Getting Vulnerable With Fitness Leader, Super-Mum & Cover Star, Chontel Duncan
Standing tall
By Victoria Lewis | 3rd September 2025Viral fitness leader, super-mum, dedicated business owner, and mental health advocate – meet the woman behind the titles, who shows us the real strength in vulnerability. Raw, stripped back, unapologetic – this is Chontel Duncan.
It’s not every day you come across a woman like Chontel Duncan. Standing tall at a statuesque six feet and two inches, she doesn’t just enter a room, she commands it, with shoulders back, a warm smile, and an effortlessly magnetic presence.
The self-described “big dreamer” whose fitness empire has amassed a following over one million strong, Chontel is a living, breathing embodiment of the age-old saying “trust the process”. The Chontel we see today seems to pull off the impossible. A proud Māori woman, mother of five, devoted wife and founder of the cult favourite fitness platform, Neuform, she juggles her chaotic life with style, grace, and wit – and still manages to hit the gym once a day. Strength personified, her killer workout plans and impressive schedule have granted her ‘superwoman status’ in the eyes of many, but underneath the accolades, it’s inside that Chontel holds her innate power. The real secret ingredient behind her strength? Vulnerability.
It wasn’t overnight she built her platform Neuform, her gym HIIT Capalaba, her loyal fanbase, or even her chiselled abs. “I didn’t start out strong,” she says. It took her time, discipline, rude awakenings, and loss to be standing so tall now.
Stripped back, Chontel is still the girl who remembers all the ways she used to hide herself. Growing up without a structured home life or access to many of the opportunities she gives her children today, a young Chontel “struggled to find her place”. Being the only person of colour among her peers, and also measuring a head taller, meant most of her formative years were spent punishing herself for not fitting into a mould never destined for her. In her words, she was “shrinking herself literally and figuratively”. Slumped shoulders, voice quiet, she was always keeping the peace. She says “I’d bleach my arm hairs, bleach my hair to be lighter, iron it straight because I hated how curly it was. I’d hunch over to hide my height, avoid heels, stay seated when I could… I spent years trying to mute everything that made me different.”
Her adolescent plight to fit in with her peers was then compounded by not having the resources to fully embrace her Māori culture at home. Though deeply proud of her heritage, she wasn’t taught the language or customs, leaving her feeling disconnected from her beloved heritage, and wrecked with guilt. She says, “for a long time, that left me feeling like a fraud in my own culture.”
It was when she found the gym, her safe haven, that she was able to fully lean into her true self. This was when the magic began. “I stopped trying to fit a mould and focused on building a life that felt like mine.” As she built confidence in the weight room, she built it within her until it spilled out into every facet of her hectic life, describing the gym as the first place she felt okay to take up space. “I started to embrace the very things I used to wish away,” she says. Her once dyed-blonde hair eventually returned to its original hue, her flat-iron replaced with natural curls, her posture corrected, and her voice carried further than ever. She even started reconnecting to her roots, learning the Māori te reo language as an adult alongside her children, so they never have to feel the same disconnection she once did.
“I’ve learned that strength isn’t just about how heavy you can lift, it’s about how willing you are to keep showing up for yourself and others.” And “show up” Chontel does. From a daily 4am wakeup to cooking dinner for the family (her “crew”), she attributes much of her success to her drive and discipline, but also her empathy and openness with those around her. This is the foundation of everything she does, in personal life and in the creation of her Neuform and new Neutrition programs.
To Chontel, the idea behind these platforms was always deeper than just meal plans and workouts, it was meant to be a jumping off point, a safe place to start even when times are tough. She says “I carry a deep softness for people who are suffering in silence… I think this comes from my own lived experience. I’ve been met with kindness and patience in times I didn’t feel I deserved it. I’ve never forgotten that. So now I pay it forward, every chance I get.”
Someone who leads by doing, Chontel encourages others to open up by being so vulnerable online herself. Never one to shy away from life’s messiness, she has built a personal legacy that’s “raw and real, even when it’s uncomfortable”. Detailing the horrific near loss of a child to drowning, and the challenges of not one but two high-risk pregnancies, Chontel has shared her deepest battles with the world, but to her, it’s a freeing process. “I feel lighter… like I can actually breathe.”
It takes a special kind of person to be so raw and honest, but Chontel wants to share the real her, “flaws and all”. She says being vulnerable has taught her that “people don’t connect with your highlight reel; they connect with your truth”.
Now out of the old protective cocoon that hid her from the world, Chontel has emerged in full bloom, taking on a different kind of suit. Going full circle, these days, she steps into her power in a pair of sky-high heels, even layering a sharp shouldered blazer for when she really means business. “It’s like my armour,” she says. But the beauty of her double life means that sometimes, in family mode, a gentle softness is her ultimate power play. She says, “Fashion, for me, reflects where I am and who I’m showing up for at that moment. I love that I get to embrace both sides of myself.”
When thinking of Chontel Duncan, the words ‘strength personified’ come to mind. Though, she possesses a unique kind of strength, one forged only out of years of growth, experience and radical self-love – it’s soft but unwavering, gentle but fierce. Her journey is a hopeful reminder that there is strength within us all. The Chontel who shows up today, no matter how hard times are, is unapologetically herself, authentic, and free – a woman fully formed but always growing. To those who wish to follow in her footsteps towards true self-discovery, she says, “Remember every strong woman you look up to once doubted herself too. You’re not behind. You’re becoming.”
Imagery: Beth Hurrell @bethhurrell
