12-week cohort · max 15 women · three times a year
Your bad food days might not be food days.
Twelve weeks. Four triggers, not forty. We chart your symptoms against your cycle before we test a single food — because you cannot measure a food reaction on a baseline that moves.
Rooted Reset: The 12-Week Cycle Overlay Protocol, with Maya Chen, MS, RDN, LD.
The fit call is free, twenty minutes, and mandatory. If I don't think I can help you, I'll tell you.
Symptom score against cycle day
Premenstrual window — cycle days 24–28
- Days logged
- 28
- Mean score, days 24–28
- 7.6
- Mean score, rest of cycle
- 3.7
Why nothing has worked yet
Your experiments were sound. The measurement conditions weren't.
Every elimination diet on earth assumes one thing: that your baseline is stable. Remove a food, feel better, the food was the cause.
But a lot of women notice their symptoms cluster in the week before their period. So the same meal can produce a terrible day on cycle day 24 and nothing at all on cycle day 10. That is why your results kept contradicting each other.
It is like trying to weigh yourself on a scale that is sitting on a boat. Every reading is real. Every reading is also wrong, because the deck is moving underneath you.
Which means the gluten cut did not fail because you were undisciplined. Three weeks is shorter than one cycle, so a three-week trial cannot return a trustworthy answer — the result was noise, not an answer. That is exactly the experiment that “worked for like three weeks and then it just stopped.”
The $400 panel did not fail because you read it wrong. It handed you forty suspects and no method for clearing a single one.
And “you have IBS, try more fibre” did not fail because your doctor was careless. It just does not tell you what to eat on Tuesday.
You were not undisciplined. You were un-sequenced. Four years of good data, collected under bad conditions.
We don't test food first. We fix the measurement first. Then we test.
The order
- 1ChartScore symptoms daily against cycle day until a rhythm is visible.
- 2SubtractTake the hormonal weeks out of the analysis, so they stop contaminating every food conclusion.
- 3TestReintroduce foods one at a time, in windows where the reading can be trusted.
Who this is for
If most of this list is about you, you're in the right place.
Women 32 to 48 with IBS-type gut symptoms that came back normal on every test. You have cut gluten, cut dairy, done the elimination diet properly, and you still cannot explain why the same lunch is fine one week and ruinous the next.
- You wake up flat and by four o'clock you look six months pregnant.
- The celiac panel, the endoscopy and the colonoscopy all came back normal.
- You cut gluten. It worked for about three weeks and then it just stopped.
- You're down to roughly fifteen foods and you are still symptomatic.
- You're making two dinners every night.
- There's a spreadsheet called 'gut stuff' with three abandoned food logs in it.
- You paid for a test that handed you a list of foods to be scared of.
- The bad weeks seem worse before your period, and you were told that's unrelated.
None of that is a discipline problem. It is a sequencing problem, and it is fixable in a specific order.
The twelve weeks
A fixed sequence, because the sequence is the product.
Three phases, in this order, every time. You do not get to reintroduce in week two and I do not let you, because a food challenge read on a moving baseline is the thing that has been failing you for four years.
Twelve weeks, then it ends. On purpose.
- 1 of 3
Weeks 1-4
Calm
Fix the measurement before you touch a single food.
A 60-minute 1:1 kickoff sets your protocol - a modified low-FODMAP baseline plus sleep and meal rhythm - and you start charting symptoms against cycle day on the Cycle Overlay Chart. Modified, not full elimination, and built to be cooked alongside a family dinner.
- 60-minute 1:1 kickoff
- Calm Phase Protocol, written
- Daily charting begins - about 90 seconds a day
- 2 of 3
Weeks 5-10
Reintroduce
Test foods only in the windows where the reading can be trusted.
At the Week 5 checkpoint your chart is read aloud with you and the pattern - or the absence of one - gets named. Then your reintroduction schedule is built around your own chart: food by food, with a dose, a timing, a cycle-window placement, and a clear pass or fail for each.
- Week 5 1:1 reintroduction checkpoint
- Structured Reintroduction Schedule
- Six weeks of challenges, one at a time
- 3 of 3
Weeks 11-12
Root
Leave with a plan you run without me.
The Week 11 checkpoint turns everything you charted into a maintenance plan: your confirmed list, your thresholds, your hormonal-week playbook, and what to do when a new symptom shows up in eight months. Then the programme ends, on purpose.
- Week 11 1:1 maintenance checkpoint
- "What's Actually Yours" short list
- Physician Conversation Sheet
What's included
Four hours of 1:1 time, twelve live calls, and everything written down.
Everything client-facing is me. Not a coach, not a team, not a portal that answers you with a template.
Week 1 kickoff, 60 minutes, 1:1
Full history, and a proper review of every experiment you have already run - not moved past in a sentence. Your Calm-phase protocol is set live on the call.
The Cycle Overlay Chart
Daily symptom scoring plotted against cycle day, for all twelve weeks, reviewed at every checkpoint. This is the instrument. About ninety seconds a day.
Calm Phase Protocol, weeks 1-4
A modified low-FODMAP baseline plus sleep and meal rhythm. Modified deliberately, not full elimination, and written to be cooked as one family dinner.
Twelve weekly group calls
Tuesdays at noon Pacific, live teaching and Q&A, cohort capped at fifteen. Every call recorded and posted, so a missed Tuesday costs you nothing.
Week 5 reintroduction checkpoint, 1:1
Your chart is read aloud with you and the pattern - or the absence of one - gets named. This is the appointment the whole programme exists to deliver.
Structured Reintroduction Schedule
Food by food, weeks 5 to 10, with a dose, a timing, a cycle-window placement and a clear pass or fail for each. This is the half nobody has ever given you.
Week 11 maintenance checkpoint, 1:1
Your confirmed list, your hormonal-week playbook, and what to do when a new symptom turns up in eight months. This is the exit you are paying for.
"What's Actually Yours" short list
A one-page written file: confirmed triggers, quantity thresholds, and the foods that were never the problem. Fridge-door sized.
Physician Conversation Sheet
Plain language for describing your charted pattern in a twelve-minute appointment, and which conventional markers to ask your own doctor about. Educational naming only - no ordering, no dosing.
Between-call message support
Written support between sessions for protocol and reintroduction questions, because a reintroduction goes sideways on a Wednesday.
Cohort recording library
Every group call, indexed by topic, available for the whole programme. Re-watch the reintroduction call three times if you want to.
To supplyMessage-support cadence and channel must be published before this page ships: [OPERATOR INPUT: message support cadence and channel]
What you leave with
One page. Four things, with a number beside each.
This is the object you actually came for. Not a longer list of foods to fear — a shorter one, with a threshold beside each item, because the useful question was never “is this food bad” but “how much before it turns.”
It is delivered in weeks 11 to 12, built from your own chart, and it is short enough to live on a fridge door and be handed to your husband.
You'll leave knowing what's actually yours.
What's Actually Yours
Week 12 · one page
Confirmed, with thresholds
- Onion and garlic, cookedUnder about a quarter of a small onion is fine. Past that it turns.
- Milk, more than a splashSplash in coffee is fine. A glass is not. Hard cheese never was.
- Wheat, in quantityOne slice is fine. A sandwich plus pasta the same day is not.
- Apple, rawHalf, with a meal, is fine. Whole, on an empty stomach, is not.
Cleared — these were never the problem
- Broccoli
- Beans, soaked and rinsed
- Coffee
- Yoghurt
- Avocado
- Bell peppers
- Cauliflower
- Chickpeas
- Cabbage
- Almonds
Four things, with a quantity beside each. How much — not never again.
What I don't do
A refusal is more credible than a claim.
The clinic with the big panel looks more thorough than a dietitian who will not run any tests. I understand why. Here is what I will not do anyway, and why.
No
IgG food-sensitivity panels
They are not evidence-based for this, and clients arrive burned by them — scared of forty foods with no method for clearing one.
To supply[OPERATOR INPUT: approved IgG sentence]
No
Hair mineral tests
Same reason. A test that produces a longer list of things to avoid is not thoroughness, it is a bigger bill and more fear.
No
Labs ordered by me
I am a dietitian, not your physician. I will tell you which conventional markers are worth asking your own doctor about — ask about ferritin, ask about a thyroid panel — and give you the language for a twelve-minute appointment. Naming a marker is education. Dosing is not my job.
And I will never hand you a longer list of foods to be afraid of.
Included, and worth naming
Five things built for the specific reasons women quit.
Each of these exists because of a sentence someone said on a fit call, not because a bonus stack looked better with five items in it.
Bonus one
The Three-Week Trap
One page and one short video on why a three-week gluten trial cannot return a trustworthy answer. It is the argument against the free experiment you were about to run instead of this.
Bonus two
Your Forty-Food List, Triaged
Bring the sensitivity report you paid for. We read it together, map it against what is actually testable, and set it aside with a plain explanation of why it produced forty suspects and no method. Delivered inside the Week 1 kickoff.
Bonus three
Feeding Four: Family Dinner Bridge
Calm-phase and reintroduction meals cooked as one dinner for the whole household, with the swaps isolated to your plate. Plus a group-call module on it. The second dinner is why people quit in week three.
Bonus four
Restaurants, Field Trips and Real Life
Unlocked at Week 5. How to order without reading the menu online first, and how to travel or chaperone without mapping the bathrooms in advance.
Bonus five
Recording library and catch-up path
Every Tuesday call recorded and indexed, with a stated protocol for catching up if you miss two weeks. One bad month at work does not waste this.
The number
$1,800
or three payments of $650
Nobody enrols without the free twenty-minute call first.
Money is usually not the real objection here. Skepticism and time are. So let me put the number where you can see it and then be straight about it.
Priced against what you have already spent to get nowhere — a panel, a course, a shelf of supplements, four years of eliminations run without guidance — $1,800 for four 1:1 hours with a dietitian who spent six years in a hospital GI clinic, twelve live calls, and a written short list at the end is not a stretch. It is the first purchase in that sequence with a defined exit.
The real alternative is not “free.” The real alternative is another experiment that produces another ambiguous result and another six months lost.
The payment plan totals $1,950. I am not going to apologise for the $150 spread; it is standard, and it turns an $1,800 decision into a $650 one for a household budget that is jointly managed.
The Two-Week Process Guarantee
You don't have to trust me yet.
Do the first two weeks and keep the log. If it is not for you, tell me by day fourteen and I refund you in full. The only thing I ask is that you actually chart — because that is the part that shows both of us whether this is going to work.
Before you pay
A call where I might say no
Every enrolment starts with a free twenty-minute fit call. If I do not think I can help you — or you are in California, or there is an active eating disorder in the picture — I will tell you honestly and I will not take your money.
Day 14
A full refund, on one condition
Two weeks of real charting, then your call. Tell me by day fourteen and you get all of it back. The condition is the log, not a form.
What isn't guaranteed
Your symptoms
I am not guaranteeing a symptom outcome, because nobody honest can. I am guaranteeing the process: real charting, a qualified dietitian reading it with you, and a protocol, a reintroduction schedule and a maintenance plan specific to you and written down. If I do not deliver the process, you do not pay for it.
Who this isn't for
I would rather lose the sale on the call than in week six.
The fit call is a screen, and it screens both directions. This is the list I am actually working from.
- You live in California. I am not licensed to work with you, and I will tell you that on the call rather than after you have paid.
- There is an active eating disorder in the picture. Daily symptom scoring and a structured elimination are the wrong tools, and I will say so and point you somewhere better.
- Your presentation needs medical management, or it is not gut-dominant. That is a physician's job before it is mine.
- You want a test panel and a supplement list. I do not run panels and I do not sell supplements, so you would be paying me for the thing I refuse to do.
- You want a promise that your symptoms will go away. I will not give you one, because nobody honest can.
- You cannot find ninety seconds a day right now. Then this is the wrong season, and I would rather you came back in the spring.
What I can actually show you
Seven cohorts. Eighty-three women. Roughly ninety per cent finished.
This is a small practice with no paid advertising, so the proof is small too. I would rather show you a small true thing than a big vague one.
- cohorts run
- 7cohorts run
- women through the programme
- 83women through the programme
- finished all twelve weeks
- roughly 90%finished all twelve weeks
That is a completion figure, not a symptom figure. It says women finish this - which is what a kickoff call, a fixed end date and two checkpoints produce. It does not say what happened to anyone's symptoms, and I am not going to imply that it does.
“I ate at a restaurant without googling the menu first for the first time in five years.”
One woman's experience, shared with her written permission and with every identifying detail stripped. It is not a forecast for you. It is the only client sentence on this website, because it is the only one I have permission to use.
Maya Chen, MS, RDN, LD
Eleven years as a registered dietitian: the first six in a hospital GI clinic, the last five in solo private practice. Certified Monash FODMAP practitioner, IFNCP certificate. Fully virtual, based in Portland.
The questions I actually get
Answered the way I'd answer them on the call.
If your question is not here, ask it on the fit call. Bring the numbered list. People do, and it makes the twenty minutes better.
I don't have the time. I work full-time and I have kids.
That is the objection I take most seriously, so let me be precise about the time. Four hours with me across twelve weeks. One live call a week at noon Pacific, and every one is recorded - you can miss two in a row and be fine. The daily charting takes about ninety seconds.
And the Calm protocol is built to cook as one family dinner, not a second dinner for you. If you genuinely cannot find ninety seconds a day, this is the wrong season and I would rather you came back in the spring.
How is this different from the free low-FODMAP information I already have?
The free handout is the elimination phase on its own - the half that makes people miserable and teaches them nothing. It skips reintroduction, which is the part that produces the answer.
And it assumes your baseline holds still. Mine does not. We chart first and test second, which is the whole difference.
I think I'll try cutting gluten strictly on my own first.
Completely reasonable, and I would say the same in your position - except you have already run it. It worked for about three weeks and then it stopped, right?
Three weeks is shorter than one cycle, so that result was always going to be noise. Run it again and you get the same ambiguous answer and lose another six months. If you want to test gluten, test it properly: chart first, then challenge it in a window where the reading means something. I will send you the guide either way.
Shouldn't I get proper testing first? Wouldn't a panel tell us more?
I do not run IgG food-sensitivity panels or hair mineral tests, and I do not order labs. A panel hands you forty suspects and no method for clearing a single one - which is how a lot of women arrive here in the first place.
What I do instead is ask your own physician for a conventional panel, and give you the language to ask for it. If a workup is what you need, you need a doctor, not a dietitian.
I've already eliminated so much. I can't handle more restriction.
Then you are in the right place, because this is a subtraction offer in a market that only ever adds rules. The Calm protocol is modified, not full elimination, and it lasts four weeks - not forever.
The output is a short list with a quantity beside each item. How much, not never again. Most of what you are currently avoiding comes back.
What if I do all twelve weeks and nothing changes?
I will not promise you a symptom outcome, so I am not going to pretend that cannot happen. What I promise is the process: two weeks of real charting, a qualified dietitian reading it with you, and a protocol, a reintroduction schedule and a maintenance plan that are specific to you and written down.
And if your bad days genuinely do not cluster, you will hear that from me plainly at Week 5. That is an answer too, and it is a better one than another four years of guessing.
Noon Pacific doesn't work with my schedule.
Every group call is recorded and posted, indexed by topic, and available for the whole programme. The four hours that are genuinely live are your three 1:1 sessions, and those are booked around you. If you can never make a Tuesday, you can still complete this.
$1,800 is a lot. How do I justify that for myself?
Honestly? You have probably already spent more than that in fragments - a panel, a course, a shelf of probiotics, four years of eliminations run without guidance. This is the first purchase in that sequence with a defined exit.
There is a payment plan at three payments of $650. And there is the two-week window: finish the first two weeks, keep your log, and if the process is not for you, tell me by day fourteen and I refund you in full.
My cycle is irregular, or I don't have one right now.
Ask me on the fit call. The overlay reads a rhythm, so an irregular, suppressed or absent cycle changes what the chart can show, and I would rather tell you that honestly up front than take your money and work it out in Week 5.
To supply[OPERATOR INPUT: irregular-cycle policy]
I'm probably too complicated a case.
Six years in a hospital GI clinic is six years of complicated. But the honest answer is that I do not know yet, and neither do you - that is what the twenty minutes is for. If I do not think I can help you, I will say so on the call and I will not take your money.
The lowest-risk way to start
Don't take my word for it. Chart fourteen days and look at your own numbers.
Download the guide, score your symptoms against your cycle days for two weeks, and see whether your bad days cluster. If they do not, I will tell you this is not your mechanism. If they do, you walk into the fit call already knowing the method works on your body.
It costs nothing and it is the only sales argument I have ever seen survive contact with a fourth-attempt skeptic.
Cohorts run three times a year, capped at fifteen. Next dates: ask on the fit call.
To supply[OPERATOR INPUT: next cohort dates]