FOOD AND NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY
YOUR BODY HAS A LOGIC,
LET’S UNDERSTAND IT
Dalene Rottier – Registered Dietitian · Functional Nutritionist · G.E.M.M. Certified Practitioner.
BSc Dietetics (US 2003) · Integrative Nutritionist (IFN Academy, USA) · G.E.M.M. Certified (2026)
· 23 years in practice
The Human:
I was born a slightly plump, hungry and anxious child. My first panic attack came at age five. By twelve, I had been diagnosed with IBS. By fifteen, Reactive Hypo-glycaemia had turned eating into a delicate calculation rather than a simple pleasure. Through my teens and twenties, I had a hyper-disciplined relationship with food and exercise just to stay at a normal BMI, a relationship that, at times, tipped into dangerous territory. At twenty-three, a structural hip and back condition left me bedridden, shortly after that season, I encountered something I can’t explain in clinical terms: I was miraculously healed through prayer. It was the first time I understood, in my body and not just my mind, that healing is bigger than any protocol. That God is present in the restoration of the physical, not just the spiritual. It planted something in me that has shaped my practice and sense of purpose since.
I chose dietetics because I wanted answers — for myself as much as for others. I graduated from Stellenbosch University in 2003 with my BSc Dietetics, convinced that the tools of the profession would finally help me make sense of my own complicated body. They didn’t. Not fully.
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The Practitioner
From 2003 to 2008 I worked as a Consultant Dietitian in London, across Endocrinology, Gastroenterology and Oncology units. It was rigorous, formative, and deeply rewarding — and it also began to show me the limits of conventional dietetics. I was working with some of the most complex patients, in some of the best clinical environments, and still something felt incomplete. We were managing symptoms. We weren’t finding its cause.
I came home to South Africa in 2010 and continued private practice. I poured everything into it. And still — quietly, persistently — something kept nagging at me. My patients weren’t getting the results they deserved. Neither, honestly, was I.
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The Functional Turn
That discomfort became my greatest professional asset.
In 2014 I began formally studying Functional Nutrition and Integrative Medicine — a decision that changed everything. Over the following years I immersed myself in nutrigenomics, root-cause clinical thinking, and the science of the body as an interconnected system rather than a collection of isolated problems. I eventually certified as an IFNCP through The Integrative and Functional Nutrition Academy in the USA, and in 2026 I added my G.E.M.M. certification — a specialized methodology for addressing complex health challenges by restoring digestive function at its deepest root.
Twenty-three years in, and I have not stopped studying. I don’t think I ever will.
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The Personal Journey Continues
What I didn’t know in my twenties was that my own body still had a long road ahead of it — and that road would become the very thing that makes me useful to you.
Since founding my practice I have navigated hypothyroidism, hormonal imbalances, skin cancer, and the complex, disorienting terrain of perimenopause. Each chapter has been its own education. Some of it was resolved quickly. Some of it has been a long, slow journey — the kind where you have to hold your faith in one hand and your lab results in the other, and trust that the answer exists even when you can’t see it yet.
That trust is hard-won. I believe that God, who created our bodies – these extraordinary, intricate systems, is not absent from the process of healing them. My faith is woven through my work in how I hold space for patients who feel dismissed, in the conviction I bring to complex cases when the easy answer is “your results are normal,” and in the understanding that wholeness is physical, emotional, and spiritual all at once.
“So when I say I get it — I do. I’ve lived it. I’ve studied it and I walk it with you, not from a place of perfection, but of real life insight.”
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What This Means for You
If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing everything right and still not getting results, I am the kind of practitioner who knows where to start looking.
My approach is personalized, evidence-based, and rooted in the understanding that your body is a system – not a collection of separate problems to be managed in isolation. My focus areas are gut, hormonal, metabolic health and weight management, with particular interest in women navigating menopause.
There are answers, healing is available. Sometimes it comes quickly; sometimes it asks more of us. You don’t have to figure it out alone and you don’t have to keep being told that everything is fine when your body and your symptoms tell you that it isn’t.
I’m here for exactly that conversation.
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Dalene Rottier RD, IFNCP consultantdieticians.co.za
OUR PASSION is HEALTH AND PEOPLE
OUR MISSION is to help you achieve HOLISTIC HEALTH through an intricate balance of nutrition, supplementation and lifestyle change.
OUR VISION is to assist you in creating the habits necessary to become the healthiest version of you. Food is information and when built into a healthy, balanced lifestyle can assist you in living your best life.
You don’t have to figure it out alone and you don’t have to keep being told that everything is fine when your body and your symptoms tell you that it isn’t.
I’m here for exactly that conversation.