There’s a version of me that I don’t talk about often enough.
She was living in Dubai. Good life on paper. Social, busy, never short of something to do or somewhere to be. But if you’d asked her on an ordinary Tuesday evening, cigarette in hand, drink poured, another night ticking over, how she felt? The honest answer would have been one word.
Empty.
Not dramatic. Not crisis. Just… empty. And underneath that, anxious. Always second-guessing. Always creating stories in her head about what people thought, what situations meant, what was about to go wrong. She never saw a solution, only ever the problem. And if something got too hard to manage, she cut it off. Quickly, cleanly, before it could hurt her.
What she didn’t understand then, what nobody had ever told her, was that she was already living the pain. Just the imagined version of it. The story she was telling herself was every bit as exhausting as the truth would have been.
She was lost. And she felt very, very lonely.
That woman was me.
I didn’t start a fitness business because I had it all figured out
I started EH Fitness in the first week of the UK lockdown in March 2020. Not because I had a grand plan. Not because I was the picture of health and confidence and wanted to share my secrets. I started it because I needed something of my own, and because I genuinely believed I could help women feel stronger than I had felt for most of my life.
What came next nobody could have planned.
A marriage that quietly stopped working. A separation. A little boy, Daniel, my son, who is autistic and has global developmental delay, who was rejected from the only school in Edinburgh equipped to support him because, and I quote, he was “disabled but not disabled enough.” I appealed that decision alone, me against Edinburgh City Council, through two mediations. And I won.
A business built from online workouts in living rooms to a community of women I am genuinely proud to call family.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, slowly, messily, imperfectly, I started to actually know who I was.
Not because life got easier. Because I stopped running from it.
What I’ve learned about women and about change
Here’s what I know now that I wish someone had told me when I was that empty, anxious woman in Dubai.
The pain you’re feeling is almost never coming from the situation itself. It’s coming from the story you’ve created about the situation. And the cruelest part? You’re already living the worst version of the outcome, in your head, alone, at 2am, before anything has even happened.
So ask. Get clarity. Because the story you’re telling yourself is already as painful as the truth could ever be. And once you have the facts, you can let the people who love you actually reach you.
The second thing I know is this, and I say it to my clients constantly: it is so much easier than you think. Not simple. Not without effort. But easier. Because you don’t have to figure it out alone. Support gets you there faster. Relying on others is not weakness. It is the smartest thing you can do. And nothing, nothing, will immediately fall apart if you take your eyes off everyone else’s schedule for five minutes and put them on your own.
Who this blog is for
I want to be honest about who I’m writing for here. Because this isn’t a blog for everyone.
This is for the woman who is coasting. Who is busy, genuinely, legitimately busy, but if she’s really honest, most of that busyness belongs to other people. Other people’s schedules. Other people’s needs. Other people’s lives running through her hands while her own sits quietly in the background, waiting.
She doesn’t feel particularly unhappy. She doesn’t feel particularly anything. Life is just… running. And somewhere underneath the running, there’s a woman who hasn’t been asked in a very long time: what do you actually want?
If that’s you, even a little bit, you’re in the right place.
What I actually coach
People find EH Fitness because they want to lose weight, get stronger, feel better in their body. And we absolutely do that, with real programmes, real nutrition coaching, real results. Women in this community have done remarkable things physically.
But what keeps them here, what changes their lives rather than just their bodies, is something harder to put in a before and after photo.
I coach change. I coach women to understand that they actually can. I coach confidence that comes from evidence, from showing up, doing the thing, and realising you were stronger than you thought. I coach awareness, of your body, your patterns, your habits, and the stories you’ve been telling yourself for years that were never true.
And I make it fun. Because if it isn’t enjoyable it won’t last. And lasting is the whole point.
A quick note on how this blog works
Every week I’ll be writing here about the things that actually matter, training, nutrition, sleep, hormones, mindset, and the messy, real, wonderful process of becoming the woman you actually want to be.
Some posts will be practical. Some will be personal. All of them will be honest.
If something lands for you, please share it. Send it to the woman in your life who needs to read it. Leave a comment and tell me what you’re sitting with. This isn’t a broadcast. It’s a conversation.
And if you don’t want to miss a post, drop your name and email below and I’ll send each one straight to your inbox. No spam, no noise, just one email a week with something worth reading.
I’m really glad you’re here.
Emma x
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