Healing Beyond Medicine: My Shift to Integrative Nutrition Health Coaching

For years, I have been working in a clinical setting, helping patients manage chronic conditions, navigate confusing diagnoses, and try to make sense of their health.  There is a lot about that role that I love.  The science, the structure, the opportunity to make a difference.  But there has always been something missing.

Over time, I definitely have noticed a pattern:  patients are being treated, but too often, not truly healed.  In that setting, with all of its many limitations, the focus is on managing disease, not addressing root causes.  I do what I can in the short time that I have available to spend with each patient - and if they are really into it, I will spend as much extra time as I can with them - but the reality is that it takes more than a 30-minute visit every 6 months to effect the kind of real, lasting changes that can turn a person's health around.  Health doesn't come from medications and treatments - it comes from the everyday choices - food, stress, sleep, movement - that shape our health far more than any prescription ever could.

The Turning Point

Over and over again, I have found myself sitting in my exam room with a patient who is struggling with things like fatigue, weight gain, anxiety, sleep problems.  Their labs are "normal".  Their medications are "working".  But still, they tell me that they feel awful.  It hasn't taken me long to realize: the tools I had as a nurse practitioner in traditional medicine just aren't enough.

I sought to educate myself further.  I studied integrative nutrition in my spare time and built the knowledge that my formal training had been missing so that I would know how to make the most difference for my patients, my family and myself.  Because it's not just my patients who have been left wondering why, despite trying to do everything right, they still don't feel well.  That used to be me, too.

I have learned that what is needed here is not another pill.  It's for someone to ask things like "what does your day look like?" "How do you feel after you eat?" "What's your relationship with your body?"  And for nutrition and lifestyle habits to be based around an individual's unique answers to questions like these.  The knowledge that I have gained over the past couple of years has changed everything.  It has definitely positively impacted my current patients - some of them have been able to really and truly turn their health and happiness around and there's nothing I love to see more.  DE-prescribing medication because a patient has eliminated the need for it through changes to how they eat and live is my favorite thing to do!  We always celebrate as I hit that discontinue button.  But I want to do more.

I have chosen to pursue integrative nutrition coaching in addition to what I do in my "day job" because I want to work with people - not just their lab results.  I want to help people reconnect with their bodies, understand their food choices, and build sustainable habits that support long-term wellness.

Integrative nutrition looks at the whole person.  It's not just about what's on your plate - its about your sleep, your stress levels, your relationships, your home environment, your purpose.  It's about healing from the inside out.

I know that I make a difference in what I do as a nurse practitioner - but I really want to help more people who are ready to take ownership of their health.  (Sadly, this is not most people who show up for their routine check-ups in a primary care office).  I want to focus on things like:

• Anti-inflammatory nutrition
• Blood sugar balance
• Mindful eating and emotional wellness
• Habit-building and lifestyle design
• Root-cause healing, not symptom suppression

And most importantly, coaching allows me to truly partner with a person as they take control of their health.  Coaching is collaborative, compassionate, and deeply personal.

My Mission

Getting all of this going hasn't been easy.  I honestly have wondered at times over the past couple of years what I'm doing and why - where the time for all of this was going to come from.  I am not not doing any of this to make money - if it turns out that way, great - but I'm happy in my day job and don't intend to leave that.  My patients there need me, and as frustrating as it can be to try to help them in real significant ways in such a time-limited environment, I will never stop trying - because sometimes it works.  And when it does, its miraculous.

But despite feeling overwhelmed at times as I've been working to learn things beyond the foundations of integrative nutrition - things like website building, Canva, Kajabi, , how to edit reels, funnels and SEO optimization and all of that crazy stuff - that I have had to learn in order to be able to do what I want to do; despite sometimes feeling like "it's all too much, I don't need to do this, I'm throwing in the towel", I keep coming back to it.  I can't help it.

At the end of the day, creating a platform to share what I've learned with as many people as possible, finding a way to build health and happiness from the ground up for whoever might be looking for that, is the most aligned decision I've ever made.  I believe that true health is possible - and that everyone deserves a guide who sees them as a whole person.  I want to be that guide in whatever way I can.

So stay with me - follow me on instagram or Facebook, subscribe to my blog, take advantage of the free guides and recipes and tools that I'll be sharing.  It's all for you!  If one-on-one coaching is what you're looking for, I have limited availability for that too - book a free virtual session with me and we can get that going if that's what's right for you.  And let me know how you're doing!  Ask questions and tell me how I can most be of service.  It means a lot to me just to know that what I'm doing is helping.