My Story

I haven't always been a nutrition coach but I’ve always been interested in how the foods that we eat influence the way our bodies react and how we feel.

I grew up watching my mum cook. Cook for us as a family, bake cakes for school fetes, cook for girl guides on camp. I started helping out, developing my skills and had meals I enjoyed making for the family. Although I was a pretty fussy eater as a young child, I enjoyed food and didn’t really think much about the types of foods I was eating, or should be eating, or not eating.

When I was 18 years old, I had a severe bout of glandular fever requiring a period in hospital and some heavy doses of antibiotics. I didn’t appreciate this at the time but this left me with a pretty unhealthy gut microbiome, which led to a number of digestive issues and unable to tolerate certain foods. Working with a nutritionist to identify the foods my body wasn’t able to deal with and then slowly re-introducing these foods, allowed me to observe first hand my body’s reaction to these foods. Sometimes these were negative reactions, such as bloating, sickness and eczema, or headaches and feeling very lethargic. But there were also positive reactions such as good sleep, feeling energised and alert, and feeling happy! This was really the start of my journey into nutrition and awareness that what we put into our bodies really does influence the way we feel and operate.

More recently, I have experienced the negative effects of not knowing what my body needs in order to do things I’m asking of it. In my thirties, I moved to Devon and started running as a way to keep active and enjoy the spectacular scenery around me. It also coincided with adopting intermittent fasting (IF) and the 5:2 diet. At first, I felt fantastic. I had more energy. I didn’t experience those mid-afternoon slumps in energy and motivation. I found some of the foods that my body had previously struggled to tolerate were not an issue any more. I was lighter and faster in my running. People complimented how well I looked. Unintentionally, I was asking my body to operate in an energy deficit, over days, weeks, months and years. Negative effects started to appear. I started to feel less motivated to go and run. I struggled to function at work, with difficult situations or complex tasks making me feel overwhelmed. I slowly withdrew from social interactions, felt tired all the time and grumpy. And my periods stopped. I hit bottom when I was training for my first marathon whilst also training for a gig rowing championships and still adopting IF. I couldn’t cope at work and had two weeks off with stress.

Despite visiting my GP on numerous occasions over a 8 year period, having scans and seeing endocrinologists, no one seemed to think there was anything that unusual about my absent periods. I wasn’t trying to get pregnant, had a BMI only just within the ‘underweight’ category and this was a ‘fairly common side effect in active women’. I was experiencing all the symptoms of RED-S (relative energy deficiency in sport). I started to educate myself on RED-s, and trying to change my behaviours that had been so ingrained but not serving me well. Overtime, I realised I couldn’t do this on my own, despite the support of friends and family, and I reached out to a specialist sport dietitians to help put me on the path to recovery. It took 18 months or so, but I was able to get myself to a healthy place and having regular periods again.

I am now a certified PN L1 nutrition coach. I've specialised in nutrition for sports performance, metabolic health and supporting female performance in sport and fitness. I have partnered with The Well HQ to support the launch of their amazing book The Female Body Bible. You can hear more about my journey on a podcast episode from The Inspired Triathlete.

My journey, the people who helped me, the knowledge I gained, the lack of understanding of the issues women experience, has shaped what I’m passionate about today. Helping active women, and girls, understand their unique nutritional needs so they can be healthy, happy and reach their potential both in sport and everyday life.