About me
I’ve used a Small Steps mindset to overcome many challenges in my life, and I love teaching these skills to others, especially if you feel overwhelmed by a change you want to make.
Join my waiting list and you will receive my life assessment form and a few questions to help you think about what you want to change.
An introduction to me.
With a background in psychology, pastoral counselling, and life coaching, I help people clarify their goals, ensure they align with their values, and create Small Step strategies to achieve them.
Creating habits is central to my coaching because they shape our automatic responses to life. Imagine having automatic responses that are positive and healthy! One habit at a time, I’ve transformed my destructive self-talk into encouraging words. I particularly enjoy working with women who habitually criticise themselves. I’m excited to share a step-by-step process to transform that negative inner dialogue into one that’s encouraging and life-giving.
If you can’t imagine encouraging yourself, I see this self-talk problem as a habit in your brain pathways that can be transformed like any other habit. I love witnessing the joy and pleasure return to the lives of women who learn to recognize that critical voice and start saying, “No thanks,” to it!
My Personal Journey with Food Freedom
In my twenties I struggled to say goodbye to an ideal picture of what I should look like. When I realized that I could enjoy a strong, healthy body, take care of the way I look and enjoy food, I was blown away and started to turn a corner towards freedom.
I spent many unhappy years wishing I looked different and then making myself more miserable by restricting my food, following extreme health regimes or making sure my exercise was hard and unpleasant.
I didn’t have a coach or follow any kind of advice but there were two ideas I realized were simply not working and two that I wanted to practice:
I realized there were two approaches that were simply not working that I needed to change.
Firstly when I tried any kind of sad, restriction of food it seemed to have the opposite effect on my food intake. I wanted to eat more and became consumed by whether the restriction was helping my weight.
I also noticed that my energy and mood were most depleted when I was trying an extreme idea that promised extra vitality and mental clarity. What I found most helpful was focusing on working with my appetite and enjoying a variety of foods and treats, this made it was easier to eat less and slowly make changes that felt pleasant and good for me.
Focusing on the enjoyment I found in food and exercise, this became a motivating factor to keep doing things that were good for me and made me feel happy.
I am grateful to have had the freedom of enjoying food for decades now and am always improving and adapting my lifestyle with small steps.
My Food Freedom courses are based on Georgie Fear’s brilliant system that helps you transform your thinking about your body and food so that you can maintain weight loss in a lifestyle that is satisfying and full of pleasure.
Interested in hosting me for a talk?
Email life@vanessabruni.com to find out more about my group talk sessions for schools, teams and communities.