On Thursday I was one of the lucky 300 people to attend a live Q&A by Joe Wicks aka The Body Coach at the Dancehouse Theatre in Manchester. The evening was part of his Waterstones tour to promote his new Lean in 15 Shape Plan book. On arrival we were all given a free copy of the book, which was great as tickets were only £13. The book retails at £8.49 at some stores. So £13 for the book and to meet him was great especially since he is so good already at giving out free content on his various social media channels.

I was lucky enough to grab a seat in the first row, totally amazing. And ladies, yes he is as gorgeous in the flesh! During the Q&A discussed how he went from being a Personal Trainer running bootcamps to a social media sensation. 3 years ago he was just starting out on social media and has built a huge client and fan base through his meal exercise plan, his Instagram cooking videos and his You Tube channel. Even though he now has his own HQ and is working with the likes of Team GB for Rio 2016 and breaking the American market he is still very humble and down to earth. He mentioned that the public will approach him but then be too nervous to ask for a selfie or a snapchat, so he’ll always put them at ease by giving them a hug and saying, “Lets do a selfie”

He also doesn’t have a bad word to say about anyone else in the industry which is refreshing as the finess industry can be filled with arrogance and ‘calling out’ trainers who choose to follow different methods.

He also discussed the importance of meal prepping and fitting a healthy lifestyle in when you are busy and how we can embrace exercise at home, outdoors for example hill sprints or at the gym. His aim is to promote exercise and health which is accessible to everyone regardless of budget. And to work with schools, which is great.

Another topic covered was emotional eating, motivation and the danger in using scales. For me emotional eating has always been a problem and over the last month I have put on around 7lbs due to stress, it’s a revolving circle and something I was to nervous to ask about. Luckily a gentleman in the crowd also had the same question in mind. He had lost an amazing 10 stone already but was struggling with emotional eating. In regards to scales aka the sad step, progress photos was deemed the more accurate method of tracking results. Scales aren’t accurate, for example they don’t account for water retention, time of day or time of the month for us ladies, which can cause bloating. For both questions we were encouraged to take progress photos at the start and end of the month and go by how our clothes feel. Not seeing that number on the scales often results in feeling down and binge eating and becoming obsessed.

There was so many other topics discussed. Joe also promised to upload a low impact HIIT workout for a lady in the audience who has lost cartilidge in her knee and struggles with his normal exercises.

At the end of the evening we were invited onto the stage individually to meet Joe, have a hug and chat and get our books signed.

It was an honour to meet him and to hear his plans for the future.