“BEING PART OF this community means everything to me.” When Mo Bouamri, General Manager of Nuffield Health Fulham, spoke about Super-A’s Hood Fitness collaboration with Nuffield Health and David Lloyd, he said he was proud to be part of it, to reach out to his community and look beyond the business of fitness.
After the event, he met with Josh Salzmann and talked about his background, and what drives him forwards.
He grew up and has stayed in the area for the best part of 40 years, starting out as a young footballer who was snapped up by Queens Park Rangers’ School of Excellence, which he attended from the age of 11. He continued his career with them beyond school and decided to play semi-professionally, as a centre mid-fielder, being able to play with both feet and maintain high energy levels.
Beyond football he decided to pursue a career in health and did his Sports Science degree to see what else he could do within the health industry. He started to work on his Personal Trainer qualification and a National Academy Diploma in Sports Medicine.
From starting as a Personal Trainer at David Lloyd in 2004, he worked his way up to General Manager at David Lloyd and then, with the advantage of Arabic being his second language, moved to Dubai in 2008 to help Fitness First open up gyms there. He returned to the UK after two years and decided to join Nuffield because he says, “It fitted more with my lifestyle and career aspirations.”
While out in Dubai had to take a test for a UAE driving licence and failed the eye test. He found out that, following a retinal detachment, had totally lost vision in his right eye. Moorfields told him that the retina in his left eye would also detach so they would do surgery to try to save it, but they also told him that he had better start learning Braille!
He knows about stress and how it affects him very well – he puts on weight. The stresses of losing the vision in his right eye, supporting a new wife with her own mental health problems, and a new baby, took their toll. Coming from a large family (he has six sisters), he understands the kind of support a woman needs, and his own issues took a back seat. When Covid hit, he ballooned up to 120kg (19 stone) but has now got back down to his “healthy weight” of 82kg (13 stone), losing 6 stone in just 14 months.
During his weight loss programme he started to suffer with kidney stones – stress and dehydration were major factors. Even though he was drinking three litres of water a day, the high levels of cardio and weights meant that his body needed more. It was another lesson in how to look after yourself first so that you can continue to look after everyone else too.
He admits to being a “Glass half full kind of person” and says that “Even though my mind was going along with the flow, with the stresses unacknowledged, my body was taking the hits. I’ve done a lot of self-reflecting over the past year and one of biggest things I’ve discovered is that we all need to do that – whether it is to meditate or to pray, but we all need to give ourselves that time, and I recommend it to all my clients and my team.”
“The journey doesn’t stop. Just because I’ve dropped the weight now doesn’t mean I stop – I’ve still got a long way to go: physically, aesthetically, mentally, and the journey continues every single day. I have two beautiful daughters and my beautiful wife, and I need to keep my energy going, not just for me but for them.”
“Aesthetically I want to be more defined, a few more abs, but I know that will come naturally with the type of foods that I eat and the way I’ve changed my lifestyle. The most important thing to me is to live a happy life with a lot of contentment – I am content with a lot of things in my life. I want to keep my family and my friends close, keep growing within Nuffield Health – with their hospitals, clinics, gyms and the Charity, so the sky is the limit!”
“Thinking about my community, I really enjoyed the Hood Fitness Challenge and it is something we at Nuffield want to collaborate with as long as possible. It is something that I see getting bigger and better. We have a great working relationship with Super-A, and with David Lloyd, and people are talking about the next event, in March 2022, wanting to make it bigger and better – we are all for it.”
“I have a long journey ahead of me but I’m excited about it.”
Ann Fitz
Hear the full interview on Super-A TV @ https://vimeo.com/646491993
