My
story

A body as a product

Very early in life, I found myself in the modelling industry. There I quickly learned a lesson you won’t find in any handbook: in that world, your body is quite literally your product. You are weighed, measured and valued for your looks, and for very little else. ‘Beauty’, in quotation marks, was the only currency that counted.

Somewhere deep inside, a small voice said: surely this can’t be it? Life is bigger than this. It can’t be the point that we live in a shallow, slightly dystopian world where people are nothing more than their appearance.

When my body started talking

That small voice soon found an ally: my own body. By over-exercising and under-eating tremendously, I lost my period for a year and a half. Luckily it never developed into a full-blown eating disorder, but my body made it very clear that it had switched to survival mode. Fine, downy hair grew all over my body, its way of trying to keep me warm. My hair started falling out. And the world inside my head was grey.

Today I know how much healthy hormone production shapes your mood and your whole attitude towards life. Back then, I mostly knew that something was off. Looking back, it wasn’t my body failing me; it was a message. A remarkably clever body that, at the time, mostly felt remarkably inconvenient. It was the first time I truly learned to listen.

Health through the five senses

So I did what any self-respecting perfectionist would do: I dove into the books. Book after book on nutrition, hormones and the body. My nightstand has never quite recovered.

Eventually I trained as an Ayurvedic health instructor with the Chopra Foundation, and something clicked. Ayurveda sees health as one coherent, holistic system. Health isn’t only about how you move or what you eat; it is shaped through your five senses. What you see, what you hear, what you take in, what you put on your skin. Everything nourishes you, whether it arrives on a plate or not.

From there I kept learning, and honestly, I never stopped.

One coherent ecosystem

Today I look at health through the lens of the exposome: the sum of everything your body and mind are exposed to. Your friendships and relationships. The conversations you have with yourself, including the ones at three in the morning. Food, mindfulness and movement. All parts of one coherent ecosystem that I look at carefully, together with what science can tell us: lab tests, food intolerances, allergies, gene mutations and the other lifestyle factors at play. To me, intuition and lab results aren’t opposites. They’re in conversation.

Beside you, not above you

Looking back, I think I was put on this earth to experience a lot myself. To go through a lot myself, and to gather a hefty pile of knowledge along the way, sometimes as a slightly over-enthusiastic health nerd, geek and perfectionist. Until I reached a point where I feel at ease guiding other women.

Not as a coach on a pedestal, but as someone who can walk alongside you on the way to a more balanced life.