New Beginnings
Jenny Arussi, MS, RDN
"Slowly, you CAN develop an arsenal of techniques that reduce your eating, free of deprivation. This process first begins with the belief that your transformation IS EVEN POSSIBLE. The process continues with the openness and willingness to look at your eating challenges through journaling. We will review, process and problem-solve new ways of eating that work for you in our nutrition counseling sessions."
Nutritional Counseling Pillars
Support
Share parts of your eating that may be uncomfortable to talk about in a safe, non-judgmental space with an experienced dietitian.
Lifestyle Strategies
Learn and develop lifestyle strategies to help you lose weight and manage your chronic condition (pre-diabetes, cardiovascular disease, diabetes).
Craving Work
Learn and develop techniques to manage your urges to eat when you're not hungry.
Mindfulness Practices
Bring your eating into more conscious control with mindfulness practices that curb overeating.
CBT
Cognitive behavioral therapy can help you identify and replace sabotaging thoughts that lead to overeating with one's that help you.
Meal + Snack Planning
Discover meals and snacks that work for you and satisfy.
Nutrition Counseling Benefits
“The strongest predictors of dietary change and maintenance were attending intervention sessions and self-monitoring dietary intake.” These findings are referenced from the Women’s Health Initiative Dietary Modification Trial; one of the largest randomized, controlled trials to date testing the effects of dietary changes on disease outcomes over three years time. This, coupled with Frank Sacks’s study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that “attendance was strongly associated with weight loss.” Surprisingly, the diet the subjects were assigned (i.e. low fat or high protein), wasn’t as meaningful as just showing up. Many other trials echo the benefits of counseling, and the below programs mirror these research-based principles.
Initial Nutrition Counseling
One 90-Minute Session
Beginning at this initial counseling session, you will work towards increasing your awareness of your problematic eating behaviors; some of which are so ingrained and automatic, you may not have a sense of how they came about. This initial session begins with a thorough history and eating patterns assessment and sets the stage for reshaping your relationship with food and eating and improving your health.-
Bariatric nutrition evaluations available to provide to your surgeon.
Body Composition Testing
Body composition testing is on hold.
How should I prepare for the body composition test?
Frequently Asked Questions
The journey begins with first improving how you relate to food and eating. This process involves becoming more mindful how certain situations, thoughts, people, emotions and foods affect you. Our sessions include reviewing these details in an inquisitive, non-judgmental manner. The counseling sessions cannot only help with the accountability you want and need, but also provide important insight and perspective. This may include pointing out your black-and-white-thinking or critical self-judging stance. Or what about how you may have underestimated or ignored your hunger, or how you needed to plan better? Receiving this feedback and support during times when managing eating is especially difficult, is of utmost importance.
Our follow-up sessions begin with a reflection and assessment of your struggles and wins and concludes with at least one realistic behavioral/food-related goal which is both challenging a feasible for you to work towards during the week. There is no one size fits all to how these sessions unfold. All sessions and communications take place in Healthie, a secure tele-health platform (as a result of COVID-19).
Let’s find a time to chat briefly to make sure any remaining questions about working together get answered and we are fit. Here is a link to schedule a Discovery Call.
Our work together involves you working towards finding foods that you enjoy and that satisfy you. I find patients learn as they go what foods and combination of foods works best.
We will begin with the most important meal/snack times that may be impacting your tendency to overeat. This may include snacks and/or breakfast. In our sessions we brainstorm multiple examples of what to eat, with the goal of consuming more plant foods and balanced meals and snacks.
I also like to approach “what to eat” with consideration of what you currently eat and making suggested “edits” to these meals and snacks. I typically don’t provide a detailed meal plan initially, as I feel this is contrary to our work together. Using the EatLove digital platform and app is a great way to develop more skill at meal planning and cooking. See EatLove video above with the Meal Planning Support Program available to you.
Typically, new patients benefit from weekly sessions, as with “The Works Support Program.” This amount of support is helpful when learning how to eat amounts and food choices you can live with. As you develop more confidence with your new eating patterns, sessions may decrease to every other week, as in the “Beginner Breakthrough Program” or the “Maintaining Momentum Program.”