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Auntie Yasy Wellness
On-Site Wellness for the Corporate Employee
As seen on ABC10 & Fox40!
About Us
My name is Yasmin Vera, the Founder/CEO of Auntie Yasy Wellness (AY Wellness). You may wonder, “What’s the story behind Auntie Yasy, who is this “auntie” person??” Well, here’s my story of how it all got started:
AY Wellness was an accident – I mean, I didn’t sit down and think, “I’m going to start a gluten-free, keto meal prep company” or “I’m going to deliver my Mexican yoga retreat to US corporate clients”, or anything like that.
What happened was, in July 2018, I had just moved back to the US after having lived in Mexico for years, managing my yoga retreat company “Fun Fitness Globetrotters”, named one of Tripaneer’s most popular retreats. I worked with nutritionists and prep’d meal plans which my chefs then prep’d for clients. Clients really loved our meals. My team and I would also do full-day, off-site yoga retreats for clients at their beach villas – yoga, meditation, cooking, I’d even bring in Mayan shamans to spiritually cleanse clients.
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By July 2018, my mother, in California, was very sick; unbeknownst to me at the time, she only had a little over a year to live. She had ALS, diagnosed around 2013. She was a strong woman, the strongest I’ve known (next to her mom, Khadija, who raised me), and that strength allowed her to hold up well, when others would have given up. But it was clear she was losing ground.
Although a full-time neonatologist, my mom, Shereen, always had delicious, healthy, home cooked food for her kids (she was an excellent, self-taught cook). But those days were gone – by July 2018, she was a quadriplegic that needed full-time assistance from caregivers. This is where AY Wellness comes into play.
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At the time, I wanted to keep my yoga retreat company alive and needed social media content. Problem was, I wasn’t in Mexico where I normally could get tons of content. However, I knew from experience that people loved pictures of food.
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My & my mom circa 1990
Learning knife skills from my mom.
In parallel, the “nutrition” provided to my parents by their caregivers was abysmal – pre-made stuff well beyond its expiration date. So I thought I could kill a few birds with one stone – I could feed my parents some healthy, delicious food, then use pictures of that for social media content.
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My yoga retreat nutritionist had already prep’d a gluten-free, high protein meal plan – it was a great anti-inflammatory diet, perfect for my mom’s ALS and dad’s arthritis. The meals my mom made when I was a kid were my inspiration – she cooked from the heart and you could taste it in her food.
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I knew I could research anything – for nearly 20 years before moving to Mexico, I was a California corporate attorney & United Kingdom solicitor – so I began researching recipes, playing with ingredients, making healthy substitutions – vegan butter instead of regular butter, chickpea pasta instead of regular pasta, kefir instead of cream, coconut and almond flours instead of regular flour, bone broth instead of regular broth.
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Whatever passed my parents’ rigorous vetting process (they didn’t play) was posted on my yoga retreat social media. My dad let me use his credit card to pay for ingredients (without the yoga retreat revenue, I was broke!).
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My mom really liked my gluten-free fried chicken – it’s the same recipe I use today for AY Wellness clients in the keto meal bowls.
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When my parents’ grandchildren visited, I demo’d my goodies – cookies made with coconut flour and psyllium husk, a vegan cake with chia seeds instead of eggs. Kids are brutally honest – I was scared of their input since my ingredients were super different than normal. Luckily everything was a hit.
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After my mom passed away in September 2019, I decided to stay in the US and sell my food instead of going back to Mexico. My dad was in no shape to be alone, I heard my old beach in Mexico was also in bad shape, and I recognized a need for premade, delicious low carb, gluten-free meals for others like my parents.
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So I started Auntie Yasy's in December 2019, funded with proceeds from an insurance policy I accidentally found while rummaging through my mom’s belongings after she died. "Yasy" is my mom's nickname for me -- she called me that since I was a baby. “Auntie Yasy” is what I was called by 2 adorable twin premature baby girls (Fati and Mimi) my mom had taken under her wing. The persona "Auntie Yasy" is the most nurturing, caring part of me, and my cooking reflects that – its from my heart, just like my mom’s (you definitely did not want Yasmin Vera, Esq. to cook for you – she can and did burn water!).
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Despite COVID delays, by May 2020 I was delivering healthy gluten-free keto meals using everything I’d learned from nutritionists working in Mexico and from cooking for my parents and their grandchildren.
Recognizing how much yoga would help the corporate worker manage the enormous stress from COVID, instead of waiting to go back to Mexico to do yoga retreats, in 2023 I decided to add a day yoga retreat my team and I could deliver to corporate employees at their work or a corporate off-site – everything we’d done for years in Mexico for the consumer – yoga, spirituality, fitness – except now here in the US for the corporate client.
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And that’s the story of how AY Wellness got started. At its core, it’s a story of heart, perseverance, loss, and an unrelenting dedication to providing transformative wellness, learned on the beaches of Mexico and during my family’s darkest hour. My wellness can be yours, when you order my gluten-free keto meals or have my wellness team for your next corporate off-site.
Namaste, Yasmin