Oh, hey! Nice to meet you!

So, this is us, and these are the reasons why I do what I do. I love being a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist but my favorite, yet most exhausting role, is being a mom to this crazy crew. This is our blended family. The tall, handsome one, he is my person and I wouldn’t be able to do what I do for you if it weren’t for his hard work and support. The two beauties are mine, the stud in the front is my bonus kid and the baby in the middle is just that, the spoiled, rotten baby of the family. Yes, it is chaos in our house most days. When I am not working you can find me doing all the mom things like driving my children all over central IL in my mini-van or cleaning the kitchen because it seems that all children do is eat…and make messes doing it.

I grew up in a town of about 900 in the middle of nowhere central Illinois. We have since decided to plant our roots down the road from my hometown, outside of an even smaller town, population 127. The Champaign-Urbana area has always been my home and a small town girl is all I ever aspire to be. I am a busy, hard working, multi-business owning, dry-shampooing, extra shot of espresso requiring, sarcastic, don’t take life too seriously kind of girl.

I am in love with what I do. After receiving a masters degree in nutrition, I passed my boards to become a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist. (No, I am not just a nutritionist…I worked way too hard to be able to call myself a Registered Dietitian, big difference! We can talk about that difference later.)

After completing a (year long, full time, unpaid!) internship in an inpatient setting, I worked in weight management/bariatrics for 5 years. I always felt a disconnect in how I was educated and expected to practice in the clinical setting. I always felt like we could be doing more for our patients. Simply offering nutrition education in pamphlet form was not enough, and it showed in our patient outcomes and in their mental health. Dieting by way of restriction is not the answer and we have years of research and data to prove that. That is, unfortunately how I was educated and expected to practice; teaching people how to make their portions and bodies smaller at all costs to improve their physical health. This, at the expense of their mental and emotional health. That way of practicing was not for me, and I felt that there had to be a better way.

I was to the point of questioning leaving my career when I found Intuitive Eating. This framework aligned with the philosophy that I had already started incorporating in my practice. This way of viewing food, nutrition, and health made sense and felt right to me. I opened my private practice focusing on one-on-one nutrition counseling with an Intuitive Eating approach. It was going great but here is where we will insert a 2 year pause in my dietetic career to teach.

With the hopes of teaching nutrition at the high school level being my final landing place I took a role teaching in our community. Epic fail, well not completely. This was not for me but I did become a profession educator in the process which did open my eyes to where I wanted to take my nutrition practice. I want to educate. So here I am doing just that.

In reopening my business with a different approach I realize that what was missing all along was the application piece. Dietitians are educators by nature but with my professional educator experience I realize it needs to go a step further. Following the education piece is the application piece. It’s like the lab portion of your freshman year biology class. You learn the content first then you learn how to apply it. This is what makes it all make sense. But what does that look like here? That is ME TEACHING YOU the cooking, prepping, grocery shopping, meal planning, etc. to put it all into action. Putting it all together it finally feels right. This is where lifelong changes can actually be made and where anxiety about food and how to prepare it fades away. This is where disease prevention takes place. Where the dreaded question of “Ugh, what do you want for dinner tonight?'“ disappears. This is where you find yourself enjoying cooking again and dancing in the kitchen with your children begins. Because that is what I want for you.

Professional Bio

Bachelors degree in Family and Consumer Sciences from Eastern Illinois University

Completed Didactic Program in Dietetics and received Master of Science Degree in Nutrition from Eastern Illinois University

Registered Dietitian Nutritionist with Commission on Dietetic Registrar

Completed dietetic internship at Carle Foundation Hospital, Urbana, IL

Previously held position as nutritionist at University of Illinois and outpatient clinical dietitian specializing in bariatrics at Carle Foundation

Member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

Member of Eastern Illinois Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

Professional Educator Degree from West Florida University