When I was in elementary school I already wondered why my legs weren’t as thin as some other girl’s and felt bad about it. I don’t remember anyone saying something to me like that.  I think I was simply already exposed to western culture’s and society’s beauty ideal and its manifestation in the media. And that was before social media. When I was twelve years old I went on my first diet. I lost quite some weight but of course I wasn’t happier, on the contrary, and at some point it started backfiring and I binged all the food and even more than I had deprived myself of.

A vicous cycle began.

 

Looking back this was what I remember about the beginning of my story with disordered eating which would last for about 20 more years. I have deprived myself of so much time, energy and possibilities in all these years because of my continuous struggle with food. So many moments where I would isolate myself because I didn’t feel good about my body weight. On the other hand, this is why I am here today and how I became an expert in this field. Next to my training I have researched and learned so much about food & nutrition over the years, as well as many health issues that I had developed. My disordered eating combined with a lot of stress led to issues like chronic fatigue, concentration problems, gut dysbiosis, depression.

 

I always wanted to achieve great things in my life. But my health and mindset were most often in the way. When I founded a startup and couldn’t deliver the work I wanted and needed to, I knew I wanted to change it for good. I came upon the Health Coaching training and I felt this could be a missing piece. Over the years I had a huge number of health experts at my side, some of whom were good. But none of them really looked at all areas of my life and how it influenced my health or guided me on the way to change.

 

The intense learning and self-experience process, the exposure to numerous studies, theories and experts in the field of nutrition, Functional Medicine, holistic health, wellness, and personal development through the Health Coaching training led me to where I am today: I feel in balance and full of energy. Now I am looking forward to guide and empower many others on their road to health and wellness and raise awareness about how diet culture and the beauty myth keep us away from being our greatest self.

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 Discovering intuitive eating and the HAES (Health at every size) movement was another puzzle piece that was missing. For a long time I thought if I would just eat healthily enough I would finally be healthy. Then I understood that this was just another form of restricted eating, that I still had a diet mentality and was depriving myself of true well-being. Understanding the harmful dynamics of the beauty myth, weight stigma, diet culture and putting the 10 principles of Intuitive Eating into practice next to knowing what my body can and can't take, led me to find food freedom and accept and love my body as is.