#BeInspired with Nathan Honess's Story

11232017_10152779717491481_1770919974232285665_o
My name is Nathan Honess and I have been a fitness professional for over 8 years. I am passionate about what I do and take a massive amount of pleasure from helping people achieve their fitness and weight loss targets. The most satisfying part of my job is watching people’s confidence growing as they learn to feel really good about themselves – something I can relate to as you will see below.
I would like to share with you a brief history of my life to date and how I have come to help people feel good about themselves. Here we go…
Let’s start with my childhood – I don’t remember much before the age of 10 as I had all the illnesses under the sun and missed a lot of school. I also had many learning difficulties which I believe has made my sub conscious block many things out.
My mum said as a young child I was quiet and very reserved and I didn't start speaking until I was about 5. My mum and dad were worried so they took me to a speech therapist who thought I may have had a learning disability. With help and support I did start speaking and I have made up for the late start now! My Mum said during my younger years I didn't have many friends and I used to cry myself to sleep every night but, between the ages of 10 and 14, I become a lot more vocal and would voice my opinion a lot more and believe it was my friends, my sense of humour and my cheeky face that brought me out of my shell. The problem being that I couldn't read or write and I would hide behind being badly behaved, cheeky and by making people laugh.
Despite coming out of my shell more, behind the scenes I would worry about everything (not realising at the time that most teenagers had similar worries). I would worry that the moon was going to crash into the earth; I’d worry about death; catching cancer; the world generally, and getting older. I had constant panic attacks and I wouldn’t sleep as I would be worrying about everything.
When I look back now, I do think it was all down to a lack of direction in life and a lack of parental guidance. Also, the fact that I had no confidence in achieving anything as I was in the bottom group in every class at school and I had no support by teachers as they would just see me as a badly behaved child.
The ages of 14 – 18 were the most important years of my life and it was this period that has made me the person I am today. At age 14 I made a conscious decision to give myself a sense of achievement but had to decide what that would be. So I tried to play some sports and with football being the No.1 sport, I decided to try it! I remember very well the first time I played. The ball was coming towards me in the air and my natural reaction was to catch it so I did! As a result everybody on the field laughed at me and I got sent off. Crucially, I didn’t let that put me off. I said to myself that I’ll try something else and so I went for a jog. I soon realised that this was my answer as I was good at it and it really gave me the sense of achievement I was looking for.
Jogging was my release and from doing this I could think about my problems and could keep focusing on extending my jogging distance.
From this point onwards I set short term goals in my jogging and in life. In this particular year I got 100% attendance at school and I achieved going up a group in most subjects therefore I wasn't in bottom group for everything any more. It is amazing what you can achieve when you set a goal and focus on achieving it.
nathan pre workout
Exercise was my strength and my platform to set goals and to achieve them – from this I gained self belief and self respect.
When I left school I just kept exercising and was determined to achieve great things. Year by year I kept setting goals, some small ones and some bigger ones. By doing this, I was hitting and exceeding the goals, achieving well above my own expectations as well as what everyone else expected. This set the foundations for what makes me the person I am today putting me in a great position to help others by being able to show empathy and passing on the experience I have. I am passionate about helping people achieve their fitness and weight loss goals – I know the power of self confidence and self belief and seeing this improve with the people I work with is why I do what I do.

Reading next