From the Lab to the Mat: Mays Al Ali on Nutrition, Energy, and Holistic Health

Mays Al Ali has joined The emPOWER Breakfast community as a registered Functional Nutritionist and Naturopathic Therapist, bringing a wealth of expertise in gut health, hormone & autoimmune balancing, weight management, and liver cleansing. With a Masters in Clinical Nutrition, Mays has worked with clients across London, Mallorca, and Ibiza, and now she’s back in the UK, combining her clinical knowledge with her passion for holistic wellness.

Mays’ journey into nutrition and well-being was shaped by her own search for balance and clarity. After years of working in high-paced agency environments as an EP and TV producer, she began to burnout, travelling extensively, working long hours and not taking care of herself. She went on a yoga training in India and had an epiphany, she began immersing herself in spiritual practices around the world, she realised that nutrition, lifestyle, and energy are deeply interconnected. She pivoted her career toward evidence-based, personalised health solutions after having a health crash herself. Her own healing journey compelled her to pivot her approach, combining clinical research, functional lab testing, and genetic assessments with practical tools her clients could integrate into their daily lives.

For Mays, nutrition is not just about food; it’s about understanding your body, your energy, and your potential. Her approach helps clients address everything from gut issues and hormone & autoimmune imbalances to liver cleansing, weight management and emotional resilience. She believes that prevention is far more effective than cure: managing energy and lifestyle before reaching the brink of burnout is easier, more empowering, and far more sustainable than trying to recover after hitting a wall.

Alongside her nutrition work, Mays has been teaching yoga and meditation for over 13 years, studying deeply with spiritual masters worldwide. As a Reiki Master and Quantum Energy Healer, she integrates mind, body, and energy into a holistic framework for health, helping people not just survive, but thrive. Her retreats and workshops around the globe bring together nutrition, mindfulness, and movement, creating transformative experiences for all who attend. Mays has also recently completed a one year training with Gabor Mate on somatic therapeutic trauma coaching, allowing her to go even deeper into the psychology of healing with her clients.

Based full time in the UK now, Mays offers consultations in person, virtually worldwide, and hosts immersive wellness workshops. Her clients range from busy professionals and stressed out CEOs, to parents, creatives, and anyone looking to restore balance and vitality in their lives. Her mission is simple yet profound: to help individuals find their inner health, resilience, and confidence—through practical, evidence-backed, and holistic methods.

To learn more about her journey, and personal pivot to nutrition, and her current work, we asked Mays a few questions:

What inspired you to move from a more conventional career path to nutrition and holistic wellness?

I started my career in the fast-paced world of advertising, but 18 years in I found myself constantly running on empty.. stressed, disconnected from my body, and masking symptoms instead of listening to them. That experience planted the seed that there must be another way. What was missing was service and helping others, this was the key to the start of my healing journey. When I discovered functional nutrition and holistic healing, it felt like coming home. I wanted to help people avoid the burnout and imbalance I went through, and to guide them towards a life of vitality, balance, and self-connection.

How did your own experiences with stress and energy management shape your approach?

Coming from an extremely traumatic childhood, I created a high paced stressful life around me that I could survive in, but I was far from thriving. Living with high stress and energy crashes taught me that healing isn’t just about food on your plate, it's about regulating the nervous system, emotions, sleep, movement, and developing a spiritual connection. That’s why my approach when working 1-1 always blends nutrition with tools like yoga, breathwork, and trauma-informed somatic practices. They don’t just restore the body, they teach resilience, self-regulation, and self-compassion, which are often the missing links in lasting health.

What was the biggest challenge in pivoting your career toward nutrition and holistic health?

The biggest challenge was trusting myself. My higher power, intuition and inner voice was guiding me and I just had to surrender, listen and trust that this was my calling. Walking away from a secure, well paid, “successful” career where being a producer was my identity into the unknown was a little scary. But my body made it clear. if I didn’t change, I’d burn out completely. That leap into the unknown ended up being the most liberating decision I’ve ever made. It taught me that with transformation comes courage and faith and I've never looked back since.

Can you explain how you combine clinical nutrition with yoga, meditation, and somatic energy healing?

For me, they’re not separate, they're different languages of the same truth. Clinical nutrition gives us the science and the data: the lab tests, the biochemical pathways, the root causes. Yoga, meditation, and somatic trauma & energy work support the integration: calming the nervous system, releasing stored trauma, and reconnecting people to their bodies. The mind and body are interlinked, you simply cannot heal one without the other. And when you bring both together, the healing is deeper, faster, and far more sustainable.

How do you approach personalised nutrition plans for clients?

I never hand out cookie-cutter diets, there is no one size fits all model, that's why the way I work with personalised nutrition is so healing as it's so individual… I listen deeply to each person’s story, I review their symptoms and lab results, and I consider a whole 360 approach - not just their biology but also their lifestyle, emotional needs, and capacity for change. Then I design a step-by-step plan that feels both supportive and realistic. The plan is always flexible and it evolves as my client evolves. This way of working is sadly so different from modern medicine which asks how can I mask the symptoms, instead of how I work which is, what is the root cause and how can we heal from root upwards, instead of putting a bandaid on.

What role does gut health play in overall well-being, and why is it often overlooked?

Gut health is foundational. It affects everything; hormones, immunity, energy, even mood and mental health. Yet it’s often overlooked because conventional medicine tends to treat symptoms in isolation, rather than seeing the gut as the root system of the body. I always tell my clients: when you heal your gut, you create ripple effects of healing everywhere else.

How do you help clients balance energy and prevent burnout before it becomes a problem?

As mentioned, I always look at a whole 360 approach to healing. I work with detailed health and lifestyle questionnaires plus weekly goal setting questionnaires that all my clients fill out, plus detailed food diaries which helps me link up symptoms with food/lifestyles. We start by tuning into the body's signals,  because burnout doesn’t happen overnight. I teach clients to notice the whispers before they become screams: the afternoon crashes, the anxiety, the cravings. Then we support energy through nutrition, blood sugar balance, gut and hormone supplement support and functional testing and bloodwork analysis, but also through nervous system downregulation practices, somatic inner child self love tools, and rest rituals. Burnout prevention is as much about self-worth as it is about supplements.

What inspired your move back to the UK, and how has that changed your practice?

Moving back was about grounding and a true homecoming. After 5 years on the Balearic islands, my heart was calling me home - sometimes it takes a step away to help you realise what you have and everything is here for me in London, family, community, work, deep friendships, culture, creativity - it's all in the flow for me here. My heart led me back home and I followed - also realising that my work is much more needed here, people are sicker and more stressed and ultimately I am here to serve and heal. Plus my father is sick with Alzheimers and my family needed me. Being back in the UK has also expanded my practice into more corporate wellness and community-based work bringing functional medicine and holistic tools into spaces where stress and burnout are so common.

Can you share a moment when your work had a particularly transformative impact on a client?

Sandy came to me with severe gut issues, crippling fatigue, and a sense of hopelessness. She said to me “I am on the floor and I cannot carry on anymore” Sadly this is a common statement I hear in the clinic from stressed out mums and CEOs! But there is always hope -  through personalised nutrition and regular weekly somatic coaching plus liver cleanse and detox support, and lots of healing downregulating meditation/yoga/breathwork, Sandy not only healed her gut but also reconnected with her sense of joy and purpose. She told me, “I feel like I’ve got my life back.” Moments like that remind me why I do this work. It's never just about the symptoms, it’s about giving my lovely clients their freedom and vitality back so they are thriving instead of surviving.

What advice would you give someone who wants to take control of their health but feels overwhelmed?

Start small, start gentle. You don’t need to overhaul your whole life overnight. That just creates more stress. Begin with one shift: maybe balancing your breakfast with more protein, upping fibre, drinking more water, or adding a five-minute breath practice. Every small step is a signal to your body and your mind: “I am worthy of care.” Over time, those small steps build into transformation. The other best advice is to invest in YOU. I personally have 3-4 coaches I'm working with at any one time! I practise what i preach attending retreats and working 1-1 with support for my goals - I cant recommend doing the same for you - everyone needs support to reach their goals and everyone needs time out to heal - thats why I cant recommend enough working 1-1 with me and/or joining one of my magical healing retreats. I am always available for a complementary health and wellbeing assessment or retreat attendance call! Just contact me/Athene to find out more.

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Mays’ combination of science, holistic health, and energy-focused practices brings a unique perspective to the emPOWER community. Her work reminds us that health is not just the absence of illness, but the presence of vitality, balance, and inner resilience.

To learn more about how you can integrate workshop sessions with Mays within the workplace contact athene@theempowerbreakfast.co.uk.

Information on workshops and classes to follow.

Team emPOWER