my story

I’m not like other Personal Trainers.

I know that every single Personal Trainer says that, but I promise you, in my case it’s true. 

Don’t believe me? Alright, let me show you.

This was me in 2019.

I was overweight, depressed, and sick.

And i’d made a terrible facial hair choice.

This was definitely a low-point in my health and fitness journey.

You see, I was never really the ‘sporty’ kid at school.

I mean, sure, I liked a bit of tennis, basketball, football, but I was much better at playing Fifa than I was at playing the real thing. 

And I was pretty BAD at Fifa (still am).

By my teens, if I was in a park, it wasn’t with a football and cones, it was with a two-litre bottle of Strongbow and a pack of B&H Silver.

And I ate terribly too.

The staff at my local Maccy Ds knew me by name. 

In my twenties, it didn’t get any better.

The drinking and smoking and rubbish food increased, and I got more tired and unfit and unhealthy and miserable.

And then i hit 30, and in 2021 three events conspired to change my life forever:

1/ I got married
2/ The UK went into a second lockdown for COVID
3/ I got diagnosed with ADHD

Each of those events individually had an ENORMOUS impact on the following years of my life, but together, they transformed pretty much everything about me.

So let’s start with getting married.

aside from the obvious — the necessary growing up, the official legal recognition of the partnership with, and support from, the love of my life, getting to enjoy the best day of my life with all the people I love etc.— the biggest impact it had on me was it gave me a target.

It’s not an uncommon story:

bride or groom wantS to shed a few pounds ahead of the big day.

But I had it in my head that this was more than that. 

I didn’t want to shed a few pounds, I wanted to lose 20% of my body weight.

Why?

I knew I would see the photos for the rest of my life.

A couple of years before, we went for an Engagement photoshoot. 

I hated everything about those photos. 

i hated how i looked in them. I hated looking at them. 

And that’s such an awful experience. 

It should have been a happy memory captured forever. 

Instead, it made me feel terrible about myself.

So I made a vow (before I made my vows) TO do everything I needed to IN ORDER to be happy with how I looked in our wedding photos.

Superficial? Maybe.

But it gave me a motivation, and a really strong one at that.

And then I was gifted a bit of a leg-up.

In January 2021, the UK went back into a full lockdown, the second (proper) one in a year.

The first had been tough.

And I’d started it with good intentions, like a lot of people: do some daily exercise, eat well, blah blah blah.

But by the end of it, I was 5 kilos heavier than when I went in.

Lockdown Two would be different.

I created a plan — to eat better and do more exercise — and amazingly, I stuck to it.

I actually kept with it, all the way up to my original planned wedding date in May (wedding got moved to August in the end, cheers Covid).

From January 1st to May 1st, I lost 18kg.

94kg down to 76kg. 

In four months.

Amazing, right? 

Want to know my secret?

I ate an egg white omelette, with cherry tomatoes and cucumber for lunch.

Every day. 

EVERY. DAY.

For four months.

and I ran or did a home workout.

Every day.

EVERY. DAY.

For four months.

I tracked every calorie I ate, and pretty much only ate a maximum of 1500 calories per day.

So yeah, I lost 18kg.

But IT Was terrible, and i wouldn’t recommend this approach to anyone.

The lockdown gave me the mental and physical bandwidth to finally bring some healthy habits into my life.

But I took it all to the extreme. 

I took the healthy habits and made them unhealthy, by becoming obsessed.

It became my hyperfocus. 

Which brings me to point three.

I’d spent my life thinking I wasn’t normal, a bit odd.

My mind would never shut up, I would jump from one interest to another, I couldn’t be on time to save my life.

And then during COVID, especially the lockdowns, all of this just became significantly worse. 

Or perhaps I just had the space to finally see it all for what it was.

And so after weeks of Twitter and Instagram scrolling, blog post and article reading, and online tests until I was seeing checkboxes in my dreams, I sought a diagnosis for ADHD.

And wouldn’t you know, the guy whose mind wouldn’t stop playing Radio Ga Ga on repeat, the guy who once flew to Southend instead of Gatwick by mistake, the guy who sought every form of dopamine he could in whatever form he could, had full-blown, check-all-the-boxes ADHD.

I wasn’t the typical naughty kid at school, sure. 

Which is why it probably never got picked up.

But I did always do stupid stuff.

The signs were there.

The ADHD diagnosis was the missing piece of the puzzle.

Everything clicked into place.

And as most late-diagnosed ADHD people do, I spent the months following my diagnosis reading and watching and learning every single thing I could possibly get my hands on to do with the condition.

I began to understand myself in a way I had never been able to before.

I was able to start creating strategies and processes and mental models and support systems and habits that built me up, including exercise and healthy eating.

And rather taking them to the extreme, like I did in lockdown 2, I was able to find ways to balance them.

And so that brings me to now.

I am a Personal Trainer with ADHD, and I work with clients who need help with both aspects.

I haven’t got everything figured out. 

Far from it.

But I do have some pretty effective tools to use, both to help me maintain an exercise habit and healthy eating plan, and to help manage and mitigate some of the worse parts of living with ADHD.

I believe that these things are completely interlinked.

The more I manage my health and fitness, the more my ADHD symptoms are managed.

The more my ADHD symptoms are managed, the more I can manage my health and fitness.

It’s a constant cycle.

But the good news is that it’s a cycle that can build and develop.

It compounds.

And no, it’s not easy.

Or quick.

Unfortunately, it takes time, and it takes work.

But if, like me, you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve had enough — had enough of feeling crap, enough of being unhealthy and tired and overweight, and enough of ADHD symptoms causing you daily struggle — then maybe you're ready to try something different.

And that’s where I can help.

I will work with you in a way that no other personal trainer will.

My programs are designed with the ADHD brain at the forefront of everything.

And that means doing things a little differently.

Yes, there may be a few squats and situps and smoothies, but there may also be some silly games and singing and Somatic breathing too.

Or whatever works for you.

I tailor everything toward helping you achieve the goals you want, in a way that doesn't always feel like hard work.

Flexible, fun, fast.

Structured, serious, slow.

And I will do far more than take a height and waist measurement in our first session. 

I will do a deep dive on you, to get a sense of who you are, how you work best, what you like, what you hate.

And I will create a plan for you, with health and fitness as the foundation, and support you on your journey in every way I can.

So if you’d really like to transform your health, fitness and life, and find your fit, why don’t we have a chat?

I’m not like other Personal Trainers, I promise.