Today we’d like to introduce you to Tatum Vedder
Hi Tatum, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My journey began as an athlete with a strong familial foundation in health and fitness. My father is a retired chiropractor, former power builder and personal trainer, while my mother was a former aerobics teacher. They both illuminated and exemplified the importance of living an active lifestyle and how I fueled body. Nutrition and health was at the forefront at a young age. I was involved in a variety of sports when I then commitment to volleyball as my year-round sport while learning to lift weights. This sparked further interest in nutrition and how to maximize my performance in volleyball.
I was then posed with years of gastrointestinal distress which fueled my desire to find answers to heal via a holistic approach where doctor’s limited knowledge and prescription medications were failing. It took a total of seven years to heal my gut and resolve my symptoms. Meanwhile, I gained extensive experience working with the disordered eating population which opened a new door of nutrition. This experience helped cultivate my food philosophy and foundation of how I care for clients.
In my last year of college volleyball, I was presented with an intense and complicated knee injury, tearing my ACL, medial and lateral menisci, and breaking a portion of cartilage off my femur, leaving a pothole behind. This eliminated my final season to play and posed a major threat to my identity. Over the course of four years, I had six knee surgeries while I was completing my B.S. in nutrition at California State University, Northridge, and carried over as I completed my dietetic internship at the VA in La Jolla. This troubled road of constant injury, surgery, physical therapy, and healing incited interest to maximize recovery from surgery and sports injuries through nutrition. Therefore, I opened my own dietetic private practice, Equilibrium Nutrition, devoted to helping people heal and recover from injury and surgery via the power of nutrition.
My dream is to surf the world and I am my most joyous and grounded version of myself when I am in the water. I didn’t lose sight of my dream no matter how many times I was sent back to the operating table. While, I was strapped in a thigh high knee brace for the sixth time, I drew parallels between the tides of the ocean and the challenges of life. There are highs and lows. We all face challenges all of the time, whether it be disease, injury, surgery, stress, pregnancy, relocation, you name it. The body’s desire to adapt, overcome, and always return to equilibrium, a state of balance and homeostasis, is my philosophy to nutrition and life. I help people improve their diet and lifestyle so that they too, can find their equilibrium state.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Resilience is the best description to summarize the road that has led me to where I am today. I have had the opportunity to overcome many obstacles and curveballs. My struggles included overcoming SIBO and gut related issues, healing from six knee surgeries and four years of physical therapy and rehabilitation, questioning my career path, and mending my relationship with food. It all came together quite well in hindsight to bolster my passion in nutrition and helping others in their journeys.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I help people improve their diet and lifestyle. My specialty is nutrition counseling for injured or post-operated folks in recovery looking to get back to their active lifestyles. An injury or recovery from surgery commonly causes unwanted weight gain, appetite changes, muscle loss, and emotional eating.
Injuries and orthopedic surgeries are so common and so detrimental to one’s mind and body. Recovery from injury is a process that most individuals do not receive guidance and sufficient support in. Furthermore, nutrition for the healing and recovery process is undervalued and under addressed.
What often happens when someone is recovering from an injury or surgery is that they will not receive guidance on how to manage their diet, appetite, and inactivity. This leads to a cascade of uninformed nutrition decisions that impact their weight, muscle growth, appetite, and healing potential. This is where I step in. I guide and teach these folks how to fuel themselves appropriately in the condition that they are in. This requires accurate calorie and macronutrient targets, blood sugar and hormone stability, adequate hydration, targeted nutrients, and let’s not forget, coping mechanisms to manage the lack of mobility, stress, and emotion of it all.
Most of the time, I often work with people who had an injury and it sets them back years after. Still struggling to lose the weight, gain the muscle lost, and reduce the pain they have from their not-so-fresh injury. I help these people get back to their fittest and strongest version of themselves.
My first hand experience with injury and surgery recovery combined with my thorough nutrition training, training in eating disorders, and athletic history is what sets me apart from other dietitians. To be able to truly empathize with clients on all the minuscule ailments of this process and experience is something not found in a classroom or online course.
I am most proud of the wins that my clients gain along the way. I often have clients come to me in hopes to lose weight, fearing the answer will be a restrictive diet that won’t last. They soon realize my approach is not what they expected. They often feel liberated with their food choices, free of stress, obsession, and confusion. They feel better, more energized, and have fewer symptoms. They feel confident that the habits they develop are long lasting, not a temporary fad. These are all wins of the work we do. It reduces the value of the number on the scale and places comprehensive health and wellbeing at the pedestal. I call this finding our equilibrium state.
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
My injuries occurred in tandem with the COVID crisis. Doing physical therapy in my mask was humbling. I learned time is relative. Patience will serve you forever, as Lao Tzu stated, “nature does not hurry yet everything is accomplished.” Being in good physical health can support you for the unknown future. Our sense of community and mental wellbeing can impact our physical health more than we recognize. Lastly, there is never a bad time to practice gratitude.
Pricing:
- Injury & Surgery Recovery Nutrition Program $699
- Exercise Performance & Body Composition Optimization Program $699
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.equilibriumnutrition.net/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tatum_equilibriumnutrition/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tatumvedder/
Image Credits
Melanie Smalls
Casey Figlewicz
