Member since May 2026
I'm a writer, community builder, and metabolic health self-advocate based in Greater Boston. My health and wellness expedition began in March 2023, when I started reading Dr. Jason Fung's The Diabetes Code at age 50, transforming a journey that had begun with a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis in 2007. In February 2024, I began publicly documenting it in my Substack publication.
Reading The Diabetes Code lit the spark, but the moment I truly dug in was August 2023, when I was diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy. Left unaddressed, it would likely lead to blindness. But I had also just learned something that changed everything: Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease. It does not have to be chronic and progressive. There was something I could do about it.
Between August 2023 and May 2025, I went from a women's size 20 to a size 8. I also took Mounjaro, a GLP-1 medication, for seven months, stopping mid-way through my weight loss journey, not at the finish line. When my A1C reached 5.0% in June 2024, my endocrinologist, who had believed I'd need GLP-1 medication for the rest of my life, conceded and told me: "I wish you could talk to my patients."
I write and speak about metabolic health, self-advocacy in healthcare, nervous system regulation, and the unglamorous reality of rebuilding health in real life, including what I eat, when I eat, and why I eat. I publish It's All Happening, a Substack publication with no paywalled content documenting my ongoing expedition. And I'm building Rooted Allies, a peer-support community for people navigating health and wellness through shared lived experience. In January 2025, I was invited to share my story on The Fasting Method podcast, co-founded by Dr. Jason Fung and Megan Ramos.
I'm not a healthcare professional. I'm something rarer: someone willing to tell the truth about what it actually takes.
The work isn't finished. I lost 110 pounds and regained 35, and learned that the mental health piece, coming to terms with permanent changes to how I eat and live, is where lifetime success actually happens. I've got my own back now.
I started this journey at 50, often wondering if it was already too late. My mother died of a sudden cardiac event at 55. What could I possibly do, after 50, to change the trajectory of my own health?
It turns out, quite a lot. But I had to find most of it myself, falling down rabbit holes through books, podcasts, and online communities, questioning everything I'd been told about my diagnosis.
I want other women to have a shorter, less lonely path. Not because someone hands them the answers, but because they find their people sooner and learn to trust themselves faster. Especially women who've been told "this is just how it is." It doesn't have to be.
I'd had Type 2 diabetes for 17 years, since I was in my early 30s. By 2019, I was on insulin. I was told the disease was progressive and that managing decline was the best I could do.
Then I read a book, made some changes, and within one year my blood sugar was in the non-diabetic range. My endocrinologist, the one who told me I'd likely need medication for the rest of my life, looked at my results and said: "I wish you could talk to my patients."
I gave her homework. I told her to read The Diabetes Code by Dr. Jason Fung. I've since changed insurance, so I don't know if she ever did. I really hope she did.
That's the story I tell. Not because it has a perfect ending—the middle is forever. But because a patient assigning homework to her doctor is only possible when she's learned to advocate for herself. I want every woman in that exam room to know she has her own back and that she is worth advocating for.
People started asking me how I did it. How I'd gotten off insulin and a GLP-1. How I'd lost the weight. How my numbers had turned around.
I didn't have a simple answer—because it wasn't simple. It was books, rabbit holes, community, trial and error, and a lot of honest reckoning with myself.
So I started writing. And then I realized that writing wasn't enough—that what people actually needed wasn't more information. They needed each other. That's how Rooted Allies was born.
I'd had Type 2 diabetes for 17 years, since I was in my early 30s. By 2019, I was on insulin. I was told the disease was progressive and that managing decline was the best I could do.
Then I read a book, made some changes, and within one year my blood sugar was in the non-diabetic range. My endocrinologist, the one who told me I'd likely need medication for the rest of my life, looked at my results and said: "I wish you could talk to my patients."
I gave her homework. I told her to read The Diabetes Code by Dr. Jason Fung. I've since changed insurance, so I don't know if she ever did. I really hope she did.
That's the story I tell. Not because it has a perfect ending—the middle is forever. But because a patient assigning homework to her doctor is only possible when she's learned to advocate for herself. I want every woman in that exam room to know she has her own back and that she is worth advocating for.
People started asking me how I did it. How I'd gotten off insulin and a GLP-1. How I'd lost the weight. How my numbers had turned around.
I didn't have a simple answer—because it wasn't simple. It was books, rabbit holes, community, trial and error, and a lot of honest reckoning with myself.
So I started writing. And then I realized that writing wasn't enough—that what people actually needed wasn't more information. They needed each other. That's how Rooted Allies was born.
