Meet Karlina
Founder Altus Nutrition
My name is Karlina and I am a busy mum of 3 active, energetic and lively little girls, an avid cook, butter connoisseur, amateur gardener, lover of the great outdoors, seemingly extroverted but extremely introverted, and super passionate about leading a healthy
lifestyle.
I am addicted to feeling good. I know all too well how it feels to not have your health, I’ve been at both ends of the spectrum with a health journey that has had plenty of ups and downs! I’ve made it my mission to educate myself so that you can feel confident that your health is in the right hands.
Throughout my career as a Nutrition and Lifestyle Coach, I’ve developed a signature method of helping women like you on the path to a healthier lifestyle. Its been through fixing and treating my own gut symptoms that i have been able to fully immerse myself and specialise in treating other women who have the same issues I had all those years ago.
My Favourite Things
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Being beside the ocean in any capacity, there is nothing in this world as magical as the glorious deep blue!
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Gardening. I'm very amateur, but very proud of my humble veggie garden and love growing as much as i can from scratch in my backyard.
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Café Breakfasts. Well... a past love of mine as cafes and three kids don't always make for a relaxing time!
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Travelling and seeing new places.
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Swimming - a sport that gives back to me and makes me feel refreshed and energised.
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Coffee. No need for explanation, am I right?!
I haven't always been determined and had motivation for my health....
I’ve always had an interest in nutrition from an early age. I was doing lemon water at 16 after reading my sisters Cosmopolitan magazines, I did vegetable juices long before they were mainstream, I was a very active teenager and played a lot of sport and I was raised on a very minimally processed diet. My mum did a lot of home cooking and made everything from scratch. I still remember coming home from school to freshly baked cookies made with just butter, flour and sugar (not all the other added ingredients so common today!). I had the best start to life you would say.
however, those late teenage year hit and I threw myself into experimenting with what was trendy at the time. I did a lot of fad dieting and got sucked up into very negative body image issues. I ate ‘diet’ everything, I skipped meals, I did so many extreme cleanses and fasts and I spiralled out of control into disordered eating very fast.
I spent years battling with eating disorders and low self esteem and I really thought there would never be a light at the end of the tunnel. The majority of my diet was for convenience or weight loss and I really thought the vitamins I took would make up for the deficiencies in my eating habits (WRONG!).
I spent a lot of time in my early twenties indulging in late weekends drinking and partying too. I ate fast food and started binge eating on weekends. I felt so fatigued and foggy come Monday, when I would resort to eating healthy again, only to do the same thing the following weekend. I was a never-ending cycle I really struggled to get out of.
I also really struggled with sustaining long term health patterns and just didn’t know how to be consistent with eating well, moving my body and I had very low self esteem.
I had my first child and literally within weeks started to spiral into the scariest moment of my life with horrible anxiety and insomnia, all the while doing nothing about my lifestyle at the time. I was eating a lot of convenience foods, I was addicted to sugar, my gut health was so severely symptomatic and problematic and I relied heavily on medication as the only fix to my mental health issues. I believed that there simply was no way out. It really does take someone to reach breaking point through, mine was when I had not slept for 3 days, I was shaking with anxiety and I simply just could not go on like this any more. That deeply scary moment brought me to the realisation that I loved life and I didn’t want to be anywhere else but here…..
I slowly started to change my diet, I got help for my mental health in a rounded, holistic way, I found ways of moving my body that I really enjoyed, I met new friends and made a new life for myself. It was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I was happy again and I slept so much better. I had more energy and I felt so confident through taking care of myself that I knew at that moment I was never turning back.
I decided to start really educating myself and also started to thing about changing my career to what I was passionate about, that’s when I came across my nutritional medicine studies.
Becoming educated in nutrition and how food plays such a pivotal role in our health has helped me treat my own digestive issues, from pesky bloating, to years of irritable bowels - oh yes, I've been there.
These days, I am very intuitive with how I eat, move, who I surround myself with and what enters my world.
It’s now my mission to help as many other women who may be experiencing similar issues to what I had to step out of their shadow and into the limelight of abundant health and happiness. I truly believe this first comes from a change in your state of mind, to what you put into your body, then by how you move your body, by how you think, by who your inner circle is and by doing what truly makes you happy. Want to know how I can help you achieve this? Reach out and let’s have a chat together and open up the possibilities.
I can’t wait to help you lovely