I have a confession that would get me thrown out of most fitness circles: I have been a fitness coach for 28 years, and I do not love training.
I know. You are supposed to hear that I live for the burn, that 5am is a lifestyle choice, that my happy place is a burpee. It is not. My happy place is a quiet kitchen, a decent coffee and two boxer dogs asleep on my feet.
But I have trained, more or less consistently, since the 1980s, when workouts came on video cassette and every mum in Britain owned a leotard. And I have taught fitness classes and personal training since 1998. Twenty-eight years of real women in real classes: shift workers, new mums, menopausal solicitors, and women who had not exercised since school and were fairly sure the gym would bite.
Here is what all those years actually taught me. Not one of those women failed because she was lazy. Not one, in 28 years. They failed because the plan was built for somebody else’s life. Somebody with free evenings, steady hormones, a private chef and nobody small shouting “Muuum” through the bathroom door.
Where I actually started
I should tell you where this began, because it is not a glossy before-and-after. I left school at 15, because I nearly died of anorexia. I have stood at the very worst end of diet culture, the end nobody posts about. It took years to rebuild an ordinary, peaceful relationship with food and my own body. So when I say there will never be punishment workouts, banned foods or “earning your dinner” around here, that is not a marketing angle. It is personal policy, written the hard way.
It is also why I read the actual research instead of the headlines. When your history is like mine, you learn to be suspicious of anyone selling extremes, in either direction. The science, when you read it calmly, is surprisingly kind: a calorie deficit is required to lose fat, but there are many ways to create one, and the only one that works is the one you can keep doing (Hall et al.). Strength training builds muscle and protects bone through and beyond menopause (Thomas et al., 2021). Protein helps most up to about 1.6g per kg a day (Morton et al.), which is chicken and yoghurt and beans, not powders and misery.
Life now, in all its glamour
These days I am 46. I run a full-time business, I have two daughters and two boxer dogs, and perimenopause has introduced me to entirely new genres of tiredness. If a plan needs me to feel motivated at 9pm on a Thursday, that plan is dead on arrival, and I write plans for a living.
So everything I teach starts from one question: what is the least you can do that still works? Not the most you can survive for a fortnight. Two short strength sessions a week. Enough protein, from food you would happily eat anyway. A daily walk, which remains the most underrated tool in fitness. And a rehearsed plan for the bad week, because after 28 years I can tell you the bad week is not the exception. It is the schedule.
The bit I most want you to hear
You do not need to become a different woman. The version of you who is strong, well fed and consistent is not a stranger you have to chase. She is you, on an ordinary Tuesday, with a plan that finally fits. My job is the plan. The Tuesday is all yours.
If you have read this far and felt a bit seen: the two-minute eating assessment will show you which pattern has been running your weeks, and The Foundation is where most women start. And if you only take one thing from a 28-year career, take this: miss a day, never two.
Sam x