Cushla Holdaway Dietitian

Cushla provides an incredibly knowledgeable, personalised and understanding service, a great resource for anyone who needs sports nutrition advice from someone who is passionate and dedicated!

Cushla takes the time to understand her client’s needs, aspirations and preferences and helps to develop a pragmatic plan that helps you achieve your goals. Since seeing Cushla I’ve been able to significantly lift my protein intake and iron levels which as a menstruating, vegetarian who does endurance sport is no mean feat!

I have found Cushla to be a wonderful dietician and have greatly valued her advice and input. She gives information to read and understand to support changes in my diet following our appointments. I have found the changes very beneficial. I strongly recommend Cushla.

Cushla really listens and gives real world advice and ideas. She explains the why which makes you want to get things right. Highly recommend her services.

Working with Cushla has been great.

She has helped me switch my mindset from reducing what I eat to get to race weight. To fuelling my body so that I can maintain the training load leading up to Taupo 70.3 and The Coast 2 Coast Longest day. I am not only recovering faster and sleeping better, my longer training sessions feel so much better when I fuel well.

I initially started working with Cushla to get some help with race fuelling for UTMB, but ended up getting so much more from our sessions. I learnt many new things in regards to fuelling for my training on a day to day basis, and was reminded of old things I had long forgotten and should have been implementing. Learning how to fuel and recover properly after a training session, and in time for the next one, has been probably the one thing that has had the biggest impact on me and improving my energy levels. I'm now really enjoying my training sessions, having the energy to do them, rather than dragging my feet due to fatigue.
Cushla was supportive of my vegan diet, and happy to help with an experiment using a CGM. AND I also aced UTMB! Thanks Cushla!

Working with Cushla has been such a positive experience. She has helped me understand the extremely important role that nutrition plays in endurance training in the lead up to Coast to Coast. Would highly recommend.

I went to Cushla to get help with food and nutrition as I was training for an ultra and wanted to make sure that I was getting what my body needed. I found that she was very supportive and gave me great advice and was very thorough.
Toresa Hooper

Cushla has been great to work with. Positive and encouraging as we tackle my health challenges.

Cushla is very knowledgeable and very helpful!

She helped me get back on the right track with my diet and change the way approach food and performance.

I was referred to Cushla by my endurance sports training group about 2 years ago. I had wanted to improve my triathlon results and thought that, instead of continuously just hammering the training side of things, that I would give the nutrition and diet side a go. It was then that I went on a great journey of discovery about myself!

I found Cushla to be really personable, easy to chat to, knowledgeable, helpful, her instructions easy to follow and interacting/communicating with her very straightforward.

Cushla's approach was methodical. She started our consultation journey by getting comprehensive blood tests done. It was from this that we confirmed my tendencies of developing diabetes. From there she then tailored diet plans and instructions to make sure that I could get the best results for my lifestyle and sporting goals.

The regular consults with her are used for checking in on progress and also creates a feedback loop from which we could adjust/improve on the nutrition plans developed. I have learned a lot about lifestyle and food choices that will improve my life outcomes. I have also learned a lot about what to do for nutrition before, during and after both training as well as sporting events.

Cushla provides helpful reading material to educate her clients. She enables her clients to learn about themselves. Her methods are not merely instructional, but she creates discussions from which outcomes can be developed through collaborating with her clients.

Consultations with Cushla are done personally or via video conferencing. I found this to be really straightforward to use.

I feel like Cushla's effectiveness is also because she is an endurance athlete herself. She therefore personally practices what she preaches.

I have recommended Cushla to some friends and would recommend her to anyone wanting to educate themselves on how to make improvements to their lifestyle and/or sporting endeavours.

I started working with Cushla as an older female returning to exercise and wishing to improve my body composition. She was able to provide me with a wealth of information and practical guidance and although I struggled initially to accept her advice about calorie intake, I have achieved my goals regarding my body and training and have a much healthier attitude towards food in general. I can highly recommend Cushla as a nutritionist as a result of my experience with her.

I worked with Cushla initially to undergo a review of my day to day nutrition after my own personal journey of weight loss. I realised my goals had shifted from eating minimal calories to lose weight, to wanting to fuel my body correctly to be able to carry out a physical farming job - where I had low energy and was absolutely shattered by the end of the day. Cushla encouraged and guided me through this and within a few weeks of working with her, I was eating nourishing meals and had energy to burn! I then gained entry into Coast to Coast where my nutritional goals levelled up completely. Cushla and her incredible knowledge, powered with her own personal experience, was the key to getting me through this. There was a lot of pre, during and post training/race nutrition trial and error to see what my body could handle. The face to face, zoom and phone calls we had to review each step of the process was always so welcoming, professional and insightful. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Cushla, and look forward to working with her again.

Cushla was amazing to work with. She taught me so many things from fuelling my body before, during and after training to full race nutrition. I ran my first ever ultra whilst working with Cushla and her race plan/education absolutely got me through. Cushla is very thorough and fine tunes every detail to ensure you can get the best out of your nutrition/performance. Cushla also worked alongside me to educate a group of students at an all-girls school who were taking part in an enrichment programme. She taught them nutrition for their growing bodies to menstrual cycles and how to fuel. Cushla has made a huge difference in my training/racing and is also such a kind human!

Cushla gave me great advice on my diet especially around how much protien I should be eating daily.
I had a great video chat with her and most of the advice she gave around nutrition I still use today in my busy lifestyle and endurance running.
I highly recomend her service

Cushla has been very helpful, working with me on my sports diet, plus day-to-day diet.
At times I have slipped into some old happiest, but she has been very patient with me.
I would have no problem referring her to anyone.

I loved working with Cushla, she was always so supportive and encouraging. She is down to earth and understands that life can be busy. I have no hesitation if recommending Cushla for anyone looking for an amazing dietitian. 5 stars +

I approached Cushla at the start of 2023 to help me with my nutrition to support my exercise and lifestyle. I found Cushla to be very professional, personable and easy to work with. Cushla quickly understood my specific issues and formulated a set of nutritional and lifestyles strategies that were easy to implement and have resulted in reducing my injuries, increasing my recovery and improving my performance. Working with Cushla has helped me understand the specific food types, hydration and supplementation that my body needed. I would recommend Cushla to anyone that is looking for a dietician to help them with their specific needs.

I had a very positive experience working with Cushla in the build up to my first marathon. She provided me with a solid nutrition plan that addressed the issues I was having during my long training runs and ensured I was fuelling adequately day to day with the increasing mileage. Race day went smoothly and Cushla was a key part in my success on the day. She was friendly, knowledgeable and professional, a real pleasure to work with. I would absolutely recommend her to anyone looking for nutritional guidance for endurance sports.