My interest in nutrition started in high school, but my absolute hopefulness that ordinary life can feel creative, joyful, and purposeful started when I was so very young. I am grateful to now have experienced both the reduction in physiological static as a result of stewarding my physical health through lifestyle choices and the increased interior stillness that only my contemplative spirituality could open the ceiling to.

2022: The Benedictine Sister’s of St. Paul’s Monastery, through an extensive discernment and review process, agreed to a collaboration that allowed my training and experience in behavior modification programing to integrate with our beloved 1500-year-old monastic tradition creating a new model of Benedictine wellness formation.

Onward: Benedictine CARE Wellness Program has become a living, continuously evolving, active process for making changes, together in community. It is a process that companions each of us as we nurture our hopefulness that ordinary life can, indeed, feel creative, joyful, and purposeful. And… as this process has continued to unfold for me, I still have those healthy lab values and health indicators. For now, I get to experience both (health and quality of life) now.

2018: Despite my strong training and experience in nutritional diagnosis and prescribing Lifestyle as Medicine, and despite the proven physiological benefit of Lifestyle as Medicine, there remained a ceiling that I, and others I worked with, couldn’t get beyond.

2018 con’t: I could hear the near unanimous voice that we all formed together; we were experiencing greater health but life didn’t feel as different as it was supposed to. I personally had more physical ability but still felt the exhaustion stored somewhere in my body. The more I could control my lifestyle, the less tolerance and strength I had for engaging. I withdrew more, lost interest in finding hobbies, and thought the idea of being more playful felt overwhelming rather than remotely rejuvenating.

2018 (still) con’t: I, with that same piercing clarity I had when very young, saw that I was at my inherited crossroads. I had the most important decision of my life to make… which internal voice was I going to listen to and allow to lead.

2019-2021: Truly, these years turned me inside out and upside down, then, finally, right-side up. My experiences here are shared with program members as I walk beside them as they navigate their own inherited crossroads.

My curiosity for nutrition formed during high school while running cross-country and track. I didn’t formalize that interest until working in publishing for several years after college. As I entered my 30’s, this interest was reignited as a way to fix the physical issues I was already experiencing from high physical and psychological stress.

College: I stopped running competitively and gained 25 pounds; my experimentation begins: I started yoga, became lacto-ovo vegetarian, progressed to vegan, began eating for my dosha (Ayurvedic Indian medicine). Yet, my triglycerides spiked to 700 (yikes!) even though I was young and highly active (this was my introduction to how vegetarian shouldn’t = ‘starchetarian’).

1997-1998: I worked as a store manager for Starbuck’s in Chicago; my diet was simple – incredible amounts of caffeine plus broken pastries 6 days a week, gained 20 lbs; this was my introduction to blood sugar control (and what it feels like when it isn’t!).

1998-2003: I was in “The Zone” (most of the time); weight still fluctuated (so frustrating!).

2003-2005: I integrated the Blood Type Diet with the Zone; I’m Type O so was essentially Paleo and gluten-free, but I still felt anxious and unable to adapt to stress; my weight continued to fluctuate. Amidst all of this “failure,” I gained an insatiable appetite to solve the puzzle. Why wasn’t anything working? So I enrolled in graduate school.

2005-2008 (Graduate School): Completed my clinical nutrition and research graduate program; I was awarded funding to lead research studying the various factors that affect chronic inflammation in our bodies; I elected to go through more extensive culinary training which included classes such as “The Therapeutic Use of Whole Foods” and “Whole Foods Culinary Design”;  through these classes, I learned how to use whole, real foods to heal the body (culinary medicine) without sacrificing taste.

2009-2010: Completed my 900 internship hours (required for licensure) and started Perfectly Produce Nutrition Services out my desire to make a whole foods, produce-based diet doable; I evolved to the beautiful simplicity of eating whole foods (all of them), in the right amounts, at the right time; (finally) stabilized my weight and increased my adaptability to stress. I learned why and how to use lifestyle as medicine.

2011: Perfectly Produce was awarded Best Nutritionist in the Twin Cities by Minnesota Monthly Magazine 

2012-2017: Attention increased for what I was doing with Lifestyle and Food as Medicine. The core clinic version of CARE Weight Loss and Lifestyle Program became the focus of my private practice. Clients were loosing weight and improving lab values. My health was impeccable on paper. There seemed to be proof accumulating that eating perfectly does, indeed, fix everything.