Having always had a passion and academic interest in nutrition, Helen had completed a Masters in Nutritional Medicine before teaching the subject, but nevertheless felt she could do more to help people directly. “I wanted to use my brain more,” she says of her decision to quit teaching. “I needed a change.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the incredible machine that is the human body,” adds Helen, 56, after founding Hero Lifestyle, an award-winning nutrition and wellness company. “I’ve also always been interested in nutrition and practiced yoga, so I set out to get my yoga and personal training qualifications and then started the business in 2019.”

Helping people achieve and maintain their fitness goals and optimal health standards, Hero Lifestyle has seen Helen work with everyone from professional athletes to everyday people looking to be healthier. By creating bespoke nutrition programs, Helen works with her clients to develop a whole new and much healthier relationship with food.

Having also practiced yoga for over 25 years and taught it for 15, Helen also incorporates yoga, mindfulness and even personal training plans into the programs she develops, focusing not only on nutrition, but also on mental and physical health. She also hosts classes ranging from outdoor yoga to corporate menopause awareness.

“It sounds a bit corny, but Hero Lifestyle’s USP is ‘be your own hero,'” she says. “It’s about helping people unlock potential they don’t even know they have: don’t aspire to be like someone on Instagram who’s been Photoshopped to within an inch of their life, work to feel bright in yourself. Be your own hero, work on yourself and treat yourself with care.

“I work with people one-on-one on nutrition because you can’t exercise on a bad diet and you have to feed the body with nutrients rather than counting calories,” adds Helen. “I work with a lot of people who have food issues, so I advise them on what they’re getting into their bodies while working on fitness and mindfulness.

“It’s about lifestyle and mindset changes rather than seeing how much weight someone can lose in so many weeks – these are small changes that people can easily incorporate into their routine but that quickly become a habit change. People say I changed their lives, but they did – I just gave them the knowledge and the tools, where the power is.

From working one-on-one with people looking to improve their lives, to group yoga on the beach and delivering corporate workshops to encourage companies to be more in tune with the well-being of their staff, Helen says ‘she likes her work. “I’ll never be the next Alan Sugar, but it gives me so much joy,” she says. “I’m living the dream!”