With lots of new subscribers lately, I want to re-introduce myself to those of you who already know me and introduce myself to everyone else. Hiiiii! Welcome to my little corner of the world wide web.
Hi, I’m Bianca Chaptini a certified health coach, speaker, writer, marketer and storyteller.
I am passionate about all things health, wellness and clean living. I have too many indoor plants to count, an appreciation for herbal tea and an adoration for books (currently on my bedside table is ‘In the Flo’ by Alisa Vitti). My weakness is dark chocolate, and I’m particularly fond of Haigh’s dark chocolate macadamias.
After moving to Sydney (in 2013) and London (in 2017) to fuel my hunger for adventure and personal and professional growth, I returned to my hometown of Adelaide, South Australia in 2019, just before the world turned upside down.
In 2017, I commenced my health coaching journey with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) in New York. From the moment I discovered the Institute and researched its growing list of famous alum and influencers, I wholeheartedly knew I was in the right place. It was a ‘full body YES’!!! The teaching emphasised holistic or integrative health – and there I discovered the ‘Circle of life’ coaching tool that IIN coaches use with clients.
An IIN concept that really resonated with me was about classifying foods as ‘primary’ or ‘secondary’.
Primary foods such as relationships, sleep, spirituality and movement are things that nourish us at a much deeper level than secondary or physical foods as in the foods we eat. I’ll never forget the analogy about kale. Basically, you can eat all the kale smoothies and superfoods in the world but that won’t be nearly as beneficial as doing the inner work – healing your relationships, finding a job your truly enjoy, connecting with nature, setting boundaries in your personal and professional life, healing your inner child etc.
Guiding my clients through this inner work – as well as helping them clean up their diets and cut out the inflammatory stuff that weighs us down and makes us sick – is what fulfills me at my core. As a certified health coach, I help people optimise their mindset, diet, lifestyle and environment so they can discover the best versions of themselves. This requires giving people permission to take back the power, banish the excuses, set goals and taking inspired action towards them. Together we create an achievable plan, we put strategies in place and we celebrate the small wins along the way.
Back to me…I’m a self-confessed recovering orthorexic. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s basically a disordered form of eating where one becomes obsessed with #cleaneating. Essentially, you’re a food purist. It typically involves labelling foods as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, restrictive eating patterns, and eliminating from your diet a long list of ‘bad’ foods. After seeing countless doctors, dieticians, naturopaths, gastroenterologists, specialists and healers who all prescribed insanely restrictive elimination diets in an effort to help treat my digestive issues, it’s no wonder I became both obsessed and terrified by food. Not really how you want to be living your life in your mid-20s!
Honestly, I was that girl who interrogated café menus beforehand, that annoying one negotiating meal substitutions with the waiters – “Can I please have a gluten-free, diary-free nourish bowl, minus the edamame, and swap the feta for avocado? Thanks, that’s all.” Yep, I was *that girl*.
I ended up eating a tiny selection of foods – the things I knew for sure wouldn’t have me running for the toilet! As an intuitive woman, I knew there had to be another way. That eating a balanced diet was the key to great gut health.
Long story short, I spent the next 10 years trialling, testing, on and off of elimination diets, doing various cleanses, seeing more healers and integrative doctors. I’ve made some pretty drastic changes to my diet and even quit coffee back in 2013. Yes, coffee. People still ask me how I do it. But one of the most profound changes was to change my belief system about foods through positive beliefs and affirmations. At the time I discovered Louise Hay’s life-changing book, ‘You can heal your life’ and this is when I delved into the mind-body connection. It was a gamechanger for me.
I started to believe that my body could and would heal. That I could eat whatever I wanted, as long as it was healthy. I repeated these new positive thoughts and affirmations to myself over and over. I also adopted mindful eating – eating in a calm state, giving thanks for the food and tuning into my food cravings. Over time my symptoms began to improve. I started to expect to feel good eating a varied diet rather than terrified that something would upset my tummy and flare up my IBS. Eventually, I could eat whatever I wanted – minus the foods I still avoid to this day: gluten, dairy, coffee, sugar and soy.
My healing journey has been extensive, time-consuming and costly. I’m not perfect, I still have flare ups and food reactions at times (usually when I’m stressed or tired). But, thankfully, I’m much better at managing them thanks to all the knowledge and experience I’ve gained throughout my career as a health coach and the improvements I’ve witnessed in my own clients.
It’s my mission to help people treat their bodies better. And it all comes down to self-care and self-love. When we truly love and respect ourselves, naturally we will want to make the better, healthier choices in life. This is my belief and it can be applied to all aspects of our lives from our relationships, health and career to our passions, dreams and goals.
If you’ve reached this point, thank you for reading and I hope this resonated with you. You've come here for a reason. Perhaps you are embarking on - or in the middle of - your own health journey. Know that you are not alone. Help is always available. Your body wants to be healthy and whole. You are here to thrive. You are here to shine. You are meant to flourish.
Thank you for joining me on this journey.
