Nutrition Counseling

Picture a quaint and lovely house.

Imagine a room within where you spend most of your time⎯you write your daily To Do list, work, read, phone friends, check email, and organize your thoughts. It’s an active place with forward movement. This is your conscious mind.

Imagine a room in the back of this house. Every memory and thought you ever had clings to the walls. Every bad experience is stuffed under the bed and dresser, and every moment of sadness, pain, embarrassment and humiliation spill out of the closet and litter the floor. Every scene you’ve seen, every story you’ve told and been told lives here. Like when you were five and awoke from a nap screaming in pain from a mindless game played while you tag-teamed sleep where you wove a rubber band tightly around your finger, then felt afraid and abandoned when you couldn’t find your mother. Or that time in high school when you were shamed with a “D” in algebra. When schoolmates called you names and sibs mercilessly poked and picked. Memories of being criticized for how you dressed. Remembering you were always last to be picked for recess games.

This back room holds fear of loss from moving every three years, humiliation when you forgot your lines in the play, embarrassment you weren’t good enough, concern you were taller than your classmates, and pain and sadness of dashed hopes and dreams. It holds every negative, self-critical and judgmental word you’ve said about yourself. This is your unconscious mind.

This back room is cluttered and filled to the brim with beliefs formed around childhood experiences. It is sometimes so full the door won’t shut no matter how hard you try. Bursting forth are terrors, worries, anxiety, and ideas that take you down fantastical trails filled with made up stories. Its din is orchestrated by childhood stories and informs present choices and actions.

As in:

• You become fearful for no reason.
• Anxiety skyrockets.
• You judge yourself harshly without cause.
• You are sharp and rhetorical without logic.
• You eat compulsively then restrict. Poor eating habits drag you down.
• You body check to see that your careful calorie calculations are working.
• You make judgments about “that food is bad!”
• You’re uncomfortable in your own skin due to weighing yourself constantly.
• You feel totally overwhelmed and unfulfilled though life is full.

It’s driving you crazy.

Guests in your home are completely unaware of the clutter and stink in that back room driving all this. But you know it’s there. You know that when it’s cleaned it out, you’ll feel better.

And that’s your work. By diving into that back room, you heal the unconscious focus informed by erroneous childhood beliefs that ghostwrite present storylines. Clutter begins to thin, old stories are refreshed to what makes sense now, and healing occurs within all those childhood experiences.

How we begin

Initial Consultation:

Our first session is an assessment and includes some preparation on your part (see forms below). It includes review of your health history, eating patterns and preferences, ethical values, spiritual practices, and your particular nutrition needs. It is immensely important to me that I get to know you, your expectations, and what’s previously worked or not worked.

Plant-based nutrition is a hot topic based on substantial evidence-based nutrition studies. While vegetarian or vegan choices may be right for some, others find quality animal protein choices atop a foundation of fruits, vegetables and grains beneficial for their body. Either way, if it feels right, we’ll pulse around how to include more plants into your existing protocol and make appropriate choices that are just right for you. We may touch upon how to change groceries into actual meals, review food records for nutrient balance, and how eating out or getting take out fits into a balanced life. We’ll check on sleep hygiene given how impactful sleep deprivation is to our appetite hormones and speak to joyful movement that feels good to you. We’ll chat about anti-inflammatory dietary patterns and foods that calm inflammation and heal your body from disease risk. If you have digestive difficulties, we’ll explore protocols to reduce stress and bring relief. Most of all, we’ll chat about you and your needs!

We’ll always end with an action plan. If appropriate for your learning style, you’ll be invited to use the Good Measures app, a state-of-the-art digital platform available via iPhone, Android, and the Web to help support you in behavior change related to eating and activity.

Follow-up Sessions:

We’ll review your progress based on goals and objectives that feel right to you, update your plan as needed, and brainstorm barriers and resistance to moving forward. We may reassess food records and meal plans, revise nutrient intake, and chat about ideas for making your kitchen a friendlier and more easeful environment. Internal reactions about lifestyle events (business travel, vacations, holiday meals, and office party birthdays) and these external changes you shift toward will be explored to make space for them.

For One-On-One Nutrition Counseling:

Please download, complete, and bring the forms shown below to our first session.

• Client Agreement and Registration
• Insurance Script (Complete this first as some PCP referrals, if required, cannot be backdated.)
• HIPAA form
• Lifestyle Questionnaire
• Digestive Health Questionnaire (Complete this only if you specifically seek digestive health counsel.)

Arriving on time means we get the most out of the session. As unplanned issues may arise that lead you to reschedule, 24 hours advanced notice is needed; if less than 24 hours, a late fee of $100 will be assessed for that scheduled time. If availability is open in the same week for you to make up the missed appointment, there will be no fee assessed.

Office Location

We meet at the Center for Integrative Healing, 23 Main Street, 2nd floor, Suite A, Watertown Square, Watertown MA. This is the building next to CVS and accessed either through CVS or the alley between our buildings. There is ample metered parking behind CVS.

Contact me to schedule a consultation or for more information.

My Massachusetts License is #1630
My Georgia License is #LD005083

Story influenced by Ramdesh Kaur

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