My Story
I live in Vancouver, Canada helping women locally and around the world feel empowered and accountable for their own health, restoring it to its natural state so they can get back to living their dream life.
When I’m not coaching women, or cooking healthy meals for my friends and family, you can find me in the yoga studio or up a mountain with a pair of skis’ or hiking boots.
Did you know
that nearly 1 in 5 teenage girls are on hormone altering contraception? Yup, that’s nearly a whopping quarter of girls from the mere age of 13 who are offered medication to regulate the most natural human process of all. I was one of those girls; full of mood swings and misled information. Impressionable and in pain, I sought the guidance of General Practitioners and received mediocre mainstream advice – a one-size-fits all approach to managing my birth control – cue suspenseful music, the Pill.
If you could go back in time and give your 16-year-old self some advice, what would it be? Maybe don’t date that boy, or over-pluck your eyebrows? But if only I knew what the fall out would be - the monstrous mood swings, the 28 lbs weight gain, every major relationship in my life disintegrating before my eyes - I’d have told my younger self to not take the magic blue pill. This key event in my journey would start a cascade of doctor’s appointments that would span nearly a decade.
Abandoning the Pill wasn’t the answer, the damage had already been done and what followed is a period of my life that we shall lovingly call, the acne years.
The Pill, condoms, the Pill again, injections, implants, IUD’s - I tried them all and with every passing year my body continued to fail me. There’s a theme here, are you following?
For a long time, I was told that how and what I was feeling was normal, but in a world where normal is tolerated as second-rate, where aches and pains are an entry-fee into adulthood, fragile mental health is the new epidemic, and PMS is widely underrated and even accepted as a part of a woman’s coming-of-age journey, I was indeed normal. I’d made it, I was officially a woman - all grown up.
I’m here to tell you that this isn’t how it needs to be. Neither is inflamed breasts, irregular and painful periods, skin conditions, debilitating headaches, fatigue and compromised immune function, I’ve lived it all for you, I’ve been in the trenches and I refuse to believe this new normal is optimal health.
By age 27, I hadn’t welcomed a period for over a year and was prescribed Accutane by a dermatologist as a “last resort”. The medication caused my lips to crack and bleed and I needed bi-weekly blood tests to make sure my liver was still functioning, no big deal. In a desperate attempt to reclaim my social life with friends, I succumbed to a cycle of weekday salads and spin classes followed by weekends of burgers, binge eating and partying.
The outcome? At an age when I should have been finding myself, I felt more alone and confused about what was best for me than ever before.
The crossroads came when I moved to Canada. Instead of being excited to start this new chapter of my life; I was deeply insecure, lost, and unable to regulate my own emotions. I wanted to realize my potential and lead a life with meaning and purpose, where I had the self-love and physical energy to contribute to the people around me who I loved the most, but also have glowing skin and a banging body of course, not too much to ask, right?
That’s when I discovered Holistic Nutrition
I feel like there should be an Enya soundtrack softly playing in the background right now, but seriously, it saved my life, my relationships and my poor little liver. I took a chance, giving it 100% and with time my body started to return to me: my weight regulated, my energy increased, my sleep restored, my period returned, the acne decreased, and the best part, I didn’t cry into my pillow every night for no apparent reason. Surely it can’t be that simple? Medicinal food + lifestyle changes = optimal health? I’ll let you in on a little secret - it is, and if the pharma companies put that on their packaging, they’d be out of business quicker than Enya can say sail away.
This life experience led me to go back to school and study to become a Holistic Nutritionist, and a great one at that. I strive to be someone who I wish I’d had by my side; a voice of reason, a research and evidence-based beacon for women in a storm of hopelessness.
