Welcome to Live Well Live Free
Hi! I’m Lori.
I didn’t set out to become a health coach. I set out to figure out why I felt so disconnected — from my body, from my sense of self, from a version of faith that was actually good news for all of me.
What I found on that journey became the foundation of Live Well Live Free.
My Background
I have a PhD in Nutrition from NC State University and spent 11 years teaching health, nutrition, and disease prevention at the university level. I’ve spent decades studying how food, lifestyle, and the body interact — and I genuinely love that work.
But credentials don’t tell the whole story.
Where It Started
I grew up in the church. I knew the right answers. I believed in God’s grace — at least in my head. But somewhere along the way, I absorbed messages about bodies that came more from the world than from Scripture. I learned to see my body as something to manage, to improve, to measure against a standard I could never quite meet.
When my husband and I moved overseas with our young sons, I poured myself into family, ministry, and teaching. I loved it. But I was still carrying an unspoken tension between my faith and how I lived in my own body — one I hadn’t yet named.
My FReedom Journey
Faith meets Food: A Turning Point
One of our sons developed a persistent cough while we were living in East Asia. After years on steroid inhalers, I went deep into the research on food, inflammation, and the body. We made a significant dietary shift as a family — one we had prayed over for months and made together. Within two weeks, our son stopped coughing and came off his inhalers. Six months later, my husband’s cholesterol dropped 40 points.
That experience — of inviting God into our health decisions and seeing Him show up — planted a seed. I earned my Plant-Based Pro Chef certification and my Plant-Based Nutrition certificate, and I began learning how our bodies, our food, and our faith could work together rather than in separate silos.
Finding Healing, Finding Purpose
When Covid hit in 2020, our family left East Asia and never returned. We landed in Michigan with a few suitcases and an uncertain future. That season of loss sent me to my knees in a new way and opened a door for deeper personal work.
Through the Freedom Movement organization, I began working towards my own healing at Freedom Academy. It was there that I experienced what it felt like to share the harder parts of my story with safe people and have it met with grace rather than judgement. For the first time, I experienced God’s love not just as doctrine, but as something I could actually feel. Eventually, I earned a Biblical, trauma-informed coaching certification two years later that changed everything about how I understand health, wholeness, and what it means to care for yourself as someone made in God’s image.
Fast Forward to Today
My Own Body’s Story
Like many women, menopause caught me off guard. I’d eaten well for years, exercised regularly, trained for half-marathons in East Asia — and still found myself gaining weight and feeling like my body had become a stranger to me. I had less energy and my favorite ways to move my body became less enjoyable. Those challenges led me to the Metabolic Balance program in 2025. Within a few months, I lost 13 pounds, gained some of my energy back, and began to feel like myself again. That personal experience is part of why I’m so passionate about offering this program to other women.
For me, this very personalized way of eating fits my beliefs of caring for my body so that I feel amazing and am able to live out God’s calling for my life – through my body’s ability – to share my faith, love and serve the people God brings into my life. I love that it has provided real, whole foods that will meet what my body needs right now to help reset my metabolism and reduce inflammation and then later allowed me more freedom to add additional foods I enjoy all in a balance with a structure that has brought me more awareness to what I feel in my body and stewards my physical health in a way that aligns with my faith.
I’m on a Mission
Guiding Women to Feel Good in Their Bodies too
Doing my own deep work helped me see my body, my health, my identity, and my faith as integrated rather than at war with each other. It gave me people to grieve with, to be witnessed by, and to be gently and lovingly challenged to move forward.
I want that for other women. Especially women who have sat in a pew their whole lives and still feel like they can’t be fully themselves, fully seen, or fully free.
That’s what this work is. It is an invitation to live fully — body, mind, and spirit — exactly as God designed you.
At Live Well Live Free, I’m here to be your guide, your coach, and your resource for the slow, deep and meaningful work of caring for your whole self. My goal is to provide you a safe and non-judgemental space for you to ask questions and grow in awareness of the health habits you wish to change, to add or to learn. Together, we will invite the Holy Spirit into our conversation and listen to how He wishes to care for and heal you and your body.
I am just a guide beside The Guide. My prayer is that working together will bring you closer to God and more at home in the body He gave you.
Certifications
Freedom Coach
I am a Biblically-Sound, Spirit-Filled, Trauma-Informed Freedom Coach as of November 2023
Certified Coach
The Metabolic Balance® program is designed to naturally balance hormones, enzymes, and biochemistry, which can lead to improved digestion, better sleep, increased energy, and overall well-being. It is not a one-size-fits-all “diet” but a personalized approach that is tailored to your unique body chemistry
LiveWell Coach
I am here to guide you in making healthy choices, developing new habits and reaching goals that help you align with God’s design
Ph.D. in Nutrition
I completed my MS in Nutrition in 1998 and my Ph.D. in Nutrition at NCSU in Raleigh, NC in 2001
Plant-based Pro
I completed a comprehensive course that covers the profound connection between nutritition and chronic diseases (cancer, heart disease, diabetes, brain health, and autoimmune disease) and how to create lasting change through plant-based nutrition
Plant-based Pro
I can offer resources for cooking and eating a healthy whole-foods, plant-based diet