I'm Chia (Shar). Yes. Like the seed.

I’m a Certified Integrative Health Practitioner and Nutrition & Lifestyle Coach, a mum of three boys, a passionate cook and someone who genuinely cares about people.

I’m also quite a private person, so writing an About Me page is slightly ironic.

But if I’m asking women to trust me with their health and some of the more vulnerable parts of their lives, I think it’s only fair you get to know the person behind the health coach too.

So, here goes.

I was born and raised in Auckland to Vietnamese parents who came to New Zealand as refugees after the Vietnam War.

Growing up, I lived between two cultures. Vietnamese at home and Kiwi everywhere else.

I used to joke that I was a banana. Yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Probably not very politically correct these days, but there was some truth in it.

I never felt as though I completely belonged in either world.

My parents worked incredibly hard to give us opportunities they never had, something I appreciate so much more now.

But as a child, I also picked up the message that doing well mattered. Make people proud. Be good. And whatever you do, don’t disappoint anyone.

So naturally, I became a high achiever and a people pleaser.

Very useful qualities... until they’re not.

I became very good at being who I thought I was supposed to be. It took me much longer to work out who I actually was.

But there were always parts of me that felt very me.

I’ve always been creative. I played piano, studied Spatial Design and spent years working across architecture, interiors and property.

And I’ve always loved food. That part goes way back.

I’ve loved cooking for as long as I can remember. I was making dinners for my family when I was young and birthday cakes for everyone at school as a teenager.

Later, after becoming a mum, that love turned into Mighty Morsels, my little baking business making preservative and additive-free baking for children’s lunchboxes.

Food is also deeply connected to my Vietnamese heritage. It’s how we gather, celebrate and care for people.

Even now, if you come to my house for dinner, there’s a good chance I’ll put rice paper rolls in front of you because I love feeding people.

So for me, food has always been about family, culture, creativity, connection and love.

That said, my university years were a little different.  I discovered freedom and definitely made the most of it. I partied hard, ate plenty of ultra-processed food and developed digestive issues that stayed with me for more than a decade.

At the time, I didn’t really question it. I just learned to live with it and carried on.

It wasn’t until I became a mum at 28 that I started looking at health differently.

When my first son experienced ongoing health challenges, I found myself searching for answers.

I didn’t just want to deal with one symptom after another. I wanted to understand what was actually going on.

While I was trying so hard to understand his health, I wasn’t paying nearly as much attention to my own.

Between having my children, I experienced two miscarriages. I was raising three boys, running my business, managing family life and trying to be a good mum, a good partner and the person who could handle everything.

So I did what I had always done. I pushed through and kept going.

Until I couldn’t.

During a particularly stressful and depleted period, I developed pneumonia and everything stopped.

Looking back, I can see how disconnected I had become from myself.

I was so busy doing what needed to be done and looking after everyone else that I’d stopped paying attention to how I actually felt, physically and emotionally.

That experience changed something in me.

I started asking different questions.

Instead of only asking, “How do I fix this?” I wanted to understand, “Why is this happening?”

That curiosity led me to functional and integrative health and eventually to studying integrative health and nutrition myself.

And somewhere in the process of learning to listen to my body, I started listening to myself too.

That part was harder.

I began to realise there were things in my life that no supplement, diet or wellness protocol was going to fix.

I wasn’t happy.

Eventually, I made the very difficult decision to leave my marriage.

There are parts of that chapter that will always remain private because they belong to me and my family.  But it forced me to see how much of my life I had spent trying to be enough for everybody else.

Rebuilding took time.

I had to learn to trust myself again, find my confidence and work out what I actually wanted. For a lifelong people pleaser, that was more confronting than I expected.

I didn’t become a new person.

I think I became more myself.

And maybe that’s why, when a woman sits across from me now and says,

“I just don’t feel like myself anymore.”

I understand.

I know there can be a whole life sitting underneath those words.

She may be tired, overwhelmed or confused by the changes happening in her body.

She may be looking after everyone else, trying to do all the right things and quietly wondering why she still doesn’t feel right.

Often, she’s already trying really hard.

I know what that feels like.

Which is why the last thing I want to do is give her more rules, more pressure or another impossible routine to squeeze into an already full life.

I want to understand her.

What’s going on in her body, but also what’s going on in her life. What she’s carrying. What she needs. What’s realistic for her.

And importantly, how she actually wants to feel.

Because I’ve come to believe something very strongly.

Health isn’t really the end goal. Your life is.

I want women to understand their bodies, feel confident in the choices they’re making and have the energy to enjoy the people and things that matter to them.

To feel well, but also to feel connected to themselves again.

Sometimes that takes information. Sometimes it takes a plan. And sometimes it helps to have someone who listens, understands and helps you work out where to start.

I know how much that can matter.

And that’s why this work means so much to me.