Veteran Of Afghan War Becomes Famous On Instagram As Fitness Model

Apparently in your lifetime, you have about five different careers; which is good news for anyone who worries that they're doing the wrong thing with their work life.

But for Hope Howard, it's quite the jump from being deployed to Afghanistan at the young age of 19 to becoming a bikini model and Instagram model.

But that's exactly what she's done.

She always wanted to be a model, even from the age of 5-years-old. As she grew older that dream remained but within it something else grew and that was a deep desire to help people.

She talks about her journey from being in the Air Force to becoming a personal trainer and model on her website. "As you can imagine the world of modeling can be very vain and the business of helping people well, it is everything but vain," she says. "I began to have an internal conflict with this and began to lose belief in my dream of ever modelling and started to give up on it."

When she graduated high school she joined the United States Air Force and became a Fighter Jet Mechanic. At the age of 19 she was deployed to Afghanistan where she had an M-16 machine gun strapped to her pretty much 24/7.

A big difference to the modelling world.

"This was both the worst and best experience of my life because I did an immense amount of growing and began to see the world differently," she said. "Most importantly though I began to dream again and that's when I started to become more mindful of the food I ate and began focusing on physical training. A fire started to burn inside me and it couldn't be put out. Lifting weights and eating properly seriously saved my life!"

Now 26-years-old, the Floridian is an IFBB Bikini Professional, personal trainer and model.

She credits her success with her new career to her grandmother. When she was nearing the end of her six year enlistment with the military her grandma called her and said she's in the hospital and needs to have her leg removed. She made it through surgery but unfortunately passed away three months later.

Hope was very close with her grandmother and remembered that she told her "you have to live your life no matter what." She decided to get out of the military and pursue fitness modeling and personal training full time.

Hope grew up poor, her whole family in a one-bedroom home and while she's not embarrassed about her past, helping people is clearly very important to her.

Also she looks great in a bikini.

Words by Laura Hamilton

James Dawson

James Dawson is a Journalist at LADbible. He has contributed articles to LADbible’s ‘Knowing Me, Knowing EU’ series on the EU referendum, the 'Electoral Dysfunction' series on the 2017 general election, the ‘U OK M8?’ series tackling mental health amongst young men, and for its ‘Climate Change’ initiative in partnership with National Geographic.

@thejaytoday