Success Story: Holly Shelowitz - Truckin' Away
by Holly Shelowitz

Before coming to Integrative Nutrition I was living in Manhattan working as a commercial photographer and had four books of my photography published. It was heavy-duty work that was very stressful and exhausting. My back went out completely, so that I couldn't move, twice. For twenty years I had been reading everything I could get my hands on about nutrition, health and food. Clients, friends and family were always asking me health and cooking questions. I had no intention of giving up my career because I had worked from being a starving artist to a very successful photographer, but I went to the school anyway.

One day in school Joshua said "who we are and what we do for our work shouldn't be different, because if you have become someone different at work than who you are at home, that is spiritual schizophrenia." I was fully identified with being a successful young woman photographer, but every magazine and book I read had to do with health or nutrition. It became clear that who I really am is sharing this knowledge with other people. I took a huge risk, gave up professional photography and never looked back.

My life is totally different now. I moved out of Manhattan and into the country in Upstate New York, where I always wanted to live. I am a full time holistic health counselor, seeing clients individually and in corporations, leading private and group cooking classes and teaching anywhere I can about health, food and nutrition from the perspective I learned at school. I teach classes at the Natural Gourmet on creating healthy skin from the inside out, understanding your cravings and I also just finished leading a ten month Nutrition Program for UPS drivers.

UPS wanted to provide support to some of their overweight employees and hired me to lead groups for six different divisions, each with 30-60 drivers (all men!). The drivers came on their own time at 7:30am to learn about health and nutrition. Each session had a focus, such as reading labels, learning about how sugar affects the body or how each organ works and they were so excited to be learning. They asked incredible questions, shared the information with their families and started telling other people in the company. The class kept growing. It was the most amazing thing to happen in my career so far.

Every day, I cook amazing food, read and learn about health and support people in making positive changes in their lives. My life feels very purposeful, and I never felt this way in my photography career.

To read an article published in Newsday about Holly's work with UPS, click here.