A truly savvy approach to nutrition.

Whether you have no clue where to start and feel totally overwhelmed, or feel confident but would like to check with a professional, Savvy Dietetics can help with your nutrition needs.

Hypermobility (HSD/EDS) and Invisible Illness Dietitians

What can we help with?

As Accredited Practicing Dietitians, we have a broad range of training and can help with many acute and chronic health conditions, across various stages of life. To view each Dietitian’s special interests, see Our Team page.

Gut symptoms, including bloating, nausea, constipation, diarrhoea, dysphagia, poor appetite, reflux, fecal loading and more. Motility conditions, including gastroparesis, fecal loading. IBS/DGBI, coeliac disease, food allergies & intolerances, food chemical sensitivities, select elimination diets (including low histamine), gut support after antibiotics, managing medication side effects.
HSD/hEDS, MCAS, POTS/OH, ME/CFS + PEM, chronic pain, Vascular Compression Syndromes (e.g. MALS/SMAS), Long COVID / PASC, lipoedema, advocacy for diagnosis and building your healthcare team.
Menopause and peri-menopause, PCOS, endometriosis, adenomyosis, hypothalamic amenorrhoea, irregular or painful periods, PMS & PMDD, bladder pain disorders, pre-conception nutrition, pregnancy care in invisible illness.
Assessing malnutrition and providing an plan focussing on oral nutrition, especially when other factors such as gastroparesis or abdominal vascular compressions are involved.
Note, we cannot assist with Enteral Nutrition (tube feeding)as this is outside of our team's scope.
Chronic stress and burnout, anxiety, depression, food fears related to MCAS reactions.
Our team all take a weight-neutral approach.
Autism, ADHD, OCD, neurodivergent burnout.
Aleisha can assist with relationship with food, eating disorders, ARFID,
Coeliac disease, T1DM (Romy only), connective tissue disorders (inc. Lupus, Sjogrens), Rheumatoid Arthritis, Multiple Sclerosis, Hashimoto’s and more.
Reactive hypoglycaemia (& CGM trials), insulin resistance, T1DM (Romy only), T2DM.
High cholesterol, T2DM, pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome, liver disease.

Conditions we work with include:

Especially for our invisible illness and EDS/POTS/MCAS clients, tailored symptom management support can make a significant difference without having to restrict or alter diet significantly.
We work on areas including: POTS/MCAS management, microbiome health, motility optimisation, micronutrient optimisation and much more.
We provide clear and detailed instructions, offer multiple pathways, and involve your wider care team (e.g. GP, allied health) where needed.
As health professionals - first and foremost, we are here to listen.
We’re happy to take the time to chat through your questions and concerns, and help you work through how to implement different options in practice, with follow-up information where needed.
For those seeking support with their relationship with food, Aleisha (ANZAED Credentialed) on the team is best to see.
Meal planning for complex dietary needs is a large focus of our work.
Within this, we often provide suggestions for meal ideas, products and kitchen equipment. Where possible, we try and build your capacity to work towards reducing the long-term mental load of meal planning.
We do not generally offer prescriptive meal plans, as these do not are often not easy to implement or sustainable long term, and they can take us 5-20+ hours to create.
We use elimination diets and significant dietary change very sparingly, as we understand these are often not accessible, and/or are not best practice.
For some clients, dietary change is not an area that we discuss at all! And this is completely okay. We understand that everyone is at a different stage in their journey, and if you’d rather not focus on the food side of things yet, we’re still more than happy to assist with other areas within our scope such as symptom management tips, micronutrient optimisation and health team communication.
For people living with complex conditions, we understand that our work in isolation will often have a limited impact. For true cohesive care, a multi-disciplinary approach is required.
We are set up to facilitate this. After each session, you will receive a Nutrition Care Plan which you are welcome to share with any other members of your team.
Where needed and with consent, we will communicate with other medical and allied health members on your team - in writing, or via phone/video call.
We are happy to write NDIS reports (including EOP, COC, ART) and letters that are within our scope to do so.
As Dietitians, we can assess the need for evidence-based supplements and recommend options within our scope - for areas including micronutrient deficiencies, gut/microbiome health and motility, food intolerances and more.
Where possible, we recommend products from reputable practitioner-only brands via Vital.ly (we always set costs below RRP). For clients with MCAS or allergies, we are able to review product excipients and recommend workarounds to best meet your needs.
We stand by the ethos that less is more, and aim to not overprescribe. When recommending nutraceuticals, we discuss factors including financial cost, pill fatigue and practicality.
Note that non-food based herbal supplements are outside of our dietetic scope of practice.

How we support clients:

Our Ethos

Nutrition should feel supportive, not stressful

We take a back-to-basics approach - aiming to use foods you actually enjoy eating, in ways that feel achievable.
Individualised care

Recommendations are tailored to your story, preferences, neurotype, and circumstances - you remain in the driver’s seat.
Weight-neutral care

We take a HAES-aligned approach. Health and nutritional status is not always determined by body size. We do not prescribe weight loss as a goal.
Symptom management comes first

We often prioritise stabilising symptoms (e.g. GI symptoms, POTS, MCAS) before making major dietary changes.
In many cases, this reduces the need for extensive dietary change or restriction.
Cautious, considered use of elimination diets

When needed, these are introduced carefully and thoughtfully - but never as a first step.
Sustainability over perfection

We value sustainability over perfection, offering flexible strategies that respect fluctuating energy, access needs, and real-life constraints.

Dietetic Consult FAQs

Duration: Initial consults at Savvy Dietetics can take up to 60 minutes.
What do I need to prepare for an initial consult?
- Please complete your intake forms (emailed with your booking confirmation, and in a reminder email four days prior to your consult) at least 48hr prior to your consult, to allow your Dietitian enough time to prepare.
- If you have any recent (last 1 year) test results, such as blood/stool tests, endoscopy and colonoscopy results, abdominal x-rays, CGM trial or similar, or relevant specialist post-consult reports - please email these through prior to your session to assist us in providing accurate and safe information during your consult.
- We don't require you to complete a food diary prior to your consult.
What will be discussed during an initial?
- Your Dietitian will take a thorough history, which involves asking a lot of questions about your medical conditions, medications/supplements, symptoms (especially gastrointestinal symptoms), previous test results, diet, priorities and more. If there are any areas you'd rather not discuss just yet, there are spaces to indicate this in the intake form.
- After this, your Dietitian will run you through their initial thoughts on your case - explaining what they think is happening, and why this could be. We truly believe that when you understand how your body works, finding solutions that fit becomes much easier!
- Your Dietitian will run you through 2-5 key areas to focus on over the next 1-2 months. This can look different for everyone, but we often start with symptoms management strategies, condition screener tools and tests to discuss with your GP. If your medical history is highly complex, we may not be able to gather enough information during our first consult to provide a full Nutrition Care Plan. In this case we will usually offer you to book in a follow up consult sooner.
What happens after an initial consult?
- Your Dietitian will send you a full emailed 'Nutrition Care Plan' via email, within 7 business days of your consult. This will detail their overall thoughts on your case so far (it can take a few sessions to unpack complex symptoms and conditions!), as well as specific instructions on strategies to implements, often accompanied by our clinic resources which provide further background (if you're interested in this).
- If you have minor questions about your plan, feel free to email these to your Dietitian. We do not usually answer complex questions via email - so if you have major questions or would like a more guided approach, consider checking in after 2-3 weeks with a 15min or 30min review consult.
What do initial consults not usually cover? 
- Custom meal plans - in general, our clinic is not a huge fan of providing custom meal plans, as we often find these can be too prescriptive and difficult to implement safely - and often take our Dietitians 2-7+ hours to create. We are certainly open to creating custom meal planning resources for you, however this make take 2-5 sessions for us to start to create these, as it does take a while to unpack your symptoms, dietary preferences, intolerances, capacity and more.
- Elimination diet guidance - we understand that elimination diets are a common topic in the invisible illness space, however in the context of complex chronic disability they can hold significant risks - including malnutrition, disordered eating, burnout and more. To provide guidance around these safely, we first prefer to take 2-3 sessions to get to know you and your symptoms, to assess whether an elimination diet is necessary, and to provide tailored guidance around this. In extenuating circumstances, we may provide elimination diet guidance in an initial consult, however we will usually book you in for a review consult 1-3 weeks later to check in and troubleshoot proactively.
- A complete roadmap for the path ahead - complex chronic disability is complex for a reason! Dietetic consults in this space are a dynamic process, and we often adapt our strategies along the way depending on your response and fluctuating capacity.
If you have any other questions about Initial Consults at Savvy Dietetics, feel free to email us.
- Home enteral nutrition (e.g. feeding via nasal or surgical tube). If this is a factor you will need another dietitian helping in this area.
- Specific nutritional protocols for mould illness (we can assist with MCAS management in the context of mould illness).
- Paediatric Dietetics for children under 12 years old. We can assist with fecal loading management for children 6-12 years old.
- Emergency consultation related to acute presentations (e.g. acute symptoms related to significant malnutrition, acute gastrointestinal pain, bleeding or similar) - this is outside of our scope and capacity as private practice dietitians. Please visit your local emergency department, call 000 for emergency services or dial 13 HEALTH for a free phone triage from a registered nurse.
- Herbal medicine - this falls outside of our Dietetic scope. We are able to assist with evidence-based nutraceuticals (which have some overlap with specific, food-based herbal products). Aleisha and Savvy are confident in this space, and Romy and Katherine are currently up-skilling.
- Considerations for neurodivergent clients with high supports needs - we are more than happy to discuss accessibility and communication needs, and adapt our approach where possible while providing a safe Dietetic service within our scope and capacity, however we may not be able to meet all needs. If there are any considerations you'd like to discuss before booking in, feel free to send us an email, and we can discuss this via email or phone call.
- Meal planning for long term restrictive diets (e.g. ketogenic diet, carnivore diet), and general prescriptive meal plans, as these fall outside of our clinic's ethos.
View our fee schedule and accepted funding sources here.
You are welcome to send questions to your Dietitian between session. Reply times can depend on their clinic days, pacing, and the urgency of your question.
We aim to answer simple questions (clarifying minor details of plan, Vital.ly supplement re-prescriptions) and urgent requests (malnutrition & vascular compression, hospital/medical questions where dietetic input is required, etc) within 7 working days. Documentation and other matters may take up to 14 days.
If you have a more detailed, non-urgent clinical question (e.g. asking about modifications to your nutrition plan, symptom management, starting a new supplement etc), we will often ask for this to be saved for our next consult. If you would like to check in sooner, you are more than welcome to either book a 15min Phone Consult on our calendar or ask to be put on the cancellation list for an earlier consult.
Unfortunately, dietitians cannot order Medicare-rebatable pathology tests (including blood, stool and functional testing). While we can organise pathology test referrals through third-party providers, we often opt not to do this as the cost is significant, and we prefer to have a medical professional co-interpreting results in case there is something significant and outside of our scope that presents.
As part of our service, we can recommend nutrition-related blood tests to ask your GP for. Via this pathway, most testing can be bulk billed, with no out-of-pocket cost to you.
Remember to ask your GP for a PDF copy of your results, and please aim to email these to us ahead of your next session!
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Posting testimonials can lead to false expectations, and may be misleading to you as a consumer.
If you are currently deciding if our team would be a good fit for you, please feel free to email us at admin@savvydietetics.com.au.