How to Make A Change: How Harnessing Lifestyle Can Improve Your Health with Tobey Hill
- Dr Natalie Hutchins
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Guest Bio:
Tobey Hill is a board-certified health and wellness coach specialising in women’s health, longevity and mindset transformation. After a successful and high-intensity career as a corporate tax lawyer, Tobey made a conscious pivot to focus on health when she was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis. Drawing on her own lived experience of combining conventional medicine with lifestyle medicine, she now empowers women and men to reclaim their health through nutrition, movement, breathwork, mindfulness and micro-habits. Having worked most recently at the evidence-based longevity clinic Chi Longevity in Singapore and in her private practice, Tobey collaborates with multi-disciplinary teams to help clients build sustainable lifestyle change rooted in vision, values and balance rather than perfection.
In this episode we cover:
In this episode, Natalie speaks with health coach Tobey Hill about what it really takes to make a meaningful change in your health, especially when you’re living with a chronic health condition. Tobey shares how she used nutrition, routine and mindset shifts to support her body alongside medical care, and why true transformation starts with awareness, tiny steps and letting go of perfection.
This is an honest, practical conversation about how to begin, how to keep going, and how the smallest daily decisions can create powerful change over time.
What you’ll learn:
• How food, routine and mindset can support autoimmune health
• The difference between supporting your body vs. “going all or nothing”
• Why noticing your thoughts changes how you heal
• How to start meditation when you think you “can’t”
• The truth about consistency and tiny habits
• How to build change without abandoning conventional medicine
Timestamps:
00:00 – Welcome & intro
01:10 – Tobey’s diagnosis & early autoimmune journey: Toby describes being a young mum with two tiny children, juggling law school at night and a demanding job, when she became severely unwell.
05:35 – What macrobiotics actually meant for her: She explains how discovering macrobiotics offered a sense of control at a time when the medical plan involved lifelong steroids. Toby breaks down what macrobiotics really is, rather than the celebrity stereotype many imagine.
09:58 – Balancing motherhood, work & big health change: We talk about how she managed an all-or-nothing lifestyle shift while raising two toddlers, finishing law school and working full-time.
14:40 – Mindset, perfectionism & inner voice: Toby opens up about her perfectionism and how this inner pressure contributed to stress and illness. She explains how learning to recognise her inner critic became the first step toward loosening those patterns.
20:05 – Meditation that finally worked: She recounts years of failed attempts before finally understanding that meditation isn’t just about having “no thoughts”.
27:42 – Awareness as the real catalyst for change: Toby describes how becoming aware of her thoughts, rather than being carried away by them, allowed her to shift lifelong wiring around stress, achievement and self-worth.
32:18 – Supporting health when you’re “too busy”: We discuss how women who feel overwhelmed, overburdened and time-poor can still make meaningful changes.
36:45 – Tiny habits & building consistency: Toby explains why motivation is unreliable and why success comes from starting small, attaching habits to existing routines, celebrating wins and aligning goals with a person’s deeper values and vision for their life.
42:20 – Identity shifts after leaving a legal career: Toby opens up about the emotional upheaval of leaving a prestigious corporate role, grieving an old identity and learning to introduce herself not by title, but by the impact she now creates.
47:55 – How health coaching fits into medical care: We talk about her role as a health coach and how she supports the medical team integrate lifestyle work into medical care.
53:02 – Final takeaways & daily non-negotiables: Toby shares her two daily practices she hasn’t missed in over 15 years, plus her favourite books and her final message to listeners.
Key Takeaways
Lifestyle isn’t a replacement for medicine but it can be a powerful partner to it.
Toby’s story shows that you can stay fully engaged with your doctors and use lifestyle tools to meaningfully support your health.
Awareness of your thoughts is the foundation for change.
Recognising your inner critic, stress patterns and personality traits like perfectionism that may be impacting negatively on your health, is often the catalyst that makes all other lifestyle shifts possible.
You don’t need hours for self-care: tiny, consistent habits create momentum.
One minute of breathwork, mindful daily actions or a small routine tweak can be more effective than big, unsustainable overhauls.
Your identity is allowed to evolve.
Letting go of who you once were- a job title, a role, a narrative- doesn’t diminish you. It can be the doorway to a healthier, more aligned version of your life.
