Approach
Information is not a plan.
I spent four years in a hospital dietetics department watching people get discharged with a photocopied diet sheet and no idea what had gone wrong inside them. This practice is a reaction to that.
Meera Bhandari · Bengaluru
Why I work this way
Her story
I trained at Manipal, finished an MSc in Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics in 2013, and went straight into a tertiary hospital in Bengaluru. Endocrinology and cardiology wards, mostly. It is very good training and it teaches you a specific lesson: the clinical decision is usually correct and the translation to the patient is usually terrible.
A man would be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes on a Tuesday and be handed, on the Thursday, a laminated sheet with "avoid" printed on one side. Nobody had thirty minutes to ask him what time he got home from work, who cooked in his house, or whether he had ever heard the phrase insulin resistance. Six months later he would be back with a worse number and a conviction that he had failed.
He had not failed. He had been given information instead of a plan, which is a different product entirely.
Why food-first, and what that actually means
Food-first is not an ideology about supplements. I prescribe them when the bloodwork says so. It means that the first several interventions in any plan I write are changes to food you already eat, because those are the changes that survive contact with a real life.
Practically, it means I would rather change the order in which you eat what is already on your plate than take anything off it. It means asking what your household cooks on a Wednesday before I suggest anything at all. And it means that if a change requires a specialty ingredient from a particular shop, it had better be doing serious clinical work, because it is going to cost you attention every single week.
Where I am impatient
With the industry, mostly. With ₹8,000 PDFs generated in nine minutes. With practitioners who make thirty per cent margin on the supplements they prescribe and do not disclose it. With the word "detox" being used commercially by people who know exactly what a liver does. And with the idea that a woman who has regained weight three times has a character problem rather than a plan problem.
I am not impatient with clients. Nobody arrives at a nutritionist because things are going well.
Nobody arrives at a nutritionist because things are going well.
Training, registration, and where to check it
Every line below is verifiable. The registration number is on the Indian Dietetic Association register and you are welcome to look it up before you pay anyone anything.
- 2013
MSc Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics
Manipal Academy of Higher Education. Dissertation on glycaemic response to sequenced meal composition in South Indian diets.
- 2014
Registered Dietitian, Indian Dietetic Association
RD/2014/KA/2287. In good standing, verifiable on the IDA register. Renewed annually with continuing education requirements met.
- 2014 – 2018
Clinical Dietitian, tertiary hospital, Bengaluru
Endocrinology, cardiology and renal wards. Roughly 2,000 inpatient consultations, plus the outpatient diabetes clinic on Fridays.
- 2017
Certificate in Diabetes Education
Project HOPE / Dr. Mohan's Diabetes Specialities Centre.
- 2019
Advanced training, PCOS and reproductive endocrinology
Monash University PCOS evidence-based guideline training programme.
- 2021
Monash FODMAP-trained clinician
For supervised elimination and reintroduction. The reintroduction half is the part most practitioners skip.
- 2018 – present
Private practice, Rasa Clinical Nutrition
Solo. Approximately 1,400 clients to date, in-person in Bengaluru and online across India.
What you are actually buying
Sixty minutes, broken down. If you are sceptical — and you should be — this is the part to read twice.
- Before
What you send me
Bloodwork from the last three months, a list of medications and supplements with doses, and three days of honest food logging including a weekend. It goes into a secure upload link, not WhatsApp.
- 0 – 15 min
History
Diagnosis, duration, family history, cycle history, sleep, stress, digestion, and every previous attempt with what specifically went wrong. That last part is the most useful fifteen minutes of the hour.
- 15 – 30 min
The kitchen
Who cooks. What gets cooked. What time you get home. Where you eat lunch. What happens at 4pm. What your weekends look like. Whether you can have a separate meal without a family argument.
- 30 – 45 min
The explanation
I draw the mechanism for you — on paper, or on screen if we are online. You leave able to explain your own condition to someone else. If you cannot, ask me again, because that means I explained it badly.
- 45 – 60 min
The first three changes
Three. Not thirty. Chosen for effect-per-unit-disruption, and agreed with you rather than handed to you. If you tell me one of them will not happen, we pick a different one there and then.
- Within 48 hrs
The written plan
A document with the changes, the reasoning, portion guidance in household measures rather than grams, and what we are measuring and when. Plus any labs I want that you do not yet have.
In-person: Tuesday and Thursday, Bengaluru. Online: Monday to Friday, all of India. Online consultations run on Google Meet with reports uploaded through a secure link beforehand.
And what I will not do
The short version. There is a longer one on the homepage, set considerably larger.
No crash diets
Anything under about 1,200 kcal costs you muscle, thyroid output and your period. You will regain it with interest. I have spent years undoing this.
No meal replacement shakes
They work exactly as long as you drink them. Nobody has ever learned to eat by not eating.
No supplements sold on commission
I prescribe supplements when your labs justify them and you buy them wherever you like. I earn nothing on it. Ask any practitioner whether they can say this.
No banned-food lists
Rice is not the enemy. Neither is a laddu at your mother's house. Frequency, portion and what sits beside it on the plate — that is the whole conversation.
No detoxes, no alkaline water, no seed cycling
Your liver and kidneys handle detoxification. There is no trial worth citing on any of these. Charging for them would be easier and I am not going to.
No guaranteed weight-loss numbers
Anyone quoting you a fixed number of kilos in a fixed number of weeks is guessing, and has priced the guess into the fee.
05 — Next step
Sixty minutes, ₹3,500, and a plan that survives your actual week.
If you join a program within thirty days, the consultation fee comes off it. If you are not ready to book, send a question instead — I answer those myself, usually within a working day.
In-person: Tuesday and Thursday, Bengaluru. Online: Monday to Friday, all of India.