My Mission

We’ve all grown up eating food and there are many things that determine our diet and why we eat the way that we eat. This could be our parents/guardians, our culture, the way we have been brought up etc. If you are struggling with your diet and you come and see me for nutrition advice – me just telling you what you could eat isn’t going to do that much because your current diet isn’t actually about what you eat. The way that you eat is an ingrained habit that you’ve had your entire life – a subconscious behaviour that has been learned, through no fault of your own. Therefore, my passion is more about helping you to understand where your eating behaviours have come from so that we can help you change those behaviours to improve your mental relationship with food, which leads to the knock-on effects of improving your diet, health and overall happiness.

An example would be if you grew up around parents who had their own unhealthy relationship with food – it’s likely that you will have picked up those patterns of behaviour yourself (all subconsciously, through no one’s fault). The first step is recognising this, so that, with my help, you can look back, understand where you have picked up these patterns of behaviour and then learn how to undo them and replace them with healthier patterns. I would provide you with the tools to help with this, such as learning the process of Intuitive Eating, or by using Reiki to help you shift stagnant energy which is currently holding you back. Unhealthy eating behaviours or attitudes towards food could also be a result of some kind of trauma, such as childhood trauma or certain life events, no matter how big or small. Our body’s primal instincts are clever – their first instinct is to keep us safe – so we develop coping mechanisms (such as unhealthy relationships with food, drugs, alcohol etc) to keep us safe when we have no other means of processing trauma. This all happens subconsciously with good intention, even though it can lead to unhealthy outcomes. It is the body’s way of protecting us from dealing with those negative feelings, but there comes a point where we have to recognise that these coping mechanisms we’ve developed are doing us harm and are having a negative impact on our overall lives. Some of us have to reach rock bottom before recognising that we need to ask for help in overcoming these behaviours.

intuitive eating reiki nutritionist

Following a traumatic childhood, I ended up with mental health problems in my late teens. I suffered from depression, bulimia and physical self-harm. I hit rock bottom at the age of 18, when I became suicidal. As I hit the milestone age of 30 this year, it makes me emotional to think that there was a time where I couldn’t see myself making it to this point. I couldn’t imagine a future for myself past the age of 21 as I truly didn’t care about what life had to offer – I was so deep in my own suffering. But not only did I make it past 21, I’ve made it to 30 and I’m so grateful that I did as I can now see that life is a gift. If you’re at your rock bottom right now, know that I understand – I have been there and I made it out – there is hope. I have been in one of the worst places you can mentally be, and I’ve made my way out of it. This is why I am so passionate about helping others to get out of it as well.

I often get asked how I reached this point from where I was, and the answer is that I was privileged to find an amazing therapist who showed me understanding and a non-judgmental approach with kindness and love, which is what I needed in order to feel seen and validated. Still to this day, I have somebody who I can call if I need to talk something over. You don’t need to have a mental illness to need to talk to a professional. Just like the concept of doing exercise to maintain a healthy physical body, why shouldn’t you have an equivalent for your mind? I have worked on myself so that I can now be that person for other people who need this kind of help in the present day. If at any capacity your relationship with food stresses you out – no matter how small that may be – then that’s enough of a problem because I believe that food should be about joy and fuelling ourselves to feel good, not about stress. If food is a stressor in your life, are you ready to face it and change it? I have a particular interest in nutrition and unhealthy relationships with food due to my own experience of an eating disorder, but you don’t have to have troubles with food to come and see me. If any of the things I am saying resonate with you and you feel like I could be the person you need to talk to, to make some changes, please get in touch. This is why I offer everybody a free discovery call, to give us the chance to have a chat and see if you feel I’m the right fit for you and vice versa.

Secondly on my journey, I had a personal interest in studying a nutrition degree, as understanding the science behind what I was doing to my physical body when I had bulimia (and the damage that eating disorders can do to the body in general) helped me want to get out of it. I also wanted to understand how to fuel my body correctly to not only give me the energy I physically need, but to feel good mentally, as there is growing research to show a strong connection between the gut and the brain. I can now use my scientific knowledge of nutrition and the body to help you in gaining your own understanding of nutrition and the impact of your eating behaviours on your body.

Another tool which helped me was Reiki, which is about understanding universal energy and how we can shift and let go of negative energy to improve our wellbeing. This was key for me in helping me to process childhood trauma and pull myself out of depression and self-harming behaviours.  As my passion grew, I gained qualifications as an Advanced Level 3 Reiki Practitioner. I use Reiki on myself daily to help process my thoughts and feelings in a healthy way, and I find it can be a really useful tool to help my clients do the same. If you are interested in learning more about Reiki and how it can help you, please get in touch here.

There were many other tools which I picked up over the years which I still use to contribute to my quality of life. These include a regular meditation and yoga practice, which taught me patience and learning how to accept my body for the way that it is, after years of self-abuse from harmful self-punishing behaviours. I also trained with the founders of Intuitive Eating to become a Certified Intuitive Eating Counsellor as the process of learning to become an intuitive eater myself, really helped on my journey to a healthy relationship with food and my body image.

Lastly, I had this drive (really deep down at the beginning!) that I wanted to help myself, which turned out to be the most important thing. Asking for help and doing the work to improve your life is a choice. Everybody goes through a level of trauma in life, and our perception of it and the way in which we choose to deal with it is what will determine our quality of life. Doing nothing and continuing to feel dissatisfied is also a choice. Often it can take hitting rock bottom to be ready to make the change. This is ok – just know if you are reading this, that there is something inside you, even if it’s 0.01% that you’re not happy with where you are right now and you would like to change. There is a reason that you have found me today – use that knowing and be open to looking at yourself which is the hardest thing to do.

Bearing this in mind, I work holistically to combine my knowledge and skills in nutrition, Intuitive Eating, Reiki and my lived experiences, to help my clients in a unique way. You are not just signing up for nutrition advice, you are signing up to explore your behaviours and patterns throughout all aspects of your life as problematic behaviours with food don’t tend to be isolated to just nutrition. For example, if you have a pattern of self-sabotaging when it comes to food, it’s likely that those self-sabotaging behaviours will also be showing up in other aspects of your life such as in relationships or your career. By identifying the behaviours and learning tools to help change it, it could help across your entire life, not just in your relationship with food. This can be scary and confronting, but very fulfilling and satisfying, which is why it is nice to have the option to work with somebody like me who has been there already and understands what it feels like.

That being said, I am not here to do the work for you. If you choose to work with me, know that I will be your biggest hype person, but you are still the expert of your own life, not me. Therefore, you must be prepared to do the work on yourself and use me as your personal guide and toolbox to build up the tools you need to have a better quality of life. I will provide you with a judgment-free, safe space to lay out everything you need to, in order to move forward. Are you ready to start today? It’s ok if you’re feeling nervous and unsure – start with curiosity. Let’s get curious, for example “I don’t know what is going to happen, but I’m open to finding out. I’m willing to explore and see what answers are waiting for me should I go down this route.” That is all you need – come with a little bit of curiosity and you have started your journey to make that change for the better.

If you choose to work with me as part of your journey, we will start with an initial 90-minute session which gives us the opportunity to really get to know one another and have a deep dive discussion into figuring out where you are in your life right now and what you would like to change. This would be different for everybody. Based on your individual needs, we would then come up with a plan to move forward together and discuss what that would look like. It’s your decision as to how often you feel you would like to see me for hourly support (weekly, fortnightly, monthly etc). Hourly sessions could be anything from learning about nutrition, having a Reiki session, doing Intuitive Eating activities, setting up tools such as breathing exercises/meditations, or just using me as the space you need to get that rant (or any emotion) off your chest, or gain my perspective on an issue you may be struggling with. Every session I have with a client is completely different which is what I love – we are all so individual and that’s what makes us special. I work intuitively and go with whatever you may need in that particular moment on that particular day.

I AM READY TO CHANGE MY LIFE

The Story of My Toolbox

Life is going to keep on happening, we don’t just get to the end of a therapy journey and we’re happy and that’s it now for the rest of our lives. We don’t just walk off into the sunset without anything bad every happening again, that’s not realistic. Things are still going to happen throughout our lives. Therapy isn’t about fixing it, it’s about giving you the tools so that you are more prepared to deal with those things in a healthy way when these things do happen. I have been on a really long journey since my rock bottom at the age of 18, and things are still going to come up throughout my life, so I have healthy coping mechanisms set in place to help me when they do. This doesn’t mean I never have bad days or feel low from time to time, I’m human of course I do. But I can manage those feelings better and those days happen less frequently and have less of a negative impact on my life overall. For example, I use Reiki in my daily life to help me process my thoughts and feelings and shift energy around. Another example is use of different breathing techniques to help me, such as when I feel a panic attack coming on, or to ground myself before meeting a client, or to help process difficult emotions. I practice yoga regularly because I have found that it helps to clear my head and instil a sense of calm, helping to reduce the noise of the outside world. I use my nutrition knowledge to plan meals for myself which will sufficiently fuel my physical body, as well as contributing to feeling good mentally. I attend regular Pilates sessions because it helps to nurture and strengthen my physical body, standing myself in good stead as I get older. I use Intuitive Eating on a regular basis to help maintain my healthy relationship with food and avoid slipping back into old eating patterns and negative body image thoughts. My training in NLP helps me to adjust my perception and communication skills when dealing in difficult scenarios. As well as many more techniques on hand to use in different life situations. And for those times when life really hits the fan, I still have an ongoing relationship with a therapist to help me talk things out in a neutral environment, which is something which could benefit anyone, not just those who are particularly struggling. These are all examples which contribute to my own self-care plan, which inform my daily habits and lifestyle routine. The tools that work well for me, will not necessarily be the same for you, but we can work together to discover what your version of this looks like.

It’s not about curing yourself from sadness or problems because things are still going to happen. The state of the world is quite scary right now and it’s valid that a lot of us will be feeling worried about the future. There are many things which are out of our control, and we can’t change that. But what we can do is change the way that we perceive these things and make sure we have our own tools in place to help ourselves. We can take the helm of our own ship, even when the sea seems impossibly stormy.

take the first step

Non-Diet Nutritionist | Intuitive Eating | HAES Aligned | Virtual & Lincoln / Newark