Non-Diet Approach

A diet is any plan, program or product that tells you when, what and how much to eat. Diets usually consist of rigid food rules and use labels including "good" and "bad." Some diets will require that you eliminate certain foods or even food groups and they send us messages that we cannot trust our own bodies. Research shows that 95% of diets fail and lead to weight re-gain within the first 5 years of ending the diet. Diets usually result in a slowed metabolism, an increased set-point weight (the range your body naturally wants to be at), increased preoccupation with food and increased shame about our bodies.

Intuitive eating, unlike dieting, is a process of learning how to increase mindfulness in order to better connect with your bodies internal hunger and fullness cues. It is learning to eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full,  but it is also so much more than that. It's recognizing the psychology of eating, the importance of why you're eating versus simply what you're eating. It is focusing on eating behaviors without trying to manipulate a number on the scale.

In our practice, we use Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch as a foundational resource for helping individuals to reject the diet mentality and make peace with food. In nutrition sessions, you and your dietitian will work to recognize and challenge your preconceived food rules while dismantling the lies of diet culture and learning to trust yourself with a variety of foods. You will learn how to view food as emotionally equal (neither eliciting a sense of self-righteousness nor shame) and will work to increase variety, flexibility and spontaneity with food.

Body Acceptance

In order to properly nourish your body, you have to first accept it. Only then can you practice self-care through adequate nutrition and mindful movement. There is a difference between body love and body acceptance. Maybe body love does not feel realistic to you. Maybe it feels like a far stretch from where you currently are at in your relationship with your body.

Body acceptance allows you to hold space for the fact that our bodies change over time. It allows you to be able to perhaps not love your body and, at the same time, still be able to care for it through proper nourishment and mindful movement. Body acceptance looks like caring for your body instead of punishing it through restrictive dieting and over-exercise.

The diet industry is a 60+ billion diet industry and its primary strategy is to get you to be dissatisfied with your body. It sends messages telling you that you are broken and that it has the magic solution you need in order to be fixed. Our culture has defined beauty as the thin ideal and countless times we strive to meet our society's unrealistic standards which only leaves us more depressed and more preoccupied with food.

Our practice believes that health can be achieved in all shapes and sizes. We believe that you cannot determine one’s health status simply by looking at their physical appearance. Our practice believes that our bodies are good and we strive to empower clients to treat their bodies as if they believe it too!