I believe that it’s possible to nourish, care for, and build trust with the body you’re in right now.
Despite living in a culture that tells you that you need to shrink to fit in.
Hey there, I’m Nicola [she/they].
I’m a Body Trust Coach for plus-sized/fat humans.
I’m also a fat person who practices Body Trust® every day in order to heal, thrive, and reclaim the joy and pleasure in my life.
I support and guide smart, socially conscious humans like you to heal your relationship with food, unlearn body shame, and live your fullest life, right now, in the body you’re in.
I do my best work with folks in higher weight bodies who have some knowledge of Intuitive Eating or Health At Every Size®.
I help you to move from “getting it intellectually” to integrating these approaches fully into your life – without getting pulled off course by Diet Culture and Anti-Fatness.
I show you how to explore, name & reclaim your Body Story, learn to trust your body’s wisdom, unpack fear of weight gain, and redefine what health and wellbeing mean for you.
My training and credentials
- Professionally trained life coach (Coaches Training Institute)
- Intuitive Eating Facilitator
- Certified Body Trust® Provider
- Additional training in: Nutrition, Trauma-informed Care, Motivational Interviewing, Acceptance Commitment Therapy, Body Image, Narrative Coaching, Feminist Theory, Social justice, Radical Boundaries® & Mindful Self Compassion.
My lived experiences are just as valuable as my credentials.
I live in a mid-large sized fat body – it took me a while to embrace the word fat but it feels good to reclaim it as a neutral descriptor now (it’s OK if you prefer to describe your body differently).
I have been in a smaller “average sized” body and also a larger fat body than the one I have now, and I know how vastly different my experiences of the world were at my lowest and highest weight.
I struggled with disordered eating (including Binge Eating Disorder) for most of my 20s before a Dietitian advised me to go on a liquid diet for 9 months, an experience which ultimately proved to be really damaging to my relationship with food and body.
After regaining most of the weight I had lost, my feelings of body shame were at an all time high, and were only reinforced by the fatphobia I experienced in the healthcare system when I fell pregnant with my first child.
It was after my second pregnancy that I first came across Intuitive Eating & Health At Every Size® and realised that there was an alternative to continually trying (and failing) to shrink my body.
I spent a good deal of time in the beginning going back and forth, trying to figure out a way to somehow focus on weight loss at the same time as letting go of the diet mentality.
A big part of the reason that it took me so long to finally let go of the pursuit of weight loss was the Fat Stigma I experience in our culture at large as well as my own internalised anti-fatness.
When I started training to be a Body Trust Provider I finally found the support I needed to develop resilience to body shame so I could focus on listening to my body, act compassionately, and trust that my weight would settle where it needed to.
By returning to this practice over and over again, every time that I found myself getting lost in a weight loss fantasy (or caught up in body shame), I have been able to find healing.
Over time, I have grown deep roots into, and developed my own Body Trust practices so that I spend less time focusing on my body and more time living a life that nourishes me.
I’d love to help you find your own version of that.
On a personal level
I’m 42 years old and happily entering my “middle years”, where I find myself embracing a new sense of peace and appreciation for all the ways that my body has helped me survive in the world.
I grew up in Ireland but nowadays I live in East London with my husband Ricky and our two kids, Noah (9) and Patrick (7).
When I’m not stepping on Lego, I like to powerlift, bake banana bread, and hike (I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2020!).
I’m a math geek and originally trained as an engineer.
Ricky makes me finish the “hard bits” of the crossword – I always complain but secretly, I like it.
Here are some of my beliefs
- I believe that dirty laughs and throaty cackles are music.
- I believe that my kids are the best teachers of body liberation. May they always feel at home in their bodies.
- I believe in wearing rainbow sparkle converse, bright colours, and quirky jewellery.
- I believe that you have tried hard enough.
- I believe in embracing my nerdiness and accepting that I will always have a million and one books on my “to be read” pile.
- I believe in “context, nuance, discernment; always.” (h/t) Randi Buckley.
- I believe in your right to body autonomy, even if that means the pursuit of weight loss – I will never judge you.
- I believe in licking the bowl clean.
- I believe that health is not a moral obligation or an individual responsibility. You do not owe your health to anyone.
- I believe in climbing mountains (literally and figuratively).
- I believe that self compassion can be fierce.
- I believe that when the most marginalised body is free, we all get free.
Because we heal in community. Because Body Trust is a practice.
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Are you in?
“Life is so very short. There is no time to waste. Bang down the doors of your own true knowing. Smash your own heart with fists of flowers. Wish them freedom and fill
your mouth with truth and kindness. Love first your own hunger and your wisdom and your unknowns, and never look back”
Isabel Abbott, Salt and Honey