I started out studying to be a PE teacher at Sydney Uni. That was the original plan. Partway through, I transferred into naturopathy at Endeavour College instead, and around the same time I was doing my Certificate III and IV in Fitness through TAFE, studying both at once. So from pretty early on, I was doing a lot: full-time study, building a business on the side, training clients, and constantly trying to do more, be more, push harder.

For a while, from the outside, I looked completely fine. The picture of health. But on the inside, I was burning out.

My period became irregular. My skin flared up with stubborn, painful acne that wouldn't go away no matter what I tried. I started holding onto weight that wouldn't shift, even though I was eating "clean" and training hard, which was honestly the most confusing part, because I was doing everything I thought I was supposed to be doing. I felt inflamed, exhausted, and disconnected from my own body.

The moment that really tipped things over was after I ran a half marathon. My skin broke out worse than it ever had, my energy completely crashed, and anxiety started creeping in in a way it never had before. That race pushed me past what my body could handle, and looking back, it was the wake-up call I needed, because I'd been living in a constant state of stress for years without really clocking it.

At that point I was offered the usual route, medication, hormonal birth control, the standard things a lot of women get offered when this happens. I understood why that gets offered, but I knew in my gut it wasn't going to fix anything for me. It would just cover things up, not change what was going on underneath. So I made the decision to heal it properly, which meant doing it the slower way.

I slowed everything right down. I started training and eating around my cycle instead of just pushing through it regardless of where I was at in the month. I got the gut testing done, took the herbs I actually needed instead of guessing, and started properly supporting my nervous system instead of treating it as an afterthought. Slowly, over time, the inflammation came down, my cycle came back, my skin cleared up, and the weight I'd been holding onto for so long started to shift.

Once I got to a good place with all of that, I did a proper reverse diet, bringing my calories back up to maintenance and staying there for a few months before I went into any kind of deficit again. That part mattered just as much as the rest of it, because it meant when I did eventually work on body composition, my body had the capacity to respond well, instead of me just running myself into the ground again.

That's the work I do now, every day, with my clients. I work with women who feel stuck with their skin, their weight, their cycle, or their energy, whether they've come off the pill and feel completely disconnected from their body, or they've tried a naturopath before, or a trainer, and it helped for a bit but didn't hold long term.

The natural route isn't always the fastest one, and I'm upfront about that from the start. But it's the one that holds, because you're not relying on something external to keep masking the symptoms while whatever's actually going on sits there underneath, waiting to come back the moment you stop.

I'm genuinely grateful I get to do this work. And I'll say honestly, I'm still on this journey myself too, I don't think there's some finish line where you've got it all figured out. Every time I learn something new about my own health, it ends up shaping how I work with my clients as well, because in a lot of ways, we're figuring this out together.