meet the coachesSHANNON CUSACK
Nutrition coachSHANNON CUSACK
I am a toddler mom to a very energetic little boy, a licensed clinical psychologist, a self-proclaimed rap lyric extraordinaire, and a lifelong back squat PR-chaser who also happens to take her corner spot on the sectional very seriously.
Experience: +5 yrs
Helping you build sustainable habits that align with your life, identity and relationship with food.
I am Richmond, VA born and raised. I briefly escaped to Charleston, SC, but the pull back home was strong and it turns out I'm a homebody at heart. I share the toddler-wrangling duties with my partner, Sam, who I met on spring break in college (yes, I know how cliche this sounds). Our household also includes two Boston Terriers who require almost as much attention as the toddler.
When I'm not chasing someone small around the house, walking the dogs, writing grants or publications, or working with nutrition clients, you'll find me in the gym chasing a back squat PR or firmly planted in the corner spot of my sectional (objectively the best seat in any home) with a fiction book or something on Bravo that I will not be taking questions about.
I hold a doctorate in clinical psychology and am a licensed psychologist which means I bring a unique lens to nutrition coaching, one that's just as focused on the mental and emotional side of eating as the practical.
My own relationship with food has been anything but straightforward & that's a big part of what draws me to this work. Years of dieting, rigid rules, and a complicated relationship with exercise taught me a lot about what doesn't work -- and my training and research taught me why. That combination is what pulled me toward coaching: I want to help clients untangle the mental and emotional side of eating, break out of the diet cycle for good, and build a relationship with food that actually holds up in real life.
sound like you?i love working with…
Women with a long history of dieting who are done white-knuckling it and ready to actually feel good around food
Women trying to conceive who want to fuel their bodies well without getting lost in the noise of contradictory fertility nutrition advice
Pregnant and postpartum women who are ready to prioritize their own nutrition while juggling approximately one million other things
Credentials & Experience
PhD, Clinical Psychology
Precision Nutrition Level 1
Licensed Clinical Psychologist
Perinatal Mental Health Certified (PMH-C)
My Coaching Superpower:
I bring a full understanding of the psychological, emotional, and behavioral factors that shape how we eat because food is never really just about food. My superpower is helping clients connect the dots between their mindset, their history, and their habits, and using that bigger picture to build an approach to nutrition that actually holds up in real life.
let's get personal...Get to know ME
non-guilty pleasureCadbury mini eggs (seasonal obsession), chocolate covered almonds year-round, and any coffee cake with an aggressively thick crumb topping.
walk out songDreams and Nightmares by Meek Mill
Fun FactI'll never apologize for how much Bravo reality TV I consume. Never.
my own nutrition journey
My relationship with nutrition started the way it does for a lot of people: complicated. I was a perpetual experimenter from high school on, cycling through what felt like every diet and approach out there without much to show for it.
I played college basketball, and when that chapter ended I needed something to fill that competitive outlet, which sent me down a long road of trying every workout from OrangeTheory to CrossFit, and just as many approaches to nutrition along the way. Some were helpful. A lot weren't.
I became rigid around food rules, perfectly ‘on track’ during the week and completely off the rails by the weekend, with food fears that ran deeper than I realized. I was avoiding anything I hadn't meticulously tracked in MyFitnessPal the day before, cycling through the same rotating cast of cauliflower rice, rice cakes, egg whites, and powdered peanut butter while the rest of my life shrank around those rules. I felt anxious eating out with my now-husband when we were dating, constantly running calculations in my head instead of being present. Missing a workout wasn't an option, which meant 4:00am alarms before long days in my PhD program seeing patients at the hospital, a pace that was taking a toll on my body even when I convinced myself it was just discipline.
Working through my own complicated relationship with food and fitness happened alongside my training as a clinical psychologist, where I spent years conducting research on behavior change and working directly with patients. Food shows up constantly in the therapy room, in anxiety, in perfectionism, in how people talk about their bodies and themselves, and the more I sat with that, the more I became fascinated by why we know what we should do but still can't seem to make it stick. Honing my behavior change skills in that clinical and research context made nutrition click for me in a way that no approach ever had.
Then came pregnancy and postpartum, which gave me a new window into how these same skills show up when women need them most. That experience pointed me directly toward KLN. I had been following Kate for a while, genuinely impressed by how the KLN approach aligned with everything I believed about sustainable change. So I did what any determined psychologist would do- DM’d her a few too many times to make it very clear I wanted to be part of the team until she finally said yes.
Now I get to help clients do what took me years to figure out: stop cycling through approaches that don't work and build a relationship with food that holds up in real life.