About Us

About REAL Health & Nutrition

Discover Matt’s story, our evidence-based approach, and how we’re making quality nutrition accessible for individuals, families, and NDIS participants across Australia.

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Story

Meet Mat -Your Accredited Dietitian (APD)

Mat holds a Bachelor of Nutrition and Master’s in Dietetics and is an Accredited Practicing Dietitian (APD) with Dietitians Australia. His qualifications ensure you receive evidence-based advice that meets the highest professional standards while remaining practical and realistic for your everyday life.

As an Accredited Practicing Dietitian, Mat has worked across diverse settings including hospitals, community health centers, and private practice.

His expertise spans clinical nutrition, NDIS support, workplace wellness, sport nutrition performance and helping individuals navigate complex dietary requirements with confidence and clarity.

There is no shortage of nutrition information online (some great, some not so much). Matthew takes pride in staying at the cutting edge of nutrition science and ensuring that the nuance of each individual situation is accounted for. 

From micronutrient adequacy to supplementation to easy health interventions, Mat tailors each health strategy to your unique situation.

Whether you are looking to optimise your sport performance and body composition or maximise healthspan longevity, Mat avoids the cookie-cutter approach and tailors each recommendation to achieve your goals.

If you’re looking for a quick fix, we’re not be the right service for you. 

Mat prioritises long term, sustainable health strategies that fit into your life to enable compounding health benefits for a long life with sustained health.

With experience at Australias leading healthspan, longevity company Everlab, Matthew prioritises high ROI health strategies that provide great value to our health personally tailored to your goals.

Nutrition can be an endless sea of grey information with very few black and white answers. 

This can make it easy to get mentally trapped in a world revolving only around your food and nutrition. 

While we do not seek people with active disordered eating patterns, we take pride in acknowledging, respecting and supporting a healthy relationship with food that works towards our goals. 

Mat and the REAL team take great pride in being actively at the cutting edge of organ health and medical nutrition therapy. 

Diabetes, PCOS, cancer and alzheimers prevention, gut health and osteoporosis are some of the key conditions where we aim to go above and beyond the current text books, well into the latest evidence of best practice. 

These conditions are often life long or life impacting. Our nutrition strategies are tailored to your life and designed to be sustainable, realistic and supporting your health for the long-term

What sets Mat apart is his genuine understanding that sustainable health changes happen through small, consistent steps rather than dramatic overhauls. He combines his professional expertise with a warm, non-judgmental approach that puts clients at ease, making even the most overwhelming nutrition concerns feel manageable.

No one diet fits all. Matthew believes nutrition should be individually tailored, easy and realistic so you can enjoy more out of your life!

Matthew Rigoni Dietitian (APD) Sport Nutritionist, Sport Dietitian (ASD)
Matthew Rigoni Dietitian (APD) Sport Nutritionist, Sport Dietitian (ASD)

Making quality nutrition accessible, practical, and sustainable for every individual's unique journey

We believe that good nutrition should enhance your life, not complicate it. Every person deserves access to clear, practical guidance that respects their individual circumstances, preferences, and goals.

Our approach

  • Evidence-Based Solutions

    All recommendations are grounded in current nutrition science, ensuring you receive reliable, proven strategies tailored.

  • Realistic & Sustainable Changes

    We focus on building habits that fit your lifestyle, making gradual improvements that stick rather than quick fixes that fade.

  • Collaborative Partnership

    Your input, preferences, and goals drive every recommendation. We work together to create solutions that feel right for you.

Our 4 pillars of health

Discover the four essential pillars that guide our holistic approach to nutrition and wellbeing, creating balance that lasts.

The first of the 3 pillars. Hallucinations and psychosis occur from 48-72 hours without sleep with your brain pulling the emergency handbrake along the way.

Your body can only last without food for about 40 days without kicking the bucket and only up to 5 days without water.

Recovery allows us to continue, not just in our exercise and performance, but in our everyday lives. Whether it is sleep, nutrient sufficiency, healing or medication, recovery allows us to take that one further step every day.

Needless to say, adequate recovery from a combination of factors plays a huge role in our short and long-term health.

“If exercise could be packed into a pill, it would be the single most widely prescribed and beneficial medicine in the nation.” – Dr Robert Butler

Through our clinical and community experience and the purely immense amount of literature, we believe the act of self-exertion is one of the most effective tools that we have in our arsenal to address almost every aspect of health. Our practitioners can personally vouch for how exercise and physical activity has made huge impacts in their own lives.

From sleep length and quality, to the confidence to walk up a flight of stairs without the fear of falling all the way back down, the saying “movement is medicine” is worth it’s weight in gold.

 

 

While exercise is incredibly important, it is important to note…

Activity and exercise are not the same thing.

The act of exercise is to exert yourself to perform a task more difficult than the requirements of your daily life. Activity is all the items within your life up until that point.

Physical activity is incredibly important, however, we would argue mental is just as, if not more important.

It’s all too common where we see loved ones retire from daily commitments and begin a downward spiral of reduced physical function and diminishing cognitive capacity.

There is a saying that is common within the health sphere. Each day that passes we are more and more convinced of it’s truth.

You use it or you lose it.

Lifestyle, the tricky one. This pillar encompasses many things (too many for this short summary).

It incorporates various aspects such as daily activities, nutrition and food choices, interests, values, behaviours and our ability to respond to the daily stressors of life.

Both recovery and exercise have colloquially been a part of lifestyle, however, we have found that their significance is diminished when they are combined under this one pillar. Thus, what remains in lifestyle is nutrition and psychological health.

Now, while we acknowledge the significant importance of mental health, we are by no means experts in psychology and promote adequate care from external practitioners.

Nutrition on the other hand, well that’s our bread and butter! We acknowledge that food plays an impact on almost every aspect of our day and adequate nutrition supplies the building blocks for a long and healthy life. Balance is a hard thing to achieve, we intend to make it easy.

Practitioners

Meet the team

Highly skilled and qualified Dietitians and Sport Nutritionists

  • Matthew Rigoni Accredited Practising Dietitian (APD), sport Nutritionist, Accredited Sport Dietitian (ASD)

    Matthew Rigoni

    Head Dietitian (APD) & Sports Nutritionist

    Matthew Rigoni is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and Sports Nutritionist supporting clients across Eltham, Diamond Creek and Melbourne’s North-East. He specialises in weight management, chronic disease care, IBS/low-FODMAP nutrition, and sports-performance nutrition. His approach focuses on evidence-based, realistic strategies tailored to each client’s health goals. Matthew also brings experience in strength training and rehabilitation, helping clients build long-term, sustainable habits.

  • Max Dennehy Dietitian, body building coach

    Max Dennehy

    Dietitian and Bodybuilding Coach

    Max Dennehy is a qualified Dietitian with strong expertise in sports nutrition, weight loss, muscle gain and body recomposition. He has more than seven years of hands-on experience in bodybuilding and strength training, blending clinical nutrition with practical performance coaching. Max supports clients managing chronic conditions, improving metabolic health, and achieving body-composition goals. His coaching style is structured and supportive, helping clients stay consistent and confident.

  • Emma Westlake Accredited Sports Nutritionist

    Emma Westlake

    Accredited Sports Nutritionist

    Emma Westlake is a Nutritionist and Accredited Sports Nutritionist with experience in athletic performance, endurance nutrition, injury recovery and rehabilitation. She brings a strong background in Biomedical Science and works with clients to improve energy, health and long-term wellbeing. Emma has supported athletes across AFL/AFLW, triathlon and running communities, offering clear and practical guidance. Her passion lies in helping active individuals optimise performance through personalised, evidence-based nutrition.

Learn more about our practitioners

Qualifcations, profesional interests and why they're unique!

Certifications & Associations

Maintaining Excellence in Nutrition Care

This commitment ensures you always receive the most current, evidence-based nutrition guidance available.

Realistic nutrition solutions

REAL Health & Nutrition was founded in Melbourne by Matthew by passionate Dietitians with a passion for providing evidence-based nutrition strategies that fit into your busy life.

Our diverse clientele includes individuals seeking to manage chronic diseases, enhance their sports performance, and those aiming to improve their healthspan and longevity through sustainable health and nutrition strategies.

Matthew Rigoni Dietitian (APD), expert Longevity Dietitian and Max Dennehy Dietitian

Our mission

Our mission is simple yet incredibly complex.

People all across Australia struggle with their health with at least 25% of all deaths being preventable with nutrition interventions (we would argue this is even higher but that’s the current evidence).

That’s at least one in four people.

It’s too common we see people struggling with diet after diet and making no progress or even worse, making their situation even more difficult to deal with.

Nutrition is only one very important piece that is a very complex puzzle of health. If we’ve had a consultation with you and only spoken about nutrition we’ve done a bad job.

Our goal is to get you to your goals. Often nutrition is a barrier. We’re here to smash those barriers within our scope of practice that is nutrition, and recommend high quality practitioners of other disciplines where our scope of practice ends

Here at REAL Health & Nutrition, we specifically focus on the realistic and achievable strategies that can make the hard parts of health easy!

 

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Nutrition Insights

Simple, practical advice and the latest updates on nutrition, health, and wellness.

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