My Story
From Award-Winning Chef to Nutritional Therapist
I’m Tara – a Naturopathic Nutritional Therapist, and I didn’t arrive here by a straight path.
For years, after working in restaurants, I ran my own private chef business, cooking beautiful food for other people while quietly falling apart myself. I was tired, inflamed, bloated, sleeping badly and I told myself that was just normal for the industry. It wasn’t.
Following my Heart
I never had a calling until I woke up one July morning in 2002 and decided to become a chef. I talked my way into a job at the best restaurant I knew, started at the bottom and worked my way up to Head Chef.
Twenty years and a decade of running my own private chef business later, I was approaching 50 and knew cooking for others wasn’t enough anymore. I wanted to help people feel better, not just eat well — so I retrained.
In 2020 I marked a decade of private cheffing by writing 10 Years of Food Fads. Since then, my nutritional therapy training has given me a whole new lens on those food trends.
I am absolutely passionate about helping 40+ women to Glow from the inside out.
What I Found When I Finally Looked
Not long after I qualified, I went into post-menopause myself and I felt terrible. So I did what I now do for my clients: I tested properly instead of guessing.
A DUTCH test showed my oestrogen was on the floor and my cortisol pattern was a mess. A GI360 stool test revealed gut imbalances and a level of inflammation I hadn’t accounted for. Genetic testing uncovered haemochromatosis and poor vitamin D conversion and I found out I wasn’t methylating well either.
One by one, I addressed each of these and it transformed how I felt. That’s the whole premise of my work now: stop guessing, test and fix what’s actually going on.
My Passion
My interest in nutritional therapy started with an online wellness business in 2019, then three years of training at the College of Naturopathic Medicine.
Now I help women navigate this stage of life through functional testing, a nutrient-dense diet, targeted supplementation and cutting the toxic load in their everyday products – because it doesn’t all have to be low libido, hot flushes and sleepless nights.