Maya Nassar

Maya Nassar (born October 3, 1986) is a Dutch-Lebanese competitive fitness model, TV host and entrepreneur. She won first place in the 2014 Pure Elite UK Championships.

Early life
Nassar was born in Long Island, New York. Her father is Lebanese and her mother is Dutch. She grew up in Nigeria, and spent several years in England before moving to Lebanon for high school, where she has lived since.

Career
After a self-confessed struggle with weight throughout her late teenage years and early twenties, Nassar started following a training program and diet regimen in spring 2010. She lost 20 kilograms of fat and reduced five dresses in size.

Nassar entered the Miami Pro European Championships in 2013 in London, England. She did not place in the event, but returned to competitions the following year at the 2014 Pure Elite UK Championships endorsed by the Lebanese minister of sports becoming the first Lebanese athlete to be endorsed by the Lebanese government to compete in a bodybuilding event outside of Lebanon. Nassar won first place in the bikini babe category. She received second- and third-place trophies in fitness modelling at the 2015 Pure Elite UK Championships, and earned its People's Choice Award. In May, she was selected a brand ambassador for the decathlon. She has been featured on the cover of several magazines in the Middle East.

Nassar blogs about her training regimen and competitions on her personal blog, Start Living Right. Her website led to the creation of the Start Living Right fitness application, the first fitness application created in Lebanon. The Lebanese Ministry of Youth and Sports has given the application its endorsement. Start Living Right has also been ranked number one by Apple store multiple times. It offers users a range of fitness tools: exercise diagrams, a fat loss calculator, calorie counter, videos and articles.

Nassar is a board member at the not-for-profit organization Animals Lebanon, which is the largest animal welfare NGO in the Middle East. She worked alongside the NGO Maryam & Martha to create strategies for women who have sought refuge in shelters. The women's empowerment initiative Elle Fiesta asked her to run a motivational workshop. She also conducted a workshop in Russia in 2015. Nassar makes appearances as a motivational speaker, and is frequently featured on television shows. She is the host of Get Fit, which airs on MTV Lebanon.

In July 2016, Nassar participated in the Pure Elite championships and won 4th and 5th place.

Personal life
Nassar lives with her husband in the northeast suburbs of Beirut.