She earned her bachelor's degree in Food and Nutrition from San Diego State University, her master's degree in Public Health Nutrition from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She finished an AP4 program, becoming eligible for sitting for the registered dietitian examination, at the University of Tennessee, and completed her clinical psychology internship in Behavioral Medicine at Brown University. Prior to becoming a faculty member at Brown, she did her postdoctoral training at Brown in the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center.