About Mary Shenouda, Founder

I suffered decades of pain and sickness while doctor after doctor told me that it was all in my head, completely psychosomatic. I was prescribed every medication and coping pain killer under the sun. I had so many blood samples drawn that I speculated that I was actually keeping a small town of vampires alive.

By age 23 my body decided to turn up the volume, doing whatever it could to get me to find the source. I spent the year with my skin completely inflamed, from head to toe. Anywhere my skin was touched, an inflamed print would be left. Doctors again would doll out prescriptions in lieu of answers. The steroids I was put on to reduce my skin’s reaction left me a pile of depression on the floor, gaining weight rapidly.

My 24th year was my record number in ER visits from vomiting induced blackouts brought on from my migraines. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and on top of that, feeling like the marvels of modern medicine had forsaken me. The rage led to the realization that it was up to me, that it was time to take my health and my diagnosis into my own hands and to seek my own answers. After going down the internet research hole, I sent out my own lab work after learning that standard blood tests related to certain food intolerances can be up to 60% inconclusive.

The results came back, I was a Celiac*, in addition to having a severe Casein and Soy intolerance. *What is a Celiac? The word “Celiac” has a Greek origin – It comes from the word ‘Koiliakos’ which means hollow and refers to the way an individual with Celiac disease can eat but remain malnourished when gluten is present in the diet. The root word made more and more sense as I learned that there is so much in our accessible and daily food supply that cause this ‘hollowness’ in our digestion.

I finally had answers, or at least partial answers, to what the root cause of my ailments over the years and immersed myself into the world of modern American food to learn how what we eat today affects the human body. I learned that all my allergies and ailments could effectively be ‘cured’ through the adoption of the Paleo Diet, based on quality meats, seafood, vegetables, fruits, tubers and seeds. Simply changing the way I ate, without the use of any prescription drugs reversed my symptoms within months. A lifetime of pain and sickness began to disappear; migraines, hives, nausea, depression, digestive issues, muscular and joint pain, all gone.

Once I began regaining my health, sharing my story via Instagram, and reinventing my favorite dishes from childhood, the requests from professional athletes, well-known authors, actors, and even world-renowned Chefs came rolling in for private chef work and culinary consultations. I decided to go all in on my journey as a private performance chef advocating the power that whole foods has when it comes to health and vitality. Worth mentioning: I don't believe that the paleo diet is the cure all for everyone, but it is what started the path that led me to where I am today and how I seek to understand nutrition on an individual level because what works for me won’t work for you and what works today may not work in 6 months.

After 12 years in the game and many accomplishments later, I am just as passionate if not more than when I started about approaching performance on an individual level vs a one-size-fits-all approach.