“Four years ago, I was obese. I was also so chronically unfit that I couldn’t manage more than one flight of stairs without getting seriously out of breath. I was eating my way to a whole host of health problems and my knees were knackered.
Now nearly four years on, I am over 80lbs lighter and a whole heck of a lot fitter. I’m now training to be a Personal Trainer so that I can help other people like me. This is why I have written this book.
Along the way I learned a lot, and came up with some ideas of my own about how and why people lose weight….or don’t.
This is my story.”

Yet again I downloaded this upon the recommendation of a friend – the same friend who recommended “The Strong Woman Trap” and “Putting Social Media To Work” – in fact the author of this book is also one of the authors of the latter.

I’d really enjoyed Gemma’s style of writing (and I follow her on Twitter) and so expected to enjoy this – and I wasn’t wrong!

It basically talks about Gemma’s own experience (or journey if we’re being X Factor about it!) from being overweight and unfit to being a size 10 half marathon runner.

It does not contain a magic wand, or secret formula for this to happen – and Gemma is very upfront that basically it’s eat less and move more (something most of us know, but many of us struggle to do in practice) – but it is her own personal experience.

Lots of it – about why people fail (with weight loss and getting fit) is stuff I’ve read before – but still rings true, and always good to reinforce this (says the Queen of self sabotage – well we’re on holiday / it’s so and so’s birthday / it’s the weekend / the day has a y in it – all excuses I’ve used for cracking open the prosecco and then eating the entire contents of the children’s chocolate stash……).

I’m also inherently nosy (part of the reason I love social media) and so hearing how someone else has achieved something is very appealing to me – and Gemma sounds like my kind of girl (we have a mutual friend – so I suspect this is even more likely to be true!)

I really enjoyed reading this – and it’s definitely motivated me in my own weight loss / get fit campaign.  (I am pleased that Gemma fannied about a bit – technical term – before finally knuckling down, I feel I’ve been at the fannying stage for a little while now, and really need to grab the bull by the horns, so to speak!)

And – I’ve signed up for Race for Life with various female members of the family on 17th July – and want to try to run all 5km.  Baby steps and all that!