We recently connected with Aly Cassata and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Aly thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.
I didn’t grow up thinking I wanted to be a nutritionist, or anything health related actually – I had always been drawn to art, spending my childhood drawing, painting, stapling together 20+ pages colored-pencil drawings of outfits on models as a “fashion magazine”, and more. When I was a teenager, I started getting more into graphic art and eventually photography, even starting an internship at a local media company to help out with graphic and photoshop related projects. I wanted to be an artist, so on to art school I went after I graduated high school. I started studying photography at FIT in New York City and I loved it until… until I got sick. Within my first year of college, living on campus, I started to feel terrible – I had always been a morning person, yet I found myself unable to get out of bed to start my day, my skin was consistently breaking out, my hormones were all out of whack and I dreaded the week of my period like it was the plague. I was experiencing hair loss, really notable weight gain (I’m talking 30+ pounds within 6 months), and the final straw for me that finally got me to go see a doctor, was chest pain walking up a few flights of NYC subway stairs (at age 18)!
I saw a few doctors, ranging from a general practitioner, dermatologists, cardiologists, and even the nurses on staff at my school a few times and even after explaining this whole cascade of symptoms that showed up within just a few months of being at school, despite not *that much* of my lifestyle/routines being too different from when I was living at home (I wasn’t eating drastically differently, if anything I was more active with all of the walking that living in NYC comes with, and I’d maintained a pretty decent sleep schedule – I was not pulling all nighters, partying all of the time, or anything crazy), all of the healthcare providers I met with ultimately decided (without any labs, testing, etc) that this was “normal,” because “everybody is tired and gains weight in college” – ignoring my other concerning symptoms. When I continued to seek care, eventually they decided I was simply anxious and that I needed to learn to relax, see a therapist.
I couldn’t accept this because I knew that something was not right in my body. I knew my routines weren’t that different than they were before I started college, and I couldn’t accept this was “normal” nor that this was just anxiety. I’m sure I was also anxious, but I’d pretty much guarantee that was born of being completely ignored by my doctors for months when I felt like I could barely function.
Fast forward to my fourth (and final) semester of college, at this point learning that as much as I love photography and any visual art related outlets, this was not the career path I wanted to follow – I realized I enjoyed creating art so much more when I’m doing it for fun, on my own terms, not for assignments or freelance jobs. It was just before the start of the semester, now a full year and a half of feeling like garbage with no end in sight and because life has a funny way of giving you exactly what you need sometimes, I logged onto Facebook one morning (it was 2013 – that was the morning routine back then), and one of my relatives posted about how she was going to start a Whole30 and asked if anyone was willing to join her for accountability. I’d never heard of Whole30 and to be honest, I grew up the absolute pickiest eater so I wasn’t too sure about shifting to a diet of meat, fish, eggs, fruits, veggies, nuts, and seeds – when I truly only enjoyed eating bread, pasta, chicken cutlets, quesadillas, way too many packaged/ultra-processed snack foods, ice cream, and maybe some occasional romaine – you know, for “health.” BUT – I was so desperate. The reviews for people’s experiences with Whole30 that I was reading online at the time made the 30 day program sound like pure magic: there were claims of glowing skin, sky high energy levels, weight loss, and more. I decided to jump in feet first and start this diet the next day (and for the first time in my life, the phrase “I’ll start tomorrow” actually meant something).
I started, then I slipped up and ate some pasta, then I started again, and slipped up again, and so on for probably 2 months before I finally made it to day 15 without cheating on some of the foods I was supposed to be eliminating from my diet. By that mid-point, not only was I actually already starting to feel a little bit better, but I’d made it halfway, I didn’t want to have to start all over again when I was now in the final sprint. I made it all the way to day 30 and when the creators of the Whole30 wrote in their book that their program would change your life, they really weren’t kidding. I went on to reintroduce foods, finding that nearly all of the foods I’d eliminated were actually really inflammatory to my body (at the time), so once I finished this process, I continued eating a generally Paleo diet going forward. I felt like a completely different human – I lost 10 lbs, my acne COMPLETELY cleared up, I was sleeping so much more restfully, waking up actually able to get up and out of bed to start my day without snoozing my alarm 10 times, my hair slowly stopped falling out at alarming rates every time I took a shower or brushed my hair, my chest pain with stairs went away, I had such better daytime energy, I was so much more productive with my schoolwork, I felt incredible!
I felt SO good, all I wanted to do was shout from all of the rooftops in NYC that everyone should try the Whole30. I couldn’t believe how eating the right foods could make you feel so good? I didn’t even know it was possible to feel so good, because I think even the level of “good” that I felt before I started to feel bad at school, was nowhere near as good as I felt eating whole foods. So what did I do? I didn’t shut up about it, that’s what. My friends, family, classmates – literally everyone was so tired of hearing me talk about Whole30 and eating real, whole foods, and how nutrition would change their lives. And with the end of my final semester approaching, knowing that I didn’t really have a backup plan for my career once I left art school and kept photography just as a hobby, it seemed meant to be to pursue something food or nutrition related. My thought process was… if my friends and family don’t want to hear about this anymore, maybe it’s time to find the people who DO want to hear about this.
My first summer after leaving school, I started a food blog called Grass Fed Kitchen, where I dished up easy, healthy, paleo recipes as I was really learning how to cook for the first time now that I couldn’t (and didn’t want to) rely on packaged or premade foods that would include ingredients I’d been feeling so good not including in my diet at the time. I got to pair my love of photography with the love of food that’s in the blood of all Italians and also with my newfound appreciation for cooking and thoughtfully putting meals together so they’d be good for me, but also taste good. I shared dozens of recipes on my blog and Instagram over the following two years, while also reading so many nutrition and health related books and diving into so many great podcasts to learn more about the science/physiology side of things. In 2015, I felt really called to pursue nutrition as a career. Two of the authors and podcasters I’d really been loving at the time both studied nutrition through the Nutritional Therapy Association and I took a risk, took out a loan for the tuition, and started the year long intensive program to become a functional nutritional therapy practitioner just a month or two later. I learned so much in school here, I met such wonderful, caring, genuine, intelligent people who inspired me to be a part of the healthcare system that focuses on listening to people, getting to the root of understanding their health challenges, meeting them where they are in that moment in time with recommendations that are realistic and doable, so they CAN heal. It was such an incredible experience in person and online learning about the foundations of health, how interconnected EVERYTHING in the body is, and how powerfully our bodies can heal when given the right tools and materials to do so. In every touch point with my class, all of our online lectures, our in-person weekends to learn hands on functional testing, and the personal and professional friendships that have lasted since then – I really felt in my heart that I’d never made a better decision before in my life. I was actually grateful to have gotten sick (with what I later discovered was mold illness) in college. Who knows where I’d be right now if I’d felt healthy during my entire college career – probably still not a photographer, but also very likely not a nutritionist either!
In the last 8 years since finishing my nutrition program, I’ve worked with over 1500 clients, helping them improve digestion, calm their nervous systems down, support their circadian rhythms, support hormonal balance, improve relationships with food and relationships/mindsets around healing in general. Nearly all of these clients come to me with the same pain points in their healing journey that I started out with myself, they knew something was not right in their bodies and they didn’t feel heard by their healthcare providers, ultimately leaving medical appointments without any plan on how to feel like themselves again. Working with everyone I have, being able to make a difference in anyone’s life, let alone hundreds, hundreds of people who were just like me, has been the most rewarding experience of my life. I may not have grown up thinking I wanted to be a nutritionist, and while I don’t wish mold illness on anyone, I’m really am so grateful for everything that’s happened in my life to allow me to be where I am today, able to make a difference in others’ lives.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I’m a functional nutritional therapy practitioner and certified lactation counselor. I got into this field after having to navigate my own health challenges completely by myself after being dismissed and ignored by countless healthcare providers – written off as having anxiety or being told my symptoms were “normal” for a kid in college. This personal journey through hormonal imbalance and frustration with the healthcare system has fueled my passion for supporting other women. My mission is to provide the empathetic, effective support that I wish I had received, but with a focus on helping mothers nourish themselves and their babies, regain their confidence, and find joy in the entire journey that is motherhood.
I primarily like to work with women who are focused on supporting hormonal balance and/or are on a motherhood journey. My ideal client is a woman who is trying to get pregnant – whether she’s simply thinking of preconception nutrition and optimizing her health or if she’s someone who maybe has been struggling to get pregnant and really wants to hone in on supporting her fertility. With the natural order of events, I’d support her through a healthy pregnancy, focusing not only on nutrition (especially blood sugar balance as this plays a huge foundational role in hormonal balance and mitigating common pregnancy symptoms like fatigue, nausea, and food aversions), but also on mindset, nervous system regulation, circadian rhythms, sleep quality, and more.
From there, once the baby is born, I focus on supporting moms as they recover postpartum – repleting nutrients, supporting energy levels, and helping them figure out how to balance their new life with a newborn without neglecting their own health. Recognizing the importance of breastfeeding, I recently decided to study to become a certified lactation counselor (CLC) to support women in this area, which is beneficial not only for the baby but also for the mother. My approach integrates nutritional optimization, stress management, and self-care practices to help mothers manage their mental and physical well-being.
My clients often grapple with feelings of insecurity about breastfeeding, overwhelmed by the demands of work and motherhood, and self-neglect. These issues can lead to stress, guilt, and burnout. Many mothers wake up anxious about their baby’s feeding, spend their workdays distracted and frazzled, and collapse into bed each night feeling defeated. Their days are marked by worry, exhaustion, and a constant sense of falling short.
What sets me apart is my holistic approach and personal experience. My journey has instilled a deep empathy for the struggles my clients face, and my extensive training in functional medicine and nutrition allows me to offer evidence-based, personalized support. My goal is to empower women to trust their maternal instincts, balance their roles as professionals and mothers, and prioritize their health.
By addressing the root causes of their issues and offering ongoing support, I help mothers avoid the dire consequences of unresolved problems, such as persistent breastfeeding difficulties, burnout, and severe health issues. Clients emerge from our work together feeling more confident, fulfilled, and capable, with a renewed sense of energy, understanding of their body’s needs and their overall health. And this is ultimately the goal, not to ALWAYS be there for my clients, but to teach them how to heal, how to listen to their bodies, how to find balance, and how to do it all in a realistic way that becomes an innate lifestyle over time.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
That there’s no such thing as “perfect” and there’s definitely no such thing as a perfect healing journey. After getting sick with mold illness in college, which wasn’t actually diagnosed and fully treated until years later, I dealt with a lot of hormonal imbalance – all stemming from my adrenal glands over-firing for so long as I was stuck in a fight or flight state while mycotoxins were attacking my body, in particular my thyroid. My entire endocrine system was struggling and this showed up in terms of weight gain, acne, hair loss, trouble sleep/getting restful sleep, intense fatigue etc. While I was able to keep my symptoms at bay and feel really good in the meantime by maintaining a really clean, whole foods based, made from scratch Paleo diet, when I veered off of this path, when I had more notable stress levels (like at work, family challenges, or navigating NYC apartment hunting), my symptoms would start to creep back in and I’d start to feel extremely fatigued again. The more research I did the more I realized how central our nervous systems are to the healing process and how I needed to work on regulating mine better, to get my body out of fight or flight, reduce the overall stress load on my body, and give my adrenal glands a chance to rest. My thought process was, if I need to calm down in order to heal, let’s do ALL the relaxing things I can think of, religiously, and then I’ll heal, right? Wrong.
I stuck myself on a very rigid schedule with a jam packed morning and nighttime routine to “relax” – with the middle of my day still focused on 100% perfection with my diet to manage my symptoms. I couldn’t understand why with adding in meditation, breathwork, yoga, stretching, reading, blocking blue light, lying on an acupressure mat, and more for months was still not yielding me any progress on my path towards nervous system resilience. And I eventually realized (like way later than I should have) that trying to do ALL of the things was actually stressing my body out even more, I was so focused on crossing everything off of my wellness to-do list daily, that I’d rush through activities I enjoyed or social events with friends so I’d have time for my high maintenance routines before bed. After later nights out with friends or for family events, I’d still set my alarm way earlier than my body wanted so I had time to do all of my things in the morning before running out the door for work. Even though I was doing “relaxing” things, I was doing them in the least relaxing way imaginable, perpetuating to my body that I was in fact, not safe, and kept it thinking that I was in a hurry, I was in danger, I was running away from a bear, and I needed to be in fight/flight mode in order to survive.
I realized that my desire for perfection in my approach to healing is what was keeping me from actually being able to heal. As a recovering Type-A, perfectionist, black & white thinker – this was huge for me. The gray area started to become my best friend and the gray area is where the healing actually happened.
Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?
Empathy and being able to really connect with my clients is absolutely essential in my field. It’s what the majority of the healthcare industry is lacking – not because people who work in healthcare lack empathy by any means, but they work in a system that doesn’t give them time to really connect or care about the people they work with (literally, most healthcare visits are SO short and rushed, it’s no wonder so many people – women especially find that they are not heard by their providers).
I love connecting personally with my clients, and a part of that is often sharing my own experiences with symptoms and my overall healing journey – to make sure they know that they’re not alone, I’ve been exactly where they are and made it out on the other side, so they know this is possible for them too. I’m also a big believer that when you’re an empathetic listener, you show people that you are genuinely listening and understanding them, allowing them to then trust you and your process in helping them reach their health goals.
A big part of making the work I do with my clients successful and actually helpful for them is meeting them where they are. There may be 50 different ways to support any given client, symptom, or goal, but just making a bunch of recommendations to someone without really understanding them, their mindset, their roadblocks, their schedule, and their lives, it’s often tough for clients to make changes that don’t actually resonate with the way they’re living their lives at that moment in time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.nourishedbyaly.com
- Instagram: @nourishedbyaly
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nourishedbyaly
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alycassata/
Image Credits
Aly Cassata