New Horizons
After a decade of immersing myself in nutrition it’s time for me to take a new path. I set up SAVI Nutrition to share my love of tasty, healthy food. I fully believe that the foundations of good health sit with good food, movement, sleep and relaxation, and I’ve enjoyed sharing the science behind this with hundreds of you over the years.
About a year ago I took a decision to step back. I left the wonderful Functional Medicine practice I was working with and stopped taking on new clients. Why? Because I’d realised that my own life was out of balance. At the time I was working in a developmental role in the NHS, lecturing in nutrition at my former college and seeing clients as part of a collaborative care team. I loved everything that I was doing and felt challenged (in a good way) but I wasn’t prioritising rest and relaxation. I suspected that this was impacting on my health. Perimenopause hit hard!!
So, I made a decision to put my nutrition practice on pause. I promised myself that I would take a year out. I wouldn’t rush to make a decision on whether I would return. I would use the time to do something completely different. To relax. To prioritise my creative side. AND IT WAS HARD.
I thought the hardest challenge would be protecting my time. I could see that when my NHS role got particularly hectic the temptation would be to just work the occasional extra day and that this could quickly slide into a regular pattern. That has definitely been a challenge at times, but actually the boundaries I set between the NHS world and the nutrition world held firm and I found that (mostly) I have avoided this pitfall.
Unearthing my inner creative was probably the easiest part. I knew I wanted to get back into textiles, a lifelong passion that took a backseat when I started my nutrition journey. I thought I might restart art quilting, and I did dabble a bit, but then helping my teen to make their prom outfit kickstarted a return to garment making. This also resulted in me making new connections and discovering a whole new community.
No, the hardest part was sticking to the promise of taking a full year out from nutrition. In the first few months this showed up as 101 ideas of different places I could take my business. Ideas for content creation, courses, group programmes. I found myself reaching for my laptop just to jot down a few ideas, just a quick blog post. Once I’d shaken off this challenge my next one was to rush a decision on whether I would return to nutrition or not. My brain didn’t want to sit with the uncertainty. Even though I knew I needed to take a break, be in the present and re-evaluate later, another part of me wanted to know the next step and put in all of the plans.
So here we are. Just over the year and with my decision made. I’m feeling healthy (a broken shoulder aside) and energised and know now that making a change was right for me. I’m parking nutrition and heading out on a whole new creative journey. I’ve loved immersing myself in textiles this year and I’m ready to journey further down that rabbit hole. Having embraced making my own clothes my next challenge is designing my own fabric. (Just how cool is it to wear a dress that you not only sewed yourself but that you designed the print on the fabric with the exact colours and design in your head?)
Never one to do things by halves I’ve signed up to Bonnie Christine’s Surface Design Immersion course. Before Summer I will have all of the skills I need to design my own fabric (or wallpaper, or stationery). If I’ve crossed your path during my nutrition journey – thank you! I’ve met and worked with some wonderful people from the people I trained and worked with to the students I’ve taught, the groups I’ve talked to and especially my amazing clients who worked with me when facing their own health challenges.
There will be some changes coming to this website as I transition across to my new path. I’ll keep the recipes live (they just may have different links). I may even pop some more up there when I get chance as I take some of my favourite client recipes out of my nutrition software. If you want to follow me on my next adventure and cheer me on then you’ll find me @kimscholesdesign on Instagram.