I love getting older! What about you?

I am more confident, more purposeful and I look forward to more grey in my hair because I hope to see a vision for my life come true. I want to age like BJ McHugh and Jacinto Bonilla. When I’m 70, I want to be able to pick up and lift my grand kids in the air and run with joy. When I’m 80, I want to hike mountains and cycle to fund raise to make a difference in a community and inspire people to achieve great things. When I’m 90, I want to fully enjoy what is left or my life.

In my old age, I will reap the harvest of a life lived intentionally.
And I know I can be strong, energetic and uplifting because I am leveraging the science of aging well today. I have made of my well being a priority because when we’re vibrant, we achieve more and we make the world better.
Life is fuller when we make conscious choices every day for our health.

Today, I harness unprecedented mental clarity and focus. I can direct my attention at will and nothing can take my mind off my priorities. From the moment I get up until I go to bed, I enjoy high levels of energy. My mood is positive and stable all through the day.

But it wasn’t always the case. In fact, I laugh at my 35-year old self who had studied Biology but lived her life without a clue…

Work hard, play hard, party harder.

That’s how I used to live. In the lab 7 days a week, I was addicted to my job. Science is exhilarating. And to be honest, my self-worth was tied to my work: feeling “useless” when I don’t work. Can you relate? Ever since I was a child, I felt like my life would only be worth living if I could help others.
Like you, I am one of those people driven by achievement, who want to have an impact. At the time, it was all about what I was doing - never about who I was being.
What I was doing was a source of meaning. I was contributing to making cancer treatment less toxic before I joined a start-up involved in finding a solution to age-related diseases.
I really wanted to make a difference. And I was quite good at my job.
But I overdid it.

Balance? I knew the word but it had no reality behind it. I was in the lab 24/7, finding pride in my streak without a day off - all the while secretly resenting co-workers who had a life.
Due to a competitive nature, I was constantly pushing to outperform myself.

I played hard at the gym. I was there everyday. Because this was my only stress management strategy, I overdid that too. There was not much play in my life. My version of fun was to get drunk. Which I overdid as well.
When I decided to participate in a 200km bike ride for a cancer research fundraising, 2 years in a row, I trained even harder. On Saturday mornings I would go for a 4-hour ride with my co-workers, often showing up - late - having slept 3 hours, hungover.

On the week-end, to trump my loneliness, I usually went out. I used to drink because it made me less serious. I used to drink when I had something to celebrate or when I felt sad. I used to smoke because I was bored. I had all of the unhealthy coping skills. And little did I know, these bad habits robbed me of my mental performance and made me age faster.

My bad habits were on repeat. Starting the day with too much coffee and an easy thing to grab for breakfast, often packed with carbs, no protein and no fat. In the afternoon, I would inevitably crash. I relied on more coffee (my average was 4 cups a day) and something sweet to get a boost.

Today when I think about this time in my life, I can tell that the combo of excess caffeine and sugar made my heart pounding, made me anywhere from irritable to angry (snapping at coworkers), made me so clumsy that I was making mistakes in my experiments and that it destroyed my ability to focus. But at the time, I was mainly oblivious. I had no self-awareness.

Here I was… With a PhD in Biology and absolutely clueless when it comes to the basics of nutrition.
I thought I had ADHD, not knowing that it was all due to self-inflected patterns.

How you do one thing is how you do everything. My routines lacked any form of intention, so did my whole life. I was just tossed around by whatever was happening to me.

A wake up call.

Everything changed on my 35th birthday. Sitting at a bus stop, holding the flowers that my boyfriend - now husband - got me. On that day I saw myself and thought that I looked like crap. I looked way older than I was.

That’s when I realized the irony of using science to make an anti-aging pill, while living life without respect for my body. My lifestyle was making me age so fast.

Being in a relationship broke me out of loneliness and love opened me to the fact that I actually did want to take care of myself. This was the lead domino I needed to get healthier.

It was only small shifts in the beginning: like having one beer, instead of my usual two at a work lunch, finding myself saying “I am trying to make better choices” to a co-worker pushing for another round.
Then I reclaimed my week-ends to nurture my relationship. Not without guilt. Not without fear. At first, taking time for rest and play was extremely uncomfortable.
I was very anxious about it when I started to prioritize my life outside of the lab. We got a puppy, who had to be walked, trained and required presence. This was very significant in my life because I had to learn to relax, learn how to be fully present with this little guy.
I had to take on a new identity.

The small shifts led to bigger shifts.
But at that point, my attitude had already caused too much damage. From the winter of 2016, misalignment at work kept growing. I wasn’t getting credit for my work, my career was stalling, I didn’t feel valued, and I was overworked.
That’s also when I heard a number that hit me like a lightning bolt: half of all cancer deaths could be prevented with lifestyle changes.

A paradigm shift

This rocked my world. The cancer stats published for 2016 highlighted that most of cancer deaths could be prevented with lifestyle changes. There was absolutely no technology, even the best scientists could develop, that would save the lives of 50% of patients taking it. This was a turning point for me.

If prevention could be more impactful than medication, why are we doing so poorly at it?

Through this paradigm shift the misalignment I was experiencing in the lab just got deeper. I slowly lost a sense of meaning from my work, my motivation plummeted and by the time I was told “I don’t see a role for you in this organization”, I was at the end of my rope.
It’s not until recently that I was able to identify all the signs of a burnout.
I didn’t just lose a job and a source of income. I lost everything I had worked for until then. I lost any opportunity to continue in Research.

This is exactly what brings me to you: I want to help you protect all that you have worked for, by putting your health first now.

I spent the next 6 months bringing myself back to life by engaging in radical self-care.

It changed my life, for the better.
I changed my diet, I made my mindfulness practice consistent and I started to take on behaviors to activate my longevity genes. The lifestyles changes that I made then opened up new possibilities for me.

I suddenly experienced higher levels of focus and cognition, my energy was high all day without ever crashing, and
I started to invest in myself, in my own vision and re-centered around my personal values. I put meaning first and reconnected with my purpose.

When I went through these lifestyles changes, I then understood why we are not doing a better job at prevention: changing is hard.

Helping you live a richer, longer life

After all these life lessons, I knew I was called to help others make lifestyle changes that can prevent disease and activate their longevity genes, without having to learn the science in depth or experiencing the many challenges.

I captured in my program TIMELESS, the 3 transformative steps that helped me look like I was 26 when I was 36: the habits that allowed me to stay biologically younger than my chronological age to these days (Read more about biological age in the Science-based blog).

• Step 1: Mindfulness

  Psychological stress is associated to 25% of the epigenetic sites found in accelerated aging. When we stress and worry, we age faster.
  Mindfulness helps buffer against stress.
  It also increase awareness, including interoception: our ability to receive and interpret signals from our body. My clients also report that mindfulness gives them the ability to slow down and improve their relationships.

• Step 2: A diet that supports longevity

  What and when we eat greatly influence healthspan and lifespan. Research suggests that 1 in 5 deaths around the world could be prevented by improving diet.

  There are 5 easy-to-follow prinicples for a diet that supports longevity. I help members of TIMELESS apply them and create healthier food habits.

• Step 3: Push physical activity

  Exercise is the most potent intervention for optimizing longevity. Wherever you’re at, I will help you push in duration, frequency or intensity of physical activity and support you in making it a consistent practice.