Red Light Therapy for Anti-Aging in Ottawa: What the Research Actually Shows
May 6, 2026
The dietitian’s chair at NP has been empty too long. We’re glad to fix that.
Isabelle joins Nobility Performance as a Registered Dietitian with the Ontario College of Dietitians, and a graduate of the University of Ottawa’s Integrated Honours Bachelor of Nutrition and Dietetics program.
Why we wanted a dietitian on staff
Every clinician at NP eventually runs into the same wall: a patient doing everything right inside the treatment room and undoing most of it outside. The athlete who can’t add lean mass because they’re eating like a desk worker. The fighter who shows up at fight week weeks behind on their cut. The masters runner whose stress reactions keep coming back because they’re chronically underfuelled. The bodybuilder who finishes prep and has no idea how to return to a normal life.
We could refer those people out — and we did. But it can be tough to find someone who understands how we work at Nobility, and especially one who understands the ins and outs of sport-specific nutrition. Bringing a Registered Dietitian in-house — one who has experience with sports nutrition and works alongside the same physios, chiros, and RMTs you’re already seeing — closes that loop.
That’s why Isabelle is here.
Who Isabelle is
Isabelle’s clinical interests are broad: athletes and active people who want their nutrition aligned with their training, but also anyone working through digestive issues, body-composition goals, or a healthier relationship with food. As a competitive bikini bodybuilder herself, she has lived the work of training, recovery, and contest prep — and she’s open about her own experience with disordered eating in her youth. That history shapes how she practices: evidence-based, realistic, sustainable, and notably non-judgmental.
Her starting question is what can be *added* to support balance and performance — not what needs to be cut, restricted, or eliminated. The research on weight-sensitive sports keeps pointing in the same direction: athletes do best with a dietitian who isn’t moralistic about food.
What working with an RD actually changes
The 2016 joint position statement from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine (Thomas, Erdman, & Burke, 2016) is unambiguous: athletes should be referred to a Registered Dietitian for personalized nutrition planning. In Ontario, “dietitian” is a regulated, protected title — only RDs registered with the College of Dietitians of Ontario can use it.
What that translates to in real life:
– Faster recovery between sessions and games. Better-fuelled athletes get more out of training and need less downtime between hard days.
– Better body-composition outcomes. Athletes who follow a structured plan lose more fat and preserve more lean mass than those who improvise.
– Fewer setbacks. Stress fractures, recurring soft-tissue injuries, fatigue, and stalled progress often trace back to chronic underfuelling that an RD can identify and correct.
– A plan that’s sustainable. The strategy that wins is the one the athlete is still following in week twelve.
If you play rugby, hockey, football, soccer, or many team sports
Most team-sport athletes we see at NP are chronically underfed (maybe not all of us rugby guys). They don’t know it because they feel “fine” most of the time and outperform their peers on talent alone. What they don’t see is the third-period drop-off, the slower decision-making in the second half, or the recovery debt that compounds across a season.
A dietitian aligns daily intake with what’s actually happening in training and competition. The benefits show up where games are won and lost: late in matches, on back-to-back game days, deep into a tournament, and across the back half of a season when the rest of the league is breaking down.
Canadian data on junior hockey players quantifies what most coaches already suspect — players lose far more fluid and sodium during a game than they replace, and many start the next shift already behind (Logan-Sprenger, Palmer, & Spriet, 2011). For sports played in equipment, indoors, or in heat, the gap between what athletes lose and what they put back is the gap between staying sharp and falling off.
If you cut weight for sport
The biggest myth in weight-class sports is that a hard cut is just a hard cut. The evidence says otherwise.
In a study of elite athletes, those who cut weight slowly under nutrition guidance lost meaningfully more body fat and added lean mass in the same training cycle. The fast-cut group lost more on the scale, but gave back muscle and strength to do it (Garthe et al., 2011). Same training. Different result. The variable was the cut.
The 2025 International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand on combat sports is more direct still: how an athlete arrives at weight — and how they refuel between weigh-in and competition — largely determines how much of their actual capacity shows up on fight night (Burke et al., 2025). Most amateurs lose that window. Most professionals win or lose their careers on it.
What working with a dietitian gives a weight-class athlete:
– A realistic timeline (a cut planned 10 weeks out looks completely different from one crammed into two)
– Confidence that what’s coming off the scale is fat, not muscle
– A weigh-in-to-bell refuelling plan that recovers the performance the cut took
– An honest second opinion when a cut has gone too far — we’d rather see an athlete move up a weight class than compete at 60%
The athletes with the longest careers tend to be the ones who learned this distinction early.
And then the rebound
Post-cut recovery doesn’t get the attention it deserves. The research catalogues what most physique athletes feel but can’t always name: metabolic rate stays suppressed for months after a contest, appetite signals get loud, and a high proportion of athletes report binge episodes and food preoccupation that persist well after the show (Trexler et al., 2014; Andersen et al., 1995).
A structured rebound — gradual return to maintenance, planned recovery, and an honest conversation about what to expect — is the difference between a long competitive career and a short one. Isabelle has lived this side of the sport. She brings both the textbook and the lived experience into the conversation.
Beyond sport
Not everyone who walks into NP is preparing for a competition. Plenty of our patients want help with digestive issues, body composition that’s stalled, or simply a steadier relationship with food. Isabelle takes those clients too — same evidence base, same non-judgmental approach, no diet culture, no fear-based food rules.
Book with Isabelle
Registered Dietitian visits are an eligible paramedical benefit under most Canadian extended health plans. We direct-bill most insurers — Sun Life and Green Shield are the two we don’t, but receipts are provided for self-submission to those plans.
Initial consultations are available now. You can book directly through our Jane portal:
Book a consultation with Isabelle
Welcome to the team, Isabelle. The clinic is better with you in it.
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References
– Andersen, R. E., Bartlett, S. J., Morgan, G. D., & Brownell, K. D. (1995). Weight loss, psychological, and nutritional patterns in competitive male body builders. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 18(1), 49–57.
– Burke, B. I., et al. (2025). International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: Nutrition and weight cut strategies for mixed martial arts and other combat sports. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 22(1).
– Garthe, I., Raastad, T., Refsnes, P. E., Koivisto, A., & Sundgot-Borgen, J. (2011). Effect of two different weight-loss rates on body composition and strength and power-related performance in elite athletes. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 21(2), 97–104.
– Logan-Sprenger, H. M., Palmer, M. S., & Spriet, L. L. (2011). Estimated fluid and sodium balance and drink preferences in elite male junior players during an ice hockey game. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, 36(1), 145–152.
– Thomas, D. T., Erdman, K. A., & Burke, L. M. (2016). Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine: Nutrition and athletic performance. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 116(3), 501–528.
– Trexler, E. T., Smith-Ryan, A. E., & Norton, L. E. (2014). Metabolic adaptation to weight loss: Implications for the athlete. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 11, 7.
