It was a milestone I wont soon forget.

Almost 13 years ago, giving birth to our daughter, I had an unexpected complication. An unknown case of placenta accreta launched me into a serious postpartum hemorrhage that rushed me into emergency surgery to try and stop the massive bleeding and a significant blood transfusion was required to save my life.

I was lucky...my OBGYN said that if I had had the baby outside of the hospital, I may not have survived. That women in less privileged countries die frequently from this. I have never forgotten that. It lived in me every time I saw an advertisement or sign for blood donation. I thought about it every time a mother told me a scary labour and delivery story.

For years now I have tried several times to donate blood, to pay forward what saved my life, however I had begun to struggle with low iron and time and again my iron was too low to donate. After a similar (but less scary) haemorrhage 3 years later when my son was born, I was advised that...

Seriously….do you ever notice how your energy and motivation waxes and wanes like the moon?!?! Well sister…apparently it isn’t just in our heads…it is in our HORMONES, and TRULY happens! There is a REASON we feel like we can TAKE ON the world as our period wraps up and like we can barely get out of bed (unless it is for chocolate) the closer to Aunt Flow’s visit.

In FACT….there is actually something called CYCLE SYNCHING that is a proven and researched method for working alongside your hormone cycle to get the MOST out of your workouts….Now as much as I am SURE you would love to get lost down a rabbit hole researching all the info you can on this (notice the sarcasm) I know that if you are like ME…YOU DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THAT INSANITY….so, I am going to summarize this stuff for you quick and dirty so you can take advantage of these perks and know what workouts to do when Aunt Flow visits and when she says ‘peace out’ until next month.

Cool? Cool.

Here we go…in laymen’s terms.

Days ...

I want to stand too close to you.

I had something inspiring to share with you but when I looked in my heart this is what I found...

At my best I want so much for you...

I want peace, I want health, I want love over fear, I want safety and freedom...

But today, I just want to stand too close to you.

I want to travel to my northern hometown
walk the cold winter streets arm & arm with an old friend
legs frozen and cheeks rosy,
step into a café
and stand too close to you

I want to go to a busy bistro with my husband and have to lean in so I can hear him better
because the place is so packed,
I’m having to stand too close to you

I want to go to a concert with more than 50,000 people
lose myself in the energy of the music
while I stand too close to you

I wanna take my children to an amusement park or an indoor play place
watch them exhaust themselves while they bump in to other children and laugh
and I want to smile quietly to myself while I stand too close to you

So yes, at my best I want you to find self lov...

 I didn't need to step on the scale to know. I FELT lighter. In my body and in my mind. 

In my personal training and health coaching practice I was beginning to notice a pattern of women over 35 doing everything they could to lose weight. Calorie restriction, intermittent fasting, dozens of various diets and nutrition philosophies paired with consistent, high intensity interval workouts. This was the way to lose weight wasn't it?

But instead of losing weight they were gaining weighting, or feeling stuck and more depleted than ever.

I was baffled.

Everything I knew as a trainer and coach was working backwards for my poor exhausted, peri-menopausal clients.

Then some time around the age of 37, I noticed a very similar shift in my own body. My same HIIT workouts were leaving me depleted. My afternoon‘s plagued with brain fog, my skin felt like it was rapidly aging before my eyes and I noticed excess weight gain around my belly that hadn’t been there before.

As much as I wanted to bla...

She asked me "What is the best workout to target belly fat?"

It's a question I have been asked hundreds of times...and even though I have a few clarifying questions to be sure, chances are, I already know the answer.

No workout.

As in, do NOT workout.

Her shocked and sceptical response no longer surprises me. I felt the exact same way when I learned this information and have seen the same response from hundreds of women when I give this answer. 

It wasn't that long ago I was feeling frustrated with my own pants starting to feel tighter. As a personal trainer and avid fitness lover for more than a decade, I found myself scrolling through my favourite online workout platform wondering which ab workouts to add on to my routine to target the extra fluff that had been starting to make my high rise leggings feel a little uncomfortable lately as they pressed on my belly. 

Was I going to have to give up my weekend love affair with Ben & Jerry? Or the blissful few nights a week where I si...

I walked into my doctors office, looked her straight in the eye and said “I think I’m in menopause at 38.”

I was certain something bigger was going on. I had been struggling for so long with various symptoms such as extreme fatigue, brain fog, what felt like teenage skin one week and rapidly aging skin the next, hot flashes at night and chilled all day. I had started to have insatiable afternoon cravings, stubborn excess belly fat, strong insomnia episodes and the final straw that broke the camels back, irregular periods alongside PMS that felt like it was lasting all month long. It was everything I had heard in my life about how menopause began.

My doctor politely asked me a couple questions and then kindly smiled and said “no you’re not in menopause…you are the picture of good health.”

Since that day I’ve learned a lot of things. First, I learned that peri-menopause technically begins for all women around 35-40 when our body just doesn’t ovulate and produce estrogen the s...

It took everything I had not to scream the fourth time I was woken up last night.

They say sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture, and I believe it whole heartedly. With a child who struggles with anxiety that manifests as insomnia, my life often feels like a blur of disrupted nights of sleep. Although I didn't scream, I wasn't my best self, and I knew that that the mom guilt from this would be what kept me awake the rest of the night...and likely what hung around at the edge of my brain throughout the rest of my  brain foggy day. These nights took everything out of me. My energy. My focus. My confidence. 

The truth I know well, is that I am not one in a million who is up half of the night for one reason or another. I am one OF a million...and if I have learned anything in the 10 years I have worked/trained/coached women in the health and fitness industry, night wakings, full days, endless to-do lists, the emotional labour and admin of life along with this deep sense of juggl...