WHO IS GEN

After making the decision to change my lifestyle, I slowly began to see results and how much better I felt within myself.

After qualifying as a personal trainer over 10 years ago and moving to Southampton, it still wasn’t all smooth sailing from there.

Life felt pretty tough a few years ago.

I was approaching the big 3-O.

I was working 14-16 hours per day – and feeling stressed out.

For a personal trainer, I was pretty unhealthy. Bad skin, dull hair, drinking loads of coffee to stay awake during the day, feeling knakkered all the time, a bit of a tummy and muffin top and muffin-top developing, and I looked at least 10 years older.

I didn’t have the energy to get my own workouts done, that I’d spent so many years studying and learning. They usually became abandoned by the time Thursday rolled around. I spent my weekends lazing about on the sofa. Using whatever crap was on TV to numb my reality.

Then I would get ill as I had a persistent chronic stomach condition that kept flaring up. Bloating, cramps, frequent trips to the bathroom feeling lethargic and drained.

I had been with my then fiancé Damien for nearly 10 years and that spark had faded a little bit. As he works shifts, it often felt like barely saw each other. For the rare occasions when we weren’t ships in the night, I had no desire nor energy to want to do anything at weekends and everything felt like a massive effort (and I mean everything…)

My solution to all of this was to work harder. Work longer. Blame the high costs of renting a Southampton studio and saving for a deposit for a house, for having to work as hard as I was doing as a personal trainer.

…but really I was just running away.

I was using work as a way to just block out the problems and the challenges that were facing me. Using personal training other people as a reason NOT to sort my own health out, focusing on my own personal training clients.

“I just didn’t have the time, right?”

The result of all of this?

I was disconnected from my fiancé and friends. I was distant.

Even when I was physically with them, my mind was elsewhere. I was never actually present with them. I loved my job and my personal trainer clients, but it consumed so much of me, my energy being as low as it was.

I wasn’t being the fiancé, friend and even personal trainer that deep down I knew I wanted to be.

It was eating me up inside.

….and so my solution to this was to eat more!!!

My dream life

I am now blessed with the most amazing relationship with Damien, who after 10 years together became my husband in 2014. We had the wedding of our dreams on the beautiful island of Jersey, followed by a honeymoon in the Maldives where I pretty much lived in a bikini!

It feels like we now get on better now than ever. We share our dreams and aspirations and work together to achieve them. We own our first house, have weekends away and behave like we are in our early 20’s, which is how old we were when we first met. We are best friends who just have loads of fun together and make each other laugh.

And when I am with my friends, I am really with them – not thinking about other things.

Damien and I hope to start a family one day and are aware, like it or not, our kids will model our behaviours. Good or bad.
Kids see us day to day. They will see the way that I look after myself. The way that I eat. The way that I now speak to my husband. The way that I can help other people change their lives and the impact that I’m now having on people in Southampton’s lives, and I hope they are inspired to do the same.