About me

Hello I'm Paula McQuillan, Functional Nutritionist, Health Coach, certified GAPS Practitioner & founder of The Nourish My Hormones Solution program. I am also a mum of two gorgeous and energetic girls, and wife to a husband who adores his family, home-cooked food and the outdoors. We are very fortunate to be living in a beautiful part of the world on the Surf Coast in Victoria, Australia. After living in Hong Kong for 14 years we truly appreciate the natural environment, clear skies and fresh air that we wake up to each day.

My passions are, and have been as long as I can remember, nutrition, wholefood cooking and chemical-free or 'clean' living. As a teen in the early 90’s . . . I planted my own herb garden, collected healthy recipes, immersed myself in books about food and nutrition and experimented on my family and friends with my food inventions and homemade beauty products! I began to educate myself about the nutrients in foods, as well as the perils of processed foods, personal and household products and the chemicals they contain.

Looking back, I know that I probably drove my family a little crazy at times. I started to get involved in the weekly food shop and would walk the aisles of the supermarket alongside my mother reading food labels and decoding additives (which of course we aim to avoid all together these days!). I also loved to cook, so I enjoyed spending time in the kitchen preparing healthy meals and treats for my family. I learned tips from my mum, a fabulous home cook, about how to adapt recipes to be healthier. With mum being a type 1 diabetic, she kept a close eye on our sugar consumption, but even so, we have certainly learnt a lot since then about how her condition could have been better managed through food choice. Mum followed the high-carb, low-fat dietary prescription back then, which we now know to be ill-advised. These days mum nourishes her body with real foods including plenty of healthy fats, and as a result her diabetes is well-controlled.  

My qualifications & experience

Essentially, I have been studying or working with food (and nutrition) for most of my life. After completing a Bachelor degree in Biological Science and a Masters in Human Nutrition at Deakin University, I worked in the weight loss industry and as a Consultant Nutritionist in Geelong & Melbourne. I married my long-term partner in 2001, and for his work moved to vibrant and exotic Hong Kong where we lived for over 14 years. I completed a postgraduate teaching degree over my first couple of years in Hong Kong and taught secondary school science and then food & nutrition alongside the most important job of all, raising my two girls :)

In 2010, in my spare time, I started up a recipe blog called 'Mixing it up HK' which was one of the first wholefood Thermomix recipe blogs. I was later invited to work for Thermomix when they commenced business operations in Hong Kong in 2013. Over 2013-2014, I returned to study and completed an Integrative Nutrition Health Coaching certification at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition New York, where I connected with leading Nutrition Scientists and experts in the field. After completing my course I began coaching clients and also worked as a Consultant Nutritionist for Hong Kong Personal Chef, (now known as Invisible Kitchen). I was also called upon to contribute to articles on various nutrition topics for two prominent Hong Kong magazines.

Over the years I have kept myself up to date with the latest in nutrition science and research, not only because it's my passion, but so I could give my children the best start I knew how. I was particularly mindful of my girls spending their early childhood living in a less than clean environment. For this reason it was my mission to work on the things I could control in our own home and reduce our overall exposure to toxins by cleaning green and providing optimal nutrition through food for my family.

In late 2014 I was very excited to return to Australia and start my own business called Nourish Me Natural, and for almost 10 years now I have been working both 1-on-1 with individuals and also with small groups inside my programs, my 10-day Real Food detox program from 2014-2020, and more recently my online 12-week program for perimenopausal women called The Nourish My Hormones Solution, providing guidance and support to assist my clients to achieve the personal nutrition and health outcomes they desire, and to be the best version of themselves.

In August 2017 I completed GAPS Practitioner training with Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride on the Gold Coast, taking my passion for nourishing the gut to the next level with a certification in gut healing and sealing to treat 'dis-ease' in the body.

In November 2019 I added a mastery certification in Functional Nutrition to my qualifications. The primary goal of functional nutrition is to address the underlying cause of any symptoms or health concerns, aiming to get to the root cause of what is not functioning optimally and preventing you from feeling your best as a bio-individual. This is about recognising the truth to every individual and not prescribing to anyone dietary theory because there is no single ‘right’ way which suits every person. It’s about taking the time to learn as much as I can about the person sitting infront of me before I make recommendations.

In late 2023 I launched my 12-week online program The Nourish My Hormones Solution. This comprehensive step-by-step plan supports perimenopausal women to sit in the driver’s seat of their own health and learn how to nourish their hormones naturally with food, nutrition and lifestyle so that they may thrive in a body free from hormonal havoc and build resilience for the longer term. To learn more I invite you to join my free Facebook community Hormone Savvy Nutrition & Lifestyle for Nutrition or to reach out to me by email.

My health story

In late 2018, at 44 years of age, I found myself struggling with what felt like perimenopausal symptoms and eventually a level of fatigue that led me to seek a like-minded health practitioner who shared my approach to healing. Together we identified, as I was beginning to suspect, that I had an autoimmune thyroid condition called Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. But I also discovered through testing, that pretty much all of my key hormones were out of whack, not just my thyroid hormones. There was in reality a hormonal storm going on inside of me which looked like perimenopause, adrenal insufficiency and a low functioning thyroid all wrapped into one.

But of course, I hadn’t arrived at this point overnight, it had taken some time, and was more like several years of feeling just not quite right. I had just been doing the best I knew how to support myself at the time. It’s all we can ever do. I had been to see my doctor in the hope of finding some answers when my symptoms were really troubling me, but unfortunately this had mostly proved futile. Thankfully, I did have my knowledge and skills as a Nutritionist which had helped me to manage my symptoms for some time, and it was also part of the reason that I had pursued an extra qualification in gut health, the other being that autoimmune conditions, which we know have their root in the gut, are rife in my family, so it was no surprise that I ended up with one really. But rewind to before I was diagnosed. . . I just kept going, I kept pushing through. . . and as a busy mum I made excuses for myself for not feeling quite right, as we do right? Until one day I just knew that something had to change, because it didn’t sit right with me that this was what this time of my life should look like, even if it was the lead up to menopause.

The turning point for me, was accepting that I could no longer do this on my own, I had struggled for too long and I needed to admit that I needed help. Just the right kind of help which I hadn’t found up until then. And while the news of having an autoimmune condition and these imbalances with my hormones was disappointing for me, and even a little embarrassing that as a Nutritionist I found myself in this situation. . . this quickly turned to feeling grateful for finally being able to unearth what was going on with me. My body had been trying to tell me for too long, for years in fact, that my hormones were struggling, and although I had sensed their struggle, I didn’t fully know how to support them. So I knew now that it was time for me to step up. 

And I knew exactly what I needed to do, science and research was my thing, and I’d always viewed myself as a lifelong learner . . . so I set out to do what came naturally to me, to do some digging into the latest science and research around hormone balance and to equip myself with the extra knowledge and know-how that I needed. I even went back to school (again) to complete a 10-month Full Body Systems mastery level immersion course through the Functional Nutrition Alliance. It was through this extra knowledge that a beautiful world of whole body understanding has truly opened up for me, reinforcing and allowing me to more fully appreciate how absolutely everything in our body is connected.

As a Functional Nutritionist, and especially since healing my own hormone imbalances and succeeding in keeping my autoimmune condition in-check without medication, I am extremely passionate about taking this approach with my clients. A functional nutrition approach allows me to dig deeper and identify ‘upstream’ imbalances which could be contributing to ‘downstream’ signs and symptoms. I work in partnership with my clients to correct these imbalances using the healing power of real food and nutrition, as well as addressing lifestyle factors.

While I have genetics at play with my autoimmune thyroid condition. I firmly believe that our genes do not define us, that we are not stuck with them and what they may or may not reveal about us, which has been evidenced in the area of epigenetics and for me personally, in how I have reduced the autoimmune attack on my thyroid significantly. Also as a woman in late perimenopause, I no longer struggle with what I call the ‘common but not normal’ symptoms that too many women report to be experiencing over this transitional time in their life. It is my passion to show women in this stage of their life, that it is completely possible to turn this experience of perimenopause (and post-menopause) around.

As you can see, nutrition is not just a career, but a lifelong passion of mine, and one which has supported me personally to heal myself, as well as to support my clients to be the best version of themselves. I work with my clients both in person and via audio and video calls to create a personalised 'roadmap to health' that suits each individuals’ unique body, lifestyle, preferences and goals. . Learn more about my unique approach and style of nutrition & health coaching here. If you're interested in learning how the health of your gut is intimately connected to that of the rest of your body, you can learn more about the GAPS approach here. Join my free Facebook community Hormone Savvy Nutrition & Lifestyle for Nutrition and learn more about my 12-week online program The Nourish My Hormones Solution here.