I was featured in IDEA’s Member Spotlight
(and yes, there was a little happy dance)
When I joined IDEA earlier this year, I was in the middle of building Mind the Plate from scratch and planning a move to North Austin with my whole family, so the last thing I expected was to be asked to share my story with the wider IDEA community. But that is exactly what happened, and I was chosen as their Member Spotlight for October.
Talking through my story for the feature made me realize how long the road to where I am now has been (although sometimes it still feels like yesterday). I spent more than 20 years trying to “fix” my body with slimming clinics, protein shake diets, keto, carnivore and plant based eating, and every single one of them promised to be THE answer. Every single one of them gave me the same result, which was something that worked for a little while and then didn’t, because none of it was ever built to last.
What changed things for me wasn’t another diet, it was movement. Running came first, after I moved to the UK, and it took me through two London Marathons and a 53 mile ultramarathon before an injury put an abrupt end to that. I turned to strength training to make my body more resilient, and I ended up falling in love with lifting (which I still do 3-4 times a week, and plan to keep doing for a very long time). But, it was while I was studying to become a personal trainer that I finally learnt about nutrition through the science of how the body works, rather than through the rules of yet another diet, and that changed everything about how I eat and how I coach.
That is really the heart of what Mind the Plate is about. I don’t sell shortcuts, because I spent two decades buying them myself and I know both how expensive they are and exactly where they lead. What I want for my clients is the opposite of what I went through, to understand their own bodies and their own data well enough that they can keep making confident choices about food long after we stop working together.
When IDEA asked me what I love most about this work, I didn’t even have to think about it. It is watching a client stop being afraid of food, witnessing that moment when the guilt and the rules fall away and someone realizes that they actually understand what they are doing (and that they are allowed to enjoy it).
I also want to say a big thank you to IDEA. Starting a business while planning to relocate to a new country has been daunting, to put it mildly, and having a professional community behind me, with mentors, webinars and people who care about evidence over trends, has given me a real boost exactly when I needed it.
If you are tired of starting over every Monday and want to finally understand your own nutrition, you can join the Mind the Plate waitlist here.
