Experiential Nutrition Therapy
What is Nutrition Therapy?
Nutrition therapy identifies:
- Emotional and behavioral connections to struggles with food, weight, and eating as well as what and how much you eat.
- Blood sugar imbalance
- Neurotransmitter imbalance
- Poor nutrient intake
- Negative food talk, body talk, and self-talk
- Distorted family/childhood experiences and cultural values and beliefs around food, weight, and eating
- Poor nutrition knowledge
- How mood and eating behavior affects our brain health, gut health, heart health, and liver health. Gut bacteria imbalances, hormone imbalances, chronic inflammation and digestion, absorption, activation, and utilization of nutrients can all be the root causes of your struggles with mood, food, weight, and eating.
Schedule a consultation and let's talk!
What is Experiential Nutrition Therapy?
Experiential Nutrition Therapy provides you with personalized education and guidance in:your kitchen, the grocery store you shop in, and your favorite restaurants you enjoy with friends and family.
Working towards your nutrition goals is often challenged by your thoughts and feelings about menu planning, food purchasing, and preparation. You may also have thoughts and feelings about grocery shopping that may challenge your nutrition goals, and then there are the thoughts and feelings about eating in a restaurant that can be overwhelming- especially with family and friends!
Experiential Nutrition Therapy helps you to identify these thoughts and feelings that arise in these different environments and develop strategies to help you challenge them and keep you focused on your nutrition therapy goals.
Schedule a consultation to learn more about Experiential Nutrition Therapy!
All types of Nutrition therapy sessions will focus on providing you with enjoyable, acceptable, and sustainable strategies that are personalized to your body and daily responsibilities. You and I will:
- Reinforce what you have learned in psychotherapy to manage these emotions so you don’t need to use the binge or compulsive eating behaviors
- Create positive self-talk and develop more healthful, less emotionally driven behaviors around food and eating.
- Develop a structured meal plan that complements your lifestyle and helps you to manage those cravings that seem at times to control you!!
- Plan meals, visits to the grocery store or eat at a restaurant (if you need to) to challenge those emotions as they surface around food and emotional eating.
- Educate your family, friends so you have supports when working on your changes outside of your Nutrition Therapy session.
- Ensure your body and brain is getting the nutrition it needs if anxiety and depression are affecting your appetite.
- NOT COUNT CALORIES, GRAMS OF FAT CARBOHYDRATE OR PROTEIN!!!!!
Let's Talk More about Functional Nutrition!
Nourishing with Food, Family and Friends.
Enjoying a meal together with family and friends can be difficult when you have negative internal messaging about the food in front of you, your body and what others are eating around you. Many people are anxious about the food or about what others may say at the table. Shame and guilt accompany that anxiety and often lead people to avoid family and friends and be more isolated.
Similarly, digestive problems including food sensitivities, gas, diarrhea, constipation, bloating can make socializing very difficult, leading to anxiety, shame and isolation from others.
Nutrition therapy sessions will help you to manage these barriers and help you return to socializing and enjoying meals with family and friends!
Schedule a consultation and let's talk!
Functional Nutrition Therapy
We have discussed how your relationship with food and eating can be grounded in your thoughts, feelings, and past experiences around food. Functional nutrition therapy identifies how this relationship is grounded in how well your brain, hormones, and digestive systems function. Functional Nutrition testing like BiomeFX and the DUTCH test will provide us insight and recommendations to support your brain, hormone, and digestive systems using food and nutrition supplements. You will learn how to use food and supplements to restore bodily functions, decrease cravings, and stabilize weight and moods.
Schedule a consultation to discuss Functional Nutrition Therapy
Resources:
Please go to the Resource sections for more books, videos, links etc.
Any suspected disturbances in the thyroid, adrenal, and sex hormones will be referred to your PCPs and/or Functional MD.
If you are already with a psychotherapist, I would be happy to work with you as your nutrition therapist and coordinate treatment with him or her.
Educational Tools and Skills: Don’t worry about remembering information discussed in sessions. Your binder of educational skills and tools will support your work, help you with your assignments, and prepare you to discuss them in future sessions!
You will create a ripple effect! The nutrition tools and skills you learn and practice will now be passed on to your family members.