National Nutrition Week: Success Stories of Top 10 Nutritionists of India

In a country where food is deeply woven into culture, tradition and everyday life, nutrition has evolved from a matter of diet to a cornerstone of modern wellness. As India navigates changing lifestyles, evolving health priorities and a growing awareness of preventive healthcare, nutritionists are playing an increasingly influential role in shaping how people understand food, health and well-being.

This National Nutrition Week, we turn the spotlight on 10 accomplished nutritionists from across India whose expertise, innovative approaches and commitment to healthier living are transforming lives—one informed choice, one balanced plate and one success story at a time.

Rujuta Diwekar, India’s leading public health advocate, Health Author

Rujuta Diwekar is India’s leading public health advocate and one of the most followed nutritionists globally. With a career spanning over two decades, she has played a defining role in shifting the conversation around health—from restrictive diet trends and Westernised food ideals towards sustainable, practical and deeply Indian approaches to nutrition.

A bestselling health author with more than 1.75 million copies of her books in publication and over 300 million video views, Rujuta has made the principles of eating local, seasonal and traditional accessible to millions. Her advocacy for everyday Indian foods and mindful eating has challenged misconceptions around fitness and wellness, bringing familiar foods and grandma-approved wisdom back into the spotlight.

Born into a middle-class Maharashtrian family, Rujuta grew up with a strong culture of continuous learning and excellence. She pursued postgraduate studies in Sports Science and Nutrition and later deepened her understanding of Yoga, Vedanta and Ayurveda.

Over the years, she has worked with people across professions and walks of life, including leading names such as Kareena Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Saif Ali Khan, Gautam Gambhir and Anil Ambani. Her success lies in making nutrition practical, culturally relevant and sustainable—proving that healthy living need not mean abandoning the food, traditions and lifestyles that are uniquely Indian.

Swati Dargan, Certified Fitness & Sports Nutritionist

Swati Dargan’s fitness journey began with a familiar goal: losing the weight she gained after becoming a mother to twins. What started as an attempt to become smaller eventually transformed into something more meaningful—the desire to become stronger.

A working professional in HR, a mother and a Certified Fitness & Sports Nutritionist, Swati now combines her career with her growing journey as a fitness and nutrition coach, particularly for women. Her philosophy is rooted in sustainability: no crash diets, starvation, demonising carbohydrates or punishment workouts. Instead, she advocates strength training, adequate protein, balanced nutrition and habits that realistically fit into everyday life.

When she first entered the gym, the weighing scale was her primary measure of progress. Over the next year and a half to two years, her perspective changed. She began lifting weights, studying exercise science and learning about nutrition. She realised that satisfaction came not simply from watching the scale decrease, but from discovering what her body could do. This shift eventually led her to become a Certified Fitness & Sports Nutritionist.

Her journey has been as much psychological as physical. She moved from asking, “How can I lose weight?” to “How can I become healthier?” Along the way, she unlearned the idea that women should fear muscle or feel guilty about eating enough. Strength training became a way of respecting her body rather than constantly trying to change it.

Balancing a demanding HR career, motherhood, family responsibilities and fitness has not always been easy. Yet Swati draws inspiration from women who continue showing up for themselves despite countless responsibilities. She believes women should not have to choose between being strong and fitting into conventional ideas of femininity.

For Swati, the gym has become her personal time—a space to focus solely on herself. She wants her children to see their mother caring for her body not because she dislikes it, but because she respects it. Her six-year-old children have already become curious about exercise and enjoy trying new movements.

She continues studying nutrition and exercise science, believing that becoming a coach also means remaining a student. Her message is simple: stop waiting for the perfect time. Start small, start imperfectly and remain consistent. Eat better, lift weights, move, sleep and, when you fall off track, return to the next meal, workout and day.

Her success story is ultimately not about weight loss, but identity. She began wanting to change her body and ended up changing her relationship with it. Now, she hopes to help other women build sustainable lifestyles that work with their lives, not against them.

For Swati, the goal is simple: strong over skinny. Always.

Shivi Gusain, Clinical Dietitian and Nutritionist

Shivi Gusain is a Clinical Dietitian and Nutritionist with over seven years of experience in clinical nutrition. Her practice has helped more than 20,000 individuals move toward better health through personalised, evidence-based care, with a particular focus on PCOS, hormonal health, fertility, weight management and metabolic health.

The Beginning of a Journey:

Shivi’s path into nutrition started with a simple but persistent curiosity: how does food, alongside lifestyle, truly shape health? That question deepened through her education and clinical training — including hands-on exposure at AIIMS New Delhi — where she began to see nutrition as something far bigger than physical wellbeing alone. It could shape confidence, quality of life and long-term wellness. That realisation became the foundation of her approach to care, and eventually, the reason she built a practice of her own.

A Different Kind of Care:

Where many turn to generic diet plans, Shivi built her practice around the opposite instinct: understanding the individual. Every plan starts with a person’s health history, lifestyle, concerns and long-term goals — not a template. Her focus on hormonal and metabolic health grew out of a clear observation: these conditions are too often oversimplified. She set out to close that gap, translating clinical knowledge into strategies people could realistically live with, not just follow for a week.

Growing Beyond the Clinic:

Years of working with thousands of individuals have shaped Shivi into a lifelong learner — not just clinically, but professionally. Building a practice meant mastering an entirely different skill set: team building, communication, systems, branding and business development, all while holding the line on patient care. It has been, in her words, a continuous evolution.

Shivi finds her greatest inspiration in women who’ve built meaningful careers without compromising their values — and in the people she works with every day, whose resilience and willingness to change reinforce why she does this work.

As a woman entrepreneur, her path hasn’t been without friction. Establishing credibility, making confident decisions, and navigating the assumptions sometimes made about young women in business have all shaped her. Balancing professional ambition with personal expectations added its own weight. But those very challenges taught her to trust her expertise, set clear boundaries, and keep moving even without certainty.

Beyond the Practice:

Outside her clinical work, Shivi is drawn to creating educational content — a deliberate effort to make evidence-based nutrition more accessible at a time when misinformation about food and wellness spreads faster than facts. She also holds space for what matters most personally: family, and a sense of balance in her own life.

To aspiring professionals — especially young women — Shivi’s advice is direct: don’t wait until you feel completely ready. Build real expertise. Create genuine value. Stay consistent.

For her, success was never just about numbers. It’s about meaningful impact, continuous growth, and staying rooted in the purpose that started it all.