I received my nutrition health coach certification in 2012 after a messy separation from the father of my child. My daughter was 3 at the time. The relationship with her father had been deeply depressing (I’ll leave it at that), and nutrition school was giving me a new foundation that I didn’t know I needed. I loved everything about the topic of nutrition. My bookshelves were filled with books about nutrition and “healthy” cookbooks. I loved experimenting with real food, and taste testing with my toddler; making big bright eyes at each other when we found something we both liked, and making faces when I had added too much lemon. I remember being shocked to find that she loved things like salmon and asparagus, adjusting my previously held belief about what foods kids like to eat. I also enjoyed the health benefits I started to feel – better moods, more energy, glowing skin, and restful sleep.
What I didn’t know then was that building a business all by yourself is incredibly difficult. I know this shouldn’t have been a shock(!) but I was in my mid 20s and still in the “I can do anything if I set my mind to it” era that many of us experience in this decade of life. So I worked as a server and bartender at restaurants while I started building a business called “The Integrative Health Studio” where I offered holistic health coaching services. This was before the “health coach” craze took over social media with people using the term more loosely. But I digress, and here we are.
I was happiest when I I was hired by a new client and we would go over their meal plan after assessing their health obstacles and goals. I intently listened to people to get at the root of their challenges. If a middle-aged woman with 2 kids was telling me she would eat foods that made her feel good throughout the first half of the day but then she’d lose willpower by the end, ordering fast-food for the family and binge-eating ice cream (which made her feel awful), I knew that it probably wasn’t a lack of self-control that she was dealing with. She was dealing with exhaustion and burnout, which, by the way, lead to meal choices especially toward the end of the day that we wouldn’t normally make otherwise. She also might not have been eating enough satiating foods in the first half of the day. I loved the excitement people would express when we found the root of their challenges, and we’d both feel excited for them to try the new plan that I’d lay out once they knew there was a solution. In the example above, this woman’s meal plan would entail getting meals ready for dinner during times that she had the energy for it. For example, putting ready-to-go ingredients into a crockpot in the morning (when she had mental capacity) so that it would be ready by evening (when she was thoroughly exhausted), thereby eliminating the need to think about what the family would eat for dinner. We would also go over her meal plan in detail after assessing her other needs and desires, such as weight loss or energy levels, both common concerns, so that she would feel set up for success without too much restriction.
Gaining enough nutrition clients to fuel my entire income was a challenge that I couldn’t find a way to reach in this time period, so I eventually added massage therapy to my practice. I slowly built up enough clientele to stop working at restaurants and was on my way to financial independence when Covid hit in 2020. For better or for worse, I understood early on that this wasn’t going to be a small break with the world returning to normal within a couple of months. I asked for a break to my office lease in April of 2020 and closed the doors completely in July.
Ten years. That’s how long I was focused on learning about nutrition and building my business. I told everyone that I would be OK, that it wasn’t a huge deal. I was enrolled back in college by August of 2020 and I sat beside my daughter, then in sixth grade, as we both stared at our laptops and tried to keep up with school that year. I rented out the lower level of our house through AirBnB to keep my finances stable.
I stopped talking about nutrition and stopped posting to my social media accounts. I stopped writing on my nutrition blog and I let the URL lapse in payment, quietly closing the website that I built myself from the ground up – hours of instructional videos about WordPress dissolved into the back of my memory. Years of blogs that I wrote vanished as I didn’t care to save them. I didn’t want to look at any of it. Most unfortunately, I stopped talking to clients and colleagues that I had built relationships with over almost a decade. I couldn’t face the pain of losing my business, and I wasn’t sure I ever would. My heart was completely broken and I simply wanted to move forward without looking back.
This was a well-intended way to move forward but heartbreak is heartbreak. Time doesn’t always heal the wound, regardless of what people say. What I lost with my business was a large portion of my identity and my passion. Talking to people about nutrition and experimenting with food is what I love. Especially because I’d done just about everything with food that clients came to me about, even with the education, and I know how hard it is to get to a good place with our diets. The woman in the example above who orders fast-food for dinner and then binge-eats ice cream until she’s sick at the end of an exhausting day? That was me. I’ve starved myself, I’ve stuffed myself, I’ve over-caffeinated myself, I’ve eliminated caffeine cold-turkey, I’ve done juice cleanses, I’ve been vegan, I’ve been paleo, I’ve been happy with how I eat, and I’ve been devastated with how I eat. And on and on. But what has surprised me the most over the last 6 years is that I truly am not happy if I’m not doing what I love, even if it’s just a little bit. Even if there is deep grief mixed in with starting it up again.
So here I am, writing to an audience that dissolved over years of disengagement. I’ve been working through my own personal journey with nutrition again as of April 2026, exactly 6 years after realizing that my business would be closing. I suppose that’s how long heartbreak can take to heal when you try to completely ignore it. My energy is back, I’ve reset my metabolism and lost 5 pounds while building muscle in 3 months, and my mood is up. The next logical step is to share what I love with people again. There is no greater joy to me than watching people fall in love with food and health simultaneously. And as a reminder – dieting is not necessary.
Welcome to my new blog: Unearth Nutrition. This is where I talk about the journey to discovering our best self through food and nutrition; uncovering the roots of our challenges and finding freedom within the process.
I’ve missed being in this space and I’m looking forward to connecting once again.