Shilpa Koundal, MSc

Her story

The nutritionist who kept asking what's in your kitchen

Shilpa Koundal did not set out to run a nutrition practice. She set out to understand food — properly, at the level of biochemistry and clinical evidence — and the practice followed because people kept asking her for help.

Her Master's in Food Science and Nutrition gave her the scientific grounding: how nutrients behave in the body, how disease alters requirement, how food processing changes what a meal actually delivers. What it did not prepare her for was the gap she found in clinical practice — between what the research said people should eat, and what people were realistically going to cook on a Wednesday night after a nine-hour day.

Early in her career she watched that gap swallow client after client. The plans she was handing out were nutritionally sound. They were also, quietly, impossible: built around ingredients nobody's local market stocked, portions nobody's family cooked separately, and timings nobody's job allowed. People did not fail those plans. The plans failed them.

So she changed the order of the questions. Before prescribing anything, she started asking what was actually in the kitchen, who did the cooking, what the family ate on Sundays, what the client's job did to their meal timings, what they had already tried and why it had collapsed. Then she built the nutrition into that reality instead of around it.

Over the decade since, that method has been refined across thousands of consultations — women navigating PCOS and PCOD who had been told for years simply to lose weight; people managing diabetes and thyroid disorders alongside their physicians; families trying to cook one meal for four different medical needs; professionals eating most lunches at a desk. She has worked with clients in Himachal, across Delhi NCR, and increasingly with Indians living abroad who want a plan that still tastes like home.

Nutrimenters is the name she gave that method. The word carries the point: nutrition, mentored. Not a plan handed over at the door, but someone walking alongside while you learn how your own body responds.

What clients tend to notice first

Two things come up repeatedly in feedback. The first is that she is direct — she will tell you plainly if a goal is unrealistic on your timeline, or if what you actually need is a doctor rather than a dietitian. The second is that she does not moralise about food. There is no lecture about the samosa. There is a conversation about where it fits.

She also does not sell anything. Nutrimenters carries no supplements, no shakes, no meal kits and no affiliate arrangements, which means every recommendation is made for one reason only.