As the founder and owner of Leg Up Nutrition, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Allegra Egizi ’18, ’20MS helps clients attain a holistic, non-diet-based relationship with food. In honor of National Nutrition Month (March) 2025, she spoke with us about her intuitive approach and how Simmons helped jumpstart her career.
“The mission of my practice is to help individuals of all backgrounds overcome disordered eating and get a ‘leg up’ on their relationships with food, body, and self,” says Allegra Egizi ’18, ’20MS, the founder and owner of Leg Up Nutrition. “My practice is aligned with an intuitive, weight-neutral, and non-diet approach to nutrition.”
Since 2019, Leg Up Nutrition has provided individual, outpatient nutrition counseling (both in person and virtual). Egizi works with clients ages 12 and up who may have come from a hospital or intensive outpatient setting. Other clients simply wish to improve their approach to food and eating. Egizi specializes in eating disorders/disordered eating, body image concerns, sports nutrition, and intuitive eating.
Additionally, Egizi delivers regular speaking engagements at conferences, workshops, podcasts, and other venues, all the while keeping abreast of the latest nutrition research and evaluating the latest wellness trends. As a business owner, she attends to various administrative tasks (e.g., contacting health insurance companies, invoicing, and marketing).
“I help people where they are,” says Egizi. “When counseling clients, I embrace weight-neutrality.” In other words, one’s weight and body size are not the most deterministic factors regarding their overall health. “If you feel that your attitudes toward food are not ideal, you are the client I want to help,” she adds. “After working together, my clients have reported feeling more peaceful and liberated.”
An Intuitive Approach to Nutrition
A central feature of Egizi’s practice is intuitive eating. “This methodology helps folks become reacquainted with their bodies’ needs, attuning themselves to their innate hunger and fullness cues, as well as other bodily sensations they may have lost touch with, due to a variety of outside factors,” she explains.
The logic behind intuitive eating emerged in 1995 with the 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating, coined by providers Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole and expounded upon in their many books on the subject, including Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach (St. Martin’s Essentials, [1995] 2020). “I use their framework to help clients tune out the external noise and re-attune themselves to their intuitive nutritional needs.”
One example of how Egizi utilizes these principles in her practice centers around emotional eating. (This topic falls under Principle 7: Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness). “I tell my clients that emotional eating is not a problem, it is a symptom . . . And there can be positive reasons for emotional eating,” she says. “I then work with them on addressing what these emotional cues are, and why they may be eating under these circumstances . . . In this way, intuitive eating is a wonderful tool, as it sharpens your mindfulness related to food.”
With her specialization in eating disorders, Egizi counsels clients who are subjected to a pervasive diet culture, replete with harmful beauty standards. “Unfortunately, our society tends to idealize a thin, White, body type . . . Men, too, are led to believe that they have to be muscular or work out at the gym every day to look masculine,” she says.
Egizi notes that any given drugstore magazine or social media content will bombard people with wellness, weight loss, and anti-aging products. “We are constantly receiving toxic messages that we need to conform to a constructed ideal, and that we have to do this by altering our physical appearance,” she explains.
To counteract these pernicious influences, Egizi champions body diversity. “I often ask clients to seek out images of bodies that look like theirs and are realistic. I also emphasize that, from a biological standpoint, it is impossible for all bodies to look the same, given the world’s genetic diversity.” Along these lines, Egizi encourages clients to celebrate the significance of food within their specific cultural backgrounds.
The broader issue of disordered eating resonates with Egizi’s personal journey toward nutrition and becoming a dietitian. Growing up as a cross-country athlete, she observed the prevalence of disordered eating (especially among female athletes) from a young age. “I wanted to experience the benefits of eating well, but anything taken too far can be dangerous,” she reflects. “So, I developed an interest in identifying connections between fueling my body and feeling good.”
Eventually, Egizi worked with a dietitian to advise her approach to self-fueling, and this experience inspired her to study nutrition. Abandoning her studies in broadcast journalism and public relations, she transferred to Simmons in 2015 as a college sophomore.
A Simmons Origins Story
“My private practice came about from Simmons, which is amazing,” Egizi recalls. “Simmons’ Department of Nutrition has a wonderful Master of Science in Nutrition and Health Promotion program that offers a Nutrition Entrepreneurship Track, and this was the perfect fit for me.”
During the 2018–2019 academic year, Egizi took two courses that catapulted Leg Up Nutrition. In “Consulting Nutrition Practice” (NUTR 462), she received a broad overview of the financial, management, and marketing aspects that pertain to owning a business. In “Business Proposal Development” (NUTR 489), she essentially devised and pitched a business idea to Simmons faculty. As she recalls, these courses allowed her to “flesh out the process of starting a [nutrition-related] business in real time.”
The name of Egizi’s private practice also emerged from her graduate coursework. “I wanted the name to be creative, and a nod to my personal background,” she says. As a longtime runner and Simmons Cross Country athlete, Egizi’s friends and family members devised nicknames for her that punned her sport and her first name (e.g., Leg, Leggy, Legs). “Ultimately, I titled my practice ‘Leg Up Nutrition.’ I wanted to communicate a proactive message [that also incorporated] all of these elements into my slogan: giving people a ‘leg up’ on their relationship with food, their bodies, and themselves.”
Value of Simmons’ Accelerated (4+1) Nutrition Track
Egizi transferred to Simmons for its top notch Department of Nutrition. “In Boston, Simmons’ department is revered as one of the finest nutrition programs in the area,” she says. After obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition and Dietetics, Egizi continued her Simmons education through an accelerated graduate program.
“The graduate program was unique and very specific to my educational needs at the time,” Egizi says. Moreover, she notes that the Department of Nutrition was ahead of the game. During her Simmons studies, the faculty knew in advance that the educational credentials for dietitians were in flux, such that by 2024, a master’s degree would be required. “Even though I received my master’s degree in 2020 [and, therefore, would have been ‘grandfathered in’ to the system], I realized that having a graduate credential would help me stand out in a competitive job market,” she explains. Moreover, Simmons’ entrepreneurship focus, as well as several course offerings in sports nutrition, aligned with her career aspirations.
For Egizi, another signature aspect of the department is its stellar faculty. “All of the Nutrition faculty members are amazing,” she remarks. Two faculty members were especially influential to her. “Lecturer Karlyn Grimes [who taught sports nutrition and an introductory nutrition course] really inspired me to become a dietitian . . . And Associate Professor Kathrina Prelack, who specializes in Medical Nutrition Therapy [MNT] and clinical nutrition, taught me so much about clinical nutrition, which I use in my private practice all the time.” Moreover, Simmons’ well-connected faculty members helped place Egizi in formative internships within the Longwood Medical Area in Boston.
Offering words of advice to aspiring dietitians, Egizi says that finding a mentor is essential. “Take the time to get to know your professors and their areas of expertise, because they can inspire you and help shape your aspirations.” In a rigorous program, she adds, “having a mentor can help overcome the barriers that students may face along the way.”
Food is Not Just Fuel
As the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics explains, National Nutrition Month “focuses attention on the importance of making informed food choices and developing sound eating and physical activity habits.” To honor this time of year, Egizi offers two recommendations. First, “Make sure that you are eating enough and meeting your nutritional needs adequately.” Second, “Have a meal or snack that you really enjoy . . . maybe it’s connected to your ‘inner child’ or makes you feel nostalgic.”
Egizi emphasizes that “Food is more than just fuel – food is love, joy, culture, and connection . . . You are entitled to enjoy eating and to contemplate its deeper levels of meaning.”
Reflecting upon the many rewards of her profession, Egizi notes that “Everyone eats and must eat. We all have our unique journeys with food. It is, therefore, profoundly fulfilling to guide people along this complex journey.”
Egizi is grateful to have witnessed her own full-circle journey. “Nowadays, I counsel people individually about nutrition, a subject that has always intrigued me. And I frequently give public talks, which is what I foresaw myself doing in the first place [as a broadcast/PR major elsewhere],” she says. “Integrating my intellectual passions and personal background is truly a labor of love.”