Nobody talks about women’s health over 30. I guess it’s not sexy enough for magazine covers? I disagree! It’s definitely sexy! Women’s bodies can be at it’s peak form in our 30’s, 40’s and even 50’s & 60’s! The biggest thing we have on our 20’s … is the knowledge we’ve gained and lessons we’ve learned the hard way. And that’s where I’ll start … how I learned everything the hard way and how it’s lead me to here.
I’ll never forget the first time I heard of almond milk and saw it in the fridge. My mom had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. It was her first round of cancer and this was 15 years ago. After she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she decided to do her research, find the best triage of doctors in the country and refused to accept the results. She refused to accept the fact that chemotherapy was her only option to fight cancer. So she dug in. She learned everything she could about nutrition and health. Almost immediately, she changed the food we ate on a regular basis. She reduced as much carcinogenic foods as possible. She switched almost everything in the fridge. Frozen chicken nuggets out … fresh blueberries in. She started working out more and she changed the way she was working out. She started lifting more weights and pushing herself to limits she didn’t know she had. She was hydrating more, sleeping more, meditating, doing yoga and took more time for herself to do the simple rewarding things like reading and gardening. All the while, she owned and operated a fitness gym, had a second career as a real estate agent and held the responsibility of raising two kids. Granted I was already in college and my brother in high school, but nonetheless she still footed the bills and supported us no matter what.
Back then, the data was slim on women’s health and breast cancer. Luckily, now we have a lot more information and data on women 30+. And this is where my fascination and passion lies.
I’ve been a corporate event planner for the last 12 years. For many of those years, my time was spent at a computer, in meetings, traveling to and from random cities. When I had time off on the weekends, I would do the things I enjoyed the most like yoga, beach volleyball, surfing, maybe a run and a HIIT workout here and there. I was and still am very active. But when I look back now, I realize how bad my nutritional habits were through my corporate years. And during my corporate years, I always wondered why couldn’t I sleep well on the road, why would my anxiety sky rocket, why did I crave wine more often, why did I always have less energy? I would feel completely depleted after I finished a project and returned home. I had more headaches and I would typically need 3-5 coffees in a day to keep functioning. I also, could never seem to lose any weight during these years.
The answer is because my nutrition sucked, and my habits did not create a positive affect on my body. I thought I was eating all the right things at the time, but I never really did the research or took the time to understand what I was actually eating. I didn’t understand how women’s bodies need protein during certain times of the day and certain times of the month. I never understood how my menstrual cycle played into my overall well-being, especially during peak times. I never understood how caffeine reacted in my body and how alcohol also took a major toll. As most people I come across today, I always thought that if I ate decent, had my salads and went for a run everything internally would work fine.
Turns out that’s completely false. and that’s how I hit the corporate burnout.
Fast-forward to Covid 2020 when the whole world shut down. Every in-person event went out the window in a single day. It took some time to turn in-person events into virtual events, so the majority of my business stopped on a dime. It was devastating, but I have to admit …… I had the best time during Covid. I decided to go vegan, turn off my alarm clocks, read more and enjoy the downtime. I did more yoga, worked out almost every single day. And I started back into personal training with online clients. I started meal prepping and taking time to enjoy cooking. I challenged myself to cook with different vegetables, fruits and make things from scratch. Yes, I hoped on the sourdough bread train … and I loved it! I took more time to walk my dog, breathe in the fresh air and enjoy the time that I had outside, because it was so limited at a certain point. And I loved it!
Now … fast forward post-Covid, my events business came back overnight and it came back larger and faster than I could’ve ever imagined. So, naturally I feel right back into the corporate world and all my bad habits. I was traveling almost every other week. I was on the road for anywhere between 4 to 14 days in a row, I lived out of a suitcase and considered restaurants grocery stores. My nutrition habits got worse and worse the more I traveled and worked my tail off. I wasn’t eating enough in the day, because stress and busy work would consume my days. I worked at this pace for 2 years straight and hit the corporate burnout really hard. I would return home after finishing a project and sleep all weekend. I would be too drained to participate in being social, doing any sports or physical activities. My workouts were nonexistent. I didn’t want to do anything around the house like gardening, renovations, or even walking the dogs. I was so physically and mentally I didn’t realize it was affecting my corporate performance as well.
I didn’t realize that the way I fueled my body played a direct role into how well I could perform in the work place. So I started looking back to when I was coaching clients in Covid in wellness, personal training and nutrition. And man was I happy and energized during that time.
So I decided to take some time draw on my experiences in two of the lives that I had created for myself. I started working towards combining those two lives. I started focusing more on women’s health, especially women who are over the age of 30, women who are perimenopause and women who are in the executive world who put their work before their own well-being. As well as women who are just struggling to lose a little bit of weight who have tried every diet and every workout trend in the book.
I completed a high-level nutrition certificate and jumped right into another certification of nutrition science that I’m currently completing. I started learning from different doctors, listening to podcasts, reading published papers from accredited doctors, all who specialize in women’s health. And I decided I would start to put it all together.
Which brings me to here, now and today. Through research, knowledge and experience I’ve developed multiple programs that are customized to any female out there reading this. I’ve developed six-week programs and long-term programs for women over the age of 30 who are looking to improve their overall health. Overall, well-being starts with nutrition. It starts with what we put in our mouths on a daily basis. It starts with what we’re eating and how we’re eating. Our mental wellness is directly related to our physical wellness. So I help women look at their own lifestyles and build a nutrition and fitness plan that will be easy for them to follow. We also build in healthy habits that will improve daily life balance. Because a lot of small steps add up to something very large in the end. I don’t stop there there. I also look at mental wellness, happiness, sleeping habits, cortisol levels, social media addictions, external factors and internal factors. The list goes on.
So now that you know a little bit about me and how I’ve gotten to my journey of helping women everywhere, I hope you’ll reach out and drop me a note in the contact form so I can hear from you too. I can’t wait to learn about you and help you get on your path to being a healthier, happier you!
