Hi!

I wanted to give you a little bit of background as to how I have ended up living my dream job as a Personal trainer and Pilates instructor and to several health challenges I have recently had to face.

I have never been a sporty person, I never excelled at any sports at school or throughout my early adult life, I would sporadically join a gym, fitness class or try my hand at getting fit but I let excuses stand in the way.

Work and 4 children kept me busy enough and I never allowed fitness to become a habit for long enough to feel that it would benefit me in anyway and help me to be as fit as I could be in order to meet the demands of my busy life.

After 4 children I felt frumpy, out of shape and old before my time. Having also moved from Spain to Scotland, I was feeling down in the dumps and needing a complete overhaul of my mental and physical wellbeing!

Luckily for me my husband has always been naturally sporty and active (don’t you just hate those people?!)

With his encouragement I decided I was going to run 5 kms around our local village. My first couple of attempts left me feeling like my heart was going to explode out of my chest!

However my determination to succeed at something for once finally overcame the negative objections in my head. My goals at that stage were to try and run the 5k without stopping and in particular the hill leading out of the forest and back to the village defeated me on several occasion! However the seed of determination was starting to blossom into will power and focus! My first 5k without stopping gave me such a buzz and elated I called my sister who casually informed me that my 8 year old niece had just beaten my time at her local fun run!!! (Fair to say I adore my niece but she became my person to beat when the willpower started to wane! Sorry Jess!!)

The running started to help me to focus on my fitness journey and for once I started to think about what I was putting into my body. Originally I started my journey by following a weight watchers diet which allowed me to shed weight easily but left me starving and then I was introduced to Herbalife which allowed me to control my hunger and gave me the energy to keep exercising. (Whilst there are many that advocate and see great results with  Herbalife , this also turned out to be the wrong thing for me and for my health and allowed me to cheat at eating a healthy clean diet.)

Fast forward a couple of years and I had taken the steps to become a Personal trainer, Pilates instructor, Spin instructor, Metafit instructor,Aqua aerobics instructor & Power hoop instructor.

I have been very fortunate to have been helped along my fitness journey by not only incredible mentors that have pushed and advised me along the way but have also made some incredible friends. As my fitness levels grew I found this wacky side of me that had been hidden underneath a layer of low self esteem, with this new found confidence I have enjoyed several physical and mental challenges such as Duathlons, triathlons, adventure racing, 10k road races & hiking challenges.

With all this new found energy and working at a job that kept me active you would imagine that I was feeling on top of the world, however 2 years ago I seemed to lose my spark, couldn’t shift that  last little bit of baby tummy (yes blame the 7 year old baby!) however little I ate, I made excuses for staying at home rather than joining my crazy friends on their weekend jaunts, found that my hair dried out however much conditioner I applied and I just had a constant lethargic lack lustre feeling.

Luckily for me a face time chat with a friend allowed her to point out that my neck had a huge lump!! Initially I shrugged of the concerns of my friend and thought that I had strained my voice box from all the classes that I had been teaching.

Fast forward several worrying months later and I finally had my results come through, unfortunately I was diagnosed with Hashimotos an autoimmune disease! Initially I was so relieved that it wasn’t throat cancer that I shrugged of any concerns about the disease and thought that as soon as I started taking the thyroxine recommended that I would feel better.

The road to full health is still a twisty windy one for me, I strongly believe that I have developed the Hashimotos because of Adrenal fatigue, however after much reading and research it took a long time to finally get a diagnosis of  anaemia & ceoliacs  which I believe is the key factor in this whole story.

I have learnt that whilst physical fitness is a necessary part of your fitness and health journey the absolute minimum is a need for a good diet, I am now following a gut cleansing and detox diet as a base platform to regain good intestinal health and from there I will be following a clean eating diet.

I also strongly believe that listening to your body is something we have forgotten to do, we do not listen to our instincts and ignore those warning tell tale signs that something is wrong either physically mentally or internally.

I will be updating this blog with little tips I have picked up along the way, you may find them helpful, but what works for one person might not work for everyone.

Listen to your body, your health is your greatest wealth!

Thanks for reading!