Why work with a Food

Beyond Fuel dietitian?

You will get more than a dietitian. You will get a coach, a motivator, and someone who won’t give up on you and your goals. Registered Dietitian Nutritionists have the education, skills, and credentials to work with individuals and groups. The education process includes several layers that are established by the Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics. Dietitians are required to:

• Get a four-year degree which includes a specially designed, accredited nutrition curriculum. The dietitian behind Food Beyond Fuel, Jenna, also has her masters degree and thousands of direct client hours in sport nutrition and eating disorder care.

• Complete an extensive supervised program of practice at a health care facility, foodservice organization or community agency.

• Pass a rigorous registration exam and maintain continuing education credits throughout their career.

Working with Jenna will help you develop safe and realistic action plans that align with your day to day life. Your work together will be a combination of conversation, brainstorming, and developing out of the box strategies.

Eating Disorders & Disordered Eating

The most important statement I can say from the get-go is this: You are worthy of getting help NO MATTER where you are in your experience with food and your body. A common myth that people hold is that they have to be at a certain “threshold” (weight, lab values, frequency of behaviors) to get help and be valid in doing so.

Jenna has experience in working people that struggle with a variety of eating behaviors in all shapes and sizes. She uses a non-diet and weight-inclusive approach.

If you can relate to any of the following, we may be a good fit:

• Restricting food intake intentionally (to feel numb, in control, lose weight, avoid physical pain, or calm anxiety) or unintentionally (low appetite, busy schedule, lack of interest in food, or limited access to food)

• Feeling out of control around food

• Eating in secret or feeling guilty after consuming all food or specific foods and having the desire to isolate and/or compensate

• Avoiding food groups out of fear of gaining weight, feeling sick, or having potential negative consequences from the food (desire to eat “clean” “whole’ “avoid toxins” “detox” etc.)

• Eating until feeling uncomfortably full, “zoning out” during eating - followed by strong feelings of shame and guilt

• Obsessively counting calories in an app or in your head

• Purging after food consumption

• Using diet pills or laxatives

• Exercising compulsively and obsessively to “burn” off calories or food intake

• Weighing obsessively

• Thinking about food all the time

• Body checking - looking in the mirror constantly to see what/if parts have changed or feeling certain body parts regularly to calm anxiety or try to identify if it feels like it has changed to you

• Transitioning out of inpatient residential eating disorder center

Sport Nutrition

No matter where you fall on the movement spectrum, we can help you answer the questions you have on fueling your body to it’s highest potential. Sport comes with unique psychological and nutritional needs - we will work to understand these to tailor a plan that fits you. Jenna has experience working with D1 collegiate athletes and teams, high school athletes, and recreational athletes. She uses an intuitive eating approach that focuses on fueling for sport, life, and longevity.

Relate to any of these experiences?

• Wanting to make changes to fuel for performance but unsure where to start

• Feeling beat halfway through a workout, practice, or game

• Not seeing improvement in your strength and endurance goals

• Irregular or absent menstrual cycle

• Busy schedule and struggling to know what and when to eat

Yo-Yo Dieting

Dieting is a rollercoaster. If you are sick of obsessing with food and are wanting to learn to trust your body, then you are in the right place. We will work together to deconstruct unhelpful food beliefs. We will replace old habits and behaviors with intentional practices that are centered on awareness, non-diet nutrition knowledge, and life giving patterns to help you feel your best.

Can you relate to anything below?

• Feeling like you will “start again tomorrow”

• Wanting to know what to eat and when but feeling like there is too much conflicting information out there

• Starting a diet, losing weight, and then re-gaining the weight and more back

• Trying diets and having cravings for specific foods increase

• Feeling hungry all the time

• Feeling like you are not enough and need more “willpower”

• Feeling low energy and fatigued

Weight-Inclusive Medical Nutrition Therapy

This means that no matter what you have going on with your health, you will experience non-stigmatizing care. All people, regardless of weight, can achieve healthy well-being. Weight-inclusivity decreases body shaming, helps eliminate weight-cycling and unstainable weight loss, and reduces the risk of eating disorders.

Non-exclusive list of conditions that weight-inclusive medical nutrition therapy can help:

• IBS, Crohn’s, Celiac Disease, Constipation, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease, Food Allergies, Osteoporosis, PCOS, Pregnancy

Nutrition Counseling: what to expect

• Initial Session: We will explore the following, but not limited to - what you hope to get out of nutrition therapy, prior experience in working with nutritionist or dietitian, your concerns and struggles related to eating and body, medical history, family medical history, diet history, a recall of what you have eaten, review of eating disorder behaviors, physical symptoms, lifestyle, and motivations

• Nutrition Education & Counseling: Food Beyond Fuel uses evidenced-based information to inform and empower you right where you are at. With a world of conflicting nutrition information that is deeply rooted in weight bias, we counter that with a weight-inclusive approach that focuses on health and well-being from the inside out. To learn more about the philosophy we use for nutrition education and counseling, check out our approach.

• Motivation and Support: Regular visits are recommended for improved outcomes. At the beginning of our work together, this may be weekly or every other week, and can move to every 3-4 weeks.

• Exposure and Skills Work: We will work with the rest of your team to create a plan to challenge fear/unsafe foods, hard situations, eat foods in session together, and create goals that challenge you to build meaningful life skills.

• Mind-Body Awareness: We will learn about how your body experiences appetite, hunger, fullness, and other body signals and then identify patterns that enable your body to expect consistency - while also moving towards intuition and responding to cues.

• Honesty and Compassion: Food Beyond Fuel holds these two values highly in the client-provider relationship. This will be an integral part of our work together.