Roxanne’s Story:
I Thought I Needed More Willpower Too.

ADHD-Informed Coaching

Healthy habits don’t require more willpower. They require an approach that works with your brain…not against it.

my Story

How I Got Here

Mindful Nutrition Coaching started with my own health journey, although it took me a while to understand that there was a lot more going on than nutrition and weight loss.

In 2021, I knew something in my life needed to change. I started with my health. I found coaching, got incredibly focused on nutrition and training, lost over 100 pounds and got into the best physical shape of my life. Somewhere along the way I realized I wanted to help other people the way my coaches had helped me, so I started studying nutrition coaching myself.

And then life got messy. Really messy.

I could get up at 3 a.m. to study. I could train consistently. I could learn everything there was to know about nutrition and follow it almost obsessively. I was accomplishing some pretty incredible things with my health while other parts of my life were basically crashing down around me.

At the same time, I was moving through perimenopause, and problems with focus that I’d experienced at different points throughout my life were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Work became harder. My life was going through enormous transitions, and I was trying to manage all of it at once.

As I started coaching my own clients, I kept hearing women talk about ADHD and recognizing pieces of myself in what they were describing. Eventually I started asking questions about my own experience. That led to an ADHD diagnosis in my 50s and made a whole lot of my life make considerably more sense

It also changed the way I thought about health and coaching.

Because clearly, I knew how to do hard things. Knowledge and motivation weren’t always the problem. But when circumstances changed, some of the things I’d been able to do so consistently became much harder to maintain.

I continued my training, eventually becoming a Master Health Coach as well as a Certified Nutrition Coach. That took me much deeper into behaviour change, asking better questions, understanding what gets in the way, and helping someone develop strategies that work in their own life rather than simply telling them what they should do.

At the same time, I was learning more about my own ADHD and working with more women with ADHD. Those two things started coming together in my coaching.

I know a lot about nutrition. Food matters for reasons that go far beyond what we weigh. But knowing more about nutrition, movement, sleep, stress or recovery isn’t necessarily what gets someone from knowing to doing. That’s the space I’m most interested in: what is actually getting in the way, and what can we change, simplify or experiment with so taking care of yourself works better in your real life?

Today I work as a financial planner as well as running Mindful Nutrition Coaching, so I don’t live in a world where taking care of my health gets to be my full-time job either. I’m working, riding my bike, going places, doing things, and figuring out which things need my attention at different times.

Sometimes that’s nutrition. Sometimes it’s movement. Sometimes it’s sleep, stress or recovery. And sometimes life changes and what was working doesn’t work anymore.

That’s a big part of how I coach now. I’m not here to give you another list of things you should be doing. I’m much more interested in getting curious about why the things you already want to do aren’t happening, and figuring out what might actually work for you.

why mindful nutrition coaching

Knowing what to do isn’t always the hard part.

What the photo doesn’t show

I’m incredibly proud of what I accomplished, but this photo only shows one part of the story. It doesn’t show the focus, structure and circumstances that made that transformation possible.

And it definitely doesn’t show what happened when life changed and some of the things that had felt almost effortless became much harder to maintain.

What I learned from it

Health isn’t something you figure out once and then do perfectly forever. Our lives change. Our capacity changes. What worked before may stop working.

That doesn’t mean you’ve failed or need to start over. Sometimes you need to understand what’s getting in the way and find a different way forward.

How coaching can help

When you know what you want to do, but doing it is the hard part.

Understand what’s getting in the way.

When something you want to do just isn’t happening, we start by getting curious about why. What’s happening around it? What need is being met? Where is the friction? Instead of assuming you need more motivation or discipline, we look for the patterns underneath so we can work with what’s actually going on.

Find what works for you.

Once we understand what’s getting in the way, we can experiment with what might help. There isn’t one right strategy or perfect routine. We look for changes that make sense for your brain, your life and your capacity right now, try them, and pay attention to what actually happens.

Adjust when life changes.

Because life is going to life. Work changes. Stress changes. Your health, relationships and responsibilities change. Something that worked beautifully before might not work anymore, and that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. We get curious about what’s changed, reach for a different tool when we need to, and adjust your approach to fit the life you’re actually living now.