I may seem fit and healthy now, but that wasn’t always the case…
I was so overweight and unfit when I was a child that I would make up excuses to sit out of school sports! Partly because I got runover at 8 and broke my femur in my thigh and partly because I was that sick kid who had a terrible barking cough and was constantly on antibiotics.
That was, until I saw my first Naturopath when I was 21, who realised I was intolerant to dairy and guess what?! My Nan had woken me every morning with a chocolate milkshake!
Plus, the fact that I hadn’t been breast fed and of course, antibiotics kill both your good and bad bacteria, so growing up on course after course, had really depleted my immunity.
The damage was done and I was getting sick A LOT. Have you had a period of time when you just keep getting sick all the time and it was really setting you back?
Of course, being laid up in bed and sick all the time, really impacted my metabolism and training and I was overweight. I finished year 12 in 1996, got my black belt in karate in 1998, where I had won tournaments and was a karate instructor and I retired in 1999.
I was really lost. I had gone from being good at something, to not knowing what I wanted to do with my life!
I was drinking a fair bit of alcohol, diet drinks, snacking late at night, had an insatiable appetite and would often binge eat, and I struggled to get to the gym regularly. I hadn’t realised the caffeine in the diet coke was causing insomnia and I was exhausted all the time and suffering from depression.
I needed to find something that I was good at again, so I joined a Dragon Boat team in 1999 and competed in Australia and internationally. I can honestly say that I wasn’t fuelling my body properly, because I didn’t understand the importance of diet and nutrition and it left me exhausted!
I moved over to London, England in 2002 and travelled the world. I partied it up and seemed to be sick all the time, so I developed a love for nutrition and finally understood the value of sleep.
It was then that I realised just how important health and nutrition were and I made the decision that I wanted to become a Naturopath and Personal Trainer. I wanted to learn how to manage my own health… and better yet, help others manage theirs.
So, here I am today! I love surfing, scuba diving and riding motorbikes in my spare time and I thrive on learning more and more about health and fitness.