I’m Kelsey Umansky, RD

Hello and welcome! 

My name is Kelsey Umansky - I am an Anti-Diet, Registered Dietitian with the goal of helping others unmask the diet culture that lives all around us, reconnect with the body's interoceptive awareness, and cultivate a peaceful relationship with food. 

I started my career in dietetics as a clinical dietitian, providing medical nutrition therapy in an acute setting to a diverse population of patients. Since then, I’ve received a wide variety of experience in various areas of the field including nutrition education and counseling for cancer patients and survivors and more recently through my work as the Registered Dietitian for Cal Poly Campus Dining. In this role I was given the opportunity to assist in recipe and menu development, provide nutrition education to the campus community, and consult college students with various food allergies and dietary restrictions to help better their dining experience on campus.

Going back to the beginning, my interest in food and nutrition started at a young age, in the kitchen, learning to cook with mom. I quickly developed a passion for making and sharing food and recipes with others. Although this interest developed from a pure space, throughout my years as a high school athlete, I encountered my own periods of falling into the diet mentality trap. This interest and at times obsession with “health and wellness” led me to Cal Poly where I studied applied nutrition for my undergraduate degree. Here, I was educated on the bodies various and incredible processes and discovered the important role that all foods play in these functions. It was through this knowledge and exposure that I was able to begin to lay the foundation for rejecting the diet mentality. During my dietetic internship at Pepperdine University I was given the assignment to read Intuitive Eating by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole and later got the opportunity to meet Elyse and discuss the framework in a small group setting. This experience and discovery of the IE principles further opened my eyes to the havoc that weight stigma and diet culture can wreak in all aspects of a person's physical and mental wellbeing. It became my mission to adopt these principles and never look back. I have integrated this belief system into my personal and professional daily practices and am now working towards obtaining a new credential of Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. 

On a personal tangent - outside of my professional life, you can find me creating macrame wall hangings, mountain biking or hiking the hills of SLO, in the kitchen recipe testing and playing with food photography, or snuggling with my goldendoodle Walter. 

I am thrilled to be able to practice in this space and to utilize my various passions and experiences in general nutrition related topics, a variety of disease states, food allergies, sports nutrition, eating disorders, intuitive eating, and more. I am honored you stumbled upon this page and took the time to meet me and I look forward to the potential of meeting and working with you on your journey towards food freedom and recovery.