Today we’d like to introduce you to Alix West Denholm.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’ve been interested in health and wellness for as long as I can remember, long before it became the industry it is today. Growing up in Connecticut, wellness in our house wasn’t overly complicated or trendy; it was simply part of everyday life. My mom cooked dinner every night with clean, whole ingredients and taught me to listen to my intuition, while my dad always ingrained sleep and discipline, which directly impacted well-being. Looking back, those were probably my first introductions to the idea that wellness isn’t about perfection, it’s about foundation.
I was also always active. I played a lot of sports growing up, lacrosse, tennis, soccer, field hockey, squash, golf, even fencing at one point. Fitness was less about appearance and more about structure, confidence, stress relief, and mental clarity. Movement was always the thing that grounded me.
I eventually moved across the country to attend the University of Southern California, and living in Los Angeles completely expanded my perspective on wellness. At the time, I thought I had it figured out, green juices, hot yoga, sauna sessions, supplements, intense workouts. Even during college, I was always trying to maximize my time and energy while balancing school, internships, fitness, and a social life. I laugh now because I genuinely thought sweating out a hangover and drinking celery juice was peak wellness.
Before fully entering the PR world, I spent time working in fashion PR with brands like Tory Burch and CHANEL while commuting from Connecticut into New York City. I was the girl walking from Grand Central to the office in heels because I wanted to fit movement into my day however I could. Looking back, even then I was trying to figure out how to balance ambition, efficiency, wellness, and a demanding schedule without really realizing it.
After graduating, I began building my career in luxury real estate and hospitality PR, where I still work full-time today. Agency life is incredibly rewarding, but it’s also intense and fast-paced. I genuinely love the creativity, storytelling, relationships, and strategy behind the work, but I also started realizing how difficult it was for people to maintain their health while operating at a high level professionally.
At the same time, friends, family, and even coworkers were coming to me with wellness questions. What supplement brands do you actually trust? What skincare products are worth it? How do I improve my sleep? What biomarkers should I ask my doctor to test? It was always happening naturally. They knew how much I loved wellness, and just how much time I spent reading and researching.
Then COVID hit, and for the first time, I had the space to really deepen my education around something I had always been passionate about. During that period, I enrolled at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and studied holistic health, nutrition, and client empowerment. PR by day, school by night. That experience changed everything for me because it helped me realize wellness wasn’t just an interest; it was something I genuinely felt called toward.
At the same time, I was still climbing the ladder in PR. I was getting promoted, leading high-end accounts, helping open our agency’s South Florida office, and continuing to build a career I was proud of. For a while, I tried balancing both worlds by health coaching on the side, but eventually I burned out trying to do everything at once.
Ironically, that burnout became one of the most important parts of my story.
I started realizing that so much of the wellness industry had become overcomplicated and disconnected from reality. I had spent years trying everything, from trendy treatments and expensive practitioners in Los Angeles to every wellness tool imaginable, and yet the things that actually moved the needle were often the basics: sleep, nervous system regulation, quality food, movement, sunlight, stress management, community, and slowing down enough to listen to your body.
That perspective became even clearer after marrying my best friend and moving to West Palm Beach. The move felt like a reset. I started reconnecting with a more grounded version of wellness, one centered around balance, nature, intentionality, and sustainability rather than extremes.
That’s really where Wellness by West was born.
I wanted to create the kind of platform I felt was missing online: one that made wellness feel approachable, trustworthy, elevated, and realistic for ambitious women balancing careers, relationships, goals, stress, and real life. I think the word “wellness” has become incredibly diluted over the last few years. There’s so much fear-based marketing, greenwashing, and pressure to constantly buy more, optimize more, and do more.
What I’ve learned through my own journey is that the fundamentals are still the most powerful things we have access to, sleep, movement, breathwork, sunlight, quality ingredients, nervous system support, and creating routines that actually work for your lifestyle. Anything else is just extra and a fun hobby of mine.
Today, Wellness by West is centered around helping busy women cut through the noise. Whether I’m sharing wellness discoveries, vetted products, realistic routines, or honest perspectives, the goal is always the same: helping women feel better without making wellness feel overwhelming or unattainable. I want people to know you do not have to choose between being ambitious and being well. You can build a full, successful life and still take care of yourself in the process.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Definitely not, and honestly, I think that’s part of why Wellness by West resonates with both people and brands. It was never built from a place of perfection; it was built in real time while navigating a demanding career, burnout, growth, and figuring things out myself, just like my audience.
One of the biggest challenges has been building Wellness by West while still working full-time in PR. There are so many things I want to do and ideas I have but not enough time in the nights and on the weekends. There’s often this narrative online that wellness means leaving corporate life behind or turning wellness into your entire identity, but that’s never been my reality. I genuinely love my career and the fast-paced environment I work in, but learning how to balance ambition with well-being has been an ongoing process and a process that I feel makes me relatable.
There were periods where I was trying to do everything at once: long hours, health coaching, content creation, studying wellness, traveling, maintaining relationships, and constantly feeling pressure to keep producing online. Even weekends stopped feeling restorative. Eventually, I realized that burnout can still exist even when your life outwardly looks “healthy.”
Another challenge has been navigating the wellness industry itself. Wellness has become incredibly commercialized, and there’s so much misinformation, fear-based marketing, greenwashing, and pressure to constantly optimize yourself that it can leave people feeling more anxious than empowered. Somewhere along the way, wellness became associated with extremes instead of fundamentals.
Through my own experiences, I started realizing how disconnected parts of our healthcare system can feel, too. Nutrition, sleep, stress, movement, environment, and nervous system health impact nearly everything, yet they’re often treated separately instead of holistically. I’ve had wellness practitioners spend more time understanding my lifestyle and history than traditional appointments focused solely on symptoms. That doesn’t mean rejecting modern medicine, it means realizing how important it is to advocate for yourself, ask questions, stay curious, and pay attention to your body instead of blindly following trends or waiting for someone else to have all the answers.
I’ve also had to learn how to balance authenticity with privacy, which is something I think a lot of people underestimate when building a platform online. Wellness is deeply personal, and while I always want Wellness by West to feel honest and relatable, I’ve learned that not every experience needs to be shared in real time. There’s a difference between connection and overexposure. Some of the most important growth in my life has happened quietly, and learning to protect certain parts of myself while still showing up authentically has been incredibly important.
Personally, some of the more difficult seasons of my life taught me the most. Burnout, stress, moving across the country multiple times and even internationally, navigating health challenges, and learning how much your nervous system impacts every area of your life completely shifted my understanding of wellness. It stopped being about aesthetics or trying to “perfect” myself and became much more about resilience, self-awareness, energy, and sustainability.
I think the biggest lesson through all of it has been realizing that wellness is not about perfection, it’s about creating habits, routines, and environments that support you through every season of life. My twin sister always reminds me – small, simple steps – and that is what I abide by. I’m still learning, still evolving, and I think that’s what makes Wellness by West feel relatable. I never want to position myself as someone who has everything figured out. I want people to feel like they can grow alongside me.
We’ve been impressed with Wellness by West, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Wellness by West is a wellness platform and edit focused on simplifying wellness for busy women. At its core, the brand exists to help people cut through the noise and make more informed, realistic decisions about their health and well-being without feeling overwhelmed by trends, fear-based marketing, or the pressure to live a “perfect” wellness lifestyle.
What really sets Wellness by West apart is that it was built through the lens of someone still actively living a very full, ambitious life. I still work full-time in luxury real estate and hospitality PR, so the content and recommendations always come from a place of practicality and real-life integration. I understand what it feels like to balance deadlines, travel, stress, relationships, workouts, social commitments, and personal well-being all at once because I’m navigating it too.
My brand specializes in approachable, vetted wellness recommendations across areas like clean products, nervous system support, recovery tools, mobility, hormone health, non-toxic living, skincare, nutrition, sleep, and lifestyle habits that genuinely improve quality of life. I spend an incredible amount of time researching brands, ingredients, trusted practitioners, wellness technologies, and trends before ever sharing them because trust is extremely important to me. I never want people to feel like they’re being sold to; I want them to feel informed so they know what tools exist, have the information to make educated decisions, and then determine what works for them.
I also think people connect with the fact that I’m not trying to position wellness as something unattainable or overly clinical. Wellness by West blends evidence-backed wellness with a more grounded, elevated lifestyle perspective. It’s meant to inspire, not lecture. To me, wellness is about creating a life that supports you physically, mentally, and emotionally. And a life that works for YOU. We are all bio-individual and no routine should look the same. But I want my audience and peers to know what exists out there.
Another thing that differentiates the brand is my honesty around the wellness industry itself. I’m very aware of how diluted wellness has become online. There’s a lot of greenwashing, misinformation, trend-chasing, and overconsumption disguised as health. I’ve certainly been a victim of that. Wellness by West was intentionally built to push back against that by reminding people that often the most impactful wellness practices are also the most foundational: sleep, movement, sunlight, stress management, quality ingredients, community, and nervous system regulation.
Brand-wise, I’m probably most proud of the trust and community that’s been built organically and the like-minded people I have met along the way. The platform grows because people genuinely connect with the message of being “busy but well.” I hear from so many women who are in my shoes and feel relieved to see wellness discussed in a way that feels realistic instead of intimidating or judgmental. That means more to me than numbers ever could.
I’m also incredibly proud that Wellness by West has started attracting partnerships with brands and allowed me to discover ones that genuinely align with my values, brands focused on ingredient integrity, transparency, non-toxic living, and products that actually improve people’s lives rather than simply capitalizing on wellness trends and people’s lack of time for the proper education. I’m very intentional about who I work with because protecting the trust of my audience will always matter more than quick growth. I’ve turned down multiple paid partnerships, just like any other genuine business, because I know that will ruin what I have worked so hard to build. Just like how certain brands choose to remain independently owned to maintain conscious sourcing, I will never choose money over my audience’s trust.
Ultimately, I want readers, and especially women, to know that Wellness by West is not about perfection or selling an unrealistic lifestyle. It’s about helping people feel empowered, informed, and supported while building healthier routines that make you look and feel good, as well as fit into real life. My goal is for wellness to feel less intimidating, more trustworthy, and actually sustainable for the modern woman. I think of myself as the big sister who wants my audience to learn from my trial and errors – then find what works for them.
What matters most to you?
What matters most to me is thinking for myself, living with intention and helping other women realize they do not have to lose themselves in the process of building a successful life.
I think for a long time, especially in ambitious environments, there’s this underlying belief that burnout is normal, stress is a badge of honor, and constantly running on empty is just part of being successful. I bought into that for years. But over time, I realized that the quality of your life is ultimately shaped by the things happening quietly in the background: your health, your nervous system, your relationships, your routines, your environment, your mindset, and how connected you feel to yourself day to day.
That shift in perspective changed everything for me.
What matters most to me now is creating a life that feels sustainable, grounded, and aligned, where ambition and well-being can coexist. I care deeply about redefining wellness in a way that feels realistic for modern women. I am not “influencing” full-time, I have a job that I am committed to, just like my followers. You should be able to build a career, have goals, love fashion and beauty, and travel and beautiful experiences, while also prioritizing your health and protecting your peace. There are incredible brands and businesses like holistic hair salons or posture-improving mouthguards that most don’t even know exist, and I want to help these be discovered. I never want Wellness by West to feel disconnected from real life and tell you that you shouldn’t be highlighting your hair.
I also care deeply about integrity and discernment. We live in a world where people are constantly being sold quick fixes, trends, and fear. One of the core values behind Wellness by West is helping people reconnect with what actually matters and what truly moves the needle. Sometimes that’s not another product; it’s sleep, sunlight, boundaries, community, movement, purpose, or learning how to regulate your nervous system. I think people are craving that reminder right now.
Another thing that matters to me is curiosity and staying open to growth. I never want to position myself as someone who has everything figured out. Some of the most meaningful lessons in my life have come from being humbled, changing my perspective, or realizing there’s still so much to learn. Wellness by West has evolved alongside me, and I think that’s why the community feels so connected to it. It’s not built on perfection; it’s built on honesty, evolution, and shared experience. Cold plunges used to be a part of my daily routine, and I am the first to admit that while they can be beneficial, if you are dealing with high stress, they may not be the best tool.
And beyond wellness itself, I care about creating impact through trust. Whether it’s a recommendation, a partnership, a conversation, or a piece of content, I want people to feel like there’s thoughtfulness and intention behind it. In a very noisy world, I think trust and authenticity have become some of the most valuable things a brand can have.
At the end of the day, I want people to walk away from Wellness by West feeling inspired, calmer, more informed, more empowered, and more connected to themselves, not like they need to become someone else to be well or need to buy more. I am here to help my audience at the very least make educated decisions and learn or discover something new.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wellnessbywest/
Image Credits
Casey McDuffie
