About Me

How it all began...

Hi, I'm Andrea Michelle, the fifty-something-year-old founder of FitterDays — the home of straight-talking, fun and, perhaps most importantly, realistic help and advice designed to support, teach and empower you.

My goal is, and always has been, to help you discover what makes you tick — and what ticks you off — so you can make the adjustments needed to find genuine, long-lasting wellness and happiness.

Sounds a bit wishy-washy, doesn't it...?

Believe me, I know!

I'm not one of those consultants who preaches from a script and promises that if you follow a secret sequence of steps, all your lifelong problems will disappear.

I think we all know life just isn't quite that simple!

If it was, we'd all be skipping around deliriously happy, the diet industry wouldn't be worth billions of pounds per year and stress and anxiety wouldn't affect so many of us.

So, first, let me tell you a little about me and why I created FitterDays, then you can visit the main site and decide whether this is the right place for you.

Who is Andrea...?

In a former life — actually, several former lives — I was a secondary school and college IT teacher, headteacher, training and leadership specialist, corporate trainer and personal trainer. I've also worked as a massage and sports injury therapist and, most recently, a civil servant.

On the surface, there doesn't seem to be much connecting those jobs.

There is.

Every one of them gave me the opportunity to teach, support and develop people

I'm an educator at heart. I have a Master's degree in Leadership and Management, a joint Bachelor's degree in Business Information Systems and IT, alongside qualifications in personal training, nutrition, life coaching, massage therapy and sports injury rehabilitation.

But qualifications only tell you what I've studied. The real story of FitterDays started somewhere else entirely.

Where it All Started...

Runners training outdoors in snowy conditions

In early 2000, I was a promising athlete, religiously training on the track three times a week and in the gym another three evenings. My life revolved around track and field. I'd won every competition I'd entered and was training for nationals, with my sights firmly set on securing a place on the British athletics team.

I distinctly remember running around the track one freezing winter evening with the flu (real flu, not man flu!) while snow fell around me. My head pounded every time my feet hit the track, but I refused to miss the session.

I had a goal and I was determined to reach it

Then disaster...

That same year I was involved in a serious car accident. We were car number three in a five-car pile-up on the A406 heading into London. I badly injured my neck, back and legs and was devastated when I was told I should never weight-train or take part in explosive sports again.

It was possibly the lowest point in my life and I fell into a deep depression.

Of course, me being me, I decided I was Superwoman! I threw myself into months of physiotherapy, determined to get back into the gym and prove my doctor wrong.

It didn't work.

I plunged even further into darkness and eventually needed counselling to stop myself falling completely over the edge.

Then, just when I thought things couldn't get much worse, the telecoms company I worked for merged with another and my position was made redundant.

I was absolutely convinced my world had ended.

Fortunately, it hadn't!

To cut a long and rather messy story short, I received a generous redundancy package and eventually decided that if I couldn't train myself, perhaps I could train other people.

So I invested in a personal training course. And loved it!

I qualified in personal training, massage, injury rehabilitation and sports nutrition and took to it like a fish to water.

Perhaps most importantly, I used my newfound knowledge of recovery and injury rehabilitation on myself and within months, I was back in the gym lifting heavy weights and enjoying life again.

That recovery is part of the original FitterDays story — and that's where things started to get interesting!

FitterDays 1.0

Armed with all my shiny new technical knowledge, I began watching other people in the gym and noticed a lot of them had no idea what they were doing!

Technique was often poor, the exercises people were doing didn't necessarily match the results they were trying to achieve and, perhaps most surprising to me (because the gym was always my happy place!), many people absolutely hated being there! They'd drag themselves through a workout because they wanted the result but loathed the actual process.

I watched as some (not all!) of the fitness staff gave instructions on the gym floor. The client would be absolutely fine while the instructor was with them , but as soon as they were left alone, the technique would often fly out of the window — or they'd stop altogether.

Lesson number 2 became very apparent…

Having technical knowledge and being able to explain something in a way people can understand, retain and apply unsupervised require very different skill sets.

Fortunately for me, I had both!

By this time, my friendly, outgoing (and slightly chatty!) nature had returned and, although I wasn't employed by the gym, I'd find myself offering handy hints to whoever happened to be training beside me.

I was able to explain things in a way they could understand and, more importantly, they were able to retain the information and apply it on their own.

I found myself having the same conversations week after week; demonstrating good technique and explaining not just how to warm up, cool down and stretch but also why these things were important, in a way people could understand and apply to their own training.

I loved sharing this information but needed to find a way to share it without repeating myself constantly...

And so FitterDays 1.0 was born: a website providing free, straightforward information about the what, why and how of training, so people could learn to train safely and confidently for themselves.

Of course, I didn't stop there...!

By now a self-employed personal trainer, my clients would ask for alternative exercises and programmes they could do at home to achieve particular goals.

I welcomed them all and it became increasingly clear that what felt like “common sense” to me wasn't common knowledge at all. Sure, there was plenty of information available about what to do, but far less easily accessible information about the how and why.

That became the FitterDays approach: don't just teach people what to do — teach them how and why, so they gain the knowledge and confidence to make informed choices for themselves.

Personal trainers and structured programmes are, of course, useful. But if you never learn the what, why and how, what happens when the trainer isn't there or the programme ends...?

You end up right back where you started — that's what happens!

I wanted to find a way to teach people what they needed to know so they wouldn't need to be reliant on me — in fact, on any pills, potions or other people at all...

I could do that, I thought.

And so FitterDays 2.0 was born!

FitterDays 2.0

And then life changed again...

COVID arrived and suddenly conversations about wellbeing sounded very different.

While I was happily running my first 5km (without stopping, I'll have you know!), stress, isolation, anxiety and weight gain became the new buzzwords.

I found myself thinking about my own experiences: Andrea the athlete who'd lost the ability to train hadn't just suffered physically. When my physical world was affected, my mental wellbeing went with it. And when I rebuilt one, the other began to recover too.

That's probably the first time I truly understood that physical and mental wellbeing aren't separate lives.

One affects the other — and neither exists in isolation from work, relationships, family, confidence, stress or everything else life decides to throw at us.

FitterDays needed to evolve again.

FitterDays 3.0 and RISE

When I look back now, I realise FitterDays has actually grown in much the same way that I have.

My own recovery taught me the value of understanding what I needed to do, how to do it and, crucially, why. I learned to understand my body, had a clear goal and gained the knowledge I needed to adapt my training and lifestyle as I recovered.

That experience taught me that knowledge gives us choices — and being able to make our own informed choices gives us independence.

I also learned that when life knocks us sideways, success isn't about blindly following the original plan. It's about having the confidence and ability to adapt and formulate a new plan.

Those lessons have become the foundation of the RISE philosophy, which is at the heart of everything we do at FitterDays today:

Resilience

The ability to recover quickly from setbacks, adapt to change and keep moving forward

Integrity

Being honest with yourself about where you are, what you want and what you're prepared to do to get there

Strength

The courage to make changes, especially when they're difficult or uncomfortable

Empowerment

The ability to make your own choices, act on them and take control for yourself.

Now, I'm not saying I've mastered all four elements and can teach everybody else how to live their lives — far from it! I think they're things we all have to work on every day.

I've learned, both personally and professionally, that lasting change doesn't come from somebody else telling you what to do. It comes from developing the knowledge, confidence and resilience to understand yourself, make your own choices and change direction when the old ways stop working.

That's what I wanted FitterDays to do back when I was answering questions in the gym.

And more than 25 years later, that's still what I want it to do today.

So, that's me — or at least the summarised version!

FitterDays has changed a lot since that first little website, and I'm sure it will continue to change because life doesn't stand still — and neither should we.

If something in my story sounds familiar, or you're simply ready to make a change but aren't quite sure where to start, come in and have a look around. Take what you need, learn something new and, when you're ready, come and say hello!

You don't need to have everything figured out... you just have to answer one very simple question...

Are you ready to choose differently...?

If so, we'll see you soon! 😊

With love,

Andrea xx