My journey to becoming a nutritionist wasn’t planned — it was born out of necessity.

While I was in culinary school and working in a Michelin-starred kitchen, I was over 200 pounds. One afternoon, on my break, I slipped out to the corner store and bought a convenience pastry. I was standing on the street, eating it in a rush, when Chef Raphaël François — head chef of Le Cirque at the time — walked by.

He looked me straight in the eye and said words I’ll never forget:
“If you eat that garbage, you cannot call yourself a chef.”

Those words cut deep. Here I was, mastering the art of creating beautiful, refined dishes for others — while secretly battling with my own health, weight, and relationship with food. The irony was painful: I could make food taste extraordinary, but I didn’t know how to nourish myself.

That moment planted a seed. It forced me to see what the food industry and medical system had failed to teach me: food isn’t just about flavor or prescriptions. It’s information for your cells — the most powerful medicine we have.

I realized no chef, doctor, or system was going to save me — I had to find my own answers.