If you’d told me five years ago that I’d be running my own Limited Company, coaching health and fitness to people all over the world and writing eBooks I would have laughed and said “Pull the other one!”.
Then and now
Rewind to early 2007… I’d recently moved into a new house, kept the old one for rental (so was even more of a slave to my mortgage), commuted almost four hours daily to a stressful job in London, suffered from frequent migraines, and relied on regular trips to the gym at stupid times of the day to keep me sane! I was stressed, unhappy and grumpy.
So how did I go from that to the 2012 version of Amber? How do you go from investment banker to women’s fat-loss expert? Sure, I’d always been sporty in school, danced competitively and enjoyed going to the gym and doing classes, but I’d be lying if I said I’d ever considered a career in health and fitness. Which begs the question – “why not?” – surely it was an obvious choice? Well, yes, it was. But it took me a while to figure that out!
You see, I studied languages at Cambridge University, and as a Cambridge graduate there are certain expectations as to what you ought to do with your life. The main one being that you have to go and work in the city as either a banker / solicitor / management consultant and earn loads of money. So, having graduated with a 2.1 in 2003, and with a boyfriend about to embark on a 4 year PhD, I took the job I was offered in London and began my daily commute from Cambridge.
I was good at my job, earned a decent living, worked with a great team of people, but I never felt any passion for it. I knew pretty early on that this was not going to be a career for life. During 2007 I started to plot my escape! I don’t think anybody really believed I’d actually jack it all in, but I knew I had to change something major in my life, so I got myself a personal trainer to help focus my exercise and that’s when the penny dropped. Here was this guy, helping people – genuinely helping them – on a daily basis, using his expertise and passion to earn his money. “I could do that”, I thought to myself. There was a brief moment when I realised I had absolutely no formal qualifications, but I quickly put those negative thoughts to one side and told myself that I could attend courses, read books, get my qualifications and just do it! So I did!
To cut a long story short, I did my basic ETM and Personal Training qualifications back to back, worked my socks off and resigned in July 2008. Like many trainers in the industry, I’ll admit that in the early days I was no expert! I worked with anyone who wanted to pay me, and whilst I found it easy to attract and retain clients (I’ve always been able to build a good rapport with people), not many of them were getting astounding results. Although I didn’t advertise as a weight-loss specialist, 95% of people seeking consultations wanted to lose weight. That was their goal. All of them were getting fitter, and fast, but the weight wasn’t flying off many of them.
I knew that nutrition was an important aspect of weight-loss and I was advising my clients all of the usual things: Eat a bit less, move a bit more, have wholewheat bread / pasta rather than white and switch crisps and cakes for fruit. But even though my clients were reporting back with their food diaries, they weren’t shifting as much fat as I would have expected.
I’ll confess that, initially, I suspected them of lying to me! Perhaps sneaking the odd chocolate bar and not reporting it, or scoffing seconds on a nightly basis. I decided, however, that not all of them could be so naughty, and so I started researching nutrition a little bit more. It was around the same time that I got into using Social Media for my business and as I linked in with more and more fellow FitPro’s I quickly noticed that the trainers that were constantly posting about amazing results with their clients, were the ones who were truly coaching their clients in nutrition and who were eliminating processed foods completely. Not just processed biscuits and ready meals, but anything that the body cannot easily digest. I started to lap this stuff up, ordering a ton of books, reading other people’s articles and blogs and then BAM! Suddenly my clients were dropping a dress size in no time, and keeping it off. From that point on, I never looked back. There is still a LOT to learn, but that’s how my status as a fat-loss expert came to be.