The people I coach are often successful, hard-working, and overachievers. They’re passionate about their lives, but sometimes they need help understanding their own needs. My clients are so competent they think they’re infallible—until they start to look older, or every meal upsets their digestion, or until aches and pains or a lack of energy forces them to take a look at their lifestyle and their food.
Fashion Exec to Mom to Health Coach
I can help these women understand how and why they need to change their diets because I was one of them.
I was in my midthirties, single, and a vice president for Chanel, with an office overlooking Central Park and a clothing allowance that kept me in head-to-toe Chanel—including the handbags. I helped develop and then launched Chanel’s fine jewelry and watch division; it was an amazing career. I traveled back and forth to Paris and worked with incredibly talented people. I absolutely loved my life and my job. I couldn’t have designed anything more fun or more perfect for me at the time.
Then I met my husband. He lived in Virginia, and had his own company, a young daughter, and lots of responsibilities. It was love at first sight—well, maybe first lunch— and the dear friend who’d introduced us was shocked. She didn’t intend for us to fall in love and get married within eight months.
Each weekend, I traveled back and forth from New York City to his idyllic home in the Virginia countryside surrounded by acres of fields, horses, cows, and more horses and cows. We started riding every weekend. My instant mom status was a lot of fun and very quickly became an important part of my life.
After about a year or so doing the weekend commute, our first fine jewelry collection for Chanel launched successfully. Needless to say, by then I was tired. The travel was getting to me, and switching between big city fashion executive during the week and country stepmom on the weekends made my life seem too disparate. I realized one day that in a year of marriage, my husband and I had never spent more than five days together at a time. A change was needed.
I sadly resigned from Chanel, leaving the best job in the world. I shipped my furniture and piled dozens of overstuffed garment bags into my new husband’s SUV, along with two fancy city cats who could not imagine where their new life would lead. Get ready, city cats, this’ll rock your world.
I loved living with my husband (I guess that’s always a good thing!), but living in the country full-time was a challenge. I hadn’t yet made friends, and I was lonely. As someone who’d been working since age 12, I decided I finally needed some time off. My husband suggested that maybe some self-exploration was in order.
Wow, time to think? That would be new.
I signed up for painting classes and bought a horse. I started running every day for miles on dirt roads, hung out at the barn where we boarded my mare, and spent most of my time alone. It was a big change, but I was happily in love and sure that my new passion and career were on their way.
That was true, but I had no idea how painful the process would be.
One day a few months later, we took my stepdaughter and her cousins to a horse show. It was early June in Virginia, and the heat was over 100, with high humidity. I was worried the kids would overheat, so I pushed them to drink more water. I forgot about myself.
Suddenly, while sitting in the sun with the children dancing around me, I got a searingly painful headache. I managed to stand and murmur to my husband, “Please get me out of here.”
My head was splitting in two, I was dizzy and nauseous, and I needed my husband to hold me up as we staggered to our car. I tried to play it down so I wouldn’t scare the children, but by the time we reached our house I was unable to walk.
A friend decided I must be dehydrated and went out to buy electrolyte drinks. I lay in bed thinking I was going to die. An hour later, the pain was so severe I could no longer speak or move. My husband called an ambulance.
I stayed in the hospital for days while the doctors ran every test possible. The pain was unbearable; I was on a morphine drip to keep it at bay.
The frustrating part was that no one could say what was wrong. There was no diagnosis, although one doctor, after hearing about my drastic switch from high-powered VP to country mom, did venture to say, “Some people aren’t meant to retire.” I remember wanting to slug him, but instead I just said, “OK, thanks,” and left to go home.
My husband had to leave town for a few days the following week, and we both tentatively thought I was doing better. The hangover from the incident was a fuzzy, slightly nauseous feeling, so my parents came down to stay. Within two days, we were back at the hospital, I was down again, and my parents were beside themselves.
The cycle of blinding headaches continued all that summer. After seeing a lot of doctors, the only diagnosis they could come to was a cycle of migraines, triggered by the change in my environment and dehydration.
In the meantime, I’d developed sinus issues and what the doctors called allergies, something I’d never had before. Allergy pills and a nasal spray were prescribed. I was also given a migraine pill that never seemed to work.
Over the next few years, the migraines continued and so did the low-level fear. “What if I get a migraine?” was always in my mind, lurking like a monster in the closet. I developed a fear of travel and was hesitant to accept invitations. I did my best, but I know I disappointed many hosts with last-minute cancelations.
We decided we wanted to have a baby. I got pregnant within six months, and I sadly remember the joy of having a baby in my belly, only to lose him at fourteen weeks. We were desolate, heartbroken, and determined. We turned to IVF and immediately conceived again, to lose the baby a week after seeing a heartbeat. It was another boy.
Something in me woke up. I was determined to make having a baby a reality. We moved on to using donor eggs. It seemed my body didn’t want to carry anyone else’s eggs, either. No medical professional could ever explain the losses. In one year’s time, I’d been pregnant more days than not pregnant, and we still didn’t have our baby.
What I did have was a lot more weight than normal, mostly from the hormone treatments. I felt like I’d aged a decade in a few short years, and I looked it, too. I was tired all the time, I’d developed chronic sinus issues, and I had aches and pains all over. I was still in my thirties, but I felt like I was much older.
We turned to adoption the following year, and within nine months we had a bouncing, healthy baby boy from Russia. Our son had found his way to us. He was smart, savvy, and walking and talking by the time he was eleven months. He was a handful, but we felt blessed and happy beyond words.
New motherhood was challenging, and although I tried to get my health back after the miscarriages, nine months wasn’t long enough. In the first year of my baby’s life, I broke out in a viral rash up and down my arms and was diagnosed with mononucleosis. I was still recovering from the hormonal imbalance, and the baby’s schedule left me sleep-deprived. I wasn’t taking care of myself—I wasn’t exercising and I wasn’t paying attention to my food.
I kept going, renovating our newly acquired historic home and taking care of my baby son. By this time, I’d also stepped in to manage my husband’s business, and it seemed I was needed on all three fronts, all the time. Over the next few years, I struggled with my weight, trying every diet known to man—or woman. I did protein fasts and lost seventeen pounds in a month, only to gain it back and screw up my metabolism in the process. I signed up for Weight Watchers, Jenny, and other programs; I bought every book on dieting the moment it came out. Up, down, up, down, until I finally gave up. I was worn out. I remember thinking, as I ate my son’s mac and cheese, maybe this is just the way it is once you have kids. I tried to stop worrying about it.
I continued to get sick, often, and my sinuses were a constant problem. I’d developed pain points—the tender-to-the-touch