Hi! I’m Lauren.

I’m a Functional Health Coach, Corrective Exercise Specialist, and Broadway Performer living in New York City.

 And this is my story.

I’ve spent my entire life trying to determine the best way to nourish my body for optimal wellness, while maintaining the visual aesthetic of a Broadway performer. I tried every nutritional approach and fad under the sun and committed myself to consistently challenging and persistent workouts.

And then, I crashed and burned. I started experiencing major fatigue, I wasn’t recovering from workouts or performances, and I was getting sick every other week. Getting through the day without someone worrying about me became rare, my brain couldn’t focus for more than 30 minutes at a time, and all I ever wanted to do was sleep. I didn’t know why I was feeling this way, but I knew I didn’t want to continue to feeling it. I requested a short leave of absence from my fitness job and decided that rest was probably my best bet.

My type A personality of course wanted to fill my free daytime hours with “something else”. So I enrolled in a functional health course, called Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, that had popped up in my email. I studied incessantly while locked in a sedentary position all day long in my apartment, with bottomless coffees and the same protein shake every-single-day. I laugh at myself now when I look back at how I chose to “heal” myself. But what did come out of this experience was some invaluable information, almost seemingly by accident!

Part of the course required that I run lab tests on myself, which low and behold led me to the answer to all my problems! I was experiencing what then was called “adrenal fatigue”, or HPA axis dysregulation. My daily cortisol (stress hormone) output was all over the map, which meant my fundamental regulatory systems were burnt out and chronically stressed! No wonder I was catching every cold and flu that came my way.

I was exercising way too much, not breathing, not listening to my body, and eating every trendy “health food” out there, regardless of how my body reacted. WAKE UP CALL. I finally realized that the only way I could heal was by starting from the inside out.

Personal health is extremely intimate. It doesn’t come from a best-selling nutrition book, or from your friend’s own success story. It comes from within you! The only way to true wellness is to be your own health detective. Yes it takes work, and intense commitment; but once you find it, it’s yours forever.