Physiotherapist and creator of Fit Food Focus. This is his story.
I am Paul Veen, physiotherapist and creator of Fit Food Focus.
In the consulting room I come across people every day with a complaint: a torn muscle, chronic tension, a back that is acting up. It often seems as though such a complaint arises out of nowhere. But in reality, a process always precedes it: a process of structural overload, on whatever level.
My mission is not only to repair damage, but also to prevent it. Not only to make people healthy and fit, but also to keep them that way.
Paul Veen
That mission doesn't come out of a textbook. I know from personal experience what it's like not to be fit. How it feels not to go through life feeling vital. To struggle with life itself.
I was born in Korea and spent the first ten months of my life in an orphanage. When I was adopted, I was severely malnourished and had major delayed growth. I didn't cry, gave few signs of life. I began this life, in that sense, already three-nil down.
Thanks to my adoptive parents I had a loving childhood. But by the time I was fourteen I still got into a muddle with myself, so much so that at a certain point I no longer wanted to go on living. At the last moment I chose not to do it after all. With hindsight, the call of life was too great.
That did not mean things got better after that. A dark period followed: the wrong crowd, addiction, destructive choices. By the time I was twenty, the age at which physically you should be at your peak, I had lost everything. Family, friends, a roof over my head. My health was at an all-time low.
I cannot explain precisely why, but somewhere deep inside I knew: there has to be another path for me. There is more.
I pulled myself together and took back control. I chose life again. I underwent day treatment and rebuilt myself step by step. I started several courses of study: sports, education, physiotherapy. I kept my mindset sharp, trained six days a week and started working with disadvantaged youths.
I chose life once more.
Looking back, my whole life has essentially been one continuous struggle to become mentally and physically fit. A harsh school of hard knocks, but one that has shaped me. I know what it is to struggle with life, and I also know what it is to emerge from that stronger and fitter time and time again.
I have since found my way to a sustainable, fit and healthy lifestyle. And I have been able to pass that on to others for well over ten years now through my work as a physiotherapist and coach.
The twists and turns in my life, particularly the moments of crisis, have brought me to where I am now. Becoming physically and mentally fit was never an end in itself for me. It was the foundation for something greater: an energetic life in which I can follow my own passion. And that passion is simple: bringing out the best in people. Helping people to become the fittest version of themselves.
Fit Food Focus is the direct result of that. Not a generic training schedule or diet, but a methodology born from what I have learned myself: that lasting health comes about when body and mind are in balance together, and that you only truly make progress when you tackle the cause instead of the symptom.
Living a vital life: a life that has it all. That is what I wish for everyone.
Fit Food Focus is now being used by clients of F3 Fysio and beyond.
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