Hope Howard left forces for Instagram fitness model career

Hope Howard left forces for Instagram fitness model career

NEWS: goo.gl/a3kAcQ



A former Air Force mechanic who was once deployed to Afghanistan is now an Instagram model and bodybuilder with hundreds of thousands of fans.

Right after graduating high school, Florida-resident Hope Howard's ambition to help other people prompted her to join the US Air Force, and by 19 years old, she was sent to the Middle East.

On her website, Hope, 26, calls her deployment 'both the worst and best experience of my life,' adding that it resulted in her doing 'an immense amount of growing and began to see the world differently.'



'I had an M-16 machine gun strapped to me pretty much 24/7,' she said.

At the end of the tour, the experience caused her to re-evaluate her career and revisit a dream she'd had since she was a little girl: becoming a model.

'A fire started to burn inside me and it couldn't be put out,' she said. 'Lifting weights and eating properly seriously saved my life!'

After just four years, as the end of her six-year enlistment approached, Hope had worked her way up to becoming a personal trainer and a weightlifter.



But then Hope experienced yet another life changing event: the death of her grandmother.

'She was my most favorite person in the whole world and I started to give up on my dream again but then I remembered something very important,' she said. 'My grandma told me "You have to live your life no matter what."'

'So from then on I decided to do just that. I decided to get out of the military and pursue fitness modeling and personal training full time. This way I could have the best of both worlds. I could model while helping others.'



Today, she has built an incredible online following, with more than half a million followers on Instagram alone.

Fans can't get enough of Hope's scantily clad selfies, showing off her incredible, hard-earned fit form.

When she isn't snapping jaw-dropping bikini photos, Hope also competes as a body builder and offers online services to people trying to get fit.