About
Maxi-Lee Machado
Certified Women’s Fasting & Hormonal Health Coach
B-BBEE Specialist
Founder, Lunar Living
Co-founder, NutriVita South Africa
Co-founder, Happy Healthy Human NPC
THE ORIGIN STORY
I am a mum of three boys. Three busy, loud, wonderful, exhausting boys who fill every room they walk into. I am also a business founder, social entrepreneur, a published author, a B-BBEE specialist who has spent over 15 years advising some of South Africa’s largest corporates. I lectured at Wits. I built things. I kept moving.
And for most of that time, I was also obese, exhausted, and completely ignoring my body — because that is what you do when you are carrying a full life and there is no time to stop.
“I was doing what most high-achieving women do: working too much, raising a family, sleeping too little, gaining weight and completely ignoring the body that was holding all of it together.”
What changed
Then I lost my mum to cancer.
She was not a distant figure or a family member I saw at Christmas. She was my person. Losing her was the kind of grief that reshapes you — that makes you sit still for the first time in years and ask what you are actually doing with your life, and with your health, and with the body that will one day simply stop if you do not start listening to it.
“Grief cracked me open. And in the crack, I found something I had been avoiding for years: the truth about my own health.”
Out of that grief came an obsession.
I started researching everything — fasting, nutrition, hormonal health, every protocol I could find. I started making cold-pressed juices in my kitchen every night after long consulting days — litres of them.
My family drank it.
My friends wanted it.
Word spread.
What started as midnight kitchen experiments born from loss became NutriVita — a social enterprise built on one mission: making healthy easy.
But it was my own body that taught me the next lesson.
I lost 45 kg through intermittent fasting. And then I started losing my hair — in clumps. My menstrual cycle stopped. I was doing everything ‘right’ according to the wellness world. But my body was shutting down.
“What I didn't know was that chronic fasting without hormonal awareness suppresses estrogen.
Without estrogen, your hair follicles get the signal to let go.
Your cycle gets the signal to pause.
Your body — intelligently, desperately — goes into survival mode.”
The Breakthrough
Then, I discovered Dr. Mindy Pelz’s work — her Fast Like a Girl methodology.
When I discovered Dr. Mindy Pelz’s work — her Fast Like a Girl methodology, her protocols for hormonal health — everything shifted. I understood for the first time what my body had been trying to tell me for years. I followed the protocols. My hair grew back. My cycle returned. My energy was better than it had been in a decade.
I became a certified Fast Like a Girl Coach. And I looked around and saw what I had been, everywhere: the high-achieving woman carrying her work, her children, her grief, her obligations — and ignoring every signal her body sent, because nobody had ever taught her to listen.
I had three boys at home, a business to run, and a hole in my chest where my mother used to be. And I had finally, finally, found the thing that had been missing.
”"Lunar Living is the programme I wish I had received before I got fat and sick. Not after.
— Maxi-Lee Machado
It is the information and education I wish someone had given my mum, and every woman like her.
It is what I now give to every working woman I can reach."
Credentials
The credentials behind the work.
Corporate & Advisory
- 15+ years advising South Africa’s largest corporates on B-BBEE transformation strategy
- Founder, ET Consult — Empowerment & Transformation Specialists (est. 2011)
- Lectured at the University of the Witwatersrand
- Author of two B-BBEE reference works published by LexisNexis
- Law degree
- Deep expertise in Skills Development, ESD, YES Programme, SED, Ownership and Management Control for large organisations and multinationals
Life, Health & Wellness
- Mum of 3 busy young boys — this work is personal, not theoretical
- Lost her mum to cancer — the grief that drives everything
- Certified Fast Like a Girl Coach — Dr. Mindy Pelz programme
- Lived experience: 45 kg weight loss, hair loss recovery, full hormonal restoration
- Extensive study of Dr. Jolene Brighten, Dr. Sara Gottfried, Lisa Mosconi PhD, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Alberto Villoldo PhD
- Co-founder, NutriVita South Africa — social enterprise, real nutrition
- Co-founder, Happy Healthy Human NPC — early childhood nutrition
- Facilitator: Lunar Living programme offered in person and online
The Mission
Wellness that ripples outward.
Lunar Living was not built to be a workshop business.
It was built to be part of something larger — a mission to make healthy easy for every woman and child, at every age, at every stage of life.
The Happy Healthy Human NPC.
Four years ago, Maxi-Lee Machado and her business partner, Xoliswa England, co-founded the Happy Healthy Human NPC — a registered South African non-profit company with one urgent mission: to get nutritious food to children who need it most.
“The state of early childhood nutrition in South Africa is one of the most urgent and invisible crises in this country. Stunting. Malnutrition. Irreversible cognitive damage — happening in children before they turn 6, before they start school, before they have any chance to catch up. We refuse to look away.”
— Maxi-Lee Machadoco-founder
One percent of every NutriVita sale is donated directly to early childhood nutrition programmes serving children ages 0–6 in disadvantaged South African communities. Not a once-a-year gesture. A standing monthly commitment.
When you book a Lunar Living workshop through NutriVita, your investment contributes to this mission. Your women’s wellness and a child’s nutrition are directly connected through the same transaction.
NutriVita South Africa.
NutriVita was born from the same question that drives every Lunar Living workshop: why is it so hard to be healthy?
Cold-pressed juices, frozen fruits, boosters, ready-to-blend smoothies — all preservative-free, additive-free, colourant-free. Straight from South African farms to you.
The social enterprise:
- 30 employees — 85% previously unemployed young women
- Active YES programme — youth employment at the core
- 72% Black owned, 31% Black-women owned, EME — Level 2 B-BBEE contributor
- Sources from local South African farmers
- 1% of all sales to the Happy Healthy Human NPC
- Founded 1 July 2020, ESD-funded
- Perfect for workplace fridges, canteens and wellness days
The product philosophy:
- No preservatives. No additives. No colourants. No compromise.
- Farm to belly — shortest route from field to body
- Frozen for freshness — not ambient for shelf life
- Cold-pressed for maximum nutritional integrity
- Learn more at nutrivita.co.za
THE SCHOOL WORKSHOPS
One corporate.
One school.
For every Lunar Living workshop booked, Maxi-Lee delivers one free session at a South African high school. Because the earlier young women understand their bodies, the less they suffer later.
“Nobody tells teenage girls about their cycles. Nobody explains how hormones affect their concentration, their mood, their weight, their skin, their relationships, and their self-worth. They find out when they're already sick, already medicated, already struggling. We can change that — one school at a time.”
