Sylvia Pogorzelski and Maureen Cavalieri are your new best friends who won’t just agree with you to make you feel good about yourself but will tell you the truth about what you’re really feeding yourself. And they’ll guide you on making intelligent and educated decisions about food.
We met at The Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in 2009 and became fast friends. And one of the foundations for our friendship was food. We were both completely obsessed with it and loved learning new ways to make old favorites into new healthy delicious meals. But we weren’t always healthy eaters. So eventually, when we did change our ways, we experienced firsthand the difference a healthy diet could make. And the more we learned for ourselves, the more we wanted to share our knowledge and passion for healthy living.
So we have set out to teach people about “Healthy Eating for Vibrant Living”: A lifestyle and diet change for busy New Yorkers who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous! There is a common misconception that to get healthy you have to give up all your favorite foods. Nothing could be further from the truth. Vibrant Living is the life we live, and rest assured, we would never maintain it if we felt deprived from the food we love. Whether it’s shopping for food, talking about food, thinking about food, dreaming about food, cooking food, or eating food, we can’t get enough. Now let us teach you how to live a Vibrant Life so that you can have our cake and eat it too!
SYLVIA POGORZELSKI
Sylvia Pogorzelski is a former model and Miss New Jersey. She attended the prestigious Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN). IIN is the only nutrition school in the world integrating all the different dietary theories and combining the knowledge of traditional philosophies with modern concepts, issues, and ethics of eating in today’s society. After graduating IIN, she decided to go one step further and become a professionally trained health-oriented gourmet chef. She studied at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City. After graduating the Natural Gourmet Institute, she interned at Blue Hill in Greenwich Village, New York for 3 months. Blue Hill’s menu showcases local food and ingredients that comes from nearby farms such as Blue Hill Farm in Barrington, Massachusetts and Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. Then in November 2009 she helped prepare the first vegan dinner ever served at New York’s esteemed James Beard House under Chef Richard Landau from Horizons Restaurant in Philadelphia. Sylvia also joined top Nutritionist and Author Natalia Rose for her advanced teacher training in New York City, January 2011, and is excited to bring the Rose Program to her clients. She lives in Gramercy with her husband and cute pup Parker.
MAUREEN CAVALIERI
Maureen Cavalieri, graduated from Fordham University with a Bachelors in Psychology. After deciding to embark on a career change in 2008 she decided to attend the Natural Gourmet Institute. After graduating in 2009 she interned at IIBuco in Soho, New York City for two months learning the secrets of Mediterranean cooking. Il Buco is a renowned Mediterranean restaurant that sources ingredients from local farmers. She worked under Chef Ignacio Mattos who taught her how to work wonders with ingredients in simple, flavorful combinations. She now has the joy of bringing the knowledge that she knows and loves to others. She lives on the Upper East Side with her two amazing pups Rascal and Pierre.