Welcome to my page, I’m so happy you decided to visit, hopefully this will be the start of getting to know you. Feel free to comment on any post and lets start a ‘healthily’ conversation.
Let me tell you a little bit about myself and why i’m passionate about helping people like you. I have always lived a very active lifestyle and enjoyed eating tasty food. I grew up in the typically suburban home, in Sydney’s Western suburbs. I played sport every afternoon and loved eating my grandmothers home cooked meals.
My passion in life now that I look back has always been fitness and nutrition, for reasons that have developed and changed over time. As an adult and a child, I always loved playing sports. My current focus is triathlon and ocean swims, so I spend countless hours on the bike, running and in the pool. In the past, I have been a professional Brazilian dancer, dabbled in gymnastics and competed in a few half marathon events.
I was not always like this though, here was a phase in my life that I hated working out because I felt bad about myself. I used exercise it as punishment for eating. Don’t get me wrong, I started off enjoying exercise as a child, but in my teenage years and early 20’s it developed into an unhealthy obsession. That was more about controlling my body weight and making up for what I had eaten. Looking back, if I could diagnose myself, I would say I was on the verge of an eating disorder. I certainly had disordered eating patterns and a warped sense of self.
Like most people, I’ve had my fair share of fad diets, starvation plans and killer exercise programs. Particularly during my high school years, my chronic dieting and strenuous exercise program lead to chronic fatigue and iron deficiency, which ultimately left me anaemic. I was obsessed with losing weight and maintaining muscle to compete in aesthetic based competitions and to fit in at the gym amongst all the body builder competitors.
At this stage I was sick of trying fad diets, sick of spending countless hours at the gym and sick of the lack of results. My mind was filled with toxic thoughts of starving myself and running my body down. I would spending 3-4hours training every day and if I didn’t it would send me into severe anxiety because I was scared of weight gain. I would promise myself, tomorrow I wouldn’t eat. I knew this wasn’t normal. I thought to myself, there must be a better way to do this.
My all time low, was when I spent and entire day at high school surviving off 1 slice of bread. I had purposely skipped breakfast and didn’t take lunch so I wouldn’t eat. I was so starving that day, I felt upset and I had a headache, and I still felt fat and self conscious. I came home starving, put my school bag down and carted myself off to swimming training.
I walked 3km to swim training to “burn off calories”. Then I jumped into the pool and spent the following 3 gruelling hours swimming with my coach and squad team. I was a good swimmer, but that day I couldn’t keep up because I was so fatigued. I came home completely exhausted and defeated. I was a failure.
I was stuck in this mindset for an entire year and it made me sad and depressed. No one knew that I was suffering or even suspected an eating disorder, because i’m naturally not a small person and I was carrying a lot of muscle. Only my mother pulled me aside with a face full of tears and begged me to eat. This process went on for a while; on a diet, off a diet, and still exercising every day 3-4hours without question. When Christmas day rolled by I spent half the day running around the local oval trying to burn off what I ate for Breakfast.
Things slowly got better, I later became a personal trainer and aerobics instructor when I was 18 years old. I loved learning about the human body and I wanted to cure myself of these toxic thoughts. I was searching for a better way to lose weight and keep it off. I became qualified in boxing, spin, body combat, body balance, Zumba and of course strength training.
This wasn’t enough though, I could see I was missing fundamental parts of nutrition knowledge. I didn’t know enough to make myself feel better or to stop my yoyo dieting.
I began to read nutrition books by prominent dietitians & nutritionists from Australia. I realised that I not only loved the training side of exercise, but also loved learning the critical insight into the importance of nutrition. I loved learning about nutrition and exercise so much I changed university degrees. I was committed to finding out how to lose weight and keep it off without unnecessary side effects.
After graduating from the University of Sydney as a Dietitian and Exercise Physiologist I am now equipped with the tools to stay fit and healthy. I have also done further study in health coaching, training, rehabilitation and obesity management. This increased knowledge has helped me to gain knowledge to further help people just like you, and people like my former self, climb out of the dieting cycle.
I have made it my life mission to rid the world of fad diets. You don’t ever need to diet to lose weight or feel better about yourself.
My passion is helping people avoid the torture of restrictive dieting and excessive exercise. I take pleasure in helping clients become weekend warriors in their chosen sport. I love hearing from my client who recover from heart attacks by exercising and eating right. I look forward to clients telling me they no longer need so much medication.
I want to help people like you achieve optimal health with the power of food and movement. I want to make weight loss and chronic disease management easy and simple to follow, so you don’t have to do two university degrees and a mountain of certificates. I will do the work for you!
In my quest to change the lives of people in Sydney, I am now a regular contributor for Oxygen women’s fitness, Fitness first, Clean Eating and Weight Watchers magazine. Some of my publish articles can be viewed on this website’s media page. If you want to stay updated with my daily tips and activities add me on Facebook.
Losing weight or modifying your eating patterns can really change your life. Energy levels rise, attitudes change and you feel like a new improved person. With the right help from me it will be surprisingly easy to do. Can’t wait to start you on your journey to new health and fitness!