Working as a Registered Dietitian, I refuse to pretend I’m some all-knowing monk on a misty mountaintop, sitting cross-legged and serene, holding all the answers to health like a basket of flower petals, ready to sprinkle them on my patients and clients. 

 I also refuse to pretend that nutrition is simple. There is no one-size-fits-all, 'x+y=z' approach. I've learned this both as a healthcare professional and as a patient.

 In my mid-20's, I developed a difficult to diagnose digestive illness that changed my world and even shut down my first career as a catering & personal chef. Years, tears, two college degrees, and a board certification later, I pull from my own experiences to help my patients and clients navigate the real, often messy and confusing challenges that are inevitable while living life in an unpredictable body. 

 CalmTFDown Nutrition is an intense name for a practice, but these are some intense times. So much of the messaging around nutrition insists on demonizing and restricting foods, bouncing from fad to fad, elevating Eurocentric standards, and making us feel like we're never doing enough. The messaging can get exhausting and expensive, but it doesn't have to be. 

 When we work together, your nutrition practice is collaboratively crafted to find the intersection where the body, taste buds, and budget are all equally important. We sift through harmful nutrition messaging, learn about physiology, and find an approach that is as realistic as it is delicious.

As a white, cisgender woman, I recognize that my experiences don’t reflect those of everyone and that medical education has historically and continues to exclude, harm, and marginalize many communities.

I don’t pretend that a single set of nutrition recommendations applies to everyone. I don’t practice with the belief that everyone has to be a specific body size or abandon cultural foods to be healthy. That’s a damaging approach that perpetuates oppression and elevates Eurocentric standards.

Working with a Registered Dietitian should mean receiving unconditional regard for your intersectionality and lived experience. Nutrition recommendations that abruptly disconnect cultural ties or misalign someone’s gender identity are harmful, even traumatic, and leave us far worse off than where we started. Let’s leave that poison in the past.

Whether meeting 1:1 or through workshops, I won’t assume to be an expert on anyone’s culture, lived experience, or center myself. Our nutrition work isn’t about me. Instead, I will apply my expertise in nutrition counseling and cooking to our work together or to your event, with deep respect for you and your community as a whole.

Licensure: Registered Dietitian with the Commission on Dietetic Registration

NPI: 1366054710

Dietetic Internship
Bastyr University - Seattle, WA, 2018-2019
- Completed 1,200 hours of supervised practice at Seattle-area hospitals, community clinics, long-term care facilities, and private practices

Master of Science, Nutrition/Didactic Program in Dietetics
Bastyr University - Seattle, WA, 2016-2018
- Completed ACEND-accredited coursework in medical nutrition therapy, nutrition counseling, advanced nutrient metabolism, and pathology, as well as supplements, herbal sciences, and Ayurvedic nutrition
- Gained 90 hours of experience as student clinician at Bastyr Center for Natural Health
- Fulfilled over 300 hours of clinical, community, and food service volunteering

Bachelor of Science, Nutrition & Culinary Arts
Bastyr University - Seattle, WA, 2013-2015
- Completed coursework in biochemistry, nutrient metabolism, food science, culinary foundations, cooking demonstration, herbal sciences, foraging, and ecological nutrition
- Fulfilled 88-hour Culinary Internship in Seattle-area restaurants and culinary teaching institutions

Associate of Arts, Liberal Arts/Studio Arts
Community College of Allegheny County - Pittsburgh, PA, 2007-2009, 2012-2013
- Completed coursework in English literature, creative writing, ceramics, drawing, art history, human biology, and general chemistry