Although I have a heavy academic background, a BSc in Sports Biomedicine, MSc in Sport and Exercise Nutrition, PhD in Exercise Physiology, PGCAP in higher education, and fitness and life coaching awards coming out of my ears, I truly believe this provides solely the foundation of my work. My life, my own journey, this is what provides unrivalled empathy for you, your clients, and the challenges that present themselves in food and body relationships.

Like you and/or your clients, I have a chequered background of disordered eating habits. When I was just 16, I developed binge eating tendencies as a means to manage my emotional dysregulation, a coping strategy that stayed with me until my late 20s, interspersed with 15 years of chronic restriction, food rules and extreme body preoccupation. I found my identity amongst social groups as the fit one, the slim one, the one who could out eat everyone, yet stayed in the smallest body. My life control was in my body and exercise, whilst I remained outwardly extremely positive, I used food and overtraining as a means to suppress any emotion that may threaten that.

At the age of 27, I fell into bodybuilding and competed as a bikini athlete for 4 years, nationally and internationally, coming second in Britain in 2017, quitting at this point, finally ending a repetitive yearly cycle that consistently tested my relationship with food through extreme dieting and weight cycling.

Only when I quit competing, left a challenging romantic relationship and moved away, did I discover mindfulness, meditation and self-compassion, through an intense 3-month period in California. I engrossed myself in learning from the best evidence-based and spiritual minds and hearts in the country, attending training courses at UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Centre and Buddhist meditation classes throughout the state. It was during this time, and the recognition of the role that food played in my emotional regulation, that I fully healed my own relationship with food.

Five years later, I continue to develop these learnings through personal and professional practice and incorporate them within the ETPHD method of coaching. My programme provides everything I wish I had in my 20s, because I long for you to spend as little time in a state of disordered body and food thoughts and habits as possible, so you can feel free in your life for as many years as possible.  I’m so proud that this method was the founding coaching programme in compassionate and holistic nutrition within the UK fitness industry.