About me
Hi,
Kia Ora,
I'm Kea.
I'm a board-certified family and lifestyle medicine physician, a personal trainer, and a mom of four.
I spent 13 years practicing in hospitals and outpatient clinics, and for most of that time I had a quiet, persistent feeling that something was off. Acute care in the US — and in a lot of the world — is genuinely impressive. If you break a leg or have a heart attack, you want to be in that system. But chronic disease is a different story, and I felt the gap every day. I was the doctor telling patients with high blood pressure and diabetes that they'd "be on these medications for the rest of your life." I was the one handing out vague advice to "change your lifestyle" without being equipped to actually show anyone how. I knew the recommendation wasn't enough. I just didn't have the tools at the time to do better.
In 2019, our family moved to New Zealand. My medical credentials weren't recognized here, and I was told the only way forward was to essentially start training over, which made my head want to explode. I tried, briefly, to find a way into the system, but a lot of things collided at once — a new country, school-age kids, a husband working long hours as an ER doctor, no support network — and in 2020 I stepped away from conventional medicine.
That's when things shifted. I certified as a personal trainer, started studying lifestyle medicine in earnest, and in 2022 earned my certification through the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine/ABLM. I spent a year coaching group fitness classes and went back to the medical council to see if there was now a path to practice as a Lifestyle Medicine doctor. There wasn't — not without paying $25k+ to repeat what is essentially residency.
So I built my own thing.
I'll be honest: starting my own business wasn't really the plan. It was more like the path that was left when every other door closed. But the more I do this work, the more I think I'm probably more useful here than I would have been inside a system that was never really set up for this kind of care anyway, and quite likely this was a blessing in disguise.
Somewhere in the middle of all of it, I became my own patient. I developed high blood pressure and high cholesterol and reversed both through mindset, movement, and nutrition. Strength training transformed my body and my confidence (shout out Burn Boot Camp!). Whole-food nutrition changed my biomarkers. I learned firsthand what works, what doesn't, and how much support a person actually needs to make changes that stick — far more than a 15-minute appointment can ever provide.
What I want people to know is this: everyone deserves access to informed, evidence-based care. And the best part of lifestyle medicine is that it lives within your own power. You don't need a prescription pad to feel better — you need a practitioner who knows the current evidence and can help you build and guide you through a plan that fits your actual life. That's the work I'm doing now.
