RALEIGH DIETITIAN NUTRITIONISTS
What is Ruby Oak Nutrition?
Ruby Oak Nutrition is a group of dietitians on a mission to help you improve your health and your relationship with food.
Our signature nutrition counseling meets you where you are. We use the intuitive eating principles to help you reach your health goals while feeling more confident about food and your body.
Our dietitains are based in Raleigh, North Carolina. We specialize in eating disorders, chronic disease management, gut health, sports nutrition, women’s health, and pediatric nutrition.
What makes us unique is that we take time to learn each client’s values and understand their health goals and motivations — instead of just doing a quick assessment and prescribing what we think is best.
We offer virtual appointments to clients across North Carolina and several other states, and we see clients in person at our Downtown Raleigh office in Historic Oakwood.
In addition to our one-on-one services, we offer custom workplace wellness programs that boost employee well-being WITHOUT focusing on weight or rigid dieting.
What services do our North Carolina dietitian nutritionists offer?
Our Raleigh-based dietitian nutritionists offer individualized nutrition counseling for various health conditions and challenges, and we take a non-diet, intuitive eating approach that centers well-being, not weight.
Clients have said that in their work with us, they feel safe, heard, and accepted. Through nutrition counseling, we empower YOU to make nourishing food choices without guilt or fear.
We also offer workplace wellness services for companies that want to offer individualized nutrition counseling services to their employees.
What are our nutrition counseling specialties?
Our Mission
We help you improve your health and your relationship with food.
Our intuitive eating-based nutrition counseling meets you where you are and helps you reach the health goals that are important to you.
Our Values
1. Weight-Inclusivity. We encourage health-promoting behaviors, not weight loss, when we work with clients.
2. Fairness. We aim to make our services accessible to as many clients as possible without compromising our own livelihoods and wellbeing.
3. Boundaries. We maintain and enforce healthy boundaries with our clients and our colleagues, because boundaries allow us to do this work long-term.
4. Honesty. We communicate with clients and colleagues as honestly and directly as possible within the counseling relationship and our scope of practice, because we understand that being clear is part of being kind.
5. Autonomy. We understand that our clients get to decide how they treat, feel, and think about their bodies. As dietitians, we have the autonomy to end our work with a client if we cannot agree to common goals. We also celebrate the fact that each dietitian has a slightly different nutrition counseling style.
What is our nutrition philosophy?
We help you feel more confident about food and more comfortable in your body. Instead of giving cookie-cutter recommendations, we take the time to learn your values and collaborate on strategies to make mealtimes less stressful.
Our culture and our health system are very weight-focused. We’re different because we empower you to make health-informed food choices without hyper-fixating on your body size, while also finding joy in food. We won’t tell you that you’re wrong for wanting to lose weight — because that’s what most of us have been told to want! — but that’s not what we focus on. Being a certain size isn’t as important as feeling confident, healthy, and nourished.
At Ruby Oak Nutrition, we know eating disorders, disordered eating, and body image struggles affect people of all shapes, ages, races, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, ability levels, and economic backgrounds. We also know that our culture, the media, the medical establishment, and even the eating disorder field aren’t exactly safe spaces for people with marginalized identities. Of course we’re not perfect either, but we’re constantly learning, challenging our own biases, and striving to be an inclusive and affirming space for all.
Where is Ruby Oak Nutrition?
We’re based in the Oakwood neighborhood of Raleigh, NC. We offer in-person appointments at our offices every weekday.
Does Ruby Oak Nutrition offer telehealth?
Yup! We offer telehealth as a convenient option for people who can’t come to our office or prefer not to. We work with clients in the following states via telehalth:
North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Vermont
*Select dietitians are licensed in this state. We’ll let you know which dietitians you’re able to work with.
Our North Carolina Dietitian Nutritionists
Dietitians
Kala Bernard (she/her), MPH, RD, LDN
Dietitian | Raleigh Office & Virtual Visits
Specialties: Child and teen eating disorders, gut health & digestive conditions, sports nutrition, pediatric nutrition
Abby Caudle-Patton (she/her), MS, RD, LDN
Dietitian | Virtual Visits
Specialties: Adult eating disorders, gut health & digestive conditions, chronic disease management, intuitive eating
Cherisse Chaney (she/her), MS, RD, LDN
Dietitian | Raleigh Office & Virtual Visits
Specialties: Adult eating disorders, teen eating disorders, chronic disease management, intuitive eating
Molly Edwards (she/her), MPH, RD, LDN
Dietitian | Raleigh Office & Virtual Visits
Specialties: Adult eating disorders, chronic disease management, diabetes & GLP-1 support, women’s health
Serena Hutchinson (she/her), MPH, RD, LDN, IBCLC
Dietitian & Lactation Consultant | Raleigh Office & Virtual Visits
Specialties: Lactation/breastfeeding, pregnancy & postpartum, adult eating disorders, intuitive eating
Parker McKinnon (she/her), MS, RD, LDN
Dietitian | Virtual Visits
Specialties: Chronic disease management, diabetes & GLP-1 support, sports nutrition, intuitive eating, adult eating disorders
Megan Shawver (she/her), MS, RD, LDN
Dietitian | Raleigh Office & Virtual Visits
Specialties: Child and teen eating disorders, pediatric nutrition, intuitive eating, gut health & digestive conditions
Leadership & Administration
Christine Byrne (she/her), MPH, RD, LDN
Owner, Dietitian | Raleigh Office & Virtual Visits
Specialties: Adult eating disorders, teen eating disorders, intuitive eating
Deidra Sisk (she/her), MS, RD, LDN, CEDS-C
Clinical Director Dietitian | Virtual Visits
Specialties: Child and teen eating disorders, adult eating disorders, pediatric nutrition
What specialty certifications do Ruby Oak Nutrition dietitians have?
Our Story
Ruby Oak Nutrition was founded in 2021 by Christine Byrne, a dietitian and former journalist. Christine saw the need for more non-diet nutrition services that empower clients to understand their unique nutrition needs and learn to nourish their bodies. She wanted to open a collaborative practice that didn’t push its own agenda onto clients but instead gave them space and guidance to figure out a way of eating that works for them.
Christine started seeing a few clients out of Current Wellness, a wellness studio and co-working space for weight-inclusive practitioners, in late 2021. Her client load grew steadily over that first year, and she hired her first associate dietitian in March 2023. In 2025, we moved to a gorgeous office in Historic Oakwood, the oldest neighborhood in Raleigh located right next to Downtown.
As Ruby Oak Nutrition continues to grow, we’re committed to providing excellent nutrition counseling for eating disorders and disordered eating, while expanding our services to other areas of nutrition, like pregnancy, lactation, diabetes, sports nutrition, and more.