I Was Too Zonked to Remember My Own Livestream. 'Old Me' Would Never Have Let It Go.

Coaching, capacity, and who's actually the expert on your life.

I finally did the thing I’ve been dreaming about for months: I stopped moving.

After 6 months of packing and unpacking and working out which adapter goes in which wall, Liam and I landed in Mexico City for a full month!

A full month with the same Airbnb, the same morning walk, the same gym, the same Walmart Express, the same café across the road.

And I love it here. I had really high expectations and CDMX has cleared every single one of them.

The World Cup vibe is electric, the city is beautiful, the people are so warm and fun and kind, and the food. THE FOOD! I could write you 5,000 words on the tacos alone but you’d probably quietly unsubscribe, so I’ll restrain myself.

There’s just 1 thing I did NOT see coming. The altitude!

I genuinely didn’t expect it. CDMX sits around 2,240 metres, which is high, yes, but nothing next to somewhere like Cusco (where we’ll be in a few weeks).

I’m fit, I’m strong, I assumed I’d be totally fine.

Instead I’ve spent the past week lethargic AF, foggy, heavy legs, out of breath from simple movement.

I’ve been so zonked that I have only a hazy memory of my work calls, a couple of coaching calls, and an ENTIRE Substack Live.

A whole live. I hosted it, I was present, I have the recording so I know i was there, and I could not tell you 90% of what came out of my mouth.

(to the absolute legends who showed up and stayed to the very end: you are my rock in my moments of self-doubt, and yes, I am re-recording the session this week so the replay can star a version of me who appears to be alive 😂)

Now, the old me, pre-2023 me, would have done one of 2 things:

Powered straight through it, running on caffeine and denial , with too much red wine most evenings, going out when I had nothing left, then wondering why I felt worse. And do this on a loop over and over again.

Or worse, I read the flatness as a kind of moral failing, proof that I was undisciplined and falling behind, and I bullied myself for not keeping up with a plan I had made back when I had more energy in the tank.

What I did instead was quieter, and honestly it took me YEARS to learn: I backed my own judgement over the plan’s.

A calendar I’d filled in weeks ago, back when I had working lungs, was telling me to keep going. But I was the one actually living in this body at 30%, so I let myself, not the calendar, make the call. I eased off, walked slowly, dropped the workouts, and re-recorded the live rather than forcing it.

That sounds like a small thing, but I promise you it’s the whole entire thing.

Because this is what coaching is really about, and it’s sitting right there in the word Unwritten. You are the author of your own story, and the expert on your own life. Not me, and not your fitness tracker, your protocol, social media, or that dude on the podcast either. The whole foundation this work is built on is that you already hold the answers.

My real job is to ask the question you haven’t thought to ask yourself, then shut up while you answer it. Done well, you say something out loud that you didn’t know you knew.

And it’s rarely about something as obvious as rest. It’s the sleep you keep sacrificing, the training that stopped fitting your life, the eating that’s quietly become a second job, the boundary you can’t seem to hold. The topic is different every time. The move, you arriving at your own answer, is not.

And this, exactly here, is where the wellness industry has its hand in your pocket.

The entire business model depends on you not trusting yourself. On you believing the real expertise lives in the next purchase, the better app, the next “30-day programme”, the stricter regime, the influencer who has supposedly cracked a code your own body can’t.

Every protocol sold as the fix is whispering the same thing: you are not the authority on you. Someone else is, someone who knows better what you need, all payment methods accepted.

Coaching makes the opposite assumption. That you already know far more than you’ve been allowed to believe, and that you’ve simply been talked out of trusting it, over and over, by people with something to sell.

And honestly? I watch creators who started around the same time I did, now way further along and way more successful than me, well at least on paper. Building a business on integrity is not always easy. Some days it is sooooo tempting to think, fuck it, I’ll package up some bullshit and watch it outsell the real thing.

But I don’t, and I won’t. I actually believe this, deeply, that you are the author of your own story and you already know more than the industry has let you believe. So I’ll keep saying it, slower growth and all. The real thing is the only thing I’m willing to put my name on.

It’s also why my MAKE SPACE Method™ opens with subtraction instead of addition. Adding more is the industry’s move, and it assumes the answer is out there in one more thing you haven’t bought yet.

Making space assumes the opposite: that you already have most of what you need, and it’s just buried under all the advice, apps and rules you’ve been sold. (I forgot my own first rule here, for the record. It took altitude flattening me to remember it. The irony is not lost on me my friend)

So here are 2 questions worth sitting with this week, wherever you are and whatever your oxygen situation.

1. What’s 1 area of your life where you’ve quietly handed over the pen?

One corner of your health, your fitness, your wellbeing, where you’re following a plan, a number, a rule, or a voice that isn’t yours, even though some part of you suspects it doesn’t fit the life you’re actually living.

Then ask yourself the question I asked myself this week, flat on the sofa in CDMX with the football on:

2. If I genuinely trusted that I’m the expert on my own life, what would I do differently?

Maybe the answer arrives straight away. Maybe it doesn’t, because it is genuinely hard to see your own life clearly from the inside, and close to impossible when you’re running on empty. That’s not you failing. That’s just the view from in here.

And it’s the whole reason coaching exists.

You can absolutely do this on your own, and I hope you do. But it’s hard to read a room you’re standing in the middle of, especially when you’re fried.

That’s all a coach is: a second pair of eyes on your own life, asking the questions you wouldn’t think to, until the answer you couldn’t find is suddenly so so obvious.

You don’t leave with my answers. You leave with yours, plus a way of looking after yourself that actually fits your real life, not one more plan you’ll abandon by July.

That’s the work I do 1:1.

I’m still totally zonked, and the altitude and I remain in active negotiations. But I’m tired in a way I’m allowing, rather than tired in a way I’m fighting and judging and trying to optimise into submission.

Whatever your version of that calendar is, the plan, the tracker, the rule you keep dutifully obeying even though it doesn’t fit, you are allowed to overrule it.

Take the pen back. It was always yours.

With love from Mexico City (where I’m walking slowly, eating spectacularly, and letting my lungs catch up in their own time),

Noemie X

P.S. If you want a hand with it, that’s exactly what Summer-Proof 1:1 Coaching is! Over 4 weeks, we build you a way of looking after yourself that survives real life, the busy weeks, the travel, the weeks you’ve got nothing left, so you stop starting over every single Monday. You walk away with a plan built around your actual life, not someone else’s morning routine, and the confidence to trust it. 4 spots, $987, open until 30 June so we can do the sessions before I head to Machu Picchu in August. The first step is just a free 15-minute call to see if it’s a fit. ➡️ Book a discovery call here.

P.P.S. The re-recorded replay of last week’s workshop, The Bare Minimum Habit Plan, goes up this week (now starring a version of me who has clearly slept!) It’s the smallest version of looking after yourself that survives your actual summer, worksheet included. Keep an eye out here Friday morning.

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Key Source

The coaching approach here is built on motivational interviewing, the client-centred method from Miller & Rollnick that draws out your own reasons for change rather than instructing you. For a recent review of the evidence across diet, physical activity and other health behaviours, see Motivational Interviewing to Promote Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors (2025).

Noemie Mooney is an ACE Certified Health Coach, ICF-trained Behaviour Change Specialist, certified yoga instructor, and creator of the MAKE SPACE Method™. Trained in design thinking at the Stanford d.school, she writes Unwritten Potential, a newsletter about evidence-based wellbeing, sustainable habits, mental wellbeing, and health behaviour change for smart, health-curious people who want to feel their best without making it a full-time job.

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