Nutritional Therapy & Health Coaching in

Devon

How important is nutrition?

Without a doubt, what we eat has a huge impact on our state of health. Every bite of food we take can either be contributing to our health, or take away from it. Optimising your nutrition can be one of the most effective ways to improve your health.

What are the benefits of nutritional therapy?

One of the most common things I hear when I start working with a client is that they are confused. There is so much conflicting and misleading advice out there that it is hard to know what to eat to support your health. Nutrition consultations are one of the best ways to cut through the noise and find out what works best for you.

Through 1:1 nutrition consultations, here are some of the things we can achieve:

  • A greater understanding of what your body needs and what food you feel best on 

  • Assess nutrient status through functional testing to identify deficiencies, ie find out what you are ‘missing’ and address this through targeted food and supplement recommendations 

  • Improve blood sugar balance and insulin sensitivity
  • Reduce or prevent inflammation and slow down the ageing process
  • Improve immune resilience to prevent you from getting sick

  • Improve your energy levels and stamina for exercise 

  • Improve digestive health 

  • Improve the diversity and abundance of your gut bacteria 

  • Help you bounce back after antibiotics 

  • Improve your mood 

  • Help you bounce back after illness

  • Promote balanced hormones to reduce unpleasant symptoms associated with PMS, PCOS, endometriosis and other women’s health conditions 

  • Enhance your fertility or chances of conception by eating the right foods

  • Support your baby through pregnancy and beyond  

  • Enhance your libido 

  • Healthy, sustainable weight loss or weight gain and improved body composition

  • Improve skin, hair and nail health 

  • Reduce your exposure to harmful chemicals, preservatives, pesticides, antibiotics and xenoestrogens found in poor-quality food 

  • Help you to feel good about the quality of the food you eat to nurture not only your own internal ecosystem, but also being mindful of your part in looking after the planet

Therapeutic diets

I work with several therapeutic diets, including the GAPS diet (Gut and Psychology Syndrome), anti-inflammatory diet, elimination diet, paleo, autoimmune paleo, low fodmap diet, low histamine diet and low oxalate diet. I use therapeutic diets as a short-term strategy to relieve your body from the stress of aggravating foods. If aggravating foods remain in the diet, it is hard for the body to get well. Once things have improved, ie blood sugar levels have stabilised, inflammation has calmed, and your gut is working efficiently, it is time to start reintroducing foods.

It is important to get back to a varied diet and not get stuck on a restrictive diet long-term. It saddens me how many people live on highly restrictive diets (such as the low fodmap diet) for very long periods of time. This is simply using a diet as a band-aid, and if the underlying causes of health problems have not been addressed, the person will become overly reliant on the diet to keep symptoms at bay.

A varied diet is important for several factors including quality of life, socialising, encouraging good diversity and abundance of your gut microbiome and supplying the body with adequate nutrients.

More than just diet

I am interested not just in the food you eat, but also in what feeds you – mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, as this is just as relevant.

Through coaching and gentle inner reflection, we discover what brings you joy and what nourishes you, and find ways to incorporate this more into your daily life. You are a multi-faceted being – and so is your health – and I like to dive into all the juicy elements that contribute to that, including how your emotions and physiology interact.

It is a privilege to witness my client’s transformations from being bogged down by their symptoms and the weight of life, to being symptom-free and being able to engage with life more joyfully, and with a vast toolbox of techniques to draw upon when life gets bumpy.

The process and journey of working 1:1 with Anoushka

To help you understand the process of working with me, here is a summary:

1

Discovery call

I offer a free 20-minute discovery call. Discovery calls are a great way for us to connect and see if we would be a good fit for working together. It gives me a chance to hear what you need support with, and for you to ask any questions you may have about working with me. Discovery calls can be booked here.

2

Booking a consultation and pre-consultation preparation

Once you decide to book an initial consultation, we will find a suitable date, and I will send you a health questionnaire and food diary to complete before we meet. You can also send over any additional information, such as past test results.

3

Initial Consultation

The initial consultation is a deep dive into every aspect of your health. During this 60-minute appointment, we discuss everything from your symptoms, to diet, health history, lifestyle, stress and more. The information I gather from this appointment helps to direct my clinical decisions and enables me to create a tailored nutrition, lifestyle and supplement plan that I send over to you within 3 working days of our appointment.

4

Ongoing support and follow-up appointments

During follow-up appointments we talk through the findings of any lab test results, discuss how you got on with your plan, how you are feeling and anything you found difficult. After each appointment, we decide how long you need before the next appointment. This is usually every 5 weeks but can be longer or shorter depending on what we are working on and how much support you need. You will receive a new nutrition, lifestyle and supplement plan after every appointment, and we stay in touch via email between appointments so you feel fully supported. We work together until we have got you to a great place with your health and you are happy to continue on on your own.

Frequently asked questions

How long will it take until I start feeling better?

This massively varies from person to person, however, most people start to see improvements within the first month, and continue to feel better and better! Health conditions usually take a while to develop, so it can take a while to turn things around – the change will be gradual and subtle, but consistently moving toward improved health and vitality.

Will I have to do laboratory testing?

The information gathering I do at the first consultation gives me a lot of clues as to which body systems need the most attention and which direction we need to take. However, if I need more information to help guide my clinical decisions then it is important to find out what else is going on. Testing takes the guesswork out and makes the work precise, targeted and tailored to you as an individual and to exactly what is going on inside your body. Although testing is an extra cost, many people find it extremely motivating and gratifying to find ‘answers’ behind their health struggles, especially if they have been told by doctors that nothing can be found and/or their lab results are ‘normal’. You can read more about testing here.

Will I have to take supplements?
The main focus is always on fitting you with the most supportive and nourishing diet possible – that is the foundation. Supplements are an excellent addition to your supportive diet, they ‘supplement’ the success you can achieve using nutritional therapy. Due to industrial farming methods, heavy pesticide use and depleted soils, our food no longer contains the nutrient value it used to. We are also dealing with an ever increasingly toxic environment – from air pollution, electromagnetic smog, radiation, heavy metals etc – so we need extra armoury to strengthen ourselves and keep ourselves well. Supplements can help boost your levels of vitamins and minerals back up to their optimal levels quickly and effectively, whereas this can take a lot longer through food (and you may get fed up of chomping through mounds and mounds of pumpkin seeds or chicken livers for example!).

Ready to start your journey? Book your free discovery call

If you would like to have a chat about your health issues and see how I may be able to help, I’d love to hear from you.