A little about me..
Hey there, I’m Denise and i have spent over 8 years now dedicating myself to a healthier lifestyle while still doing the things I love and without restrictions.
I’m here to help you do the same, to Reinvent Yourself.
I haven’t always been this way though, I grew up in country Victoria with the typical Aussie diet of meat and 3 veg, this was ok but as you can imagine, very boring.. so when I got my first job, money meant I could eat whatever I wanted.
After high school I moved to Melbourne, an absolute food mecca, whatever you want whenever you want, and so the unhealthy habits began.
I lived off take away to say the least, often cheaper than having to cook for myself and who wants to cook for themselves anyway when I could get a Pad Thai or duck on rice or a Pho or Bahn Mi or a meal I could zap in the microwave or Macca’s (I worked there at the time, very dangerous) all for 10 bucks or less, dinner done!
Needless to say I started to swell up and I wasn’t exactly a picture of health in other aspects either.. over drinking, staying up all hours, zero exercise, extremely depressed and anxiety riddled to name a few.
So one day, I was walking home after a bowl of noodles at some Asian joint and I started to get really dizzy, to the point where my vision was blurred and I was sort of stumbling, not very nice for someone of only 21 and it really freaked me out. I began to look into all kinds of things, doing the typical google symptom search and all I could find was the evils of MSG, so I thought ok maybe that’s it, I mean I eat a lot of Asian food.
The time was New Year, I made that age old New Years resolution that you never stick to, but this one was gonna be different, I said to myself in a bid to fix my health ‘I’m going to go all natural, if I haven’t made it myself I’m not feeding it too my body, nothing out of a can, nothing out of a package and no numbers!’.
Now please note I was possibly the worlds worst cook at this point, think trying to boil pasta and having the water evaporate and nearly burning the house down..
But I did it, the food was bloody awful at first, but for 6 weeks I kept it up, with the exception of alcohol (lets be realistic here i wasn’t giving that up) and with the drinking I confess there may have been an occasion or two that i was bingeing uncontrollably on late night Macca’s, but after the first few weeks I noticed a drastic change.
The weight was just falling off with no added exercise, my brain felt like it was suddenly actually working and I felt more alive than I had in a long time, my mental state continued to improve as time passed and others were starting to notice too. Happiness seemed attainable, it felt amazing to say the least.
As it turns out it wasn’t MSG but that old devil gluten, back in my day of discovery, gluten intolerance it was still relatively new, celiac was definitely a thing but intolerance was still being argued about whether it was legit or not.
Luckily, I mean I say luckily for me.. it is becoming more and more common, which means better food options, winning!
When i first started GF food was still made of sand and various numbers to help it resemble a food looking object. Today with many years of trying a million different things I am able to buy awesome ingredients and I am proud to say I am something of a chef now too.
The point to all this is that you can change your life and habits, yes it is extremely hard at times, there have been SOOO many moments when I have cried my eyes out in desperation for a pie or a fresh bread roll but ultimately the way I feel now is worth so much more than 2 minutes of the perfect sandwich and I basically eat with the nose now anyway, usually having a big sniff of my partners food before he eats haha.
This journey has brought me to where I am today, it inspired me to want to help others to feel as awesome as I do because I believe everyone really deserves it, we only get one go around, and so I became a Health Coach.
Doing this on my own was tough, learning how to change my habits and stick to them has taken years of practice, if you can relate to my story and need help with changing an aspect of your current lifestyle I am here for you, I’m talking full support, a structured plan that is proven to work and that all important accountability to keep you on track, believe me when I say I know the pain of having to completely reinvent myself.
Hard work but so worth it.
Denise Holton Health Coaching 