Alice Yeates is our in-house Nutritional Therapist and Naturopath. As well as working with us to ensure the meals we prepare are nutritious (and delicious), she offers introductory one-to-one sessions to our retreat guests.
A serious illness prompted Alice, a former nurse, to consider alternatives to conventional medicine. Having dramatically improved her energy levels through diet and lifestyle changes, Alice decided to train as a Naturopathic Nutritional Therapist before going on to qualify as a Naturopath.
Her first-hand experience of going from having no energy at all to being able to do all the things she wants to, means Alice is a great position to help others achieve the same.
“Your body is an amazing healer and can heal itself if you give it the right tools,” Alice explained. “For example, GPs are going down the food route to help people with diabetes.”
Guests on our retreats receive a complementary taster session with Alice during which they can talk about their health or issues that are concerning them. Alice finds these meetings help people to begin joining the dots between their habits and how they feel each day.
“Lifestyle and nutrition advice can be overwhelming. There is so much information and people are given far too many instructions,” Alice said. “I vowed never to give someone more than one sheet of instructions after a consultation with a brief resume of why they’re doing what they’re doing.
“It’s about picking one thing and getting it established as a habit. Once it’s established then we pick the next thing.”
That ‘one thing’ could be increasing hydration or eating more vegetables; Alice recommends at least five pieces of veg and two fruit per day. There’s no doubt our health and wellbeing are greatly affected by what we eat, how we move and our daily habits, and external factors also make a difference. The last year has been an example of this and Alice has been supporting people suffering from ‘Long COVID’.
She said: “Stress levels will have impacted some people’s health; anxiety affects the gut and gut problems can cause anxiety. I have seen a few people with Long COVID and expect to see more. It goes for the weak points, but I have had some people respond amazingly; people who have been able to get back to work and are doing really well.”
What she has seen in COVID patients reminds Alice of her own illness. “I was one step away from not being here,” she explained. “I was in bed with no energy at all. I want to stop people from having to go there; I’m very much about prevention and encouraging people to listen if their body is whispering to them, rather than waiting until it starts to scream and shout.”
If you’re booked onto a retreat this year, do take the opportunity to meet with Alice and talk about your body’s whispers (or shouts). Alice has also written an eBook, Healthy Habits Just For You, which is available for free to help you work on healthier habits one at a time.