Rooted Reset: The 12-Week Cycle Overlay Protocol
Your bad food days might not be food days.
Twelve weeks. Four triggers, not forty. You'll leave knowing what's actually yours.
For the woman whose gut symptoms came back normal on every test, who has cut gluten, cut dairy and done the elimination properly, and still can't explain why the same lunch is fine one week and ruinous the next.
The fit call is free, twenty minutes, and mandatory before any enrollment. If I don't think I can help you, I'll say so.
The Cycle Overlay Chart
Symptom score by cycle day
If this is your week
You wake up flat and by four o'clock you look six months pregnant.
Your labs are normal. Your colonoscopy was clean. The celiac panel was negative. On paper you are fine, and you do not feel fine, and at some point you stopped saying that out loud because you could hear how it sounded.
You are not imagining it and you are not undisciplined. You have run good experiments under bad measurement conditions, which is a completely different problem — and a fixable one.
“You've cut gluten, dairy, onions and beans, and you're running out of food.”
“It worked for about three weeks. Then it just stopped.”
“You're making two dinners every night at this point.”
“You read the menu online before you eat out, and you know where every bathroom is.”
Why nothing has worked yet
You cannot measure a food reaction on a baseline that moves.
Every elimination diet on earth assumes your baseline is stable — remove a food, feel better, blame the food. But a lot of women notice symptoms cluster in the week before their period. So the same meal produces a terrible day on cycle day 24 and nothing at all on cycle day 10.
That is why your results kept contradicting each other. Every reading you took was real. Every reading was also wrong.
It's like trying to weigh yourself on a scale sitting on a boat. Every reading is real, and every reading is also wrong, because the deck is moving underneath you.
So we don't test food first. We chart your symptoms against your cycle days until we can see whether that is your pattern, we subtract those weeks from the analysis, and only then do we reintroduce foods one at a time.
We fix the measurement first. Then we test.
To be plain about what this is: pattern-spotting on your own chart. It is not hormone testing, and it is not a diagnosis.
The three-week trap
Three weeks is shorter than one cycle
Which is why the gluten cut “worked for three weeks and then stopped.” It was never going to return a trustworthy answer — the trial was shorter than the thing that was moving underneath it. Run it again and you get the same ambiguous result and lose another six months.
The panel trap
Forty suspects and no method
A sensitivity panel hands you a long list of foods to be afraid of and no way to clear a single one of them. That is not thoroughness; it is more variables. I don't run IgG panels or hair mineral tests, and I won't give you a longer list.
How the twelve weeks run
The sequence is the product.
Three phases in a fixed order, because the order is the thing that has been missing. Group calls run Tuesdays at noon Pacific and are recorded. Cohorts are capped at 15 and run 3 times a year.
- Weeks 1–4
Calm
We fix the measurement before we test anything.
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. Modified, not full elimination, and built to be cooked alongside a family dinner.
- Weeks 5–10
Reintroduce
The appointment this whole thing exists to deliver.
At the Week 5 checkpoint your chart gets read aloud with you and your reintroduction schedule is built around it — so foods are only tested in the windows where the reading can be trusted. Food by food, with a dose and a clear read on each.
- Weeks 11–12
Root
You leave with the thing you came for.
The Week 11 checkpoint turns everything into a maintenance plan you run without me: your confirmed list, your thresholds, your plan for the week before your period, and what to do when something new shows up in eight months.
Ready to find out whether it's a fit?
Book a 20-minute fit callWhat's included
Four hours with me, twelve live calls, and one page at the end.
Everything below is part of the program. Nothing here is an upsell, and there is no supplement attached to any of it.
Session
Week 1 kickoff, 60 minutes, 1:1
Full history, a review of every experiment you have already run, and your Calm-phase protocol set live on the call. It is probably the first time anyone has taken all of it seriously in one sitting instead of moving past it in a sentence.
Tracker
The Cycle Overlay Chart
Daily symptom scoring plotted against cycle day, reviewed at every checkpoint, so hormonal weeks can be subtracted before any food conclusion gets drawn. About ninety seconds a day.
Protocol
Calm Phase Protocol, Weeks 1–4
A modified low-FODMAP baseline plus sleep and meal rhythm. Deliberately modified, not full elimination, and built to be cooked alongside a family dinner rather than as a second meal for you.
Sessions
Weekly group calls — Tuesdays, noon Pacific
Twelve live calls with a cohort capped at 15, every one recorded and posted. A missed Tuesday costs you nothing. Hearing fourteen other women describe the same three-week plateau tends to do more than anything I say.
Session + assessment
Week 5 reintroduction checkpoint, 1:1
Your chart is read aloud with you, the pattern — or the absence of one — gets named, and your reintroduction schedule is built to test foods only in the windows where the reading can be trusted.
Protocol
Structured reintroduction schedule, Weeks 5–10
Food by food, with a dose, a timing, a cycle-window placement and a clear read on each. You have already done the hardest phase of this work. This is the part nobody ever gave you.
Session
Week 11 maintenance checkpoint, 1:1
Your confirmed list, your plan for the week before your period, and what to do when a new symptom shows up in eight months. You are buying the end of guessing, not a twelve-week babysitter.
File
The “What's Actually Yours” short list
One page: confirmed triggers, cleared foods, thresholds where they matter, and the foods that were never the problem. Fridge-door sized. Shareable with your husband.
File
Physician conversation sheet
Plain-language script for what to ask your own doctor to check and how to describe your charted pattern in a twelve-minute appointment. Educational naming of markers only — I don't order labs and I don't diagnose.
Support
Between-call message support
Written questions answered between sessions, in one named channel, on a published cadence. Reintroduction problems happen mid-week, and an unanswered question is where a completion rate goes to die.
Files
Cohort recording library
Every group call recorded and indexed by topic for the full program. Re-watch the reintroduction call three times if you want to. Also the practical answer to a work trip or a sick kid.
What you leave with
Four foods with a threshold beside each. Not forty foods to fear.
This is the physical object the whole program is pointed at. One page, delivered at Week 11: what is confirmed, how much of it you can have before it turns, and — just as importantly — the long list of foods that were never the problem and that you can stop avoiding.
Rooted Reset is a subtraction offer in a market that only ever adds rules.
What's Actually Yours
Week 11Confirmed — with a threshold
- Onion (raw)Fine cooked. Raw, more than a garnish, is a no.
- WheatOne slice is fine. A sandwich plus pasta the same day is not.
- AppleHalf an apple. A whole one turns by mid-afternoon.
- Milk (as a drink)A splash in coffee is fine. A glass is not.
Tested and cleared — eat these
- Dairy, broadly
- Beans and lentils
- Garlic
- Cruciferous veg
- Coffee
- Bread, as a category
Included alongside
The five things that stop people finishing — handled up front.
Each of these exists because it removes a specific reason women quit in week three, or never start at all.
Bonus 1
The Three-Week Trap
A one-page briefing and short video on why a three-week gluten trial cannot return a valid result. Removes the objection “I'll just try cutting gluten myself first,” which is the most common way this conversation ends.
Bonus 2
Your forty-food list, triaged
Bring your IgG or sensitivity report to the kickoff. 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 for clearing one.
Bonus 3
Feeding Four: the family dinner bridge
Calm-phase and reintroduction meals cooked as one dinner for the whole household, with the swaps isolated to your plate. The second dinner is the reason most people quit in week three, so we remove the second dinner.
Bonus 4
Restaurants, field trips and real life
Unlocked at Week 5. How to order without reading the menu online first, and how to travel and chaperone without mapping the bathrooms in advance.
Bonus 5
Full recording library and catch-up path
Every Tuesday call indexed, plus a stated protocol for catching up if you miss two weeks. One bad month at work should not waste your enrollment.
What it costs
$1,800, or three payments of $650.
Money is usually not the real objection here — skepticism and time are. But you should see the number before you speak to me, not after.
Rooted Reset
$1,800 in full
Or 3 × $650, which totals $1,950. I'm not going to apologise for the $150 spread — it's standard, and it turns an $1,800 decision into a $650 one.
- Three 1:1 appointments — Weeks 1, 5 and 11
- Twelve weekly group calls, all recorded
- Cohort capped at 15, 3 cohorts a year
- Every protocol, schedule and file listed above
Not ready for a cohort? An Overlay Read — a single 1:1 session where we read your chart together and write down a next step — is $275. Ask about it on the fit call.
Risk reversal
The Two-Week Process Guarantee
Every enrollment starts with a free twenty-minute fit call, and if I don't think I can help you, I'll tell you honestly and I won't take your money.
Once you're in: finish the first two weeks and keep your log. If the process isn't for you, tell me by day 14 and I refund you in full.
I'm not guaranteeing your symptoms, because nobody honest can. I'm guaranteeing that you'll do two weeks of real charting, that a qualified RD will read it with you, and that what you leave with will be specific to you and written down. If I don't deliver the process, you don't pay for it.
Who you'd be working with
Maya Chen, RD
Eleven years as a registered dietitian — the first six in a hospital GI clinic, the last five in private practice. Monash certified. 83 women have been through 7 cohorts of Rooted Reset, at roughly 90% completion.
I don't run IgG panels or hair mineral tests. I don't order labs and I don't diagnose. And I turn people away on the fit call, which is the part most people find reassuring once they think about it.
Say no early
Who this isn't for.
I'd rather you read this here than find out after you've booked. The screening is not a formality — it is the reason the completion rate holds.
- You live in California. I can't work with you there, and I'd rather say that on this page than after you've booked.
- There's an active eating disorder in the picture. Charting and structured restriction are the wrong tools, and I'd be doing harm.
- You want a test panel. I don't run IgG panels or hair mineral tests, I don't order labs, and I won't hand you a longer list of foods to fear.
- You need medical management, or your presentation isn't gut-dominant. I'll say so on the fit call and point you somewhere better.
- You want a promise that your symptoms will go away. I can't make that promise and nobody honest can.
Before you book
The questions you were going to ask on the call.
If yours isn't here, bring it. People tend to arrive with a numbered list, and that's a good sign, not an awkward one.
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 stops exactly where the useful part begins.
Reintroduction is the product. That, and the order: nothing gets concluded about a food until your symptoms have been charted against your cycle and those weeks have been subtracted from the analysis.
I don't have the time. I work full-time and I have kids.
That's the objection I take most seriously, so let me be precise about it. 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 can't find ninety seconds a day, this isn't the right season, and I'd rather you came back later.
I'll just try cutting gluten strictly on my own first.
Reasonable, and I'd say the same in your position — except you have already run it. It worked for about three weeks and then it stopped. Three weeks is shorter than one cycle, so that result was always going to be noise. If you want to test gluten, test it properly: chart first, then challenge it in a window where the reading means something. I'll send you the guide either way.
Shouldn't I get proper testing first?
You have had the testing that matters — the celiac panel, the endoscopy, the colonoscopy — and they came back clear. The panels that are left mostly can't tell you which foods are yours; they add suspects. If there's a conventional marker worth checking, I'll give you the language to ask your own doctor for it. I don't order labs and I don't diagnose.
I've already eliminated so much. Isn't this more restriction?
It's the opposite, and it's the whole reason the offer exists. The Calm phase is a modified baseline, not a full elimination, and it lasts four weeks — then we spend six weeks giving food back. You finish with thresholds, not prohibitions: how much, not never again.
Noon Pacific doesn't work with my schedule.
Every call is recorded and posted, indexed by topic, and available for the full program. The four appointments that genuinely need you live are the 1:1s at Week 1, Week 5 and Week 11, and those are scheduled with you rather than at you.
What if I do all twelve weeks and nothing changes?
Then you'll know that, and you'll know it with evidence instead of a feeling. I promise the process, not a symptom outcome. What is guaranteed is that you'll chart, that a qualified RD will read it with you, and that your protocol, your reintroduction schedule and your maintenance plan will be specific to you and written down.
What if my cycle is irregular, absent, or suppressed?
Bring it to the fit call. It changes how we read the chart and sometimes it changes whether the overlay is the right instrument for you at all. I'd rather work that out in twenty minutes on the phone than have you guess from a web page.
How do I justify $1,800 for myself?
The honest framing is the one you'd use at work: you've already spent more than this in fragments — the panel, the courses, the supplements, four years of experiments run without guidance — and none of it had a defined exit. This one does. And the first two weeks are refundable if you chart and decide it isn't for you.
I'm probably too complicated a case.
Maybe. That's a real possibility and it's exactly what the fit call is for. Twenty minutes, free, and my only job on it is to work out whether I can help you. If I can't, I'll tell you and I won't take your money.
The first step costs nothing
Download the guide, chart two weeks, and look at your own numbers.
If the pattern isn't there, you've learned something real and you haven't spent a dollar. If it is there, you'll walk into the fit call already knowing the mechanism works on your body — which is the only condition under which I'd want you to pay for anything.
Cohorts run 3 times a year, so waiting is not a two-week delay. But the charting starts whenever you do.