Mission Statement
To help individuals love and appreciate themselves so they will nourish and nurture their bodies for optimal health.
Nutrition counseling is an investment in your health and yourself.
Regardless of the reasons, change can be difficult. A non-coercive approach to treatment is used,
while always being respectful of your individual needs. Unwanted behaviors are
seen as learning tools, rather than failures.
Ellen will partner with you and your healthcare team to provide
education, support and guidance towards increasing self-care, empowering you to
meet your health and nutrition goals.
Ellen appreciates and celebrates our diversity of body sizes and shapes. She practices a feminist, non-diet, non-judgmental, size acceptance approach with an emphasis on improving health. This is accomplished through re-nourishing the body and soul and rediscovering the body’s signals. By doing so, one learns to trust the body and to eat according to one’s nutrient and energy needs. Physical activity is encouraged for health and enjoyment.
Self-acceptance and self-respect are key elements to permanent change. The only diet encouraged is a mental diet, one that helps you decrease your negative, judgmental thoughts and view yourself in a positive light. Self-defeating thoughts hinder your ability to make positive changes and evaluating your behaviors without judgment allows us to acknowledge and understand why you have them. They do serve a purpose. Once we understand their purpose, we can then find more effective behaviors to replace them. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and relaxation techniques are used to assist you in making changes. Working with a therapist is strongly encouraged to help you work through any emotional issues that may be driving your behaviors.
Treatment goals include helping you gain insight into your food behaviors, weight obsession and resistance to change; correction of any erroneous food or health beliefs; and to help you obtain an appropriate food intake based on your individual needs. Together we will work to make positive changes in your eating style and activity patterns. These changes will then lead to an improvement in your health and quality of life. The specific treatment approach is individualized based on what works best for you. With regard to anorexia nervosa, a meal plan may be an appropriate treatment tool.
The expected results are a decrease of food and weight obsessions, increased comfort and pleasure with meals, a return to one’s genetic weight, assuming no presence of metabolic disorders, and experiencing the enjoyment of moving your body.
We all progress at our own rate. An individual’s progress will vary according to their readiness for change. Permanent change is a process. It requires time, patience, commitment, compassion towards oneself and a willingness to take responsibility for one’s health and behaviors. With sufficient support and guidance, this can be accomplished. You are worth it!
Treatment Philosophy for
Weight and Lifestyle Management
Nutrition counseling is an investment in your health and yourself.
Regardless of the reasons, change can be difficult. A non-coercive approach to treatment is used,
while always being respectful of your individual needs. Unwanted behaviors are
seen as learning tools, rather than failures.
Ellen will partner with you and your healthcare team to provide
education, support and guidance towards increasing self-care, empowering you to
meet your health and nutrition goals.
Ellen appreciates and celebrates our diversity of body sizes and shapes. She practices a feminist, non-diet, non-judgmental, size acceptance approach with an emphasis on improving health. This is accomplished through re-nourishing the body and soul and rediscovering the body’s signals. By doing so, one learns to trust the body and to eat according to one’s nutrient and energy needs. Physical activity is encouraged for health and enjoyment. The benefit to making these lifestyle changes is a decrease in blood pressure, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides and weight. You may also experience an improvement in stamina, breathing, HDL cholesterol, and overall health.
Self-acceptance and self-respect are key elements to permanent change. The only diet encouraged is a mental diet, one that helps you decrease your negative, judgmental thoughts and view yourself in a positive light. Self-defeating thoughts hinder your ability to make positive changes and evaluating your behaviors without judgment allows us to acknowledge and understand why you have them. They do serve a purpose. Once we understand their purpose, we can then find more effective behaviors to replace them. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, and relaxation techniques are used to assist you in making changes. Working with a therapist is strongly encouraged to help you work through any emotional issues that may be driving your behaviors.
One of the reasons diets fail most people 90%-95% of the time, is because old behaviors are not replaced with positive new ones that can be maintain long-term. Our bodies are programmed to fight against starvation for the purpose of survival; therefore most people cannot stay on a diet for very long. You don’t fail; the diet fails you because it works against your body’s survival programming. Research has shown that repeated cycling on and off diets often results in weight gain, not weight loss. Therefore, offering another low-calorie diet would only take you away from your health goals.
Although a specific “diet” is not used, we will explore your eating habits, food choices and activity patterns in detail. This information will give light to the “whys” of these behaviors, the education you may need and to the behavior changes that you can accomplish based on your individual needs and lifestyle. The specific treatment approach is individualized based on what works best for you. This is a long-term, realistic approach that doesn’t rely on fad diets; it’s based on making sound nutrition and activity choices that lead to permanent lifestyle changes. You will learn to work with your body instead of against it, as with dieting.
Working with your body means learning how to listen to your body’s hunger and satiety cues and responding appropriately. This will help you decrease episodes of overeating. Dieting teaches us to look to an outside source for the answers but only our bodies know what and how much we need to eat at any given time, and it tells us. We just have to re-learn how to acknowledge and respond to it. This is an instinct with which you were born. Unfortunately, dieting has taught you to ignore these instinctive signals.
The expected results are a decrease of food and weight obsessions, increase in overall health, increased comfort and pleasure with meals, and a return to one’s genetic weight, assuming no presence of metabolic disorders, and an increase in the enjoyment of body movement.
We all progress at our own rate. An individual’s progress will vary according to their readiness for change. Permanent change is a process. It requires time, patience, commitment, compassion towards oneself and a willingness to take responsibility for one’s health and behaviors. With sufficient support and guidance, this can be accomplished. You are worth it!
Last updated on 2/16/10