Choice, Action, Change: Embracing Life’s Challenges – Exclusive Interview With Esté Bell
- Brainz Magazine
- Jan 4, 2024
- 7 min read
Esté Bell is a South African-based health coach and she’s lived an active life. From her teens to her late thirties, she battled disordered eating and health challenges. Her pivotal moment was the realization that her health was deteriorating, prompting her to embark on a journey towards holistic wellness.
She’s now a certified life coach, focusing on helping middle-aged individuals realize that life can be fulfilling through change. Her journey, marked by her experience with disordered eating, PCOS, fertility treatments, and emotional abuse, equips her with empathy and a deep understanding of her clients.
Her coaching approach is client-driven, allowing clients to set the pace and select the tools that work best for them. Her focus is on raising awareness of how the body responds to different inputs, leading to better choices, sustainable habits, and overall well-being.
Pillar: The Mind, The Body
Who is this coach for: Individuals who need help with stress and recovery management, sleep and nutrition improvement, and building resilience to embrace life’s challenges like a champion.
How Esté can help: By using coaching, and various tools and techniques customized to each individual’s needs like personalized assessments, questionaries, breathing techniques, food diaries, and other ways of tracking subjective and objective data.
Esté Bell, LevelUp Nutrition
Can you share more of your journey and how you started with your coaching career?
I am a 49-year-old mother of beautiful twin daughters, residing in sunny South Africa. Although I am not a fitness coach, I have lived a very active life participating in athletics, aerobics, CrossFit, and weight training.
As a teenager, I developed severely disordered eating habits which lasted well into my late thirties. However, sharing a home with a husband and two growing children made this habit increasingly difficult to maintain. Luckily, I should say, as the weight on the scale increased my health deteriorated, which ultimately led me to where I am today.
To compound the situation, I had been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) with insulin resistance in my early twenties. This resulted in fertility treatment, a multiple pregnancy (triplets), and two years later, a partial hysterectomy. For 15 years, this condition was treated with androgen suppressants – I was always tired, miserable and suffered from debilitating migraines.
One day I woke up to the realization that I might live another forty years. What quality of life would I have if my health continued to deteriorate and I always felt terrible? How would I show up for my family if I couldn’t even show up for myself? If I continued doing what I was doing then, what would my life look like in ten years, never mind forty years?!
Something had to change and I was the only one who could make that change. Reading on the subject of nutrition led to my first nutrition course, which led to certifications in specialized nutrition, as well as sports and exercise nutrition. I was officially hooked!
Implementing this knowledge in my own life brought with it the realization that our overall wellness involves much more than just movement and nutrition. Ever on a quest for more knowledge, I studied sleep, stress, and recovery management and later became a certified life coach.
During 2021 I was approached by the Mrs SA Beauty Pageant and became an official sponsor. Spending time with these beautiful, goal-driven women served to heighten the fact that we as humans tend to focus so much on our goals and caring for others, that we neglect taking care of ourselves.
As for my health? For the last seven years, I have been maintaining a healthy body weight while loving my food! I am medication-free and haven’t had as much as a common cold in six years. I entered my first CrossFit Open at the age of 45 and ranked 13th in SA in my age group upon completion, totally taking myself by surprise. I am not special in any way. When we focus on overall wellness we are capable of surprising ourselves!
How has your journey influenced your approach to coaching?
I have dealt with and overcome the following:
Disordered eating
PCOS with insulin resistance
Fertility treatment and the death of an unborn child
A total body transformation!
A longstanding marriage – and consequent divorce – from an alcoholic husband and the ensuing emotional abuse
Severe back spasms due to chronic stress which ultimately caused functional scoliosis and the end of my CrossFit participation
My life has equipped me with a healthy dose of experience. With this comes empathy and the desire to understand where my client is coming from. This enables me to determine the best way in which I can add value to his/her life. Every client comes with his/her own set of core values and beliefs and these values serve as the foundation or starting point of our coaching journey. A client working towards a goal that is aligned with core values is a client who consistently shows up and does the work.
While I originally started coaching my fellow crossfitters, my passion lies with the middle-aged person who realizes that life can become a long, torturous affair if something does not change and he/she does not take action and make that change.
What was the biggest obstacle you had to overcome in your life that made you who you are today?
Lack of self-confidence.
I met my ex-husband, and his family with their narcissistic tendencies, in my late teens. I was exposed to harsh, negative criticism for over thirty years, and over time this destroyed my self-confidence. As a result, and to gain the validation and approval of others, I became quite the perfectionist. However, no amount of praise or compliments would erase the lack of confidence and the self-doubt that had overcome me.
Risking everything and walking away from an alcoholic husband and years of emotional abuse was the wisest decision I ever made. A lot of time spent on self-improvement and healing in the company of supportive people has brought miracles into my life. So many people need this – the realization that we are enough. As coaches, we are perfectly positioned to provide support, encouragement, and upliftment to our clients.
What insights can you offer individuals who desire change?
We were not meant to be alone. We need to feel heard, seen, and understood or our mental health will suffer.
Who you surround yourself with matters! The tongue has the power to speak life or death. It takes only one negative comment to place that seed of doubt in the mind. Surround yourself with people who encourage and support you on your journey.
Mindset makes all the difference. Positive thoughts bring about positive actions. Gratitude is a sure cure for negativity.
Habits are life. If you have previously had certain habits or routines in place in your life, you are already equipped with the knowledge and skills to build new habits should your circumstances suddenly change. You will be more resilient to anxiety and stress caused by change and able to adjust much more easily to new circumstances.
Practice a sustainable lifestyle. Move regularly, sleep well, remember to stay hydrated, ingest mostly unprocessed foods, and practice self-care and mindfulness – this you can sustain for your whole lifetime.
The choice is yours alone. Nobody is coming to save you! It’s up to you. Nobody can choose change for you – only you can choose you.
How do you innovate with coaching your clients?
My coaching is very much client-driven. While I will always be the coach, the client sets the pace. I meet my clients every week on a platform of their choosing (most clients opt for WhatsApp video calls when given the choice) and during these sessions, we’ll look back over the past week, check in on where we are now, and together make a decision about the week that lies ahead. I meet my clients where they are and progress with what they find themselves ready, willing, able, and comfortable to do. Whatever tools we use to measure progress are tools the client is comfortable using and has proven to be able to use consistently.
What benefits do your clients get after working with you?
The main takeaway of my coaching is a growing awareness of how the body reacts to the input it receives. This not only speaks for nutritional input but also for the content with which we feed our minds. After all, we’ll never decide to change something if we are not aware of it in the first place.
Once an awareness is created about how the body feels and reacts – e.g., a client might experience a bad workout and low energy levels after a couple of late nights – clients are more prone to making better choices. Consistently making the better choice leads to building better habits for sustainable results.
If you could send a message for the whole world to see, what would you say?
The present is NOW! As the word Present implies, it is a gift.
Stop living in the past – it’s past tense. Why would you want to stay stuck in that place if you can move on to a better place?
Stop worrying about the future. Worry breeds anxiety. That which you are worrying about might never even happen, or if it does, it will probably not even be half as bad as you thought it would be.
Realize that this moment, right now, is the youngest you’ll ever be again. Don’t let the wonder of this moment slip by unnoticed because you are dwelling on things that have passed or worrying about things that may never come.
Now is the time to make that change – step into the moment and act today!
Final thoughts
Life happens to all of us. In that, you are not unique. Your attitude will determine your actions, and these have the power to affect the rest of your life. The good thing about hardship is that it provides the opportunity for growth. Never stop working on yourself. Acquire the knowledge and build the skills to triumph over any situation and life will serve you well. My wish for you is that you find yourself in the company of someone who inspires you and adds value to your life.
I wish to add that value to the lives of those I encounter – that I may become the mirror in which someone can see the reflection of the truest version of themselves.
