My Story

My health and fitness journey started when I was a child. During my childhood, I was always the biggest in my class. By the age of 15 I was 17 stones at 5ft 9. I was always trying 'fad' diets that I would hear about from other people, such as the 'Cabbage Soup' diet or just eating three tiny meals a day. None of these were long term solutions, and I would gain all the weight back after, with a little extra. 

When I got to college, this was when I started martial arts and weight training. I lost around three stones by the time I was 19.

During university, I aimed to gain muscle mass, and due to misinformation, thought I could eat anything to bulk. That, coupled with inconsistent training, resulted in me gaining the three stones back.

During my final year at university, I decided to start research into ways I could lose the excess weight I had gained. This is how I discovered intermittent fasting. Within one year I was able to lose 4 stones with consistent training and nutrition.  

Unfortunately, not long after I had started drastically losing more weight – fat and muscle mass, as well as experiencing anxiety, sweating and tremors. This confused me, as I thought I was on top of my nutrition and training. It was almost a year after, during summer 2015, whilst I was on holiday, when these symptoms were more pronounced, that I decided to seek medical advice, and was informed that I had Hyperthyroidism.

Hyperthyroidism is an auto-immune disease in which the immune system constantly attacks your thyroid gland. This causes an imbalance in hormones, due to your brain not receiving the signal to stop the thyroid gland from producing more hormones. This causes extreme weight loss, irregular and fast heart rate and severe anxiety. The medication I was put on meant that the weight loss would stop, but my metabolism drastically slowed down – going from one extreme to the other. So I jumped from 12.5 stones to 17.5 stones, in the course of a year and a half.

Towards the end of 2016, when my condition had stabilised, I decided to seek help from a few personal trainers at the gym I was going to at the time to help me shift weight and maintain muscle. They helped me in regards to training, giving me the boost I needed to start my own research into proper nutrition. I managed to lose 3 stones in the next year. In 2017 I decided to use my passion in health and fitness to help other people who have been in similar situations to me, being in a rollercoaster most their lives, both physically and mentally in regards to their weight.

I explored several avenues, and decided that online coaching was the best way to do this, meaning I could build a network of professionals that clients could use, without having to physically meet someone. I started this off by doing the Level 2 and Level 3 Personal Training Qualification to acquire the professional knowledge in regards to exercise, the body and nutrition. The knowledge gained has helped me to improve my own health as well have the confidence to start helping other people.

This knowledge helped me when my hyperthyroidism came back in early 2019. I was not afraid that I would fall back into old ways, and gaining all the weight I had lost, or losing all the muscle I had built. Now, I am confident that even though I’m back on the medication, this would not hinder my own progress.

This is why I have created BodyPrep to become a platform where people can find affordable packages to help them reach their goals, whether that's to lose fat, gain weight, gain muscle etc. I am able to confidently transfer the appropriate knowledge to clients so they're also able to reach a point where they are truly happy – not by using diet fads as I myself have done in the past, but by using informed knowledge.

Working alongside registered dietitians has made it even easier to cover clients with specific medical or health requirements. My aim is to teach people through this platform of how they can improve themselves, not just in the short term, but in the long term.

- Saf (Body Prep Online Coach)