All posts tagged: fitness motivation

Active Women – meet Gemma Hicks

Consistent, healthy choices, every day over time can make a huge difference to your health. In this Active Women Interview, I talk to Gemma Hicks. She discovered that aside from losing weight, becoming active and fit has so many other benefits and it’s opened up a whole new world for her Tell us a bit about yourself Gemma… I have always been overweight. I was a chubby child. I hated any form of exercise and my parents, who are both quite sedentary, were always happy to offer a note to excuse me from PE. I was treated with sweets and chocolate if I behaved. My grandparents, who looked after me while my parents worked, fed me on large portions of wholesome food. If I ate it all, it was always followed by a good Yorkshire-style pudding like rice pudding or sponge and custard. I became an obese teenager. I was relatively academic but never sporting. We never went for family walks or did any sort of sporting activities at the weekend. I continued the cycle …

Running Towards the Future

Published by Dr Juliet McGrattan

‘How are you?’ seems to be the most common way to open a conversation at the moment. For runners this is often followed by, ‘How’s your running?’ Many people have been running more frequently during our time of lockdown, using it to keep their mental health in check and add routine to the days. Others have been running less, either because it feels like one pressure too many or they’re key workers and are just too tired and busy. Whichever it is, lockdown has certainly been a time for us to reflect on our running. Whether it’s how much we love it, why we aren’t enjoying it or how much we miss it. I wrote recently about my lockdown running but this has lead me on to thinking about what I can take forward as a positive to use in my future running. What have I learnt? What have I enjoyed? How is my running going to look in the future? Here are my own personal running reflections and how I intend to use them …

Active Women Interview – meet Kirsten Huesch

Published by Dr Juliet McGrattan

After connecting on social media, I met up with Kirsten at the Women In Sport – Empower 18 conference in London in October. Chatting away to her over lunch (whilst standing and balancing plates and drinks!) we shared so many views about making exercise fun, inclusive and part of everyday life, particularly in terms of healthy ageing. We’re both on a mission to help people live long, healthy and active lives. I was really interested to hear about the great courses she leads which include nutrition as well as fitness and I was delighted she agreed to take part in this active women interview series.

Inspiring or Intimidating? Just be Proud.

Published by Dr Juliet McGrattan

I’ve been pondering the fine balance between being inspiring and being intimidating recently. The thing is, I think as we improve and smash our targets, as we progress in our health and fitness journeys, we often become intimidating and unrelatable without really meaning to. What we need is more and more people sharing their successes at all levels.