Rosalie Lau: Bringing Sports Nutrition to Tennis

July 25th, 2026

For the first time since launching the Empower Her program, this year's workshop featured a session on sports nutrition led by Rosalie Lau, a registered dietitian and founder of RL Nutrition. Girls in the room learned the importance of fueling for performance and how to sort real nutrition science from the misinformation they run into online. It is the kind of session Rosalie has built her practice around: pairing clinical training with firsthand experience as a competitive athlete to give young women information she wishes she had herself.

Rosalie grew up in Hong Kong, where she developed a love for tennis and volleyball at a young age. Inspired by her dad, who still plays tennis six days a week to this day, she continued pursuing both sports after moving to Ontario during high school. Through her own experiences as a young athlete, she became curious about nutrition and how it can influence both health and performance.

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During her high school years, she noticed how much nutrition misinformation was circulating online and how many conversations about food were centered around the idea of “looking better.” This sparked her curiosity about nutrition and led her to learn more about the science behind food, health, and well-being. That curiosity ultimately led her to pursue a degree in dietetics.

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In Canada, “dietitian” is a legally protected title, meaning only those registered with a provincial regulatory college can use it. The path to becoming a Registered Dietitian is a long one: requiring five years of schooling, supervised internship hours, a national registration exam.

After graduating from the University of Alberta in 2024, Rosalie started working as a clinical dietitian with Alberta Health Services (AHS), supporting people living with chronic diseases such as diabetes and chronic kidney disease. In 2025, she founded RL Nutrition, building her private practice alongside her continued clinical work with AHS.

Through RL Nutrition, she works individually with athletes and runs workshops with groups like Tennis Alberta and the University of Calgary Dinos to promote nutrition education. Tennis remains her particular focus, since it is her own passion, and she points out that while dietitians are well established in mainstream sports like soccer, hockey, and football, far fewer are paying attention to tennis, especially in Alberta. It is a gap she is glad to help fill.

Much of Rosalie's work focuses on helping young athletes navigate nutrition misinformation. One common misconception she sees is that carbohydrates are "bad," when in reality, they are an important source of fuel to support performance and recovery. She believes nutrition should never be one-size-fits-all, and instead should be individualized to each person's unique needs, goals, and circumstances. Rather than focusing on quick fixes or strict rules, she focuses on education and sustainable strategies, especially for young female athletes, hoping to shift the conversation away from restriction and diet culture toward fueling, strength, and long-term health.

At Empower Her, her goal was to help the girls understand the importance of carbs for fueling performance and strength, reframing the conversation around what their bodies can do, rather than focusing only on how they look. The girls fielded sharp questions of their own, and one memorable moment came when a young athlete pointed out that her gas-tank analogy for fueling does not quite work for an electric car.

“The goal isn’t to find the perfect diet. It’s to understand your body, fuel it properly, and build habits that support both your performance and health over time”

— Rosalie Lau, RD

These days, when Rosalie is not at the clinic or with clients, she is usually still moving, whether that is beach volleyball, tennis, or resistance training with a squat PR that is nearly twice her body weight. It is the same relationship with food and sport she wants her clients to have: not about restriction, but about feeling stronger.

To learn more about RL Nutrition, visit https://yeghip.com/team/rosalie-lau/.