describes anorexia as an oftentimes unrelenting voice.
“It’s like a recorder — it keeps going,” she said.
That’s why she wants to reach girls young, and their parents too. Families teach kids not to run into the street, she said, but rarely teach them about food. She doesn’t mean labeling foods good or bad.
“We’re all machines,” she said. “Just like a car, we need the right fuel for our body — not only physically, but for our mind.”
She hopes to resume speaking to colleges and coaches and to work with girls’ teams as young as middle school. Many girls, she said, are afraid to walk into a weight room.
“They feel inferior,” she said, “and they’re not. If we could teach them at a young age, they could go into a gym with the knowledge and the confidence. I think that would be such a win.”
What would she tell her high school self in Detroit Lakes?
“We go through struggles, and it’s how we come out of that struggle — what we learn from it — to grow as a person,” she said. “I’m proud of myself, and I’m thankful for everything.”
To learn more about The Girls in the Garage, visit
.
