
You are unique.
You have your own genetic makeup, health history, and lifestyle.
Your nutrition plan should be unique to your individual body, too!
But, what is functional nutrition, exactly?
Great question! Let’s get into what functional nutrition is, how it’s different, and how I use it to help you restore wellness, find balance in your body through hormonal balance, prevent disease, help you optimize fertility (if that’s a goal!), and just feel damn good in your body!
Table of Contents
Hormones affect everything. They affect your fertility, your mood, energy levels, weight, and happiness.
Using nutrition and lifestyle adjustments to balance your hormones will help you:
Functional nutrition practitioners aren’t in place to diagnose, prescribe for, or treat their clients for specific conditions. Instead, my role is to look at all health problems holistically, educate my clients about the ways their behavior is impeding their optimal health, and offer suggestions for improvement. I also tell clients I use food as therapy .
Here are a few ways in which functional nutrition is different from conventional practices:
Functional Nutrition is Personal
Personalization is the main difference between functional and conventional nutrition.
Functional nutrition focuses on the patient instead of just on the problem. It is a personalized method of optimizing your health based on your individual genetics, lab values, lifestyle, and more. There are no generic meal plans or handouts, because each individual person is different!
Functional Nutrition Uses Food as Medicine
A whole real food diet rich in high quality fats & oils, clean proteins, tons of veggies, unprocessed grains and starchy root vegetables, and a variety of colorful fruits is always a great foundation. However, some patients require more targeted interventions with specific foods and / or high-quality supplements in order to treat the underlying cause of their health issues.
Functional nutrition honors the fact that food is not only fuel for your body, but also an extremely useful tool to help us address the underlying cause of your condition.
Functional Nutrition Is Not Just About Food
While functional nutrition honors the powerful nature of wholesome food, it also respects that there is more to health than what you eat.
For instance, a functional medicine practitioner may ask you about your stress levels, sleeping habits, activity level, relationships, and overall environment. Not only do these factors play a huge role in your overall health, but they also have a bidirectional effect on your nutrition. Additionally, your sleep habits and stress levels all affect how nutrition is digested and absorbed in the body. As a functional medicine practitioner, I’m able to talk to you about stress management and why it makes a difference. Not only that, but I may recommend various foods or nutritional supplements to help your body cope with the added stress, as well.
Embrace Your Uniqueness
With functional nutrition, I embrace your uniqueness and use it to tailor your individualized nutrition recommendations. I use personalized lab testing, functional food as medicine, and lifestyle interventions to further your healing process. I work closely with you to find a nutrition plan that is realistic for your lifestyle, while also reducing unwanted symptoms and restoring balance in the body.
When you work with me, we don’t start with a generic meal plan. We start with you — your history, your labs, your symptoms, your cycle, your lifestyle.
For women trying to get pregnant, that investigation happens inside The Fertility Code, my 12-week program. We run the right labs, identify the hidden drivers affecting your fertility, and build a personalized protocol around your specific physiology — whether you’re trying naturally or preparing for IVF.
This is the core of functional nutrition: we don’t guess, and we don’t apply a one-size-fits-all template. We investigate, then we personalize. It’s rarely unexplained. It’s uninvestigated.
The five main principles of following a functional nutrition plan
1. Fill Up on Essential Nutrients
The components of your food make up the building blocks of your entire body. Nutrients like vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, amino acids, probiotics, complex carbohydrates, and more are vital for keeping your body healthy. By nourishing it with what it needs each day, you are setting your system up for a state of health.
2. Avoid Toxic Growing Conditions
In today’s world, it’s more important than ever to understand precisely what is in your food. Factory farmed animal products, GMO crops, and pesticide-laced produce are all filling your digestive system with substances humans weren’t exposed to even 80 years ago, and the impacts on your health can be extreme. Take care to source your food from places you can trust to ensure that each bite contains exactly what you expect and nothing more.
3. Stick with Quality Foods
Just as the quality of gas in your car makes a difference in how well it drives, the components within your food dictate how well your body will run. Filling up on heavily processed junk food will prevent you from taking in all the nutrients you need, potentially compromising your system.
4. Prioritize Gut Health
Hippocrates told us that health begins and ends in the gut, and eating the world’s most nutritious diet won’t do you any good if your digestive system isn’t prepared to process it. Over 80 percent of your immune system is located in the gut, and without it functioning correctly you are at risk for infections, inflammation, auto-immune diseases and hormone imbalances – most of which will be misdiagnosed as other conditions.
Tending to your gut requires that you keep it healthy with beneficial bacteria and prevent pathogens and undigested food from causing problems. Make sure you know the signs of leaky gut syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, and other conditions so that you can tell when something has fallen out of place.
5. Tend to Your Microbiome
Healthy digestion doesn’t happen without a robust supply of beneficial microbes in your stomach and intestines. In fact, the human gut contains ten times more bacteria than all cells that make up your body.
These bacteria are collectively called a microbiome, and they are responsible for a myriad of health processes that affect your immune system, body weight composition, mental health, memory formation, and risk of lifestyle diseases like diabetes. Ensuring you eat foods filled with probiotics ensures your microbial levels stay high, which keeps your immune system working as it should.
1. Functional nutrition practitioners look at your entire body and lifestyle to address an issue, instead of just treating the problem.
2. Functional nutrition uses food as medicine and therapy.
3. Functional nutrition is PERSONALIZED to you, your lifestyle, and your goals. It’s a practice that suits every body and can be used to treat everything from problem skin to menopause, and everything in between.
4. For women struggling to get pregnant, it often reveals the hidden drivers that standard testing missed. It’s rarely unexplained. It’s uninvestigated.
If you’re trying to get pregnant and looking for a solution-based, comprehensive approach, read my complete guide: What’s Actually Preventing Pregnancy — and How to Fix It.
If you’ve been told everything looks normal but you’re still not pregnant — or you have a diagnosis like PCOS, endometriosis, or poor egg quality and nothing is working — there’s almost always something deeper that hasn’t been found yet.
Standard fertility testing rarely evaluates the factors that actually determine whether pregnancy happens: egg quality, ovulation quality, metabolic health, inflammation, nutrient status, and how your body responds to stress.
After nearly 20 years and hundreds of clients, I’ve found that most fertility struggles come down to a small number of hidden biological drivers. When those drivers are identified and addressed in the right order, the body responds.
That’s exactly what we uncover inside The Fertility Code — my 12-week, high-touch fertility program for women who are done guessing. We find what’s been missed and build a clear, personalized strategy around your body, your labs, and your history.
With 1:1 coaching, direct access between calls, lab reviews, evidence-based content, and structured accountability, you get expert eyes on your case so you can stop second-guessing and start moving forward with clarity.
Over 90% of the women I work with go on to conceive.
If you’re ready to finally understand what your body needs for a successful pregnancy — and fix what’s been missed — you can explore the program here → The Fertility Code.
Or schedule a free Fertility Strategy Call to see if the program is right for you.



© 2026 Sarah Jane Sandy. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions | Medical Disclaimer | Editorial Policy

Curious about your fertility health? Take this simple quiz to find out what factors may be harming your fertility, and learn what you can do about it!