Meet Registered Dietitian, Christine McIntosh

Christine McIntosh PhD, RD

Calgary Registered Dietitian & Online Nutritionist

Specialty: Disordered Eating, Mental Health, Emotional Eating, IBS & Intestinal Health, Anti-inflammatory Eating, Arthritis, Chronic Pain, Weight Concerns, Women’s Health & Menopause

Pronouns: She/Her

With the heart of an adventurer, Christine goes deep and wide to understand a person’s food story. With a big smile and keen perception, she listens well to collaborate on a plan for the healthiest food life possible. There is not a nutrition concern that she does not want to explore, no food she would not taste, or a place she would not roam.

Christine has always been fascinated with food. In childhood, whether it was picking wild blueberries off the rocks in Northern Ontario, making up her own recipes for her parents and siblings, or eating the ethnic foods of childhood friends new to Canada, she valued the diversity of natural foods and world cuisines. As an adult, she still enjoys foraged foods and setting up great meals with whatever is on hand. Her early respect for food first turned into love of nutrition science in her teens, then into a lifetime of inspirating a great food life in others.

Christine loves to learn. A commitment of lifelong learning includes a PhD in Education. Driven to provide the most effective counseling style to assist others with health behaviour change, she studied teaching and psychology.  Her nutrition education began at Toronto Metropolitan University, followed by a dietetic internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. She later completed a Master of Science in Clinical Nutrition from the University of Alabama. She is a certified Craving Change ™ Facilitator with experience with working in Narrative Therapy approaches. She is registered to practice dietetics in Alberta, Ontario, Australia, and parts of the United States.

Committed to client centered care, Christine is trained in motivational interviewing, a conversation style that brings out the ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ to help create an ideal plan for sustained health change. Her confidence and kind manner easily guides people along as they establish their new food habits. Experience in mental health, eating disorders, midlife and aged nutrition, as well as chronic disease management, means she knows how food fits into complicated lives. She’s been happily working with complex food lives for nearly 25 years.

Christine has made dietetics a world adventure. From health facilities in deserts to tropics, from street health to mega city hospitals, from clinical leadership to university lecturing, nutrition has been the center of it all.  She’s spearheaded new nutrition programs such as community food box delivery, eating disorder support, medical nutrition programs for intestinal health and surgical rehabilitation. But she continues to follow the trail back to her real passion of helping others in the many ways food impacts our lives.  Her travels as a dietitian brought her full circle to relearn that no matter where we live, food is meant to be an enriching part of life. With Christine, you know that food is part of life’s adventure.

When not helping clients, Christine is restoring a century farmhouse with her husband or enjoying long walks in the outdoors. You might also find her talking to her foodie adult children (the apple does not fall far from the tree), whipping up a creative salad, perfecting the family favourite of home made pizza, or finding new ways to eat her favourite grain, oats.