This web site is home for the ebook Hot Metabolism: A Metabolic Fitness Makeover, which was written by me, Carolyn Hansen.

I have added this page for those of you who would like to know a little more about me, and the reason why I took the trouble to put together a book on metabolic regulation.

But first, if you really want to understand my motivation for spending time writing about fitness and health related issues, when instead I could be hitting the gym a lot more frequently, then you need to know a little about my background, and my earlier life.

I was born in New Zealand (which, by the way is a beautiful country that you should take the opportunity to visit if you ever get the chance) and I still live there today, in Whangarei, the northern-most city in the country. Don't worry if you have never heard of it - so many people have no idea even where to look for New Zealand when they pick up a world map. Hint: it lies about a thousand miles to the south east of Australia.

See that little red dot on the map above? - that is me waving to you!

Basically Whangarei is a little green paradise surrounded by the most gorgeous coastal scenery you can imagine, and so much in the way of ocean that it is almost like living on an island. Whangarei is also famous for the fantastic diving opportunities out at the nearby Poor Knights Islands.

Currently I operate a pair of fitness centers located in the heart of Whangarei city, and I spend a great deal of my time consulting with people in my gyms, and learning about the problems they face trying to stay in shape and maintain the right kind of diet - which, I will admit, always takes a certain element of willpower. Over the years I have also picked up certifications in the fitness training area, so in addition to dispensing advice to my clients I actually do tend to know what I am talking about!

But it was not always this way. In fact, for much of my earlier life I maintained a stunning ignorance about my own body, and this cost me dearly in terms of injuries sustained, and competitions lost, and none of it need have turned out that way. You see, in the 1980's I launched myself into the exciting but physically-demanding lifestyle of competitive bodybuilding. My dream was to gain complete mastery over my body, so that I might sculpt it to the point where people would gasp when I hit that stage.

But I ran into problems. Lots of them, actually, because I really had no clue about what I was doing.

Back then, the prevailing ideas of the day about how to diet, how to control your metabolism, and how to train while both preparing for competitions, and during the off-season, were quite primitive (and often just plain wrong) compared to what we understand today about how our bodies work, and the optimal conditions and activities required to keep them fit and healthy, right up into our later years.

Honestly, it was not until later in my career, after I had figured out much of my newfound knowledge through plain trial and error, that I started seeing the successes on stage that I had dreamed about years earlier. All the wasted time and effort of those frustrating earlier years! I can barely stand to think about it.

But it is because of those head-shaking memories, and a sense that I need to turn all my previous losses into pluses as I advance into the next stage of my life, that I am so determined others should not repeat the kinds of soul-destroying mistakes that I was prone to making (always unnecessarily). This is really what provides the motivation needed these days to commit myself to spending a good part of my day at my desk, writing about all of those things I learned the hard way that you need not.

is not the only product into which I have invested a good deal of my time and energy, and I am sure that there will be more down the road. The simple fact of the matter is that there is a certain degree of satisfaction I get just from knowing that others can grab one of my books and benefit immediately from the hard won successes I experienced only after years of hard work and countless days of writing off techniques that sounded promising, but which bore no fruit. It is the kind of feeling that I used to get simply by stepping onto the stage.

It also doesn't hurt my customers that I am a firm believer that if someone has tread the difficult path before others, that they should do their best to leave foot steps, and sign posts, so that others can better navigate the journey ahead.

So that is basically what I am about. I try to pass on the information that came to me not over a period of weeks, months, or even years, but over decades. I try to crystallize this knowledge and set it into my books so that others can take up where I left off - which is the place that, had I started out there, at the beginning of my own journey, I would surely have reaped benefits and successes in both health and well-being that go far beyond those I was able to achieve simply by never giving up, no matter how hard the journey seemed at times.

To your sustained quest for Health and Fitness,

Author of Hot Metabolism,