Intuitive Eating Coaching

Intuitive eating is a non-diet approach that helps you establish a healthy relationship with food and your body, and help you learn how to eat outside of a dieting mentality. It is a gentle framework of ten principles that work to connect your mind with your body. You will explore food rules and body beliefs that prevent you from accessing internal signals such as hunger, fullness and satisfaction. Instead of making food choices based on what’s “good” or “healthy”, you use the direct experience of eating a specific food and observing how it affects your body. As you begin to understand your preferences and challenge long-held food beliefs, you will learn to eat in a way that preserves pleasure and honors your mental and physical health to the extent that you choose.

If you have struggled to feel good in your body and around eating, intuitive eating offers a path towards more peace. Intuitive eating helps you reclaim your life from food restriction and a focus on your body and weight. It helps you get in touch with your intuition - your inner knowing about what is right and wrong for your body and mind without all the noise from the outside world. If you are looking for more freedom from food and body obsession, intuitive eating provides a gentle, flexible framework for you to cultivate more peace.

The intuitive eating process can be uncomfortable and unfamiliar because it flies in the face of health ideals our culture holds dear---the pursuit of weight loss and thinness, and the validation of food restriction to achieve these. This discomfort is very normal and decreases over time.

If you undertake this journey, you will start challenging long-ingrained food and exercise rules. You will learn to listen to hunger and fullness cues and figure out foods that actually satisfy you. You make peace with your favorite foods, and learn that all foods are morally equivalent, that none are good or bad, they’re just different. You will examine the self-talk that goes on in your head and how this influences your self-perception and your relationship to the outside world. 

We will also talk about how to turn down the volume on your body criticism and how you can start to access more body acceptance.

Unlike diets, intuitive eating is a lifelong process. It is not a destination, but a continuous journey towards learning how to relate to food and your body differently, and how you can meet your physical and emotional needs without focusing on food and your body. Intuitive eating will also look different for each person depending on their life circumstances.

How you progress depends on how long you’ve been restricting food, how deeply entrenched dieting culture is in you, and what outside barriers are in place that make it hard for you to access more peace.

It takes time to figure out what makes you tick, which foods actually satisfy you and how you can build trust around foods you have been avoiding. It also takes time to unlearn beliefs you have about your body and appearance, and access more appreciation towards your body.

Some people lose weight, maintain or gain during this process. Intuitive eating can help you arrive at a weight that is natural for your body, where you won’t have to restrict your eating or overexercise to maintain a specific weight. 

Weight loss is not the focus of intuitive eating. It is very normal to desire weight loss, and you may be experiencing pressure to do so from loved ones, doctors or society’s expectations. We do not ignore the desire for weight loss. Through our work together, you will come to understand why you want to lose weight and how it affects your relationship with food and your body. You will start to explore what it might be like to put weight loss on the backburner, and what your life might look like if you didn’t focus only on weight. 

You will begin to build awareness of what is impacting your relationship with food, and understand the risk and benefits of focusing on your weight. This work will help you make informed decisions about how you want to live your life and whether intentional weight loss will be a part of that. 

Health is deeply personal and nuanced. Health includes mental and social health, not just the physical. Physical health is often distilled to just diet and exercise, but in reality, it is  influenced by so many other factors that are out of our control. 

Strained relationships with food and our bodies also cause intense emotional pain that can negatively impact your physical health, especially if you find yourself in a cycle of losing and regaining weight.

Through our work together we will start to unpack what health and healthy mean to you. You will start to have a better understanding of behaviors and habits that are aligned with your values and make sense for your schedule, and your budget. 

The short answer is no - genetics, age, stable access to food and equitable health care, ability to engage in sustainable health-promoting behaviors --- all of these matter much more for health than weight alone. But health and weight have been conflated, and our world is very much attached to an oversimplified view on health that causes harm to those who do not fit our society’s definition of what health looks like.

The long answer is that health is a complex topic. We have been taught to think about health in very black and white terms. Bodies are considered “healthy” or “unhealthy”, “good” or “bad”, “successes” or “failures.” There isn’t much room for exploring the gray space where health inevitably exists.

Science may have established a correlation between body size and risks for certain chronic conditions, but many studies do not control for other factors ---weight stigma and yo-yo dieting--- which we know to be independently correlated with poor health outcomes.

Again, most studies show a correlation, not causation, between size and disease risk. Just because you are a certain size does not automatically mean you will develop a chronic condition. Additionally, developing a chronic condition is not a moral failing. Chronic conditions occur in people of all sizes.

The work of intuitive eating involves unpacking what health and healthy look like to you, and I would be happy to help you explore and redefine these terms on your own terms.

If you have previously attempted weight loss in the past, I would invite you to consider the following question: where has a focus on weight and weight loss gotten you? Have you been able to keep the weight off, and if so, at what cost?

Most studies show that weight loss efforts do not result in long-term weight loss for the majority of people. My clinical experience also supports these findings, and perhaps your personal experience does, as well.

In the short-term, food and calorie restriction can cause individuals to lose weight quickly, usually peaking at 6 months after the start of the diet. Most diets result in a maximum weight loss of about 5-10%. These losses are modest, and for people in larger bodies, many remain larger bodied and at continued risk for weight stigma and discrimination.

Weight loss eventually plateaus, and once dieting ceases, weight is slowly regained, often returning to original levels. Studies have shown that 90% to 95% of dieters regain all their lost weight within a few years. Within the first year of dieting cessation, less than 20% of people are able to maintain their weight loss, and many regain 30-35% of weight that is lost. After four to five years, one-third to two-thirds of dieters regain more weight than was lost, although researchers believe this latter statistic may actually be higher.

The cycle of losing and regaining usually leads to another diet, more weight loss and eventual regain. This puts people at risk for the following:

• Cardiovascular stress due to fluctuations and increases in cholesterol, blood sugars, insulin and blood pressure
• Increased cravings, eating past fullness or binge eating
• Future weight gain
• Slower metabolism
• Muscle loss
• Emotional and psychological distress, including lower self-esteem
• Premature death, especially from heart disease

For the small percentage of people who are able to maintain weight loss in the long-term, losses are usually modest. Any health benefits that are observed cannot be fully attributed to dieting because it is difficult to untangle the possible effects of other changes, such as exercise.

Based on this information and studies showing that health improvements can be attained in the absence of weight loss, there is a strong case against prescribing weight loss via food and calorie restriction.

Like any new journey, it can be a little scary to navigate the beginning stages of intuitive eating on your own. For some who have already started the process, they may feel stuck and in need of having a travel partner to talk through the tricky parts. Working with a certified intuitive eating coach provides you with consistent support and guidance. You are in charge of where we take the work, and I will be there to help and support you.

Yes, you can! I work with clients who are recovering from an eating disorder and who need outpatient sessions. 

I can also meet with you if you are unsure if you need help and want to discuss your options. 

During the first session, I will get to know you and your history and will assess if my level of care is right for you.

Click here for more information on how I work with eating disorders.

Sessions occur on a weekly or biweekly basis depending on the level of support you feel is needed.

If you have financial considerations, we can reassess the frequency of sessions after our first four weeks together.

Sessions take place by secure video.

During the first session, we will discuss your eating history, how you feel about food and your body and any other relevant information you feel comfortable discussing. Depending on what your concerns are in session, you decide what sort of between-session exploration you want to engage in. This may include reading from the intuitive eating book or workbook.

In follow-up sessions, you are free to discuss any successes or challenges since the previous meeting or any topic that feels pressing to you that day.

Several insurers have recently decreased their reimbursement rates for dietitians. Because of this, I have made the difficult decision to stop accepting insurance. 

I offer various package and payment options that we can discuss.

Please contact your insurer to inquire about out-of-network coverage using the questions in this out-of-network form. I will provide you with a superbill after each session to submit to your insurer for possible reimbursement.

If you are exploring whether intuitive eating is the right approach for you or you want to get to know me and my style, single initial consultation sessions are available. After our initial meeting, we can discuss various package options I offer.