Brittany Rogers: The IBD Dietitian Who Has Lived With UC for 25 Years

Brittany Rogers can tell you exactly which bowl of food changed her life. “I started noticing that certain foods, like my dad’s delicious, but spicy chili, caused me to run to the bathroom like my life depended on it and be there for hours and hours,” she wrote in an early version of her bio. She was a teenager with an illness nobody had named yet. Today she is a registered dietitian who has lived with ulcerative colitis for more than 25 years, and the founder of Romanwell, a virtual practice of dietitians who work only with people living with inflammatory bowel disease. Her reason for doing it has not changed since the beginning. “I just don’t want anyone else to have to suffer with symptoms like I did for so long!”

The patientFive years of silence

Her diagnosis came late and hard. “After suffering in silence with diarrhea for about 5 years and a hospitalization, I was finally diagnosed with severe ulcerative colitis in high school,” she wrote. “At the time, I was 20 pounds underweight, utterly exhausted, running to the bathroom about 20 times a day, and in a lot of pain.” It is the kind of account that people with IBD recognize instantly and almost everyone else finds hard to imagine, and she tells it plainly, without drama. She has since been diagnosed with IBS and primary sclerosing cholangitis, a liver and bile duct condition that often travels with ulcerative colitis, and she discusses all three openly on her Instagram, where about 12,000 people follow her.

The chili is where the career started. “Thank goodness I took a nutrition class in high school(!),” she wrote, “because that, coupled with the fact that I noticed certain foods would send me running to the bathroom led me to pursue a nutrition degree.” She earned a bachelor’s degree in human nutrition, completed her dietetic internship through the Sage Graduate School and went on to a master’s in applied nutrition, then worked as a clinical dietitian at a children’s hospital and two adult hospitals. One part of the job kept pulling her in. “I always found myself drawn to rounding with the gastroenterologists,” she wrote, “and providing medical nutrition therapy to people with gastrointestinal conditions.”

The practiceA dietitian for every patient

She opened a virtual private practice after moving from New York to California, so that she could see patients anywhere in the country, and by the practice’s own account that became Romanwell in 2018. Today it is a small team of registered dietitians, based in New York, who specialize in Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and microscopic colitis, and who see patients over video. “I started Romanwell to be able to provide an exceptional level of care to people all over the country,” she told the IBD blog lights camera crohn’s in 2023. “I don’t want anyone else to suffer with symptoms the way I did for so long.” Her ambition for the field is bigger than her own practice: “Our goal long term is for every patient with IBD to have access to an IBD registered dietitian and for programs like ours to be covered by insurance so everyone can access them.” Romanwell now accepts most major commercial insurance plans; its self-pay rate, as of September 2026, is $200 for a first session and $150 for follow-ups.

Some of what makes Romanwell stand out is what it will not do. It does not sell supplements, and says it is not affiliated with or paid by any supplement company. It does not offer food sensitivity testing, because, as its FAQ puts it, “there isn’t strong, conclusive evidence to support it.” Rogers describes herself as a non-diet dietitian, and she has co-authored a clinical textbook on treating patients who live with both gut conditions and eating disorders, a real and under-discussed overlap: a 2022 systematic review found disordered eating in between 13 and 55 percent of adults with gastrointestinal disorders across studies. In a field crowded with elimination plans and wellness tests, a dietitian whose instinct is to keep people eating as widely as they safely can is a genuinely welcome voice.

The scienceTranslating the research

Rogers started posting research summaries on Instagram for a simple reason. “Reading research articles is intimidating!” she said. It is also where the field has been moving toward her. In 2024 the American Gastroenterological Association published formal guidance on diet in IBD that recommends a Mediterranean-style diet for most patients, notes that no diet has consistently been shown to reduce flares in adults, and calls registered dietitians “an essential part of the interdisciplinary team.” That last phrase is the case she has been making for years. When European specialists published a new consensus on diet in IBD this year, Today’s Dietitian asked her to react. On soluble fiber such as psyllium, she said, “practically, it’s something I use with almost all my IBD patients for symptom management.” And on getting dietitians written into medical guidelines: “I think that’s where we would probably get more referrals.”

Her résumé has kept pace. According to Romanwell, she serves on the Diet and Nutrition Workgroup of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation’s National Scientific Advisory Committee, leads the IBD practice group of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and holds the new Board Certified Specialist in Digestive Health credential, which the Commission on Dietetic Registration introduced in late 2025 for dietitians with extensive gastrointestinal experience. The practice has also reviewed its own patient records in an internal report presented as a poster in 2023; it had no comparison group and has not been peer reviewed, and we would not read results into it. The case for her work does not rest on it. It rests on the guidance above, and on a patient who became the clinician she needed.

The disclosure mapWhere her interests sit

Rogers is the founder of Romanwell and earns her living from its services, which are sold directly to patients and billed to insurance. The practice sells no products and has no supplement partnerships. Its website carries client testimonials and outcome figures, which we have not repeated; individual experiences vary, and diet in IBD works alongside medical care, not in place of it. She is a registered dietitian, not a physician, and her account of her own illness is her experience, not advice. Anyone with ongoing gut symptoms should start with their own doctor. Gut Health Times has no commercial relationship with Romanwell. This profile is educational, is not medical advice, and was prepared without input from the practice.