7 minute read
Focus on Nutrition & Wellness
Traditional medicines and therapies often only serve to treat the symptoms of illness, ignoring the root causes, which can lead to patients being reliant on prescriptions in their quest for better health. We caught up with some OUs who, through personal and pivotal experiences, have embarked on careers that help clients improve their health through their passion for nutrition.
Tim Rees (WB 90), Isabella Osmond (née Gullan, Sa 02), and Sarah Gullan-Whur (née Haryott, Fd 88) all work as nutritional therapists and are making their mark in this rapidly growing market, valued globally to reach $45.9 billion by 2032.
Isabella Osmond (née Gullan, Sa 02)
Isabella is a registered nutritionist specialising in disordered eating and eating disorders. Her interest and passion for nutritional health grew quite naturally from having to cook for herself and recognising the impact the food she was eating had on her mood and her mental health. Isabella has been a qualified nutritionist since 2019 and now works as a private clinician after working for several years as part of a multidisciplinary team in a private out-patient clinic, which specialised in eating disorders. isabellaosmond.com tim-rees.com
Tim Rees (WB 90)
Tim is a registered nutritionist and has worked in the field since 2003. He consults with people online to help them manage chronic disease, including obesity and mental health. Through his own experiences, reversing autoimmunity, he gained an invaluable insight into the power of nutritional therapy. He started tinkering with his diet over 20 years ago and his so-called ‘incurable’ and debilitating ailments began to vanish. tim-rees.com
Sarah Gullan-Whur (née Haryott, Fd 88)
Sarah specialises in children’s nutrition. She has gained extensive experience working in many different roles including community nursing, health visiting, infant feeding and nutrition. After realising the impact of nutrition and lifestyle on health and wellbeing, Sarah trained in nutritional therapy at The Institute for Optimum Nutrition. She supports families to address imbalances, aiming to improve their health and wellbeing, using evidence-based research in a functional approach and she is passionate about improving outcomes.
Not only do they share a passion for nutrition, Tim, Isabella and Sarah all loved their time at Uppingham, citing the laughter and camaraderie as commonalities. They also worked through the challenges of setting up their own businesses, the need for ‘dogged resilience’, ‘flexibility’ and ‘organisation’, and all agree on the value of fitting their work around family life. Each have the capacity to change lives for the better through the advice and encouragement they offer their clients, and we were delighted to hear their thoughts on working in this ever-evolving field…
What did you learn at Uppingham that has been invaluable to your success so far?
Tim – Confidence will get you 90% of the way.
Isabella – How to act! It might sound strange, but you’re not always going to know the answer to everything and the ability to stay calm and confident in moments of stress has proved to be unbelievably useful, especially with my client base, who often need me to be a pillar of strength and unwavering support for them.
Sarah – I learnt that engaging and communication is key to everything you do – if you can communicate effectively and are happy to work hard then you will do well regardless of your results.
What have been your greatest and toughest moments setting up your business?
Tim – Greatest: Helping people manage away the symptoms of horrible chronic diseases is deeply satisfying. Toughest: Comparing myself to my contemporaries on the money metric.
Isabella – Greatest: When clients ‘graduate’. I won’t say recover, as recovery can be ongoing for many years, however, when a client graduates it means they are able to live calmly around food and no longer allow their eating disorders to rule their lives. Toughest: When clients get worse, and their eating disorder is too strong.
What is a typical day like in your clinic?
Tim – I’ll usually have two clinical sessions per day which involves shaping a therapeutic diet to a client, or vice versa! I encourage them to follow a strict plan for at least two weeks before we start opening things up again. This window allows them to experience the amazing potential of dietary change and motivates them. Around these sessions I write nutrition science and historical articles for forward-thinking food companies, my own website and other platforms.
Isabella – Clichéd as it sounds, no two days are the same because no two clients are the same. Yes, the structure may be the same with 50-minute calls interspersed with admin, but no session is ever the same, no conversation and no recovery, which is why I love what I do.
Sarah – I start by reviewing health information that clients send me before the consultation and look through emails or review results. I see my clients for consultations via virtual appointments, then work on individual health plans, looking up suitable supplements or testing options. I also have ongoing training to maintain my CPD and have weekly clinical supervision groups, where we discuss cases and go through results, which is really helpful and a great learning opportunity.
What direction do you see the nutrition industry moving in, over the next 10 years?
Tim – Hopefully, less ideological thinking and more top-quality meat from regenerative farming systems that restore soil health, biodiversity and act as carbon sinks whilst providing people with much needed nutrients without the use of excessive energy.
Isabella – I would love to see the nutrition space become more regulated. Too many people are practising after doing basic courses and ‘influencers’ are also giving unsolicited nutritional advice. On numerous occasions, clients have said, ‘I saw on Instagram that x is bad for me’ or ‘someone told me not to eat y and z’. This can be extremely damaging for someone with an eating disorder.
Sarah – It’s an exciting time to be working in the nutrition, health and wellbeing industry. There is a growing public awareness of the importance of food, in both its role in affecting our physical and mental health as well as dealing with the growing chronic health issues we are facing as a nation. There is so much ongoing research that is actively changing our understanding and making it a fascinating business to be in.
Wellness
Commonly viewed as being the interconnection of five main aspects of health, wellness focuses on the emotional, physical, intellectual, financial and social aspects of our lives. It is a broad term that can encompass everything from eating a nutritionally balanced diet to getting enough sleep and managing stress; practitioners support their clients with a personalised and targeted approach. Georgina Pawley (L 95) has honed her skills in this area to create a successful business, joining an industry cited to be worth $5.3 trillion globally in 2023 (around £25 billion in the UK).
Georgina Pawley (L 95)
After 18 years working in the corporate world as a headhunter, Georgina knew it was time to embark on a new journey, fulfilling her vision to support executive women seeking improved personal and professional wellbeing. During the pandemic she recognised that exercise alone was not enough for long-lasting health and from there her career as founder and CEO of Life Body Health emerged. Combining her enthusiasm for health and fitness with her certifications in nutrition and wellness, as well as her executive coaching skills, she’s able to help people live their best lives through a more holistic approach – looking at both personal and professional wellbeing and fulfilment.
Outside of her coaching services, she offers a luxury, bespoke, personal and professional wellness retreat where female leaders can meet, connect, reflect, and focus on their own 360-degree wellbeing, with input from industry leading specialists.
Tucked away in the Andalusian mountains, 30 minutes from Malaga, the retreat takes place in a boutique five-bedroom villa set in 2.5 acres of private gardens in the Sierra de Mijas; a perfect place in which to escape, exercise, connect, unwind, refresh and learn new skills. lifebodyhealth.com
