Hi, my name is Steph Rice.
Here’s a little about me and my journey to weight loss success and the development of The Flat Stomach Solution which has also helped hundreds of women accross the world lose belly fat and get their life on the right track!
As a child I competed as a junior figure skater and swam for the British Heart Foundation at several charity events. I was very fit and healthy at this stage of my life and my nutrition was also well balanced, so I looked pretty lean.
As I travelled through my teens I found other areas to occupy my time and the physical activities & fitness fell by the way side. Once I left college and started working in the city I started to eat more, do less exercise and slowly but surely I gained weight and a large amount of body fat!
By this point I was working long hours sat at a desk and I regularly reached for a bar of chocolate; a can of soda and packets of chips to feed my unhappy feelings! If it gave me an instant boost then I consumed it, little did I realize at the time all this “emotional eating” would eventually have on my poor body!
I got to a stage where I was so unhappy with the woman looking back at me in the mirror. She looked bloated, had dark rings under her eyes with bad skin. I ended up overweight, over worked, over stressed and very unhappy. You may know how this feels regardless of whether you’re a business worker or a home maker, work’s work right?
So I thought, I know, I’ll join a gym that will get me back into shape!
Like so many of us I thought spending a fortune on a gym membership was the answer to all my weight loss prayers. It helped me feel good at least for the first month, where I’m pretty sure I went at least once a week, which then turned into once in a while until I stopped going all together.
I ended up paying a large monthly fee for something I wasn’t even using! I must have been crazy. Then something happened that changed everything.
I was reading an article in one of my many fitness magazines (whilst eating some form of fattening carb no doubt!). I’d started collecting fitness magazines in the vein hope they would ‘make me’ look thin and feel healthy again!
This particular article was about a woman who was in a similar situation to me, worked in the city, dedicated to family but not so dedicated to herself. She decided one day that enough was enough; she wanted to put an end to the unhealthy and unhappy life she was leading. I felt I was reading about my own life!
Once I had finished reading the article I became pretty emotional, it really hit a nerve. Just reading that article made me sit up and realize that something had to change, otherwise who knows where I was heading with all the emotional eating, stress and weight gain probably towards cardiac arrest!
I decided then and there that things had to change. If the woman in the article could do it then so could I.
As I don’t like to do things halfhearted I decided not to just get myself in shape but to actually study to become a personal trainer! I carried out some research on the best courses I could train in which would equip me with all round skills in fitness and nutrition then enrolled to become a Certified Personal Trainer in my spare time.
In a very short space of time fitness & nutrition became my passion and Personal Training my vocation. Everything I learnt from my tutors, my peers; books; magazines I put to use on myself.
People started to notice my energy and outlook had changed as well as my physique, it was like I was a whole new woman but all I’d changed was my viewpoint, my physical movement and my diet. I wish I knew long before then, that it was this simple to get a toned, healthy body and feel good about myself.
I overhauled my nutrition too, before I was caught up in the quick fix sugar /carb /caffeine cycle and thought it wasn’t doing me any harm but I was SO wrong!
I realized that permanent weight loss must begin inside, before the external results show up. Changing my body alone only created temporary results – but once I started to work on my internal changes as well; my outlook, my body and my life changed forever.
I did it; I qualified and started my own personal training business based out of London which led me to working with some high profile clients in some very exclusive clubs & homes. I also worked with clients in France and several locations across England which gave me an even greater wealth of training experience.
It had taken me a long time but I finally felt I’d arrived at my destination. I finally felt I was who I was meant to be and had a body that reflected the confident woman I had become.
Having built up a busy business in the UK, I wanted to reach out and help more women get the amazing results my one on one clients were achieving. I discovered the online world of personal training and decided that this was a new level of contribution I could make to women’s lives on a daily basis.
So I made the decision, this was my new path, this was the reason I went through everything I did, so I could use all of my knowledge, all of my skills and use them to help others.
The second part of my journey crept up on me over time and took my feet from under me, almost literally! During my client training sessions I knew that my clients were getting great benefits and the positive changes were there to be seen, but at the end of each day (some of which would start at 5am and finish at 11pm) I was not feeling myself.
I started to feel exhausted the entire time, suffered constant muscle pain and spasms. Had terribly bad headaches, digestive problems, insomnia and difficulty focusing on daily tasks. On top of that I started to have major problems with my feet, within a space of 4 months I had obtained 2 stress fractures in one foot, one stress fracture in the other and a very painful swelling in my right foot. This was devastating as I loved to run long distances and found it more and more difficult to train my clients.
After months of trying to balance my own physical challenges with my clients needs (and several hospital appointments later), I decided to wind things down and take time out to reflect on where I was and where I should be heading.
In 2007 I was diagnosed with a condition called Fibromyalgia which is also known as Chronic Pain Syndrome. It soon became apparent that I could no longer train clients full time one on one, because it was such a full on and physically demanding role. So I started training a few people on a part time basis and also via e-coaching.
I am currently living with Fibromyalgia but I am glad to say that after many hours of research on the best way to heal & care for my body I am now completely on top of it. I live in a healthy, toned body that occasionally still causes me problems but through regular stretching sessions & a balanced nutrition plan I’m able to overcome the pain. It doesn’t interfere with my other training too often, which is great because a varied training routine is what makes me feel alive!
Having discovered the online world of personal training I knew that I had something else to offer and missed so much the level of contribution I was able to make to women’s lives on a daily basis with the one to one coaching. So I made the decision, this was my new path, this was the reason I went through everything I did, this is where I am meant to be.
I have spent years discovering the reasons why women gain weight, become unmotivated and sabotage themselves with emotional eating, I have even used myself as one of the case studies! So now with every woman I coach, I make sure that we work to improve not only her physical fitness, nutritional diet but equally if not more importantly her emotional wellbeing too!
When I was studying part time and working a full time job, despite there being a gym to hand, I never had the time to get there nor the energy and motivation needed to workout. So I devised a home workout which I could do either first thing in the morning or in between the rest of my daily activities; it’s called The Flat Stomach Solution.
I believe that whether you have Fibromayalgia or anything else with the potential to hold you back, you MUST listen to your body and take time out when it needs it but never allow it to stop you living every day with passion.
The message I have found for myself and the one I want to share with you is; treat your body with the love and respect that it deserves and it will take care of you for a lifetime.