Registered Dietitian. Certified Personal Trainer. Your #1 advocate for a happy and healthy life.
Hi, I'm Tatum Vedder, a Registered Dietitian and Certified Personal Trainer.
I help active adults, professionals, and athletes fuel their bodies with confidence. Whether your goal is improving performance, recovering from injury, navigating hormonal changes, or simply feeling stronger in your everyday life.
My approach combines evidence-based nutrition with practical strategies that fit your lifestyle, so you can build lasting habits without restrictive diets or all or nothing thinking.
The Core Problem
Does this sound familiar?
Tracking Macros:
Upping your protein and aggressively cutting carbs.
Trending diets:
Intermittent fasting, keto, paleo, low FODMAP, or the classic "eat less, work out more" approach.
Cookie-cutter plans:
Weight Watchers, Noom, or a generic program drafted up by a gym bro.
Supplements:
Miracle pills making bold claims about recovery, fat loss, muscle growth, and endless energy.
Quick Fixes:
The latest GLP-1 peptide injections or meal prep subscriptions.
The Reality Check
You’re missing the big picture. A comprehensive, sustainable approach to nutrition, health, and performance.
My Story
Over the course of four years, I’ve had six orthopedic surgeries, three surgeons, 12 physical therapists, two athletic trainers, and an accumulative six months crutching my way through life.
In September 2019, I showed up to a casual co-ed indoor volleyball tournament, days before starting my senior season and just a week after hiking 17 miles of Yosemite’s Half Dome (I was overtraining in hindsight).
As an outside hitter, I approached a perfect set, made contact, and heard a loud pop. Louder than it felt, as my upper and lower leg torqued in opposite directions. I collapsed to the floor. Certain I’d only tweaked my knee, I sat out thinking I’d just rest and get back to the next game. Six surgeries later and four years of recovery was in my future, jokes on me!
I ended up tearing my ACL, medial and lateral menisci, and broke a large chunk of cartilage off my femur, severely damaging the bone beneath. In less than a month, I was on the operating table for what was one of several surgeries, years of rehab, and endless tears to come.
Bedridden, Defeated, and Out of Options
I was losing muscle faster than you can blink. Faster than my muscle atrophy, I was losing motivation from years of feeling defeated and betrayed by my own body and the sport I’d devoted more than a decade to.
I hit plateau after plateau with each surgery and recovery, eroding my patience while igniting a constant state of panic. Being bedridden threatened my active lifestyle, identity, weight, body composition, and hormones.
It flared up gut health issues that I’d fought 10 years to heal and triggered a relapse in a disordered relationship with food. Forced to be sedentary, my body felt static:
Activity stimulates gut motility → Motility supports liver detox → Detox supports happy hormones & vitality.
The mental and physical stress poured gasoline on the raging fire in my gut, setting me back nearly to square one with bloating, discomfort, pain, and widespread inflammation.
The Turning Point
While recovering from my third surgery…
To navigate the weight fluctuations, muscle loss, and appetite changes, I tried intermittent fasting, high protein, low fat, and low carb diets. This resulted in an accelerated rate of widespread muscle loss, iron deficiency, and a disordered eating pattern. Digging me into a deeper hole.
Newsflash about calorie restriction: It actually expedites muscle loss, not to mention hormone imbalance, decrease in bone mineral density, and added stress to the already distressed adrenal glands.
I didn’t receive any dietary guidance throughout my surgery recovery. I heard crickets in response to my dietary and nutrition-related questions. Starting to see parallels in my gut healing journey and surgery recovery, it shed light on the limitations of Western conventional medicine.
Medications & surgery > diet & lifestyle?
(Shouldn’t we be aiming to thrive rather than just staying alive?)
Surgery #5 was on the horizon, and I decided that I was going to use my nutrition and training knowledge to help myself heal, optimize my diet for recovery, improve the outcome of surgery, regain maximum muscle, and heal my gut issues and relationship with food, yet again. I course corrected.
The absence of nutrition support along surgery recovery showed a clear gap in the healing process that needed to be filled.
So here I am, playing volleyball again, surfing, personal training, and helping others meet their performance potential or recover from surgery, heal their gut issues & relationship with food.
Ditch the Scarcity Mindset
The Philosophy: Finding Your Equilibrium
Eating less and burning more isn’t the key to recovery, gut health, or peak athletic performance. Healing requires fueling.
How we get you to your equilibrium state:
✔ Fueling adequately with balanced macros, carbs, fats, and targeted anti-inflammatory foods.
✔ Supporting gut motility, hormone balance, and daily vitality.
✔ Removing the perfectionist, all or nothing dieting mentality.
✔ Building a resilient mindset and an identity that extends beyond performance alone.
When your body and mind work in alliance, you achieve a true state of balance. Your equilibrium state.
Education, Credentials, & Experience
Registered Dietitian (RD): Credentialed with extensive supervised training hours in from one of the most rigorous and competitive programs. The leading expert role in the field of nutrition. It surpasses the training and knowledge of a nutritionist by a landslide.
Certified Personal Trainer (CPT): Provides functional, strength, and balance training focus to enhance and compliment nutrition care
Sports Nutrition Experience: Working with USA Volleyball Olympians, professional lacrosse, Sled Hockey, and independent high-performance athletes.
Board Certification Goal: Sitting for the Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics (CSSD) exam in May 2027.
Gut Health Specialist: Microbiome Clinical Science Certificate (MCSC) candidate, bringing cutting-edge gut research directly to your care plan.
Disordered Eating Expertise: Years of clinical experience in an eating disorder rehabilitation center, helping clients transform rocky relationships with food and body image into sustainable confidence.
Beyond the Practice
Tatum’s Fast Facts
What Motivates Me
Surfing and the ocean. The desire to get back on my board and surf the world was my motivation to keep going through the recovery process. So while I was stuck in bed with my sidekick pet bunny, June, and strapped into a thigh high knee brace for the sixth time, I kept that vision in mind. Life has high tides and low tides, but it always returns to equilibrium.
Where You’ll Find Me
If I’m not helping clients find their equilibrium, cheffin’ up meals, or walking my dog, you can guarantee I’m on the beach playing volleyball or surfing.