Hola! I'm Maria, a registered dietitian. Born in Bogotá, Colombia, and raised in the US, I bring a bicultural identity to my practice. I grew up in a single-parent household led by my dad. I didn’t have foundational knowledge of nutrition, and those ancestral ways weren’t passed down to me because my dad had to work multiple jobs. Still, food was very important in my home, and cooking was how my dad and I bonded and celebrated our Latine cultures and communities. I know how important and special traditional foods are, and I’ll never ask you to give them up.

I grew up in the 90s, a time marked by an overwhelming focus on weight and size. The foods I ate growing up became "unacceptable" as I fell deep into diet culture and the pursuit of thinness, compounded by pressures embedded in Latine culture. After dealing with acute health issues, I began to understand how food made me feel in my body AND soul. As I slowly crawled out of the diet culture hole, I became a health coach, learning the hows and whys of behavior change. Through these experiences, I've become committed to helping others redefine their relationship with food and their bodies, emphasizing empowerment and behavior change. In the words of the great Lauryn Hill, "How you gonna win when you ain't right within?"