Maya Chen, RD · Rooted Women’s Nutrition
Your bad food days might not be food days.
Twelve weeks. Four triggers, not forty. You’ll leave knowing what’s actually yours — because we fix the measurement before we test a single food.
The fit call is free, twenty minutes, and mandatory before anyone enrolls. If I don’t think I can help you, I’ll say so.
The Cycle Overlay Chart
Same lunch. Two different answers.
An illustration of what a clustered pattern looks like on paper. Not a result, not an average, and not anyone’s data — your chart is the only one that tells you anything about you.
Why nothing has worked yet
You were weighing food on a moving deck.
Every elimination diet ever written assumes one thing: that your baseline holds still. Remove a food, feel better, blame the food. Clean logic — and it falls apart the moment the baseline moves.
Many women notice symptoms cluster in the week before their period. So the same lunch can be fine on cycle day 10 and ruinous on cycle day 24. Same salad. Same portion. Different week.
It’s like trying to weigh yourself on a scale sitting on a boat. Every reading is real, and every reading is also wrong, because the deck is moving underneath you.
The three-week trap
A three-week trial is shorter than one cycle. Whatever you saw landed somewhere inside a single hormonal month, and there was no way to separate the food from the week you were in.
Start on cycle day 6 and finish on day 27, and gluten gets blamed for the last five days of your cycle. Start at the other end and gluten looks like a miracle. Both readings are real. Both are also wrong.
You didn’t get a wrong answer. You got no answer, delivered convincingly — and that is a sequencing problem, not a statement about you.
The mechanism
The Cycle Overlay Method
One sentence, then I’ll stop: you cannot measure a food reaction on a baseline that moves, so we chart symptoms against cycle day first, subtract those weeks, and only then reintroduce foods one at a time.
Fix the measurement. Then test.
01
Chart
Fourteen days of symptom scores against cycle day, before we change a single thing you eat. About ninety seconds a day. You're measuring, not fixing.
02
Subtract
The weeks where the reading can't be trusted come out of the analysis. What's left is the part of the month where a food test actually means something.
03
Test
One food at a time, a defined amount, a clear pass or fail, placed in a window we can read. This is the half every free handout skips.
The twelve weeks
The sequence is the product.
Three phases in a fixed order, because the order is the thing that has been missing. Group calls run Tuesdays at noon Pacific and every one is recorded, so a work trip or a sick kid costs you nothing.
Phase 1 · Weeks 1–4
Calm
A 60-minute 1:1 kickoff sets your protocol — a modified low-FODMAP baseline plus sleep and meal rhythm. You start charting symptoms against cycle day on the Cycle Overlay Chart.
60-minute 1:1 kickoff
Phase 2 · Weeks 5–10
Reintroduce
A 1:1 checkpoint at Week 5 builds your reintroduction schedule around your own chart, so foods are only tested in the windows where the reading can be trusted.
Week 5 reintroduction checkpoint
Phase 3 · Weeks 11–12
Root
A 1:1 checkpoint at Week 11 turns everything you learned into a maintenance plan you can run without me — plus your short list, on one page.
Week 11 maintenance checkpoint
What's included
Four hours with me, and everything written down.
Eleven things, and the one that matters most is the one nobody has given you yet: a reintroduction schedule built around your own chart.
Week 1 kickoff
A 60-minute 1:1. Full history, a review of every experiment you have already run, and your Calm-phase protocol set live on the call.
The Cycle Overlay Chart
Daily symptom scoring plotted against cycle day, reviewed at every checkpoint. About ninety seconds a day.
Calm Phase Protocol
A modified low-FODMAP baseline — deliberately modified, not full elimination — built to be cooked alongside a family dinner.
Weekly group calls
Tuesdays at noon Pacific, twelve of them, capped at fifteen women. Every call recorded and posted, so a missed week costs you nothing.
Week 5 reintroduction checkpoint
Your chart read aloud with you, the pattern named, and your personal reintroduction schedule built around it.
Structured reintroduction schedule
Food by food, with dose, timing, cycle-window placement, and a clear read for each. This is the part nobody has given you.
Week 11 maintenance checkpoint
Your confirmed list, your hormonal-week playbook, and what to do when a new symptom shows up in eight months.
"What's Actually Yours" short list
One page. Confirmed triggers, cleared foods, quantity thresholds where they apply, and the foods that were never the problem.
Physician conversation sheet
Plain language for what to ask your own doctor to check and how to describe your charted pattern in a twelve-minute appointment. Educational naming only.
Between-call message support
Written answers to protocol and reintroduction questions between sessions, so a mid-week problem does not wait for Tuesday.
To confirm: published cadence and channel for message support
Cohort recording library
Every group call, indexed by topic, available for the full twelve weeks.
What you leave with
A short list. Four things, not forty.
One page. Confirmed triggers, cleared foods, and a threshold beside each one where a threshold applies — how much, not never again.
Fridge-door sized. Shareable with your husband. It is the object that replaces forty vague fears, and it is the reason the twelve weeks have an end date rather than a subscription.
I never promise symptom outcomes. Nobody honest can. What I promise is the process, and a document at the end of it with your name on it.
Delivered in week 11–12
What’s Actually Yours
- Food A
- Half a portion is fine. A full one isn't.
- Food B
- Any amount, in the second half of the cycle.
- Food C
- Fine on its own. Not alongside Food A.
- Food D
- Small amounts, not daily.
Everything else — cleared.
- Cleared
- Cleared
- Cleared
- Cleared
- Cleared
- Cleared
- Cleared
- Cleared
- …and the rest
This shows the format of the document, not a result. Four rows is the shape the method aims at — how much, not never again — and what actually lands on your page comes out of your own chart and your own reintroductions.
What I don't do
The refusal list.
A panel hands you forty suspects and no method for clearing a single one. You leave with more variables than you arrived with, and the only instruction it implies is avoid more things.
Conventional workup belongs with your physician, and naming markers out loud is fair game — ask your doctor to check ferritin, ask about your thyroid. I’ll help you script that conversation.
- I don't run IgG panels.
- I don't run hair mineral tests.
- I don't order labs.
- I will never hand you a longer list of foods to fear.
- I never promise symptom outcomes. Nobody honest can.
What I can actually show you
Eighty-three women. Seven cohorts.
The number I watch is the completion rate, and not for the flattering reason. The women who come to me have already finished a full elimination diet with no support — commitment was never the missing ingredient.
What was missing is sequence and a calendar. Roughly 90% completion is what that structure produces. It isn’t a personality test anyone passed.
- women through the program
83
women through the program
- cohorts run to date
7
cohorts run to date
- completed the twelve weeks
~90%
completed the twelve weeks
- women per cohort, capped
15
women per cohort, capped
- 11 years as a Registered Dietitian
- First 6 of those in a hospital GI clinic
- 5 years in private practice
- Monash-certified in the low-FODMAP method
The number
$1,800, or 3 × $650.
I’m putting it on the page so you’re not ambushed by it on a call. The payment plan totals $1,950 and I won’t apologise for the spread — it turns an $1,800 decision into a $650 one.
Cohorts are capped at fifteen and run three times a year. Fifteen is the cap because fifteen is how many 1:1 checkpoints fit in my week. That’s the whole story — no countdown, no vanishing seats.
The Two-Week Process Guarantee
Finish the first two weeks and keep your log. If the process isn’t for you, tell me by day 14 and I refund you in full.
The only condition is that you actually charted, because that’s the part that shows both of us whether this is going to work.
I’m guaranteeing the process, not your symptoms. If I don’t deliver the process, you don’t pay for it.
Who this isn't for
I’ll tell you if I can’t help you.
Every enrollment starts with a free twenty-minute fit call, and part of my job on it is to say no out loud when it’s a no. The refusal is the reason the women who do enroll finish.
- You live in California. I can't work with you there, and I'll tell you on the call rather than after you've paid.
- There's an active eating disorder in the picture. This is the wrong structure and it could do harm.
- You need medical management. If that's what's going on, you need a physician, not a dietitian's protocol.
- Your presentation isn't gut-dominant. If the pattern is somewhere else, this isn't your mechanism.
Before you ask
The questions I get every week.
These are the four objections that come up on nearly every fit call, answered here so you don’t have to book a call to hear the answer.
How is this different from the last three things that didn't work?
Honestly? The food protocols aren't wildly different. The order is. Everyone else tests food first. I refuse to draw a single conclusion about food until we have charted your cycle and subtracted those weeks. Don't take my word for it — download the guide, chart fourteen days, and look at your own numbers. If your bad days don't cluster, I'll tell you this isn't your mechanism.
I think I'll try cutting gluten on my own first.
Completely reasonable, and I'd say the same in your position — except you have already run it. It worked for three weeks and then stopped, right? Three weeks is shorter than one cycle, so that result was always going to be noise. If you want to test gluten, test it properly: chart first, then challenge it in a window where the reading means something. I'll send you the guide either way.
I don't have the time. I work full-time and I have kids.
That's the objection I take most seriously, so let me be precise. Four hours with me across twelve weeks. One live call a week at noon Pacific, and every one is recorded — you can miss two in a row and be fine. The daily charting takes about ninety seconds. And the Calm protocol is built to cook as one family dinner, not a second dinner for you.
Isn't a test panel more thorough than a dietitian who won't run any tests?
A panel produces forty suspects and no method for clearing a single one. I don't run IgG panels or hair mineral tests and I don't order labs. What I'll do instead is give you language to ask your own physician for a conventional workup, and then read your chart with you.
What actually happens on the fit call?
Twenty minutes, free, and my only job is to work out whether this is right for you. I'll ask what you've already tried and when each thing stopped working. If I don't think I can help you, I'll say so and I won't take your money.
What if my cycle is irregular, absent, or suppressed by an IUD?
This is a fair question and a common one, and I'd rather answer it precisely than approximately. Ask me on the fit call and I'll give you a straight answer for your situation.
To confirm: whether an irregular / IUD-suppressed / absent cycle is a screen-out, or whether a workaround exists
If you’re done guessing, the next step is twenty minutes.
Free, mandatory before anyone enrolls, and no pressure attached. If you’d rather start with something that costs nothing, take the guide and chart fourteen days first — the mechanism works whether or not you ever pay me.