Meet Meli | Functional Performance Nutritionist

meet meli

Hi, I’m Meli.

I'm a Board-Certified Nutrition Specialist, Licensed Dietitian-Nutritionist, and doctoral candidate in Integrative Health. I've spent 20+ years at the intersection of performance, movement, and nutrition, and I built this practice around one truth:

You can't optimize a system that's still in survival mode.

My work is foundation-first. That means building the physiological capacity that makes everything else: your training, your nutrition, your recovery, actually land.

From Performance to Polyvagal: What Changed Everything

I spent two decades in fitness, performance nutrition, and movement education, teaching 600+ instructor workshops, presenting at international fitness conferences, and coaching professionals worldwide.

I understood training stress. Recovery protocols. Metabolic optimization. I was doing everything right.

But I kept seeing the same pattern, in my clients and eventually in myself: driven people doing everything right, bodies that wouldn't respond. Hitting walls that made no sense on paper.

The breakthrough came during my Biology of Trauma certification. I finally understood what had been missing:

The nervous system.

Polyvagal theory reframed everything. You can't optimize a dysregulated system. You can't change a body that's in survival mode. You have to build capacity first, and that capacity starts at the level of the nervous system, not the meal plan.

My own healing journey, overcoming panic attacks through functional medicine after relocating from South America, rebuilding my performance from the inside out, is what made this clinical. I know what it feels like when your body won't cooperate despite everything you're doing right. And I know what shifts when you finally have the data to understand why.

Foundation before intervention. Regulation before restriction. Capacity before change.

That's how I work now. And it changes everything.

Why This Work

I do this because I've seen too many driven people burn out trying to optimize without a foundation.

→ I believe active women deserve performance nutrition that actually accounts for their physiology, not a plan built for a 25-year-old male athlete.

→ I believe athletes deserve support that goes beyond training load and macros, and addresses the nervous system capacity that determines how well they adapt.

→ I believe anyone can rebuild energy, clarity, and performance when they finally understand how their body works and get a roadmap built around their biology.

This is prevention-focused, data-driven functional performance nutrition. And it's the work I was built to do.

Education & Training

Clinical:

· Doctoral Candidate: Integrative Health

· Board-Certified Nutrition Specialist (CNS)

· Licensed Dietitian-Nutritionist (LDN)

· Master of Science in Nutrition (MScN)

· Performance Nutrition Level 7 (IOPN)

· Biology of Trauma Certified

· HeartMath Practitioner

· Voice in Sport (VIS) Expert

· The Play Zone Practitioner

Movement & Education

· NASM Certified Personal Trainer (CPT)

· NASM Sports Nutrition Coach

· NASM Women's Fitness Specialist

· NASM Behavior Change Specialist

· 20+ years in performance nutrition & movement education

· 600+ workshops and instructor trainings taught

· Bilingual — English / Spanish

A woman dressed in athletic wear, smiling and running towards the camera against a plain background.

Movement Has Always Been Part of the Work

Long before I was running functional labs, I was on the floor, teaching group fitness, training instructors, choreographing for international events. Movement was my first laboratory for understanding how the body responds to stress, effort, and recovery.

That foundation never left. It's baked into every program I build. Movement is one of the most powerful tools we have for nervous system regulation, metabolic health, and embodied awareness, and it belongs in the clinical conversation, not outside of it.

I've taught 600+ instructor workshops, 2,000+ live stream classes, and presented at ZINCON, the world's largest fitness conference. The ability to translate complex science into something a body can actually feel and use? That's a clinical skill.

Work in the World

Corporate Wellness

Google · Apple · Amazon · Kaiser Permanente · SCAD · Georgia State University
I design and deliver evidence-based wellness programming for high-performing teams, nervous system science, stress physiology, and performance nutrition education that actually changes how people understand their own capacity. Most recently: The Resilience Series for Georgia State University HR.
Athlete Programming

Savannah Clovers FC · SCAD Athletics · Youth Development Programs

Performance nutrition education and fueling workshops that bridge science and real-world practice. Teaching athletes how to train, eat, and recover with nervous system capacity in mind, because sustainable performance is built from the inside out.
International Fitness Education

Zumba® Presenter · ZINCON Speaker · Instructor Training
For 12+ years I taught 600+ workshops and trained 10,000+ instructors worldwide, including presenting at ZINCON, the world's largest fitness conference. The ability to translate complex concepts into accessible, energizing experiences is a skill I bring directly into clinical education and workshop facilitation.
This work honed my ability to translate complex concepts into accessible, energizing experiences, skills I now bring to clinical education and workshop facilitation.
Bold: Wellness for Active Aging

AgeBold · Virtual + On-Demand
Virtual fitness classes and community-building strategies for active older adults, combining movement education with nervous system-informed nutrition to support strength, mobility, and metabolic health through every stage of life.