Laura Maddox Fitness

I offer a personal & professional nutrition service, providing weight loss, weight gain & maintenance advice. More information and prices on request.

Laura Maddox Fitness and Nutrition:

Hi…My name is Laura Maddox and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for visiting my fitness and nutrition page.

I’d like to tell you who I am and why I started to learn about health, fitness and nutrition and why I want to help and inspire others to make better choices and learn how to feel awesome in themselves.

So here goes…

I will start from my early teens where I had a loving and happy family life in a stable home with my parents and siblings. I couldn’t have asked for a better upbringing in that respect.

School however was a very different story. I liked infant and junior school but when it came to secondary school well, I learnt very quickly that some people in this world really are very cruel, unkind and…the biggest thing to me…very judgemental.

I was always bigger than my friends, both in weight and height. I became very self-conscious of my appearance and what people thought about me. I was bullied, never physically but mentally. Maybe not as bad as happens to some people but certainly enough to seriously effect my confidence and make me feel inferior. I have always been a very outdoorsy kind of girl but not a tom boy. I started horse riding so I was always outside. I didn’t really bother with make up and hair straighteners like other girls. The horses and stables were all I was interested in rather than how my hair and make up looked. As a result of my appearance and passions being more unusual than the norm, I very quickly started to dread going to school. I nearly had to move schools but I stuck it out and I can honestly say I hated every second of it.

After I finished school I had a few jobs, none of which I really wanted. They were just stop gaps as my main ambition and dream job was to become a firefighter, this is what I wanted more than anything. I clearly recall some one saying to me “you can’t be a firefighter, you’re too big and you have to be fit. ”

I was determined to prove this person wrong and achieve my goal of getting the job I wanted. I started as a retained (part time) firefighter where I live in Kent but that wasn’t enough for me. It had been a massive achievement for me but I wanted more. I didn’t want to just be part time I wanted to be full time, however this was harder, much harder. All in all it took me 5 years of endless applications and interviews all around the country, I’m talking London, Dorset, Essex, Manchester…I was prepared to move anywhere to get the job I wanted.

In 2009 I finally passed all the relevant tests and interviews and at that time, through sheer determination, I passed the fitness tests to start full time with London Fire Brigade. I was so happy, I knew I would do it, I’d set the goal, it was what I wanted so it was what I was going to get. The same as any other goal I set my self, I will do it. Regardless of how long it takes or how hard it is, I will put 110% into getting there.

So this is where the fitness, nutrition and mind set all comes into it. I cant actually say what it was but one day after about 2 years of being a firefighter and still a ‘bigger’ girl I decided that I really needed to sort my self out as how I looked was not making me happy. I was self-conscious and the thought of meeting new people all the time, which happens regularly in this job, was just awful. I’d get anxious about meeting new people, if I ever had to go and cover at other stations it was like the end of the world to me. The thought of walking into another station with unfamiliar faces made me feel physically sick and i’d even cry on the way to work as I was so scared of being judged on my physical appearance. Not that any one was ever unkind but this was the effect of the demon in my head that I had to fight daily and still do now.

2011 is when I first started going to the gym and started exercising. I thought that just going to the gym would be enough because as I was exercising it was ok, I could eat what I liked. Very quickly I learnt that was not the case. I then put myself on a diet and gradually started loosing weight. After a while I invested in a personal trainer. I didn’t make this decision lightly, I took my time while I was at the gym, watching the different PT’s train their clients and in the end I decided which one I thought would suit me best and the one that I thought i’d be most comfortable working with. I realised I needed guidance as I didn’t really know what I was doing. So here I had taken the first steps in making myself into a healthier and happier person.

The weight had started to come off which was great, I lost about 3 stone over the next 2-3 years. I yo yo’d a bit, but I was doing all this by myself and it wasn’t easy. There are so many ideas out there, so many different diets and fads plastered all over the internet and also so many opinions of others who thought they knew what they where talking about. It all got very confusing.

In 2013 I still was not happy with how I looked. There was still a long way for me to go. It was not just about how I looked from the outside but I realised that this had effected me much more and I had many issues to deal with psychologically as well. I had definitely changed for the better but in my head all I could see was ‘Fat Laura’ staring back at me in the mirror and I hated that. I got to the point where I would feel so nervous about going out and I’d feel so anxious about social events that 9 times out of 10 I would make an excuse and not bother going, I’d often try and avoid contact with people, not just strangers but people I knew. I then realised that this defiantly was not healthy.

I went to the doctors and arranged some counselling for my anxiety and slowly it became better after learning a few methods and techniques to deal with certain situations. I also removed certain people from my life who brought out the worst in me by putting me down. They didn’t make me feel good about myself, so gradually things where on the up.

2014 is where things really started coming together for me, I still have bad days where I feel anxious but overall I am much happier and less anxious. I have taken steps to gain more knowledge about positive thinking, positive mind sets, removing negativity and learning more about depression and anxiety.

So where does the Nutrition fit in? Well I thought to myself about how I had felt over the last few years and how much easier it would have been if there had been something or someone to refer to or help me. This is why I enrolled on Ben Coombers BTN (body type nutrition) course. This is one of the fitness industry’s most popular nutrition education programmes, taught by a team of specialist coaches, including Ben Coomber himself.

I have at present completed the foundation academy course and am now continuing to gain a more in depth knowledge on the final 2 year course. By doing this I aim to help, inspire and empower a positive change in other people. I feel very strongly about this and I know it’s not easy to do it alone. I wanted to start this business endeavour as I am walking proof that this is an achievable goal.

My goals for the very near future business wise: I wish to have my business up and running and with an increasing client base. Next year I will also achieve my Personal Training qualifications. Fitness and nutrition come hand in hand with one another so I feel this will be very beneficial, not to mention it is now something I feel very passionate about.

Personal goals: Well I have my first fitness model competition in 4 weeks time and this is a massive step to help with my confidence and try and overcome some personal self esteem issues I have. Most of all for me its about constantly striving to keep my body fit as well as being happier and healthier to prove to myself that if I want it enough I can do it. I can overcome any obstacle’s that are put in my way and achieve what I set out to do. I always try to remember to enjoy the process as this is all part of my journey in life, enjoying where I am at each moment rather than thinking how far I have to go.

I now aim to inspire and keep others motivated the way my role models have inspired me. I will do this by continuing to develop myself and believe in who I am so that, hopefully, someone else will see me as their role model and can be inspired to undertake their own journey towards a better life.

If you have got this far in reading my bio then I want to thank your for taking the time to find out who I am and what my intentions are…

Stay awesome, keep positive and remember, if you want it you can achieve it! ! !



Laura Xx