Michelle

meet

hey babe!

I’m Michelle

A qualified yoga instructor and nutritionist with a passion for helping women become their strongest, healthiest & most confident selves.

My Story

Let’s rewind to the beginning (don’t worry, we wont be here all day). I was that kid at school that hated physical exercise. You remember the type, right? The ones that always conveniently ‘forgot their kit at home’ on sports days or suddenly ‘felt sick’ when PE class rolled around.

Yeah, I was that kid, and I was pretty happy being that kid.

Until my mid-teens hit. Girls got mean and so did some adults, and suddenly I went from a care-free girl who loved to paint, to a girl who became super self-conscious about the size of her legs or if she had gained weight over the holidays.

The deeper down that rabbit hole I went, the worse it got.

Before I knew it I was a twenty-two year old with an eating disorder who had zero idea who she was.

My self-confidence, self-esteem and body image were at an all time low, and to be honest, my personality was nowhere to be found.

I had forgotten about my dreams, aspirations and the things that made me truly happy because all I cared about was how many calories I had eaten that day or how hard I had worked in the gym.

The other part of it? I absolutely 100% hated it.

I hated every low-carb, juice cleanse and skinny tea diet I went on.

I hated the exercise programs and the bootcamps and the “30 day lean body” challenges.

I definitely hated the hours spent on the treadmill.

But I did them because that’s what you did when you wanted to be skinny and so-called “healthy” (disclaimer – I was the furthest thing from healthy, I was miserable).

Now I know my story isn’t unique here, and that’s why I started She’s a Wildflower.

I decided that I was tired of being miserable, and that this life is far too short to be doing things that I hated.

I decided to take a step away from the exercises that I didn’t enjoy, and start exploring ones that I did. I threw the “bootcamp” and “30-day-shred” style programmes in the bin and started experimenting with yoga, kickboxing, paddleboarding, hiking, kayaking, running… and discovered that I actually really enjoyed so many other forms of movement.

I decided to educate myself about nutrition and food labels and I started to prioritise foods that made my body feel good, rather than filling my body that filled me with guilt and self-loathing.

The more I tried, the more I learned, and the better I started to feel.

I found that

  • My energy levels started improving

  • My fitness levels increased

  • I started worrying less about what my body looked like

  • I started to feel proud of my body

And the positive results didn’t end there.

This is what has led me to where we are right now. To you reading this.

I feel like I’ve been given a new lease on life – as though I’m living in an entirely new body from my 22-year old body, and I wish somebody had given me the tools earlier.

The tools that showed me that health and fitness can be FUN rather than dreadful.

That you can have feelings about your body other than self-loathing.

That you can look in the mirror and feel self-love and pride.

But most importantly, that living a healthy lifestyle doesn’t have to be hard – in fact, it can be the exact opposite.

This is exactly what I teach in the Year of You programme.

MY CREDENTIALS

Diploma in Diet and Nutrition

Level 4

200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training with Contemporary Yoga Teacher Training, New Zealand