I’m just a woman

A flat tummy is what drew me to my first Pilates class. Not a strong core, healthy back and easeful movement. No, I wanted to look like I had no internal organs.

Maybe, like me, you grew up with the messaging that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” in the Heroine chic era. Starve, don’t bulk out and be as small as you can.

Luckily my quest for my flat tummy lead me on a path of movement and a career change but it has been a long and winding path.

I ran for the calorie count. I tried not to eat carbs (even though they might be my favourite foods). I went to the gym to work off the food I was intaking. I did as many core exercises as I could in my Pilates class.

And then I started on my journey to becoming a mum. Naively, I thought it would happen instantly. I was healthy, right? I was 29 years old. It would happen before I was 30. No, it did not.

Thus my years of “infertility” began. Luckily I had slowly been changing my exercise punishment to movement for joy with yoga and Pilates as it was one of my only escapes from my constant analysis of where I was going wrong getting pregnant. How could I fix myself? Take more supplements, exclude chemicals from my life, meditate more. I even quit my corporate job in digital/TV/content to remove myself from the toxic office politics I couldn’t handle anymore. A financial pressure that my husband, Alex, never shied away from.

Two rounds of IVF on the NHS which psychologically destroyed me. First time they couldn’t even harvest any mature eggs and the second time nothing fertilised. (Side note: this is because the NHS hospital puts you in a rotation without personalisation or monitoring of your own response).

At this point my friend Katherine was also shifting out of her TV production career to become a PT (she owns a few super cool gyms now in east London) and wanted to practice on me. It was my first taste of strength training and it floored me.

This period of my life was so hard. I taught many classes and each week people would confide in me that they were pregnant. Then I’d have to teach the class as if my whole world hadn’t shattered inside me. I’d play this song on repeat. I’d have to psyche myself up before every class and pick myself up after each time too.

We went to a private clinic in London for our third round of IVF. This one made everything bespoke and the treatment worked. But by this point we also made the decision to leave Walthamstow where we’d been for three years. It was a very family-friendly neighbourhood and I couldn’t face the babies day in, day out. It was heart wrenching as it meant leaving all of my work, my community and friends. Moving instead to a house kinda in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of Frensham where I didn’t know anyone.

I moved here pregnant. It was all I wanted but I had to give up everything else in my life. I would have to start again. The only constant in my life was exercise, although I would continue most of that from home now.

After the birth of my daughter, Evie, in 2018 (I’ll leave that story for another day) I struggled on as a new mum. It was awful but I just thought that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Finally, in 2019 in a Pilates class with Nas (of all places) my body revealed to me what it was struggling with. I had a goitre the size of a fist (that’s a thyroid lump). I had been living with an autoimmune thyroid disorder. My body was literally destroying itself. MRI scans (that I paid for) revealed it was even deviating my oesophagus. I was told to wait 6 months by the hospital. I was ok wasn’t I? No, I was not. I couldn’t even lie flat in bed.

Well, I did wait those 6 months. The cost? My eye developed Horner’s syndrome. That’s a form of palsy where the eye sinks in the eye socket and the eyelids droop. Now I don’t look like my former self. I booked and paid for the thyroid surgery myself. In January 2020 after begging for some thyroxine (it’s thyroid replacement medication) I started to feel a little more lively, more positive and like myself. We all know what happened in 2020…

Through all of this I discovered that I am actually not just a woman. I’m a Woman. I’m strong. I’m resilient. I’m tough. I’m capable of incredible endurance. I started to train the same way, adding strength sessions with Claire Croft after the birth of my second child, Oliver in 2021.

All of this has brought me on a mission to reveal that inner strength in all women. With science-backed strategies for exercise that actually reflects the rest of our life.

This is not about forcing yourself through a workout on zero sleep, or a work ethic that is just “push, push push”. Rather I offer exercise that allows you to maintain strength (e.g. in early motherhood) when that is the goal and to build new capabilities when you can (when you have the energy).

I start from a Pilates setting (with my classes and 1:1 sessions) but I incorporate yoga and strength training too. Yes, lifting weights on a Pilates Reformer machine is not only possible but fun and hard.