Bo­bie-Lee Dixon

Three hun­dred dol­lars was all she had to her name when a young Ter­ry-Ann George, now 43, quit her nine-to-five job and stepped out on faith to start her own busi­ness: run­ning a small weight-watch­ers' pro­gramme and health coun­selling ser­vice.

To­day she is the CEO of the In­sti­tute of Health and Fit­ness Com­pa­ny Ltd. The in­sti­tute, at 79 St Vin­cent Street, Tu­na­puna, is ac­cred­it­ed by the Aer­o­bic and Fit­ness As­so­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca (AFAA). George of­fers a unique holis­tic ap­proach to health.

"A com­plete­ly healthy body in­cludes tak­ing care of the mind body and spir­it," she be­lieves.

That's why her in­sti­tute of­fers a num­ber of cer­tifi­cate cours­es that in­clude health and fit­ness train­ing and man­age­ment, nurs­ing and pa­tient care, sports psy­chol­o­gy and food prepa­ra­tion and culi­nary arts.The in­sti­tute has pro­duced some lead­ing health and fit­ness pro­fes­sion­als, like Neil Salazar of Spar­tan Fit­ness Inc, Uber­Fit's Joel Joy­less and Body By Im­ran CEO, Im­ran Razac.

Three weeks ago George host­ed her first three-day health and fit­ness con­fer­ence at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya. The first day was open to the pub­lic and the oth­er days were specif­i­cal­ly for per­son­al train­ers, gym own­ers and oth­er health­care pro­fes­sion­als.

From di­etet­ics to teach­ing..and back

George, the moth­er of one, is from Laven­tille, and is a for­mer teacher with 19 years' ser­vice.

She got a first de­gree in di­etet­ics and a mas­ters in ed­u­ca­tion­al psy­chol­o­gy from An­drews Uni­ver­si­ty (AU), Michi­gan. She de­scribes her jour­ney to suc­cess as "seraph­i­cal," say­ing the dots were di­vine­ly con­nect­ed.

She was heav­i­ly in­volved in sports at sec­ondary school and rep­re­sent­ed T&T na­tion­al­ly in track and field. Even to­day, George still hits the track for a good work­out.

Af­ter school she did a cer­tifi­cate course in di­etet­ics at the now de­funct John Don­ald­son Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute be­fore do­ing her de­gree in it. While study­ing she in­terned at Port-of-Spain, Mt Hope and San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tals as a di­etet­ic tech­ni­cian.

But then, up­set about what she saw as a de­te­ri­o­rat­ing health­care sys­tem, she de­cid­ed in 1992 to go in­to teach­ing. She would spend 12 years teach­ing at pri­ma­ry school lev­el and sev­en at sec­ondary school.

But her first love haunt­ed her and in 2001 George packed up shop and re­turned to health­care. Along with her moth­er and a reg­is­tered nurse, Ani­ta Pierre, she be­gan in a small build­ing at Stone Street in Port-of-Spain, of­fer­ing a weight watch­ers pro­gramme, group coun­selling and cook­ing class­es. As her clien­tele and ser­vices grew she need­ed a big­ger space and even­tu­al­ly bought her own build­ing in 2004.

"Get­ting my own build­ing was like a dream come true. I re­al­ly fought long and hard to get to this point and I thank God for every ob­sta­cle and bless­ing along the way, be­cause when I look back I can see that every­thing was there for me. I just had to fol­low a path, and well, here I am to­day," said George, with a large smile.

She de­scribed her­self as the ul­ti­mate nerd while at­tend­ing school, say­ing she was at­tract­ed to and ex­celled at the sci­ences.

She talked proud­ly about last month's con­fer­ence, a mile­stone in her ca­reer.

"This three-day con­fer­ence was re­al­ly the height of my ca­reer to date. Be­cause it so­lid­i­fied to me that all the hard work that went in­to es­tab­lish­ing this in­sti­tute was not in vain," she said. She de­scribed the event as an ac­tion-packed week­end.

"We had a whale of a time. Every­one who at­tend­ed en­joyed them­selves. It was ex­cit­ing, ed­u­ca­tion­al, in­for­ma­tive. I can say that all health and fit­ness pro­fes­sion­als walked away with a wealth of knowl­edge," she said.

Among oth­er ex­pe­ri­ences, par­tic­i­pants learned how to make spe­cial fruit and veg­etable juices that help pre­vent di­a­betes, pro­mote healthy hearts and de­crease the risk of can­cer. Live cook­ing sta­tions turned out healthy, de­li­cious meals. Booths of­fered ser­vices in­clud­ing tests for di­a­betes, high blood pres­sure, triglyc­erides, bone den­si­ty and PH bal­ance.

Health and fit­ness ex­perts, such as geron­tol­o­gist Dr Di­ane Mc­Coughey and di­eti­cian Nicole Alexan­der were on hand to ad­dress spe­cif­ic health is­sues. An AFAA rep­re­sen­ta­tive and fea­tured speak­er, Jen­na Mar­tin, spoke on fight­ing obe­si­ty and di­a­betes.

Fu­ture plans

With all that she has ac­com­plished, George gives back through free con­sul­ta­tions, work­shops at schools and busi­ness­es that seek her ex­per­tise. Cur­rent­ly she is work­ing on cre­at­ing a live cook­ing show for tele­vi­sion.

The pub­lic can al­so look out for a ra­dio pro­gramme com­ing on stream lat­er this month. George said she is still de­cid­ing on which fre­quen­cy will be used to air the pro­gramme.

She al­so plans to open two oth­er in­sti­tutes in San Fer­nan­do and Ch­agua­nas to make her ser­vices more ac­ces­si­ble to clients liv­ing in those ar­eas.

Asked what words of ad­vice or en­cour­age­ment she had for young en­tre­pre­neurs, George said sim­ply: "Hav­ing a vi­sion is the be­gin­ning of your suc­cess. Fol­low­ing through on that vi­sion, no mat­ter what comes, will bring you com­plete suc­cess."

To find out more about the In­sti­tute of Health and Fit­ness, call 289-6363/492-7397 or e-mail: health­fit.ihf@gmail.com