How Leeds Beckett helped me turn my passion for fitness into a career in nutrition

I love all things health and fitness! I have played sports the majority of my life and living a healthy lifestyle has always been very important to me and my family. I studied my undergraduate degree at Liverpool John Moores University, studying Sport and Exercise Science as during high school I developed a great passion for the ‘behind the scenes’ and the science into why and how people can use science to improve performance.

I graduated in 2019 and then the dreaded Covid-19 hit and we all went into lockdowns so getting a job straight out of uni had to take a back seat whilst the World figured out what was going on! In 2020 I started my postgraduate degree at Leeds Beckett University studying MSc Sport and Exercise Nutrition.

I chose to study at Leeds Beckett University due to the amazing standard of facilities within the Carnegie School of Sports, and with it also being in my hometown, and the country being in lockdown, it made sense to me to continue my education here rather than staying on in Liverpool.

Surprisingly, although we were in lockdown and everything was delivered online, the course itself was organised very well. Dr Lauren Duckworth, our tutor, was amazing at ensuring students engaged within the online sessions and I didn’t feel as though I was at a disadvantage due to the course being held online for the majority of the year.

Having said that, my favourite part of the course, was the days we were able to go into the university together and use the state of the art facilities the university offers. A stand out moment for me was being present when the Leeds United first team were at the university to complete some of their pre-season medicals and fitness testing, this just goes to show how great the facilities are at the Leeds Beckett University.

I'm now a nutritionist and I specialise in helping people to achieve their goals by using different dietary pathways to aid this. I am also an online fitness coach, using my knowledge of nutrition to support people with science backed methods to achieve their ultimate health/physique goals on a 1-1 basis. The two jobs differ in how they run day-to-day, but ultimately both support the same outcome of helping others achieve their goals.

The course helped me greatly with firstly, gaining that knowledge required within the sports nutrition field in the first place, but then also within different modules, the course helped me transition this knowledge over to more real life scenarios like helping person to person, rather than just being able to obtain information. This helped massively in my work place because I am dealing with a lot of very different people and it’s a great skill being able to connect differently with different people, as required, but this course helped with this.

If anyone was considering the course or was thinking about becoming a student at Leeds Beckett University, I would highly recommend this. Good luck to every student at Leeds Beckett (& the new students, don’t worry, you’re in safe hands!)