About

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Hi there! It’s Liz here…I’ve made it into the blogosphere - who would have thought?

I already have a business website (www.ept.net.au) and I pretty much thought that was all I needed, but I’ve found that it really didn’t give me the ability to communicate properly with my clients. Clients often have lots of questions when they begin exercise and sometimes when I’m in a group exercise situation, it’s difficult to answer everyone’s.

For a while I tried email and that works well (one-on-one), but I think blogging will enable me to better provide answers to general health and fitness questions, exercise tips, nutritional advice etc not only to my clients, but for any bloggers who are interested in losing weight, increasing strength, improving cardiovascular fitness, improving mobility and reducing pain. And for those of you who have specific health conditions such as heart disease or diabetes, there’s plenty of information for you too.

A little bit about myself… I live on the Gold Coast (Australia) with my husband, Kel and daughter, Olivia. Before becoming a personal trainer, I worked as a Chemist for 14 years with an oil company. This was a demanding job - long hours and highly stressful at times (particularly when I was promoted into management positions) and I found that although I was successful in my career, I was often unhappy, overworked, stressed and DESPITE receiving hours of high intensity personal training - I was often overweight.

I would fluctuate from size 7 (Australian size… weighed 45kg) to size 12 (weighed 69kg) depending on how much I could starve myself each month. I kept thinking that it shouldn’t really be too difficult to maintain a healthy weight and body without spending hours in the gym and eating like a sparrow. I was too busy (& often too tired) and also wanted to utilize the precious hours that I had left for family time and fun stuff, and didn’t really want to spend it with my personal trainer at the gym (even though he was terrific to be around).

I reached the point where I was eating what I considered to be good food and reasonable portion sizes and exercising 2-3 times a week with my PT but I still couldn’t seem to budge any kilos. I went to a doctor and he told me to consider changing jobs because the stress could be making it difficult for me to lose weight. I couldn’t grasp this concept at the time… because surely if the energy into my body was less than the energy out - I should have lost weight…

Pretty simple concept - hey? But in my journey over the next few years I learned a lot. I learned that my diet wasn’t as good as I thought it was, and I learned that stress did in fact make me fat (along with some other factors).

I also learned about the effects on my body from the years of abuse of alternating between starvation and binge eating, the effects of mainly drinking diet sodas, alcohol and coffee and basically making poor nutritional choices.

On the up-side, I came to learn how lucky I was that I had had excellent personal trainers over the years that had taught me good exercise technique and helped me learn the importance of not over-exercising or choosing high-risk exercises. (I was also lucky that I’d trained under a diverse group of trainers… one was a former Mr Australia, another a former commando, another a martial arts instructor, and another a female athlete. The one thing they all had in common was attention to detail with regard to exercise technique.) All up… its resulted in over 20 years of exercise instruction… and continues.

This blog will tell you about my journey from “corporate climber” to personal trainer. It will tell you about the health and fitness mistakes I made and how to avoid doing similar. It will follow my husband Kel’s progress as he has recently begun his journey from “flab to fab” (as he likes to refer to it). Along the way, I will try to educate you about your body, chronic diseases, tips to maximise your exercise time and help you lose weight, tone up etc.. It will talk about choosing functional exercises, safe exercise, and what is appropriate for your age group etc. It will focus on LIFESTYLE changes that are necessary to achieve a healthy body and mind. This blog isn’t for those who are looking for the fast track to weight loss or the latest diet craze - its for REAL People living in the REAL world who want to see their weight decreasing instead of increasing - without having permanent residence at their local gym.

The information contained on LizHarperfitness.com is based on the professional knowledge and experience of the creator, Liz Harper Fitness is intended for entertainment purposes only. Liz Harper Fitness is intended to help you increase your overall level of fitness and knowledge. The instructions and or advice presented are in no way intended as a substitute for consulting with your health care professional. Consult with your health care professional before beginning any exercise program.

The Creators, Producers, Participants and Distributors of Liz Harper Fitness disclaim any liabilities or loss in connection with the exercises, instructions and advice herein.