When the message first came inviting me to speak at TEDx Cairo University, I stared at it for a long time. The red dot felt enormous, too big for me. And yet the message of my talk had been living inside me for years.
For weeks leading up to the event, my life became a rhythm of writing, rewriting, practicing, doubting, starting again. I’d test lines aloud while cooking dinner, whisper them in the car, and time my delivery between my mumsy errands. Some days the words flowed; other days I felt like I was digging so deep it was almost triggering.
It wasn’t just stage fright. It was the weight of what I was about to say.
I was standing there to tell the truth about a system I had once helped uphold – the “health” culture that praises control and restriction, celebrates smaller bodies, and quietly shames hunger. In my talk, Redefining the Journey to Wellness, I share how I grew up believing that health meant self-control, how I became a coach teaching the same ideals, and how listening to people’s real stories – the shame, the disordered eating, the exhaustion – made me question everything.
I talk about the science too – what actually creates lasting, compassionate health habits: self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, flexible goals, mindfulness, self-compassion, and support. But mostly, I talk about what it feels like to move from a life of rules to relearning how to trust my intuition again.
Those weeks of preparation mirrored the message itself. I had to practice self-compassion when I stumbled, flexibility when a section didn’t work, and mindfulness when anxiety crept in. I had to remind myself: this isn’t about perfection; it’s about much more than that. I wanted to connect with everyone who was still questioning their self-worth based on the number on the scale.
On the day of the talk, as I stepped onto the red circle, the fear didn’t disappear, but it changed shape. It became a kind of clarity. This wasn’t about me performing. It was about saying out loud what I wish someone had told me when I was 13:
You didn’t fail the diet. The diet failed you.
I delivered the talk in my mother tongue, Egyptian Arabic – the language of my childhood and my inner voice – with English subtitles so the message could travel further. It felt like finally speaking to my own people and to anyone, anywhere, who had ever felt like they were the problem.
Now that it’s live, I’ve been reflecting on the journey. How long I waited, how many times I feared it would never go up. How many drafts and late nights and quiet rehearsals it took to distill a lifetime into ten minutes. And how, even through the nerves, I kept thinking of something a dear friend once told me years ago.
We used to laugh about how overused this quote was – the one so often attributed to Gandhi – yet we kept coming back to it anyway:
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
For us, it wasn’t a slogan. It was a compass. We knew our work on this earth was to embody the change we wanted to see, even in small ways, even when it’s embarrassing, even when it’s uncomfortable.
This talk was my way of doing that.
I hope when you watch it, you feel a little less alone in your own journey. I hope it plants a seed of gentleness. And I hope it reminds you that your health isn’t a trend to follow – it’s a life to live.
