After growing up in England, I moved to the United States and completed my Bachelors Degree in Nutrition and Medical Dietetics at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1988. I started practicing as a Registered Dietitian and  at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Jersey. I remember teaching a weight management program and began learning that it was not a simple equation but that the participants had different struggles with  managing their food, weight, eating and exercise habits.

My skills as an Eating Disorders Dietitian developed at the Somerset Medical Center’s Eating Disorders program in New Jersey. People enjoyed working with me but they continued to struggle as they made changes in their thinking and behavior around food, weight and eating. These resistances often included their emotions like anger, anxiety and depression. I learned how food, weight and eating played so many different roles in people's lives and relationships.  Thats when I evolved as a Nutrition Therapist.

Sometimes, controlling weight and what and how much food they ate was a way of bringing back control in life and when everything else felt out of control. Sometimes it was a form of communicating a message or an emotion because the words couldn’t be found. Sometimes it was just a way of coping with stress. It was so complex and there was so much to learn!

As part of my professional growth, I was attending seminars( and still do!) to understand more and learn new strategies to help those struggling with their food, weight and eating. I decided to pursue my Masters degree in Social Work, at Rutgers University in New Jersey, which I completed in 1997. I developed my professional counseling experience as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in a community mental health agency and group practices. I can now look at the struggles that people present with their food, weight, eating, depression and anxiety from a mental health and a nutrition perspective.

My work with Eating Disorders recently expanded to other forms of addictions while working for a year at a residential facility for alcohol and drug addiction. I met brave people who were struggling with addictive behaviors to drugs and/or alcohol in a similar way to those who depended on their anorexia, bulimia or binge eating behavior.
Indeed some moved from their dependence on alcohol and drugs to their Eating Disorder behavior as they struggled in their attempts to recover successfully.

 Having children helped me to grow personally and professionally. I now experience the stressors that families experience with developing healthful eating behaviors in our children at mealtimes! A good plan and lots of patience is key! It is important to help them not just learn about healthful foods and activity but also healthful attitudes and behaviors towards food, weight and eating and healthy coping skils to prevent eating disorders and obesity as they grow older.

 Our family has now settled in Texas and we are enjoying all that the surrounding “family friendly” communities have to offer as we move towards the “quality of life” that we have envisioned for ourselves.