The Team

My name is Margaret and I eat naked. That’s really all you need to know about me, but if you’re curious to know more… I love food and everything about it: growing it, cooking it, eating it, healing with it, talking about it, understanding it, relating to it. Food is such an integral part of our life. We have to eat it multiple times a day just to survive and, as one of my teachers said, “We are, at our most basic level, walking food.” True that. I had my first powerful experience with the fundamental importance of food in my mid-20s when a change to my diet resolved a chronic skin condition I’d struggled with for years. At the time I was deeply immersed in the world of social ventures and business consulting, first with the boutique consultancy Spark Strategies and then as VP Member Development with Canadian Business for Social Responsibility. Fast forward a few years and I realized my true calling was food and health, and, more specifically, using the former to achieve the latter. I became a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP) at the Nutritional Therapy Association (a school I recommend highly if you’re considering a career in nutrition) and then drew inspiration from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition where I learned from some of the top minds in the field (personal favorites were Sally Fallon of the Weston A Price Foundation, Dr. Mark Hyman, and Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way). Since then, I’ve become a Certified GAPS Practitioner, a Certified Healing Foods Specialist and also studied with the incredible Mark David at the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. I now work with clients all over North America and Europe, helping them resolve health issues, learn how to eat for their body to thrive, and heal their relationship with food. It’s juicy stuff, and so rewarding. In June 2011 my first book, Eat Naked: Unprocessed, Unpolluted and Undressed Eating for a Healthier, Sexier You, was released with New Harbinger Publications, and in May 2012 we launched its recipe follow-up, The Naked Foods Cookbook: The Whole-Foods, Healthy-Fats, Gluten-Free Guide to Losing Weight and Feeling Great, with the amazing Chef James Barry. I blog here as well as guest author on several other health-related blogs. I still do a little business coaching here and there, but mostly focus these talents on supporting my NTP peers in a Business Class for NTPs that I lead annually. Thanks so much for popping by and if you like what you see, subscribe to my newsletter (see the subscribe box up to your right) and I’ll send you recipes, articles, updates, and a complementary 10-week guide to getting naked.

A couple of fateful years ago, when I was in the middle of writing my first book Eat Naked, I happened to meet a cute and very knowledgeable chef at a group training run. We got to chatting and discovered a mutual love of food and very similar beliefs around its importance to health. We started working together on the Cook Naked chapter of the book, and I was so impressed with his passion and culinary abilities (not to mention his gluten-free peanut butter cookies) that I married him. True story. Chef James Barry is now an active part of the Eat Naked team. A brilliant personal chef and owner of the Los Angeles based healthy (naked!) meal delivery company Wholesome2Go. Chef James co-authored the recipe section of Eat Naked as well as the recently-released Naked Foods Cookbook and he supports our Eat Naked clients with creative recipes, menu planning tips, and all sorts of great strategies to make eating naked fun and seriously delicious. Chef James learned to scramble an egg at the ripe age of four and has been passionate about cooking ever since. A graduate of the Natural Gourmet Institute of Health and Culinary Arts in New York, James has served as a private chef to A-list celebrities, helping them reach their optimum health. His healthy and tasty style of cooking had such positive response that he started Wholesome2go, a healthy high-quality food delivery company currently serving the Los Angeles area. Whether traveling cross-country as the vegan/vegetarian chef on the Van’s Warped tour or in Europe with his celebrity clients, James is constantly making efforts towards assisting those that want to live healthier lifestyles. If you’re lucky enough to live in the LA area, you can eat Chef James’ food easily with Wholesome2Go‘s meal delivery service. We’ve partnered on our 14-Day Sugar Control detox for those clients who’d prefer to have their meals delivered rather than preparing their food themselves (currently only available in the LA area). Chef James is also regularly contributing recipes and creative cooking articles to this blog, so keep an eye out for his work!

In the spring of 2012, Lisa Marlene Thompson joined the Eat Naked team as the first Eat Naked Associate. I was looking for someone to support my clients during my maternity leave and Lisa, a highly skilled Nutritional Therapy Practitioner who also studied with the Nutritional Therapy Association and who shares many of my beliefs and approaches around food and health, was the perfect person for the role. I’ll let her introduce herself in her own words: I’ve been a mover all my life. I started dancing and choreographing at age 4 and never stopped. My dance career has taken me to many different places on the globe and taught me many lessons along the way – the most important being how to nourish my body and make the best food choices in order to sustain my athletic activity. I’ve definitely made my share of mistakes and learned a lot by trial and error. Born with a deep fascination of the body and a desire to understand how it works, I continued to study and increase my knowledge: I became a certified Pilates and Yoga instructor, and still wanted more. I continued my pursuit to understand the body on ever deepening levels and discovered the Nutritional Therapy Association and became a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. We are transformed by the food choices we make. How we choose to nourish our bodies has an impact not only on our health and vitality, but also our minds and our spirits.

Hannah Williams and I met several years ago when we were both studying at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. We became fast friends, and I always felt that I could count on her to show up with real insight and total professionalism. When I received her email in the summer of ’11 that she was shifting gears and opening up shop as a Virtual Assistant/Project Manager, I jumped on it. Now, Hannah helps keep Eat Naked running and growing – taking care of my clients and community, helping manage the blog and newsletters, and helping me with the strategic vision for the company. Hannah runs her own business, Savvy and Salt, supporting me and other women entrepreneurs in service-based companies all over the country. She lives in Boulder, CO.