Healthy in a small town
Marion “is a small town, a very small town,” says native Serena Dickerson.
Photo: Heather Boone
So, when she told her friends and family she wanted to start a fitness center, they were skeptical. They’d say, “nobody here wants to be healthy,” she recalls.
But with more than a decade of working with her kids and their athletic endeavors, learning about and teaching fitness, and personal coaching at home, Serena thought the naysayers might be wrong.
Full Body Fitness Studio, now located on the 400-acre farm she grew up on, served by Kenergy Corp., has been going strong for several years. When it shut down for the coronavirus pandemic, Serena went on YouTube to continue showing people how to keep healthy.
Food is a big part of that, she says. She includes cooking tips and talks about nutrition during and after exercise classes and on all her social media, and welcomes people into her home for cooking classes.
Much of what she cooks comes from her garden, where she grows everything from tomatoes, which she doesn’t like, to bell peppers, which she loves.
She will cook with tomatoes, though, and loads of fresh herbs that she also grows. But she never adds salt.
