Powerhouse women: balancing self-care and success
By BRANDVOICE
Successful women are rewriting the wellness playbook by prioritising self-care, strategic nutrition and holistic health, explains Livia Wang, founder of Wellness Adventures.
BRANDVOICE
Life as a modern woman can be exhausting and relentless, regardless of your age and stage of life. Juggling multiple roles every day takes considerable planning and commitment, which means squeezing exercise into the daily mix can tip us over the edge.
But by reordering our priorities in life, we’re going to be far happier and lead much more fulfilled lives, according to Livia Wang, a vegan and plant-based entrepreneur who has forged a business that improves the wellbeing of women.
The Sydney-based entrepreneur founded Access Corporate in 2017, and later Wellness Adventures, to propel wellness brands into international markets. More than 50 success stories later, she now invests in, owns and leads 15 wellness businesses.
Wang is the CEO, keeping track of a business with 1000 people around the world operating in multiple time zones. She must travel one-third of her time, while also looking after children and meeting a range of expectations as a businesswoman.
She wants to lift other Australians around her but is acutely aware that women continue to be underrepresented in local leadership positions. This places further pressure on women to perform at the top of their game.
“Modern women are expected to meet multiple roles in their everyday lives and have multiple expectations from a range of people – from taking care of family, responding to constant demands from their boss and keeping up with friends and peers, which can be exhausting,” Wang says.
“Taking care of family, working full time, meeting societal expectations, raising children is hard enough in itself. Throw in the challenges of hormones, exhaustion, menopause, the ageing process and the constant need to move and exercise our bodies, and most of us have nothing left in the tank at the end of the day.”
Women juggle so much
Wang believes that reprioritising our day holds the key to being happier and healthier. She notes that making such changes is challenging at first but can quickly yield results.
“So many women have their priorities the wrong way around, particularly if they love their job. But we need to love ourselves first and realise that there’s no guilt in that,” Wang says.
Countering the rise in sedentary computer-based work, women able to maintain active lifestyles are far more capable of fulfilling the varied roles of their everyday lives. The solution to managing it all is recognising the need for additional support mechanisms, with our overall wellness closely linked with the need to stay active, Wang says.
“Women lead complex lives, and need a range of skillsets. We need to remind ourselves and each other that despite the demands on us every day, we aren’t superhuman.”
Livia Wang
“If society expects women to fulfil more leadership roles in the future, we’re going to need to make sure they are fit and healthy enough to keep up with those workplace demands.”
The role of exercise
A study published early last year (SUBS: May 2024) has shown a link between regular exercise in mid age and physical health later on, even when the exercise routine wasn’t started until the mid-50s.
From Charles Perkins Centre and University of Sydney’s School of Public Health, the study is part of a growing pool of evidence that maintaining or adopting an active lifestyle brings important benefits in physical health and physical function for women.
Women in the modern era also experience multiple nutritional deficiencies, starting with Vitamin D and iron, but extending into a range of other issues, depending on their lifestyle and diets.
“You might be eating right, but a plant-based diet only provides us with one seventh of the nutritional benefits we were getting from the same vegetables and fruit we eat today.”
“We need good nutrition to be able to carry out all the functions of our day, but the fact is that we can’t swallow 10 capsules in one day to maintain our nutrition. We also can’t cook meals with 50 different ingredients that give us the nutritional complexity that our bodies need. There are easier ways to do things,” Wang says.
By adding supplements to our daily lives, exercising and reordering our priorities, we can start to have important benefits our health and wellbeing, she says.
