Our Team

Elaina Efird, RDN, CD, CEDRD, CSSD is a registered dietitian nutritionist and certified eating disorder dietitian with a degree from Virginia Tech. She moved to Burlington from North Carolina, where she worked at the Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders at UNC Chapel Hill primarily in the inpatient and outpatient levels of care. Elaina worked closely with patients and their families to provide a family-based nutrition therapy approach during the recovery process. Elaina also worked at both North Carolina State University and Virginia Tech with athletes at the division 1 level, helping to create nutrition plans that enhanced athletic performance.

Passionate about food, nutrition education, and client-centered care, the move to Burlington was a natural fit. With training in multiple areas of dietetics — including sports nutrition, eating disorders, weight management and gastrointestinal complications — Elaina works with all ages, genders, and body types. Through the unique approach offered at The Kahm Clinic, she is thrilled to help clients meet their nutrition goals. In her free time, Elaina loves to explore the outdoors with her husband and dog and cheer on Virginia Tech Football. She loves to travel both nationally and internationally and to experience the food, outdoors, and people in new places.

Elaina is a member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Collegiate and Professional Sports Dietitians Association, and the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals.

Bret Hermansky, MS, RDN, CD is a born and raised Vermonter and registered dietitian nutritionist. She received her Dietetics and Nutrition Food Science degree from the University of Vermont and is the immediate Past President of the Vermont Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Bret has experience working with all eating disorders, disordered eating, general nutrition, athletes, and child and adolescent nutrition. She enjoys applying evidence-based practice in her nutrition therapy; in particular, she loves getting to use the tests at the Kahm Clinic because she can help people better achieve their goals. Bret works with all ages, genders, and body types. Through the Vermont Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, she seeks to apply the vision of creating a community where all Vermonters thrive through the transformative power of food and nutrition.

Bret loves seeing her clients make tangible progress and watching their improved health change their lives. For instance, she loves working with people who are at their last straw, ready to be done with dieting and/or obsessing about food in various ways. She loves helping clients realize that 20 years of yo-yo dieting is hard and miserable, that there is a way out, and that there is light at the end of the tunnel. She relishes, in particular, the small victories — like when someone lets her know that, for the first time, they went out to dinner with their family and ordered what they wanted without guilt and shame! In general, she takes pleasure in helping her clients improve their quality of life through a healthier relationship with food.

Bret likes shopping for food and gifts at the local farmer’s markets and dining at Vermont’s many farm-to-table restaurants. In her spare time, she loves reading and exploring her home state with her husband, including hiking in the Green Mountains, swimming at local swimming holes, and walking with their Great Pyrenees, Meera.