Meet Christina - The Chodos Group

Real Food, Real Life, Real Results

As the mom of three kids with severe food allergies, I’ve lived with food challenges for over twenty-five years and learned things that aren’t taught in any textbook. I was completely overwhelmed the first time one of my sons was diagnosed in 1991. I gained hands-on life lessons, and the first thing I tell my clients is something I wish somebody had been there to tell me – “You can so do this.”

I offer answers, day-to-day strategies and a sense of community to families and individuals dealing with food allergies, food sensitivities and food intolerances; people hoping to maximize their overall health and well-being; people with medical issues including arthritis, diabetes and cancer; and sports teams, small businesses and other organizations. I offer plans for dealing with every major food allergen; high blood pressure and low cholesterol diet plans among others; and general nutrition education. I specialize in helping my clients navigate life and feel their best with a personal touch, and for the past 25 years I’ve crafted unique recipes and health management strategies to accomplish just that.

Learning the Hard Way

My journey to an awareness of how profoundly food affects health and well-being began on the snowy February morning when my son Hudson had his first anaphylactic reaction. He was eleven months old at the time. I knew zilch about food allergies: I thought his lower lip was swollen and hanging down because the scrambled eggs I’d put on his high chair tray were too hot and had burned him (though I’d tested them first). We were lucky – over-the-top, beyond belief lucky – that we lived just four blocks away from the doctor’s office.

But it never feels lucky to be told you have to completely rethink your relationship to food. Hudson’s two brothers later turned out to be even more allergic to more foods (the list of things they couldn’t eat included everything from eggs to beef, chicken, sweet potato, white rice, peaches and celery (celery?!)). I had to rebuild every aspect of what our family ate from the ground up, and what I learned along the way surprised me.

A Mother’s Passion

My kids, after all, were just kids – kids who loved the Cubs and Skittles and playing Grand Theft Auto and sleeping in late on Sundays – who never asked to be different. I gained a meal-by-meal education in managing their nutrition to keep them physically thriving (all of them would eventually become successful high school athletes) – but the emotional parts of their journeys were a different story. Food allergies in children are uniquely hard to deal with. What do you tell a five-year-old who can’t ever eat cake at a friend’s birthday party; or an eighth grader who has to plan out his class trip to Washington, D.C., as carefully as the Normandy invasion to avoid foods that could land him in the ER; or a college freshman who just wants to fit in but is highly allergic to the gluten in beer?

Food is so much a part of our lives that most of us never really think or feel about it until we have to. Coming to understand this emotional side of food challenges is what inspired me to pursue a career in Health Counseling: I wanted to share the lessons I learned in order to help kids, families and anyone else with food-related issues feel “normal” (better than normal) and empowered. And I also wanted to share the message I learned from my own sons, that it was possible to face food challenges with courage, resilience and humor.

Where I Studied

I received my education from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, where I was trained in over a hundred dietary theories and studied a variety of practical lifestyle coaching methods. I am currently continuing my studies with the Institute for Functional Medicine. Drawing on this knowledge, and my own life experiences, I’ll help you create a completely personalized plan for better health that suits your unique body, lifestyle, preferences and goals. A “one size fits all” approach doesn’t work with clothing, cars or even entertainment: why would it work with something as personal as health and nutrition? I learned over time that each of my children was different and needed different solutions, and the same goes for you. I’ve developed a nurturing, positive way of approaching food issues that embraces all parts of our lives– mood, food, medicine and the practical question of what on earth to put on the table for dinner tonight – with confidence, compassion and humor. You can so do this!

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