About

Hi, I’m Natalie.

I’m the founder of The Thriving Practice. I bring lived experience and years of study to food, mind, behaviour and the question of how we live well while we are still changing.

Natalie Carter at home with The Thriving Practice sign behind her

I have lived through decades of struggling with food and weight. I have lost weight, regained it and started again more times than I can count. I know what it is like for food and body thoughts to take up far too much of a life.

I’m not a polished expert pretending I’ve got life permanently sorted. I’m a real person who loves honest conversations, walking, meditation and finding what genuinely helps in ordinary life.

I stopped looking for the next plan and began studying what sits underneath the patterns. I trained in mind-body eating and eating psychology through the Institute for the Psychology of Eating and studied meditation through the British School of Meditation. I have also invested time in nervous-system and polyvagal-informed learning, behaviour change and body image, and I am continuing my BSc (Hons) Psychology with Counselling degree.

I became less interested in telling people what to do and much more interested in one bigger question: what are you really seeking from your life?

People may come to me because of food, weight, body image, confidence or simply because life feels stuck. Food patterns can be a doorway into a much wider conversation about stress, coping, identity, relationships, purpose, confidence, pleasure and what you are really seeking from life.

I am not anti-weight-loss. You can want your body to change without losing yourself in the pursuit. My work is about looking beneath the pattern, making room for the rest of your life and finding a way forward that does not depend on being perfect.

That includes women pursuing weight loss and women using a GLP-1. I support the person alongside the body goal. I do not give you a diet plan or promise a particular result.

My purpose is to bring what I have learned into ordinary language and useful everyday practice. This is life in the middle lane: looking after yourself without making your weight your whole life.

My approach

Curious, honest and practical.

We make room for the wider context: habits, self-talk, the ways you cope, the people around you and the version of life you keep hoping will begin later.

I won’t dismiss a wish to lose weight or tell you how you should feel about your body. We’ll have a more useful conversation about what’s happening, what keeps pulling you back into the same patterns and what could help in your actual life.

Training & study

A considered, evolving practice.

Eating psychology

Certified Mind Body Eating Coach qualification, Institute for the Psychology of Eating

Meditation

Meditation teacher, British School of Meditation

Nervous system

Polyvagal-informed training with Deb Dana

Current study

BSc (Hons) Psychology with Counselling student

A clear note about scope

This work offers education, reflection, accountability and community support. It is not therapy, medical care, diagnosis or eating-disorder treatment. If specialist support would be more appropriate for what you are experiencing, I will say so honestly and encourage you to seek the right care.

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