Hi, my name is Jennifer Matthews and I am your Personal Trainer/Weight Loss Consultant... I wrote this page to let you in on a little history about who I am and why I am doing what I am doing. It is a rather long story, so I hope you won't get too bored...

I began to experiment with my knowledge on weight loss at about the age of 15, due to the fact that I was always a rather chubby child. My parents loved me no matter what but that wasn't good enough, so I tried every "diet" out there that was humanly possible. Many of them worked and many didn't, from Easyslim to Weight Watchers and even the good old Low Fat Diet. Although they worked for a very short time, I always seemed to put the weight back on again.

At the age of 18, I met my now husband who was extremely supportive of me and encouraged me the whole way until, at the age of 20 (when we got married) I had lost a whopping 16kg in 2 short months (I had to look hot in my wedding pictures). At this point I was down to a grand old 61kg (not bad for my 170cm frame). After our wedding we left for Germany where I had my first born child Jayman. I gained about 10kg during that pregnancy but managed to get it off within a 4 month period (a little slower but it didn't come back so quickly). I walked 3 hours a day, carried out some aerobics and ensured I ate what I considered to be healthy (although later on realised it wasn't).

We lived in Germany for 2 years and during that time I began to become very fascinated with health. Due to the fact that I couldn't work over there I spent a lot of time researching over the internet and to be frank becoming a bit of a hypochondriac in the process. I then decided that helping others feel good about themselves was something I wanted to do with my life and so then I researched where I could go and do my naturopathic degree.

When we moved back to Perth in 2003 I began my journey of naturopathy with the distance education college "Health Schools Australia" in Brisbane. As I had Jayman and we were planning on having another I decided distance education was the way to go and because of the good reputation Health Schools had I decided to go with them. I studied hard for the next three years, whilst we proceeded to have a gorgeous daughter called Amelia. Although it was hard studying whilst having them, learning about keeping healthy and keeping my kids healthy gave me an even greater incentive to keep going.

After two years, we moved across to Melbourne (from Perth) and I continued to study. After the three years was up, I graduated with my Advanced Diploma and decided that to top it off, I would do my Bachelor in Health Science alongside it with Charles Sturt University (in Sydney). This University also had a very good reputation for distance education. This took another year but then I was all set to work.

I worked in Melbourne as a Naturopath and Massage Therapist for a year or so (around the kids) and created a discount health food site (Discount Health Products) until we moved back to Perth at the end of 2009. When we got back to Perth I started to assess what I was going to do with my career and decided that I would do my Personal Training Qualifications with the Australian Institute of Fitness to go alongside my Naturopathic ones. As I love my exercise and am totally enthusiastic about the benefits associated with exercise, I felt that this would be a great addition because then I would be able to help people from start to finish and design great, effective weight loss programs and try to attack the obesity epidemic.

Now that I have completed both qualifications, I am excited about the knowledge I have and the results I can help my clients achieve and am completely enthusiastic about what "Fit and Firm Personal Training", as well as the sister companies "Total Health Anti-Ageing Clinic" and "Discount Health Products" can achieve, both within and outside of my local community. I hope this story gives you a brief insight into who I am and why I am so passionate about helping others achieve what they want to achieve. I hope I can do that for you too...