about me

I want you to end the war with yourself.

Hi, I'm Elena.

And if there's one thing I can't stand, it's the exhausting and demoralizing pattern of working against myself.

Trying to want things I don't want.

Trying to do things I don't care about. 

Trying to be someone I wish I was, but am not.

I became a "health enthusiast" more or less on accident, at the same time I was working as a sign language interpreter.

Doing freelance work, I ended up in the places people go most often.

So by default, I became a medical interpreter — doctor's offices, clinics, hospitals, you name it. 

I worked in dermatology offices, surgical suites, physical therapy gyms, cancer centers, labor and delivery units, and in-patient (locked-down) psych facilities.

As I experimented with my own nutrition and lifestyle, I found a sense of agency. There's power in being able to control your own outcomes. It feels really good.

And I became increasingly frustrated in many of my interpreting assignments. I'd have to interpret medical professionals giving what my research told me was poor nutrition advice. I'd have to interpret doctors giving meds for problems I knew could often be resolved with food. I'd have to come back with the same client, month after month, sometimes year after year, and watch their health deteriorate in front of me. 

Patterns started to emerge. It felt like a revolving door — and every time they went in, they came out a little more dependent, with a little less agency. And they weren't getting healthier.

Through my hands, I'd deliver the doctor's obligatory, weary attempt at addressing healthy habits. They'd tell the patient "you need to lose weight" or "eat healthy" or "get more exercise." 

The patient would nod, and their gaze would shift to the floor, or the thin crinkled paper of the exam table, or the window if there was one. I could almost see them scanning their memory, thinking of all the times they'd tried, all the years they've ruminated on how — HOW?!? — to do it, and still there they were, no better off for their efforts.

These people had lost a number of things by this point, and you may have lost them too.

Agency is one thing — a big one for sure.

But there's another thing that's lost: 

Knowing how to work with yourself, instead of against yourself. 

When you read between the lines, the messaging sounds something like this:

You're the problem.

You're lazy (otherwise you'd exercise more).

You're a glutton (otherwise you'd eat less).

You're kinda dumb (otherwise you'd have figured out how to be healthy like all the skinny people out there).

Your body doesn't work right (bad genes, slow metabolism, or some other inescapable flaw).

I don't actually think the doctors or nurses were actually thinking any of these things. 

But we're kidding ourselves if this isn't the broader narrative — the narrative we've often bought into and internalized.

And when you've bought into "I'm the problem," then the only way to fix it is to fight against yourself. 

Cue the calorie counting, portion controlling, pavement pounding, "eat less and move more" paradigm. Perfect for those who want it bad enough to punish their body into submission.

And yet, I wasn't restricting. Or "earning my calories" with exercise. 

I was enjoying my food. Eating when I was hungry, stopping when I was full. 

And I was healthy. And getting healthier.

Turns out, our bodies are exquisitely designed to work really well. To self-regulate. To get pleasure from what enriches us. To heal and rebuild.

Our bodies are ALWAYS trying to be as healthy as possible, within whatever environment they find themselves.

They just find themselves in some pretty difficult environments these days. Modern life is not always friendly to our human biology. There are inputs we need desperately that are largely absent. There are inputs we are harmed by that are largely ubiquitous.

It's the soup we're swimming in, not some personal flaw.

You aren't the problem. 

Not your family genetics, or your appetite, or your metabolism, or your lack of interest in exercise, or your struggle to figure out the "right way" to eat, or your health history up to this point, or anything else about you.

The problem is there's a huge mismatch between what our genes expect (and depend on!) and our modern diet and lifestyle defaults.

Eating well can be easeful. 

Moving can be pleasurable. 

They SHOULD be. 

You and I both know they aren't sustainable if they're not.

It's about time you reclaim your agency and trust in your body. 

Change takes effort — but it doesn't take long, and it doesn't stay hard. 

Getting the plane off the ground is the hardest part. Once you're airborne, the effort drops — turbulence here and there, but nothing that will keep you from getting where you're going. 

Reach out. Let's get started.