Where It All Began: A Farm, a Kitchen, and a Way of Life

I didn’t learn about “clean eating” from a wellness blog. I learned it from the soil.

Growing up on a small farm on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile, the food on our table came from the world around us. Vegetables were pulled from our own land. Fresh milk arrived from farmers nearby. The honey — raw, golden, and so pure it was exported to Europe — came from beehives just down the road. And fish? Caught at 5 in the morning and at the local farmers’ market before most people had finished their coffee. Seasonal, organic, naturally grown food wasn’t a lifestyle choice in our house. It was simply how things were.

That upbringing gave me something I didn’t fully appreciate until much later: a deep, almost instinctual understanding that what we eat is connected to how we feel, how we function, and how we live. It also gave me a particular way of thinking about health. In our home, the first response to any ailment wasn’t a trip to the doctor. It was the garden, the pantry, a herbal remedy passed through the family. You looked to nature first. That holistic worldview became as natural to me as the food on our table.

“Healthy eating wasn’t a trend where I grew up. It was just life — and the first answer to any health problem was always found in nature.”

And then there was my mother’s kitchen — the place where my love of food truly took root. From a very young age she let me in: mixing, baking, being part of the process. I was a born foodie, and I was lucky enough to have a mother who nurtured that from the start.

When Food Became Medicine: My First Turning Point

By the time I was living in Vancouver, I had spent years learning to live with things I shouldn’t have had to live with. Migraines that arrived without warning and wiped out entire days. A cycle so irregular and painful it was a constant source of exhaustion and dread. I managed. I pushed through. I told myself this was just how my body worked.

But eventually, I’d had enough.

I started researching — really digging. And no matter where I looked, my intuition kept pointing me back to the same place: food. That instinct wasn’t random. It was the same voice I’d grown up hearing in Chile, the one that said: start with what’s natural, start with what nourishes. So I listened. I started changing what I ate — methodically, curiously, with genuine hope.

What happened next surprised even me — not just in my body, but in my whole life. As my diet shifted, everything else began to shift with it, almost spontaneously. The way I moved. The way I slept. The way I thought about caring for myself. It wasn’t a programme. It was a transformation.

The migraines stopped. My cycle — once so unpredictable it felt like a force outside my control — became almost clockwork. The pain that had shadowed me for years faded to something barely worth mentioning. I had simply listened to my body, trusted my instincts, and let food do what food — when treated with respect — is capable of doing.

“My intuition kept pointing me back to food. I’d grown up knowing that nature is the first place you look when something is wrong. So I listened — and it changed everything.”

That experience didn’t just change my health. It changed my direction. If nutrition had this kind of power, I wanted to understand it properly and share it. I enrolled at The Institute of Holistic Nutrition of Canada (IHN) and earned my certification as a Certified Nutritional Practitioner (CNP). It felt like coming home.

Then Came Diabetes: My Second — and Most Defining — Chapter

Here’s the part of my story I don’t think you’ll expect.

For years before my diagnosis, my health was, by every conventional measure, excellent. Because of a family history of type 2 diabetes, I had been monitoring my blood glucose regularly for years — eating carefully, moving my body, paying attention. And my numbers consistently confirmed what I hoped: everything looked good. I was doing everything right.

But it had been a while since my last check. My numbers had always been fine, so I’d let the habit slip.

Then, gradually, things started to feel off. Persistent fatigue. Occasional lightheadedness. A thirst that never quite went away. Unexplained weight loss — I was becoming noticeably thin, in a way that had nothing to do with anything I was doing. And — something many people don’t know to connect to blood sugar — recurrent yeast infections that resist treatment are a recognized and telling sign of chronically elevated glucose, particularly in women. Taken individually, each symptom is easy to dismiss as stress, a busy week, not enough sleep. But I had the background to see them differently. When I put them together, they pointed somewhere specific.

I got out my glucometer.

My blood glucose was 15.6 mmol/L. My stomach dropped. I knew immediately what that number meant — and I knew what could follow. I checked my ketones. They were at 3.6 mmol/L. I didn’t wait. Driving wasn’t an option — I knew better than that. I called a taxi and got myself to the hospital.

I was in the early stages of diabetic ketoacidosis. My blood had become slightly acidic — not yet a full crisis, but building in that direction. Because I caught it when I did — because I knew what to look for, because I trusted the signal my body was sending me — it was treated quickly. A person without that background, without years of paying attention to blood sugar, might easily have dismissed how they felt and gone to bed. The outcome of that could have been very different.

“I didn’t find out I had diabetes at a routine appointment. I found out because something felt wrong, I trusted that feeling, checked my own numbers, and acted. That instinct is something I try to help every client develop.”

And then came the next layer: I was initially diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. This is far more common than most people realize — type 1 diabetes in adults is persistently underrecognized, and the default assumption is almost always type 2 first.

I accepted the diagnosis and did what I do: I threw everything I had at it. I knew that type 2, caught early, was highly manageable — potentially even reversible — with the right nutrition and lifestyle approach. So I designed a rigorous plan, went deep into the research, took my medication, and applied every tool in my arsenal. I was disciplined. I was thorough. I did everything right.

Three months later, nothing had changed. Not a single meaningful indicator had moved.

That was the moment I started to trust a different instinct. I knew type 2 well enough to know that I should have been responding. The fact that I wasn’t — despite doing everything correctly — told me something the original diagnosis hadn’t: this wasn’t type 2. There was a quiet voice in the back of my mind that wouldn’t go away. Not type 2. Not type 2. Not type 2.

I kept going anyway. My A1C was slowly dropping, which gave me enough reason to keep trusting the process — healing takes time, and I knew that. But the voice stayed. Then life intervened in ways that shifted my focus elsewhere for a time, and my own health advocacy took a back seat for several months.

About ten months after that initial diagnosis, it became undeniable. My blood glucose was consistently sitting between 14 and 22 mmol/L — on metformin, on a diet and lifestyle so controlled it would have put most type 2 patients into remission. The numbers simply had no explanation within a type 2 framework. My doctor finally recognized what the picture was actually showing. I got access to insulin, and everything shifted.

With that came a referral to an endocrinologist — which, in the reality of Canadian healthcare, arrived surprisingly quickly. The right bloodwork was finally ordered. And there it was: I tested positive for antibodies attacking my own beta cells. My immune system had been quietly destroying the cells responsible for producing insulin. It wasn’t type 2. It had never been type 2. It was an autoimmune condition — Type 1 diabetes — and now there was no question.

That moment of confirmation was its own particular thing to sit with. Not quite relief, not quite shock — something in between. The voice that had been saying “not type 2” for almost a year had been right all along. And all those months of doing everything correctly and seeing nothing move suddenly made complete, perfect sense.

Living with Type 1 diabetes has since taught me things no textbook ever could. The invisible mental load that never takes a day off. What it feels like when your body responds differently to the same meal on two different days. The way that navigating early perimenopause alongside T1D adds yet another layer of complexity — hormonal shifts affect blood sugar in ways that are rarely acknowledged in clinical settings, and that most standard diabetes advice simply doesn’t account for.

These aren’t clinical abstractions for me. They are Tuesday morning. And that lived reality is at the heart of everything I bring to my clients.

Who I Work With

I have a particular passion for working with women — I understand the unique ways that hormones, life stages, and the often-overlooked complexities of the female body intersect with blood sugar management. That lived understanding shapes everything about how I work. That said, diabetes doesn’t discriminate, and neither do I. Anyone ready to take their blood sugar and metabolic health seriously is welcome here.

My core focus is diabetes and blood sugar management. I work with people who have been diagnosed with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes and want support that actually accounts for the full complexity of their lives — not just a meal plan handed to them at a clinic appointment.

But some of my favourite clients are the ones who haven’t been diagnosed with anything yet. People who are paying attention. Who have a family history of diabetes, or who are noticing their energy, their weight, or their blood sugar trending in a direction they don’t like. People who have already decided that their health is their responsibility — not their doctor’s — and who are ready to act on that belief before they have no choice.

I understand the particular irony of being passionate about prevention when I have a condition that couldn’t be prevented. Type 1 diabetes isn’t caused by lifestyle — it found me despite years of doing everything right. But that experience only deepened my conviction. Proactive monitoring is literally what allowed me to catch my own diagnosis before it became a medical emergency. What you pay attention to matters. The clients who come in already believing that are the ones who tend to transform their health most profoundly. It’s not about the absence of diagnosis. It’s about the presence of intention.

“The clients who make the most progress aren’t always the ones who are most unwell. They’re the ones who have already decided to take their health seriously — and are ready to do something about it.”

My Approach

I don’t believe in restriction for its own sake, and I don’t believe in handing someone a plan and sending them on their way. Growing up surrounded by real, beautiful food taught me that eating well should feel like nourishment, not punishment. My practice reflects that.

Every client I work with gets a strategy built around their actual life — their schedule, their food culture, their relationship with their body, and their specific metabolic picture. I blend evidence-based nutrition science with practical, grounded guidance that makes change feel genuinely possible. And I bring something most practitioners can’t: the perspective of someone managing the same condition, making the same daily decisions, asking the same questions.

I also believe, deeply, in the principle I was raised with: your health is your responsibility first. Doctors and healthcare professionals are essential partners — but they are not the ones living in your body. I’m here to help you understand what’s happening inside you, and to give you the tools to make informed, confident decisions for yourself.

Credentials & Training

•  CNP — Certified Nutritional Practitioner

•  Graduate of The Institute of Holistic Nutrition of Canada (IHN)

•  Specialized focus in metabolic health and blood glucose management

•  Personal experience living with Type 1 diabetes and navigating perimenopause

Beyond the Practice

When I’m not working with clients, you’ll find me out in nature with my dog, experimenting in the kitchen, or finding new ways to make nourishing food feel like the joy it has always been — ever since I was a little girl on a farm in Chile, standing on her tiptoes to reach the mixing bowl.

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Vision
A world where every person living with diabetes feels confident, balanced,
and fully supported in living a vibrant, healthy life — free from confusion,
restriction, and burnout.

True Balance Nutrition