The Tribune

By ALESHA CADET

Tribune Features Reporter

acadet@tribunemedia.net

NUTRITIONIST Sha King believes what started four years ago as a small home business has turned into a full-blown movement.

Ms King has gone from launching a YouTube channel to launching herself to the world.

“Using social media, I created my YouTube channel, Eat Emotionally Well, to showcase more of my eating style for people watching to learn. I hosted and coached private ‘un-cooking’ classes in my very own kitchen to showcase my concept of the eat emotionally well lifestyle," said Ms King.

"Ending a 25-year marriage, I needed to eat and take care of myself. I am a mother of five and my children were, and are, my biggest inspiration. My mom and sister said to me, you can do this and that motivated me to stop crying and start the Eat Emotionally Well brand."

During this time, Ms King said she feels like God gave her a new head start, and she is really enjoying being an entrepreneur.

“I have a multi-dimensional eating and lifestyle brand. I currently offer private nutrition coaching at my residence out west, Cable Beach. A number of my inspired spice blends and gourmet salts, which I use when teaching my clients, are now available for retail purchase. One of my favourite things to do is create foods from an ingredient a client says they don’t practically like. One of my first goals as a nutritionist is to help my client improve their relationship with food,” said Ms King.

She said whenever she is making a new cooking blend, her goal is to always use fresh, organic, free of pesticides and herbicides ingredients locally sourced whenever possible. For her, this is the pathway to eating emotionally well intentionally.

She said: “No matter how successful we are, our emotional and physical health and well being are most important. Watching the process of someone’s health return is what I have grown to love and appreciate most about this field. What I can tell you today is that I have a few influences in my life. Firstly my grandmother Olgamae Thompson, she really was my first childhood lesson in 'eating from the earth'. One of the things she would say often was that if you take care of mother nature, mother nature would take care of you. She would always say to me I was born for greatness.

"My mom, Sandra Smith Thompson, is a power house of creativity. She has a spirit of never giving up no matter what and she inspires me always. She is also an entrepreneur of 70 years plus. And then my dad, Craven Thompson, he is now gone, and was one of the greatness chefs and cooks I knew. Watching him in the kitchen as an adult, I was always blown away how he could use such bad ingredients and the food was good. This inspired me to create good tasting food like my dad, but with a major difference, using good, mostly raw ingredients to create the Eat Emotionally Well Brand."

She recalled a 2015 experience when she created and implemented a five-year 'Be a Healthier You’ Campaign at the Stapledon School for children with special needs. Her goal was to get the children to eat more fruits and vegetables, using her un-cooking and blending techniques.

“There was this one student who would only often eat noodles and drink juice. Mostly everyone at the school didn’t think I would get him to eat the kind of food I made, and within the first three months of the campaign, he was in and asking for more. Today he eats a whole lot more variety of foods. This is just one of the eat emotionally well memorable moments. Another one of my memorable clients was a gentleman who was recently divorced and said he wanted a personal nutritionist to help him change how he ate. He said he was ready and was very determined to change his eating ways. We started in January, and eight months later we celebrated his birth in August with an eat emotionally well chocolate cake and he is 100lbs lighter,” said Ms King.

She said adapting her brand due to the global pandemic and social distance practices was an easy transition for her, as she is now spending a lot of time on virtual platforms with clients. Also when visiting a client’s home or having them visit hers, the space adheres to the new protocols and guidelines.

She said: “I am really encouraged even more so now, as a lot more Bahamians are reaching out to me for help to turn their health and weight around using my unique nutrition concept, eat emotionally well. Especially now, keeping your immune system healthy and releasing stress weight from all of the emotional eating has become priority. Going forward, I am excited about my new launch of a very old classic 'super food', seamoss. Seamoss has so many wonderful health and weight loss benefits. I have watched how it changed and transformed my clients’ weight and taste buds to help them crave less sugar, and get rid of mucus congestion.

"In 2019, I went on a quest to make a seamoss product that smells great, tastes good, easy to use and of course with good ingredients. It became very important to me that I needed more Bahamians to experience the amazing healing and restorative benefits of this 'superfood' seamoss. And additionally it’s the perfect weight loss food, when taken with a nutritional protocol. In June 2020 during COVID-19, I successfully launched this new taste of seamoss, in an easy to use gel, with 3 delicious flavours: Mint Majesty, Spiced Fusion and just launched, in August, our Summer flavour Mango Splash. In the Fall we will launch the 'glowing skin' seamoss gel."