Liza opened the doors to her naturopathy clinic in Huskisson six years ago, shortly after graduation. Just two weeks before finishing her studies, she signed the lease on her first space and in the very first week, seven appointments were already booked.
Today, Keto Naturopath has become a quiet word-of-mouth staple for locals to the Shoalhaven, who are, in her words, “sick of being sick” and ready to tackle their health long-term and not just for a summer or a season. “I grew up watching both my parents be quite old and sick, and on lots of medications,” she says. “I just knew I didn’t want that for myself. Natural health was my thing from my teens, but I couldn’t study while the kids were little. When we became empty nesters, I thought, right, it’s my turn.” That decision has shaped not only her own life, but the health journeys of hundreds of people across the Bay & Basin and beyond.
From bodybuilding to science-led naturopathy
Before she was a naturopath, Liza set herself a very different kind of challenge. In her mid-thirties, a size 16 and grieving the loss of her father to heart disease, she walked into a gym, found a bodybuilder, and drew a line in the sand: 18 months to step on stage.“I gave myself a scary deadline,” she says. “I thought, who knows how to lose fat better than anyone else? Bodybuilders.”
She hit her goal. She dropped to a size 8 for competition, but the process was brutal. Seven meals a day, every gram of food weighed, a tiny rotation of chicken breast, broccoli, egg whites and fish oil capsules. “I was really fit,” she says, “but I wasn’t healthy. I came off stage and promised I’d never do that to myself again.”
That experience now underpins a lot of her thinking. “It taught me discipline, goal setting and that I can do anything if I commit. But it also showed me what not to do. Now I want people to get results without wrecking their bodies or their relationship with food.”
Not your ‘crystals and reiki’ kind of naturopath
Mention naturopathy and many people picture incense burners, crystals and talk about “energy”. Whilst that certainly has a place in wellness, Liza is very clear that this is not her lane and that sets her apart. “Most people see naturopaths as a bit ‘woo-woo’,” she laughs. “I don’t do crystals, I don’t do reiki, I don’t do massage. I’m very science based. I love the research side of things, and I love teaching people how their bodies actually work.”
Her consultations blend traditional herbal medicine with a strong emphasis on nutrition, blood test interpretation and lifestyle. She’s just as happy talking about magnesium pathways and vitamin D as she is mixing up a herbal formula. “It’s about mixing the old with the new,” she says. “I like the new technology, but I also love herbal medicine. Mostly, I love simplifying things. People are bombarded with health information, and they don’t know what’s right. My job is to show them it’s not that complicated.”
For Liza, that often comes down to going “back to basics”: eating more like your grandparents or great-grandparents did, focusing on whole foods, and stepping away from ultra-processed products and extreme diet trends.
Easy Keto: tailored programmes for real lives
While Liza still offers standard naturopathic consultations, most of Liza’s work centres on her ketogenic diet programmes – six- or twelve-week journeys that are heavily personalised and supported by education. “My programme’s called Easy Keto because I make it easy,” she says. “That’s what everyone says – ‘I can’t believe how easy it was.’ That’s my whole philosophy.”
Clients can use a personalised online portal where information is provided over the weeks: how keto works, why sleep and stress matter, what magnesium and vitamin D actually do, practical tips and mindset shifts. Alongside that sits one-on-one support and a meal approach built around the person, not a generic, one size fits all program.
People come in with all sorts of things – thyroid issues, gut problems, medications, foods they can’t tolerate, shift work. I look at their blood tests, I look at their lifestyle, and I make a plan for them.
Rather than the American-style “all-you-can-eat bacon and cream” version of keto, Liza promotes what she calls a more Mediterranean, “keto-terranean” style of eating: lots of vegetables and salads, good-quality proteins, healthy fats, and just enough carbohydrate to suit that person’s metabolism.
“It’s not no-carb, and it’s not extreme,” she clarifies. “When you reduce carbs, your body produces ketones and uses them as fuel – it’s like switching to super fuel. Your brain’s clearer, you’ve got more energy, you sleep better, inflammation goes down. And you’re still eating real food.”
Meal timing and natural fasting patterns are part of the picture too, but she’s careful not to turn it into another rigid rulebook. “I don’t tell people they can’t drink coffee, or they can never have wine,” she says. “Nothing is off limits – it’s about how much, how often and what works for your body in the long term.”
From being “sick of being sick” to sustainable change
If you asked Liza for an ideal customer profile, she’d struggle – not because she doesn’t know who she helps, but because the range is so broad. “It doesn’t really matter if they’re male or female, or how old they are,” she says. “The common thread is they’ve got some sort of metabolic issue or they’re just not functioning properly.”
In practice, that often means women in their 40s and 50s navigating perimenopause or menopause, people juggling stress and weight gain, clients on multiple medications, FIFO (fly in, fly out) workers dealing with heavy carb buffet-style canteen food, shift-working nurses and teachers trying to get their sleep and energy back on track.
I love the ones who come in and say, ‘I’m sick of being sick. I want to sort my health once and for all,’ she says.
She also supports some oncology patients online, referred for a very specific, therapeutic ketogenic diet alongside their medical treatment. Here the numbers are even more precise, and she stresses that it’s always a co-therapy, never a replacement.
On the other end of the spectrum, she still sees plenty of people for more general naturopathic support – the “tired and run down,” sudden clusters of eczema, or those who are simply getting every bug that goes around.
Not everyone is put onto her keto programme, and that’s deliberate. “I’ll only suggest keto if I think it’ll actually benefit them,” she says. “If someone comes in with things like polycystic ovaries, high cholesterol, and no energy, I know keto can help, so I’ll talk about it. But if it’s not the right fit, we’ll do something else, or I’ll refer them on.”
Social media: Cutting through the noise on supplements
One of the themes that gets Liza fired up is misinformation – especially around supplements pushed hard on social media. “People are getting most of their health information off social media now,” she says. “There are products that aren’t TGA-approved being sold everywhere, brands that shut down and reopen under a new name, powders and ‘elixirs’ that don’t have enough active ingredients to do anything.”
She contrasts that with the practitioner-only products she stocks in clinic. “With something like turmeric, people say, ‘My neighbour told me to buy turmeric, so I grabbed a jar from the supermarket, and it didn’t work,’” she says. “Cooking turmeric and a clinically formulated curcumin with measured active ingredients are not the same thing.”
To keep herself honest, she tests new products on herself, family, or practitioner friends before they ever reach a client. “Companies are always saying, ‘Try this, it’s the latest thing,’” she says. “If we don’t feel any benefit, I won’t keep it in. If something is brilliant, then it earns its place.”
That transparency carries through to the actual business side: prices are on her website, and she offers a free 10-minute chat so people can see if they click, before committing. “I don’t pretend to know things if I don’t,” she adds. “If someone asks about a condition I’ve never heard of, I’ll say that and go away and research it. If I’m not the right person, I’ll recommend someone who is.”
Beyond injections: another story about weight loss
Like many practitioners in the weight-loss space, Liza has seen demand shift since GLP-1 injections such as Ozempic became more widely discussed. “Weight loss used to be the biggest driver of new business,” she says. “Now a lot of people are trying the injections first. It’s seen as the easy solution.”
Increasingly, though, she’s meeting clients after the fact. “I get people coming in saying, ‘I tried it, it worked and now it doesn’t. Help me,’” she says. “They were never really taught how to eat in a sustainable way.”
Without getting into medical advice, she notes that many of the mechanisms people are chasing with those medications such as reduced appetite, better blood sugar control and improved energy, are also outcomes people often experience with a well-structured ketogenic approach, but through food and lifestyle rather than a script. Her focus, as always, is on what will hold up in real life. “Everyone has enough going on,” she says. “Health shouldn’t be another layer of stress.”
A wellbeing precinct, and a life grounded in nature
After several years in her original premises in Huskisson, Liza moved her clinic a few months ago to a new space alongside other wellbeing practitioners in Woollamia. She previously ran an infrared sauna on-site, but that arm of the business has since been taken over by David Lunn, a therapist at Bowline Remedial Massage, who now offers saunas, float tanks and compression boots as part of a growing wellness hub called Anchorage. As this wellness collaboration builds, Liza will be part of this new hub, surrounded by like-minded practitioners.
Outside work, her life is just as connected to the local landscape. She and her husband now live on a 480-acre property on the Shoalhaven River, part of the Bundanon Trust umbrella, where he works as caretaker.
“It’s animals, birds, everything,” she says. “I still love the long walks in the National Park and just being in nature. As a herbalist I’m always looking at plants – it all ties back in.”
For locals and visitors alike, Keto Naturopath sits at the intersection of science, real food, and human connection: a place where health advice is less about quick fixes and more about helping people reclaim their lives, one simple, sustainable change at a time. To find out more about how Liza works, you can get in touch with her here