Meet Meli
I’ve spent 20 years asking one question: what does it truly feel like to be alive in your body?
Most people come to me after trying a lot: the supplements, the protocols, the practitioners. My work starts somewhere different. We begin with your nervous system, because a body that feels under threat can’t digest, absorb or respond the way you want it to. Then we use testing to see what your body needs, and build a plan that’s personal to you, with fewer supplements and a reason behind each one.
That question was born from loss. From panic attacks that started young. From relocating from Venezuela and having to find my way back to myself.
I didn’t find the answer all at once. I found it through dance. Through nutrition science. Through understanding what the nervous system holds and how the body can find its way home.
Today I’m a bilingual Board-Certified Nutrition Specialist, Licensed Dietitian-Nutritionist, and doctoral candidate in Integrative Health. One truth guides everything I do:
You can’t optimize a system that’s still in survival mode.
What changed everything
I spent two decades in fitness, performance nutrition and movement education. I understood training stress and recovery. I was doing everything right.
But I kept seeing the same pattern, in my clients and eventually in myself: people doing everything right, with bodies that wouldn’t respond.
The breakthrough came during my Biology of Trauma certification. I finally understood what had been missing: the nervous system. You can’t change a body that’s in survival mode. You have to build capacity first, and that starts at the level of the nervous system, not the meal plan.
My own healing, overcoming panic attacks through functional medicine after relocating from South America, is what made this clinical. I know what it feels like when your body won’t cooperate. And I know what shifts when you finally have the data to understand why.
How I work
Foundation before intervention. Regulation before restriction. Capacity before change.
Real testing (hormones, gut, genetics) replaced guesswork in how I understand a body. Now it’s how I understand yours. I look at your whole system together: hormones, brain biochemistry, gut, genetics and nervous system.
My training runs deep on purpose: advanced work in menopause and next-gen performance under Dr. Stacy Sims, and an advanced Biology of Trauma certification under Dr. Aimee Apigian.
Movement Has Always Been Part of the Work
Long before I ran labs, I was on the dance floor, teaching and choreographing. Movement was my first laboratory for how the body responds to stress, effort and recovery. It’s part of every plan I build, because it’s one of the most powerful tools for nervous system regulation.
Education & Training
Doctoral Candidate, Integrative Health, ACHS
Board-Certified Nutrition Specialist (CNS), BCNS
Licensed Dietitian-Nutritionist (LDN), WA, AK, FL, MD
Master of Science in Nutrition (MScN), NUNM
Performance Nutrition Level 7, IOPN
Biology of Trauma Advanced Professional, Dr. Aimee Apigian
Menopause & Next Gen, Dr. Stacy Sims
HeartMath Practitioner
NASM Certified Personal Trainer, Sports Nutrition Coach, Women’s Fitness Specialist, Behavior Change Specialist
Bilingual: English / Spanish
What is a CNS? An advanced nutrition credential: a graduate degree in nutrition, 1,000 supervised practice hours and a national board exam.
Ready to feel like yourself again?
Start with a free 20-minute consultation.
I also work with teams and organizations. See For Organizations.