Invited by our editorial team, the Brazilian nutritionist discusses science, clinical practice, digital innovation, and the international award that marked her academic work.
When we invited Deborah de Sousa Neri for this interview, we already knew that her career path brought together increasingly decisive elements for the future of personalized nutrition. However, it was only by delving into her clinical practice, her interdisciplinary work, her digital programs, her scientific articles, and the eBooks she authored that we understood why her name has been gaining prominence in debates about precision health. This movement was reinforced in 2024 when she received the Excellence Award at the VI Seven International Multidisciplinary Congress, after her article was selected among the fifteen best and recognized by an international scientific committee as the most outstanding work in her field. This distinction is recorded in the official congress certificate, which details the academic merit granted for the study on the ketogenic diet and cortisol modulation.
Deborah began her career at the Body Gyn academy in Goiânia, where for two years she closely followed the weight loss and nutritional re-education process of students seeking to reconcile health, routine, and self-knowledge. She considers this experience essential to understanding the complexity of people’s relationship with food, a perspective that became more sophisticated when she moved to the clinical environment, working at institutions such as Salutem and later at the Virgínia Spicacci Clinic. Her approach combined technical rigor with sensitive listening, a skill that was further developed during her time at the multinational Danone, where she was exposed to pediatric nutritional protocols and international research and development standards, helping to structure a more robust perspective on applied science.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a decisive shift in her practice, leading her to transform her physical office into a digital care network capable of bridging distances without losing proximity. It was during this period that her Online Weight Loss Programs emerged, 14- and 21-day cycles that brought together entire groups around nutritional strategies such as low carb and ketogenic diets, with daily follow-up, educational materials in PDF and eBooks, participation from a physical education instructor, and food monitoring via apps like FatSecret. This model was repeated in more than ten consecutive editions and impacted hundreds of people, consolidating an accessible, scalable, and well-founded care format, as she describes it when stating that “the digital did not replace the bond, it expanded the reach of care by transforming the patient’s routine, doubts, and autonomy into a living part of the follow-up.”
With the evolution of this work, the Slim Effect method emerged, structured in 14-day cycles over three months, in which participants alternate nutritional phases, understand the logic of each adjustment, and develop awareness of the process. This structure reinforces the idea that sustainable weight loss requires continuous nutritional education, an element that Deborah incorporates into her own publications, such as the eBook “Intelligent Nutrition, nutritional strategies to lose weight in a healthy way,” a work that brings together fundamentals of contemporary nutrition, food psychology, and intelligent supplementation, and which has become a natural extension of her clinical practice and the daily dialogue established with her patients.
Alongside her work in private practices and digital platforms, Deborah has consolidated a body of scientific work that has placed her on the radar of professionals and institutions, beginning with the article “The impact of compounded supplementation on metabolic performance and weight loss,” in which she examines substances such as L-carnitine, creatine, CLA, and thermogenics from the perspective of scientific literature, discussing benefits, risks, and clinical applications, and reinforcing the need for individualized prescriptions in conjunction with qualified professionals.
Next, she advanced the study of the relationships between diet and hormonal regulation with the article “Impact of the low-carb diet on hormonal balance and appetite regulation,” discussing mechanisms involving insulin, leptin, ghrelin, and GLP-1, an analysis that connects directly to the contemporary challenges of obesity, insulin resistance, and metabolic disorders that affect a large part of the adult population.
Finally, her research on the ketogenic diet and cortisol modulation—which earned her an international award—deepens the intersection between metabolism, mental health, and responses of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, a topic that has gained global relevance due to the growing demand for complementary strategies in managing chronic stress and the neuroendocrine impacts of modern life.
This scientific production directly relates to another dimension of her work: health consulting at Manipularte, a compounding pharmacy where she guides doctors, nutritionists, pharmacists, nurses, and biomedical professionals in creating personalized prescriptions, combining active ingredients, adjusting doses, and integrating compounded solutions into nutritional protocols. According to Deborah, this work evolved organically from the need to “ensure that personalization was more than just talk and became a clinical practice grounded in safe, effective, and evidence-based choices.”
This same logic of integrating science and practice appears in her second eBook, “Personalized and Intelligent Nutrition, from labeling to individualized plan,” in which she addresses topics such as microbiome, nutrigenetics, artificial intelligence, and sustainability, building a didactic overview of contemporary precision nutrition and providing readers with a roadmap that unites scientific advances and everyday applicability, reinforcing the message that technology and biology need to go hand in hand so that the nutrition of the future is truly personalized and human.
Today, balancing in-person and online consultations, advisory work, scientific production, educational programs, and the construction of a care ecosystem that combines technology, science, and personalization, Deborah Neri represents a generation of nutritionists who are expanding the traditional boundaries of the profession, positioning themselves as professionals who write, research, teach, and innovate. This movement explains why her trajectory caught the attention of our editorial team and why her international award marks not only a personal achievement but also recognition of the growing impact of her work.
At the end of the interview, we asked her what it meant to see her research awarded at an international congress and her books circulating among professionals and readers, and Deborah replied that each study, each online group, and each personalized protocol is, above all, a gesture of commitment to people, stating that “science is only complete when it finds the patient, and nutrition is only transformed when we understand that each body, each routine, and each story deserve to be treated as unique,” a reflection that, in summarizing her work philosophy, also explains why her voice resonates more and more in modern nutrition.
By Fernando David
Journalistic supervision approved by Radija Matos
