Hanna Teodorovych

“It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.”

This quote by 19th century French writer Guy de Maupassant has long guided my cognitive evolution, and ideologically underpins my desire to pursue my professional and personal passions.

My name is Hanna Teodorovych. I was born in Ukraine to two physicians. At a young age they taught me the importance of public service as well as connection to humans, nature and animals. As a girl, I always wanted to help wounded animals and my days were filled with sports and outdoor activities.

My mind belongs to science and medicine, and thus, I followed the footsteps of my parents. My career began as a Registered Nurse and continued into training as a Medical Doctor at the University of Warsaw, Poland. All of my career choices were largely motivated by the desire to directly impact people’s lives. In 2018, my professional path took me to a career in a pharmaceutical company in the obesity space. This is where I began to learn the importance our brains play in weight management and the multifactorial and complex nature of obesity.

My heart, however, will always be captured by my love for fitness, dogs and art. These three things truly make me feel alive and bring out the deepest, most genuine parts of my inner self.

From working out alongside my friends, to independent learning about specific training approaches, my passion for fitness has grown over the years and in 2018 I decided to compete in bodybuilding competitions. In my second year of competing, I became a three-time National gold medalist and a silver North American medalist. Despite the immense amount of evolution I went through while competing, these achievements came with a great cost of hormonal imbalance, severely impaired metabolism, body dysmorphia, and an unhealthy relationship with food. No matter how hard I worked out or how little I ate, my body did not listen and my head was flooded with self-doubt and negative conversations I had with myself. This was a time of great challenges and growth in my athletic and medical career, when the well-known basics of training and nutrition were no longer working. I developed a new empathy and understanding for people who struggle with the yo-yo effect of weight loss, abnormal physiological states, and unhealthy eating patterns. This led me to re-evaluate and improve my approach to training and weight loss. I learned about the importance of our minds in the process of healthy living and began to incorporate it in my personal life.