I'm Maya, and if you'd told me five years ago I'd be running a nutrition practice in Pasadena, I would have laughed — probably while clutching my third coffee of the day and ignoring my stomach pain.

Back then, I was a marketing director at a tech startup, pushing through 60-hour weeks fueled by caffeine and whatever I could grab from the office kitchen. I thought constant fatigue, brain fog, and digestive issues were just the price of success.

Then came the wake-up call: a particularly brutal bout of burnout that left me in bed for a week, unable to focus on even simple tasks. My doctor ran some tests and basically shrugged. "Stress," she said. "Try to relax more."

But I knew something deeper was wrong. That's when I dove into nutrition research, eventually earning my certification in Functional Nutrition from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. What I discovered changed everything: my gut health was completely shot, my blood sugar was on a roller coaster, and my hormones were crying for help.

The transformation didn't happen overnight. But slowly, by changing how I ate and approaching food as medicine, I got my energy back. The brain fog lifted. My digestion normalized. I felt like myself again — actually, better than before.