You found me!
I am a certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and 21 Day Sugar Detox coach and my goal is to improve wellness with food.
I live in Southeastern PA with my husband and three little ones! I currently work full-time as a Speech-Language Pathologist in a skilled nursing facility and subacute rehab center. I have started my nutrition coaching business and I am here to serve you!
My own personal path toward improved health began, like many others, due to unwanted weight gain. After a childhood of Kool-Aid, Little Debbies and sugared cereals (seemingly without health consequences), to my shock and dismay my naturally thin frame began to pack on extra weight during college. I thought I could just exercise away the extra pounds. I was determined to not have to change what I was eating. Then, after college I began counting calories and attempting the “diet” approach, complete with low-fat salad dressings and artificial sweeteners. In the short term, I did lose weight. But this was not sustainable, and I was becoming attached to the numbers. I would count every last calorie and try to burn them off in the gym just to “earn” a glass or two of wine. I couldn’t get rid of those “last few pounds” and I was obsessed. I never characterized myself as having an eating disorder because I wasn’t “starving myself” and I wasn’t throwing up. In hindsight, however, I realize that I did not have a healthy relationship with food and my goals were narrowly focused on aesthetics versus health. I now know there are terms for this behavior, including exercise bulimia and orthorexia and they do belong in the disordered eating category.
In 2014, I discovered the holistic nutrition movement. Through searching on Amazon for books on health, I found The Calorie Myth by Jonathan Bailor and Eat the Yolks by Liz Wolfe. These two in particular introduced the idea of focusing on quality of food over trying to reduce the quantity taken in. I learned about set points and the importance of fat intake for nutrient absorption. I learned how damaging artificial sweeteners can be and how resetting your palate with whole foods can reduce cravings for junk foods. Through Eat the Yolks I learned about the Balanced Bites Podcast, which in turn introduced me to Diane San Filippo and her work. I tried my first 21 Day Sugar Detox in early 2015, hoping that after 8 years of taking hormonal birth control, it would help reset my hormones to establish a regular cycle so I could begin thinking about starting a family. In an effort to nourish my body with REAL food and set me on a path for fertility, I lost those last pounds without that being the focus. I also returned to a regular cycle within 2 months of discontinuing birth control. I was hooked.
There are two other facets of my life that have plunged my interest deeper into this holistic nutrition world. First, my father was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in April 2015. I had been reading about the link between cancer and diet and I led the crusade for a low sugar, nutrient dense diet for him throughout his illness. He passed away in September 2016 but my family and I believe that we got 11 more months with him than we would have without the homeopathic and nutrition changes we implemented.
The second facet I mentioned pertains to my day job as a Speech-Language Pathologist working with the geriatric population. I work in a skilled nursing facility and I see chronic disease every day. We have patients coming in with laundry lists of diagnoses, many of which could potentially be reversed or remediated through diet and lifestyle changes. After years of practice I have become increasingly frustrated at seeing the preventable diseases of my patients, and even more so with the medical professionals that told these people that diet has nothing to do with their health. I realized I wanted to play a role in the prevention side of things and not just the therapy side.
I still struggle with falling back into conventional foods from the Standard American Diet at times. They are EVERYWHERE! It helps to not focus on perfection, but rather on maintaining good habits overall and always coming back to a place of nourishment and nutrient density when getting off track. I listen to my body now more than ever to tell me how foods are affecting me. What seems to have the biggest impact on how I feel is my sugar intake. When I’m “off sugar,” meaning avoiding refined and added sugars for the most part, I feel more energized and I sleep better. I don’t have the 3pm slump and I don’t feel that sense of dread with the morning alarm. These changes may seem small but they impact my life every day. I don’t want to live in a world where I am dreading anything, let alone waking up to start my day- a day I should be grateful for! I don’t want to NOT have the energy to play with my daughters, cook for my family, put in my best effort at work, or do nice things for my friends. THESE things are my WHYs. These PEOPLE are. I know now that healthy eating is one of the keys towards living your best life (not in the social media, gimmicky kind of way). Gretchen Rubin says “Choose the Bigger Life” in her Happier podcast. Doesn’t the “bigger life” involve living it to the fullest, not hiding from or avoiding things because you don’t feel your best?
Let me help you feel your best!
For those self-awareness and self-improvement nerds out there like myself, I am a Questioner, a Generator, and an Enneagram 2, wing 3.
What People Say
“If nothing changes, nothing changes. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to keep getting what you’re getting. You want change, make some.”
– Courtney C. Stevens
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”
-Steve Jobs
“Never continue in a job you don’t enjoy. If you’re happy in what you’re doing, you’ll like yourself, you’ll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined.”
-Johnny Carson