Upmarket boot camp draws a crowd

by Catherine Woods - Friday, 29th August 2008 -

Victoria Wills’s battle with the bulge inspired her to launch Devon-based boutique boot camp NuBeginnings.

“I’d struggled with my weight since I was about ten,” she says. “I’d done lots of boot camps, basically every diet that there ever was and I’d lose the weight but then pile it back on again.

“I found hypnotherapy and decided it was a long-term solution when combined with good nutrition and exercise. It got to the root of why I was having trouble with my food.”

NuBeginnings is based in a mansion house and opened its doors in January 2008. Eight new clients come to the house each week to take part in a seven day programme that mixes exercise and nutrition with alternative therapies such as hypnotherapy, massage therapy and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).

Wills explains NLP: “It’s all about speaking to your subconscious mind in the way you talk to yourself. If we talk to you in the same way you talk to yourself, you accept what’s being said much faster and easier.

It’s a programme that’s certainly resonating with clients. Wills says NuBeginnings is attracting more than 800 expressions of interest each week. “People are coming from around the world. Last week we had customers from Dubai, Iraq, Brussels and the US,” Wills says. Most clients find NuBeginnings through Google.

A one-week stay starts from £1,695 and turnover for the business this year is expected to hit £250,000.

Wills funded the venture using money she'd saved when she worked as a management consultant but she also has investors. “They’ve invested in the property that we’re in so I rent it off them,” she says.

The average weight loss, per guest, while at NuBeginnings is 10lbs but Wills says some people lose up to 16lbs during the course of the week. She claims no one has put on weight after leaving the boot camp “and the vast majority have lost significantly more”.

Picture source

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