Meet Sarah Anne Stewart of Holistically Slim in West Hollywood

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Anne Stewart.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I was thrown into the world of wellness as a teenager when my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. My family made a choice – to fight back with alternative medicine and nutrition. Seven months later, my father was declared cancer-free and a spark was lit in me that propelled me to study the power of healing foods.

However, around this same time, I signed a modeling contract at the early age of 15 which fueled my eating disorder journey. With agents barking at me to “stay skinny” and “don’t eat until next week”, fears and anxiety around my weight soon consumed my entire life. I went through a decade of gaining and losing hundreds of pounds and almost lost my own life to anorexia (I woke up in a NYU hospital bed being told I must make a change if I want to live!).

After leaving the fashion industry, earning several certificates in nutrition and a process of deep self-exploration, I finally found my saving grace: meditation and mindfulness techniques. Today, with years of training, hundreds of hours of health coaching and working under some of the brightest minds in health, I have been able to connect the dots to create a unique and personalized approach for losing weight, keeping the weight off and finding peace with food!

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No, there have definitely been several struggles including opening and closing two companies before Holistically Slim!

After several nutritional certifications (in which all taught me how to eat healthy, nourish my body and heal on a physical level), I opened my first company and started coaching clients. It was very overwhelming and I felt extremely embarrassed that I still had not completely recovered from my eating disorder.

Every time I walked past a mirror, into a fitting room or was in front of a camera, the anxiety returned and my heart raced. Some days I still felt too skinny, some days too fat. I continued to portion out even my kale salads so I wouldn’t eat “too much”. I also never skipped a yoga class out of crippling fear that the weight would pile back on.

I realized all the ‘nutrition’ information had helped me on a physical level but it had not healed my mind completely or released the grips of anxiety that still existed in me. I decided I needed to do inner work, beginning with simple meditation and a consistent yoga practice, focusing on reconnecting my mind with my body rather than shedding pounds. I further added in breathwork and energy work, then integrated personal mantras with meditations to help repair my subconscious beliefs around my self-image. I also spent a lot of time using mindfulness techniques to help create a new relationship with food. I slowly began to cultivate self-love and started taking care of my entire being.

I felt the grip of anxiety and depression released and I began to live again.

At this time, I also had opened a second company with a business partner that focused on retreats. After a couple years of self-exploration, I decided to focus all my attention on my private coaching practice. I felt stronger, happier and more confident than I had ever had before and re-launched a new company with a core focus on the mind-body relationship.

Holistically Slim – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Ah I love my job! As a holistic health practitioner and entrepreneur, I have a coaching practice specializing in consistent ways to maintain permanent weight loss without ‘crash-dieting’. Most often, individuals come to me after trying countless diets, feeling frustrated, fed up and uninspired.

I support individuals through the concept that ‘what to eat’ and ‘how you exercise’ are only small pieces of the big puzzle. In the midst of thousands of diet protocols, it becomes easy to let fear, anxiety and massive uncertainty drive our decisions. However, the story of our weight often starts in our own minds. It can be an accumulation of external experiences we have had throughout our lives. Yet through using mindfulness techniques, we have the ability to rewrite them.

Individuals have the opportunity to sift through their thoughts, challenge their limiting beliefs and raise their standards of what they truly want for their body and mind. In this way, they can become more confident, compassionate and loving towards themselves! And also, they can create their own ‘wellness lifestyle’ following internal guidelines based on what is best for them and their lifestyle.

I also offer an eight week, self-study e-course called ‘Meditate Slim Mastery’ and am also working on my first book!

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Every day I am proud of my clients and how they are transforming their relationship with food and living happier, healthier lives! One specific client, through healing her relationship with food, left her job, went to study meditation in India, opened her own company and is moving to Germany this fall! All within the last 2 years!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sarahannestewart.com
• Phone: (213) 550-5432
• Email: [email protected]

Image Credit:
Nick Onken

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