Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing

Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing Naturopath | Accredited Practising Dietitian (APD) | Certified Eating Disorder Clinician
Weight-neutral care for gut, hormone, chronic illness & mental health.

I also mentor natural health practitioners in disordered eating-adjacent clinical practice. Casey Conroy, BVSc(Hons), BHSc(Nat), MNutrDiet, APD, CEDC
Accredited Practising Dietitian (APD) | Non-Diet Nutritionist | Naturopath | Medical Herbalist | Credentialed Eating Disorder Clinician (CEDC) | Provisional Sports Dietitian | Yoga Teacher | Strength & Conditioning Coach

I am an experienced health

practitioner blending evidence-based science with traditional wisdom. My approach is body inclusive, LGBTIQA+ friendly, and neuroaffirmative. Deeply personalised, compassionate care for you and your family. Medicare & health fund rebates available, in person and Telehealth consultations available. At Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing we operate from a Non-Diet, Body Acceptance, Health at Every Size® philosophy which values people for who they are rather than what they look like. SPECIALTY AREAS:
- Eating, Weight & Body Image: Eating Disorders, disordered eating, emotional eating, diet recovery
- Nervous system: Neurodivergent Support (ADHD, ASD, SPD), CFS, stress resilience, Anxiety, Depression, Insomnia
- Hormones: Menopause, painful & heavy periods, menstrual irregularities, low testosterone, HT support for trans folks

INTEREST AREAS:
- Fertility, Pregnancy, Breastfeeding
- Gut: Bloating, Constipation, IBS, SIBO, Reflux, Dysbiosis, Food Intolerances
- Sports & Performance Nutrition
- Acute Naturopathy (e.g. colds, flu, recent injury)
- Thyroid: Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, Grave's disease
- Cardiometabolic: High cholesterol, Hypertension, Type 2 Diabetes
- Musculoskeletal: Arthritis, fibromyalgia, sciatica

CLASSES: Yoga, AcroYoga, Strength & Conditioning - privates available! Message us for details. For more info visit https://www.funkyforest.com.au/how-i-can-help.html

01/05/2026

There’s this idea that if you say things “the right way” in clinic, they’ll land well.

Sometimes they do. Sometimes… they reeeeally don’t.

I’ve had clients get defensive, dismissive, even a bit sharp or rude with me when I’ve gently brought up the possibility of disordered eating.

And I’d love to say that doesn’t rattle me, but it DOES.

I care. I want to get it right. I don’t want to upset people, and I don’t want to p**s people off unnecessarily.

But I’ve also seen what happens when we don’t say anything at all.

We keep treating the surface stuff. We keep layering protocols and optimisation and tests. And the actual driver just sits there. The disordered eating doesn’t improve, or maybe it gets worse. And I mean, no thank you, not on my watch.

Over time, I’ve gotten better at how I bring it up. Slowing things down, asking permission, making it collaborative instead of confrontational.

But I still say the thing. And I’ve had to learn that defensiveness doesn’t automatically mean I’ve done harm. Sometimes it just means it’s touched in on something real and tender.

If you’re a practitioner and you’ve had that moment where you KNOW in your guts something’s there but you’re not sure how to say it… you’re not the only one.

I unpack this a bit more in my latest blog, including how I actually approach these conversations in clinic.

Link in bio or DM me if you want an easy little link 🙃

**kwellness

Had a supervision session recently with Fiona Sutherland .mindfuldietitian that’s been sitting with me.I asked what the ...
24/04/2026

Had a supervision session recently with Fiona Sutherland .mindfuldietitian that’s been sitting with me.

I asked what the most common way harm happens in disordered eating care is.

Fully expected something about saying the wrong thing.

She said it’s usually when we say nothing at all.

And yeah… 🤔 that felt a bit uncomfortably accurate.

Because the signs are often there in clinic. Not always a full blown eating disorder, but patterns: restriction, food fear, rigidity, chronic dieting dressed up as “being healthy.”

The client comes in for gut stuff, hormones, fatigue… but their relationship with food is doing a lot behind the scenes.

And there’s that moment where you clock it.
That little hmm… something’s not quite adding up here.

Then the hesitation.
Not wanting to get it wrong.
Definitely not wanting to overstep.
Not wanting to open something you’re not sure you can hold.

So you stay with the safe stuff.

But saying nothing isn’t neutral. It just means the disordered eating stays tucked away in the background.

And I really get that naming it can feel a bit (a lot) awkward. But awkward doesn’t automatically mean harm’s been done.

If you’ve had that moment in clinic, I’ve got a free guide in my bio: 7 red flags 🚩 of disordered eating practitioners often miss.

It’s not a script for these conversations, just a starting point so you’re not second guessing yourself as much.

**kwellness

17/04/2026

First cohort = full ❤️

Honestly a bit blown away by the calibre of humans in this group.

This work matters.

**kwellness

16/04/2026

This is the part of the work that doesn’t get talked about enough. But it’s where the juiciness lies... 🍊

When disordered eating recovery intersects with medical recommendations for weight loss.
When physical health goals and a person’s relationship with food feel like they’re pulling in different directions. When motivation is there… but things are still stuck.

It’s complex, and it can feel reeeeally uncomfortable to sit in as a practitioner.

You’re trying to stay grounded, collaborative, and respect autonomy….
while also holding risk, health concerns, and your scope of practice.

And there’s not a lot of space to actually talk about that.

Inside DECIDE, this is what we focus on...

Not just what to do, but how to think in these situations.
How to stay anchored in your values.
How to navigate the grey areas without defaulting to either overstepping or stepping right back.

We talk about supervision, team-based care, scope, and also how not to just throw your hands up and say “I can’t do anything here!”

Because your clients need more than that. This work is nuanced, and you shouldn’t have to figure it out on your own!

Plus it’s more fun in a group of kickass enthusiastic non-diet natural health practitioners 😉

DECIDE starts April 21.
I’m closing discovery calls tomorrow.

There’s one spot left for this round, so if this resonates, I’d really encourage you to reach out.

DM me “course” if you want details 🤍

This is something I see all the time in practice, especially with clients where there’s some disordered eating or body i...
14/04/2026

This is something I see all the time in practice, especially with clients where there’s some disordered eating or body image stuff sitting under the surface.

You’re not just throwing random advice at them, you’ve actually taken the time to understand what’s going on, you’ve explained things properly, talked through food, patterns, what might be driving it…

and they’re nodding along like yeah, that makes sense.

But then they go away and it’s the same s**t:

still restricting
still anxious around food
still stuck in the same patterns
still hating their bodies… the same bodies that are trying so hard to keep them functioning.

And you’re left sitting there thinking what the f am I missing here?

Because it should be helping… and it’s just not landing.

It’s so easy in those moments to turn it back on yourself, like maybe I didn’t explain it well enough, maybe I need a better plan, maybe I should be doing more.

But a lot of the time it’s not about what you’re saying… it’s about where the client is actually at.

At uni we’re trained to work with people as if they’re ready to change, motivated, on board, keen to implement. But with disordered eating, it’s often way messier than that.

There can be ambivalence, fear, attachment to behaviours that feel “safe”, even if they’re not actually helping.

So you can say the most perfectly worded thing… and it still won’t land.

Not because you’re doing a s**t job, but because you’re speaking to a stage they’re not in.

And this is where praccies start getting nervous.. pushing harder, tightening things up, focusing more on food rules… and without meaning to, making things worse 😬

This is the kind of nuance we’re just not taught, and it’s exactly what we unpack inside DECIDE

We start April 21, and I’m closing applications this Friday.

There’s one spot left for this round, so if you’ve been sitting on this and thinking “this is me”… I’d really encourage you to reach out this week.

DM me “course” if you want details 🤍

**kwellness

12/04/2026

I didn’t come into this work with it all sorted, I came into it through my own disordered eating, and for a long time I didn’t even recognise it as that. I just thought I was really “into health”.

I got into yoga when I was 18 after moving from FNQ down to Brissy, and that opened the door into the whole health and wellness world. I was learning from the Hare Krishnas and it just felt like I was doing something “good” for my health.

That led into vegetarian, then vegan, then raw vegan, detoxing… always pushing things a bit further.

Then during vet in my early 20s, that all ramped up. I was working as a promo model, getting paid based on how I looked, and got really into triathlon, which turned into a fair bit of over-exercise.

I lost my period for about a year and genuinely thought that was just part of it, a weird badge of honour, which is pretty fu**ed when I think about it now.

A couple of years later I went into dietetics, and part of that was wanting the protection of being “qualified”, like if I had the degree then no one could really question my beliefs about food or bodies… including me.

(continued in comments 👇)

09/04/2026

This is one of those aaawkward situations that doesn’t get talked about enough in practice.

The client wants to lose weight… and on paper it looks straightforward enough.

But when you actually zoom out a bit, there’s no clear clinical reason for it.

They’re eating relatively well. Their symptoms aren’t being driven by their weight. Their labs are fine.

And you just get that quiet little nudge of
“Shhhhi…. this might not actually be about health”

But it would be very easy to just go along with it. That’s kind of what we’ve all been taught to do, right?

Help the client reach their goal
Optimise things
Tighten the diet up

and sometimes that’s appropriate. But sometimes…
that’s exactly how we end up reinforcing patterns that are already a bit shaky underneath.

Especially if there’s any disordered eating sitting in the background (which is COMMON).

Yet DE is not always obvious. It doesn’t always look like an eating disorder.

It can look like:
being “really compliant”
wanting to do everything “perfectly”
being quite rigid around food (but in a way sanctioned by wellness culture so it seems cool 🤯)

If we don’t know how to spot that, it’s very easy to unintentionally make things worse… just by doing what we think is helping.

And just to be clear - I’m not anti weight loss.

If someone is working on their health, eating adequately, exercising, improving their relationship with food, and their weight shifts as a result… that’s completely fine.

I’m pretty neutral on weight changes overall.

I’m not anti weight loss.. I’m anti HARM.

That’s the lens I think we need more of in practice. The grey zone stuff. The stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into a protocol.

It’s exactly where a lot of praccies feel unsure.

If this made you go “yeahhh… I’ve been there”, this is exactly what I teach inside DECIDE so you can navigate this properly without second guessing yourself.

We start April 21
small group, 2 spots left.

DM me “course” if you want details

This has been doing my head in a bit lately 😅I’m seeing more and more clients coming in on GLP-1s, being told it’ll “kic...
04/04/2026

This has been doing my head in a bit lately 😅

I’m seeing more and more clients coming in on GLP-1s, being told it’ll “kickstart weight loss”

That framing is an absolute mind f**k.

Used purely for weight loss (not talking about diabetes or PCOS here), these meds suppress appetite. They don’t fix whatever’s actually driving the situation underneath.

So yeah.. of COURSE people eat less.
But that’s not some magic reset. That’s biology being overridden.

I don’t care how many times the word “food noise” is used by pharma reps to make it sound more benign than this. Food noise = biological, mental and emotional HUNGER. All valid forms of hunger by the way.

And then over time, the effect shifts, the novelty wears off, and food starts creeping back in (yep, even if hunger’s still blunted).

And when people stop taking them, weight regain is EXTREMELY common.

And often quicker than what we see after your standard diet/exercise attempts.

Why aren’t all GPs shouting this from the rooftops to anyone they are prescribing these meds to?!? Please 🥊 me if you know 😆

Why is weight regained faster than ever after stopping these meds? Because nothing’s actually been supported. Just… suppressed.

Then there’s the nutrition side.

We’re seeing more under-fuelling, lower protein,
muscle loss (which matters WAY more than most people realise), and higher rates of malnutrition in people on these meds.

But the bit that really gets me?

🚨 eating disorder risk 🚨

Because we’re literally reinforcing:

eat less = doing well
ignore hunger = success
appetite suppression = the goal

and that can spiral pretty bloody quickly in the clients we see.

This post isn’t anti-GLP1. They have their place in certain chronic disease situations like insulin resistance.

This IS anti half-truths
anti harm
pro actually informing people what they’re signing up for.

We can absolutely use these meds (they’re not going away any time soon), and still do better alongside them.

If this made you go “oh s**t…”

🚩 grab my 7 red flags of disordered eating guide
(bio link). This is exactly where this stuff shows up.

02/04/2026

This is the stuff that sits underneath a lot of the “gut” and “hormone” cases we see.

Not always. But often enough that it matters.

It’s pretty easy to miss, especially when someone presents as:
motivated
“healthy”
doing / eating all the right things

Because it doesn’t always look like an eating disorder.

It can look like:
discipline
clean eating
being “on top of things”

Until you backtrack, zoom out and look at things differently to how we were trained. Namely, from an ADEQUACY perspective.

However, this is where a lot of us default to:
more testing
more protocols
more restriction

And without meaning to, we reinforce the exact thing driving the symptoms 😱

If you’re a natural health praccie and this is starting to make sense (even just a little bit)… you’re not alone.

This is exactly what I teach inside DECIDE.

DM me “course” if you want details… always happy to chat 😌

**kwellness

31/03/2026

I could have gone full “oestrogen dominance” protocol on this one. 🥦

DIM
cruciferous veg
fibre
liver support

All the usual stuff.

And don’t get me wrong, I use that stuff regularly. It’s so satisfying to get good results when these tools are used correctly.

But not when someone’s already under-fuelling.

This is where it can get tricky. Because if you’re not trained in disordered eating, it’s dead easy to go down the path of least resistance…

Run tests
add protocols
“optimise” and “balance hormones”

When sometimes the most effective thing you can do is:
slow down
zoom out
and actually look at what’s going on with food

On paper it can look like detox and oestrogen excess / dominance (not going to go into the issues with this term today 😆)

But underneath it can be:
not eating enough overall calories and/or carbs
rigid food rules
fear around food and body
a system that’s just not resourced

And if we miss that, we can accidentally reinforce the exact thing driving the symptoms.

That’s the bit most of us weren’t taught.

If you’re a natural health praccie (nat, nut, herbie) and this is hitting a bit close to home… this is literally the kind of stuff I teach inside DECIDE.

Comment COURSE or DM me if you want details - happy to chat, no weird pressure.

**kwellness

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