Yoga Instructor, Holistic Health Coach, M4: Clare Brady Fits it All In [Show Summary]

Clare Brady is currently a fourth year med student at St. Louis University, though she got to med school in a roundabout way. During her recovery from an eating disorder in college, she learned a lot about the human body and found it fascinating. While she began her career in marketing, which her degree was in, she maintained her interest in health and wellbeing through an integrative nutrition program, which helped her realize that a career in medicine was really the right move for her. After graduating from UVA’s postbac program, she began medical school at St. Louis University in 2015. In addition to her studies, she manages to find time to teach yoga, run a beauty counter business, and blog.

Interview with Clare Brady, M4 at St. Louis University School of Medicine [Show Notes]

Can you tell us about your background? Where you grew up? What do you like to do for fun? [1:57]

I grew up in St. Louis, and I am the middle child with older and younger brothers. Growing up I did Irish dance and music – there is a big Irish heritage in my family – and I did that all through high school. I went to a private all-girls high school and was a very type-A studious kid and then went on to Notre Dame where my dad went. I was very unsure of what I wanted to do, but ended up majoring in marketing and design. After school I had a job in marketing and then advertising, and I also am into yoga and fitness. I teach yoga, I love all forms of exercise and healthy eating, and I do keep myself pretty busy with yoga teaching, blogging, and school. I like to travel as well.

How did you go from an undergrad degree in marketing and design in 2010 to starting a post-bac program in 2013? [3:22]

I started to get interested in health during my senior year in college. I was recovering from an eating disorder that started when I was 17 and continued through the middle of college. A big part of my recovery was learning about my body and what the eating disorder was doing to my body, and I found it fascinating. I started getting interested in proper nutrition and health. At the time I was a senior, finishing up my marketing degree, and already had taken a job, so it was too late to make a career change at that point. When I started working fulltime in business I wanted something that could further my interest in that area, so that is when I enrolled in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, which is a one-year online program that teaches you all about different aspects of holistic health and nutrition and sets you up to be a holistic health coach, which many people do as a job when they are done. I didn’t intend to do that, I just wanted the education. Through my blog I did get a lot of requests for health coaching, many who were struggling with eating disorders, and I started taking on a few clients after work. I really loved these pseudo patient/doctor relationships but would get frustrated by my limitations as a health coach. These people often needed to go to their doctors to get answers to questions I didn’t feel comfortable talking about without more education.

At the same time I was getting a little frustrated with my marketing and advertising jobs – I wasn’t feeling stimulated or passionate, and I didn’t see myself getting there in the future in that field. I had reached a point where I was either going to change jobs or change careers, and I looked at a lot of different things – nutrition, clinical psychology, nursing, PA, and looked at education requirements. I didn’t think I could do a medical degree since I hadn’t taken a science class since high school. It was actually a family friend who mentioned a