You’re concerned about your health. You got a recent lab back and something has tipped into being out of range. You may have received a recent health diagnosis. Your doctor is concerned about your health, but it seems like the only thing they recommend is dieting and weight loss.
You feel like you’ve tried every diet under the sun, but nothing is working. You feel embarrassed and frustrated to talk to your doctor about your health challenges, and you’re not sure how you can improve your health without dieting. You feel like no matter what you try, you can’t seem to get your health back on track. You want to live a ‘healthy’ lifestyle, but you’re tired of feeling like a failure for not losing weight. You’re also tired of judgemental doctors who aren’t able to understand your struggle with food or your body. When you express your struggle, it seems like their only advice is to try another new way to magically lose weight which doesn’t address your health challenges. You don’t want it to seem like you don’t care about your health, but it’s exhausting to feel like you’ve tried everything and yet nothing seems to work. You want to get your health back on track for your doctors, friends, family and most importantly, for yourself. You want a life free from diets and the pursuit of weight loss, but you’re not sure if you can achieve your health goals without it.
Health concerns, such as high cholesterol, PCOS, pre-diabetes/diabetes, and high blood pressure can be incredibly daunting, especially when it seems like the only solution is dieting and weight loss. At Bravespace Nutrition, our expert registered dietitians want to make sure that you feel validated, supported, and respected in your experience with food and weight. If you’re ready to focus on your health due to a recent health issue, a change in labs or fear that you will develop something that runs in your family, and you’re tired of endless dieting, constantly over exercising, and the pursuit of weight loss, we’re here to help you! You deserve to live a life free from dieting, no matter what health issues you’re facing!
What is medical nutrition therapy?
Medical nutrition therapy (MNT) is the use of evidence-based nutrition interventions to help manage, treat, or prevent certain health conditions. In medical nutrition therapy, registered dietitians use dietary interventions to improve a patient/client’s condition. The goal of medical nutrition therapy is to manage and prevent certain health conditions by making dietary changes to optimize your health.
MNT is recommended for certain conditions including pre-diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension/high blood pressure, metabolic syndrome, polycystic ovarian syndrome, kidney disease, diabetes, as well as gastrointestinal disorders like celiac disease and irritable bowel syndrome.
Medical nutrition therapy involves these key components:
Assessment - Registered dietitians gather information about your medical history, dietary habits, lifestyle, and current health status to gain a comprehensive understanding of your health condition.
Diagnosis - Registered dietitians use information from assessment to identify and diagnose any nutrition-related concerns.
Intervention - After diagnosis, an individualized nutrition plan is developed and shared with the client/patient to address the diagnosis.
Monitoring and evaluation - The progress of the nutrition plan is consistently monitored and frequently evaluated to determine the effectiveness of the nutrition plan.
What is anti-diet medical nutrition therapy?
Many medical nutrition therapy interventions involve weight loss to improve certain health conditions. Unfortunately, this approach to MNT ignores an undeniable truth: Attempts at weight loss and dieting often make health issues worse, not better, overtime. Dieting and weight loss don’t work for most people, and that’s normal and expected. As anti-diet dietitians, we recognize the toxicity of diet culture and weight stigma in healthcare, and we understand that dieting doesn’t always make health issues better. In fact, dieting often makes health issues worse!
Anti-diet MNT helps you focus on your health issues without promoting weight loss or dieting as the solution. Anti-diet medical nutrition therapy values Health-at-Every-Size, and works on the fundamental understanding that size alone does not determine your health.
Why is it important to take an anti-diet approach to medical nutrition therapy?
Conventional medical nutrition therapy uses weight loss as a one-size-fits-all solution. But health issues are complex, each person is different, and no body is exactly the same. Why continue to use a blanket-treatment approach to such individualized and complicated health issues, especially when research supports that dieting and weight loss often provide only short-term results and often long-term harm? Diet culture promotes dieting and weight loss as the key to your health issues, but fails to tell you that dieting isn’t sustainable. Diets may provide short-term results, but they’re not meant to help you manage life-long chronic health conditions. Instead, the continuous battle of yo-yo dieting leads to weight cycling (consistently large fluctuations in weight), which only worsens your health. Sometimes even the solutions that doctors and dietitians recommend (dieting and weight loss) are often the main culprits for these health conditions that are traditionally blamed on weight.
Anti-diet medical nutrition therapy helps you develop a nutrition plan that you’ll actually be able to maintain. Our main goal is to support you in making peace with food and your body while honoring your health, your goals, and supporting your overall well-being in a way that is sustainable for your lifestyle.
How do I know if I need medical nutrition therapy?
If you’ve been diagnosed with any of the following health conditions, you may benefit from MNT at Bravespace Nutrition:
Prediabetes or diabetes
High cholesterol
Hypertension or prehypertension
Metabolic syndrome
Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS)
Gastrointestinal disorders
Irritable bowel syndrome
Celiac disease
How do I know if I would benefit from virtual weight-inclusive medical nutrition therapy?
Maybe you’ve had this experience: You begin a diet, and it works for a little while. Your health seems to be improving, and you’re losing weight. On the weekend, you slip-up at brunch, have a birthday party later that night filled with yummy snacks and drinks, and next thing you know, you're spending the next few weeks spiraling out and seem to be eating everything in sight or feeling guilty for what you’re eating! You begin the diet again a month later, and this cycle continues. After a year of following your doctor’s advice to diet and lose weight, your health condition over time has only gotten worse.
Or this one: You have your annual check-up. Your healthcare provider mentions your BMI and advises you to lose weight to prevent certain health conditions. But you’ve always existed in a larger body. You’re ok with your weight, and don’t want to pursue weight loss, but you’re afraid based on what your doctor has said. You try to convey this to the doctor, but they’re judgmental and don’t seem to care about your wishes. You feel unheard, unseen, and unvalued by the healthcare system.
Or perhaps this sounds familiar: You’ve been diagnosed with a chronic condition, and your doctor’s advice is to lose weight and start dieting to improve your condition. You’ve had experience with dieting and disordered eating in the past, but you were able to recover from disordered eating. You don’t want to lose all the progress you’ve fought so hard for. You care about your health, but you know that dieting to lose weight isn’t worth losing that progress.
Or this one: You’ve been diagnosed with a health issue and you know you don’t want to diet, but you’re not sure what else to do! Everywhere you look online it’s telling you to cut out foods and food groups for things like high cholesterol, high blood pressures, PCOS and more! You feel confused and also worried about your health.
If you identify with these circumstances, are struggling with a health condition, or have been told you’re in the early stages of developing a chronic condition, and you’re tired of dieting and trying to lose weight, Bravespace Nutrition in Seattle, WA is here to help you! You deserve a life that honors your health without the constraints of diet culture and weight loss.
Our registered dietitian nutritionists at Bravespace Nutrition in Seattle, WA can help you with:
Elevated cholesterol
We will help you manage your cholesterol by emphasizing the importance of balanced nutrition, reduced stress, and a varied diet. We can help you find a sustainable approach to nutrition that involves a wide-range of foods that will leave you feeling satisfied. Additionally, we can help you develop healthy coping mechanisms to reduce and manage stress levels that may be contributing to your health condition.
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)
Navigating life with PCOS can be difficult, but we’re here to support you. Anti-diet MNT for PCOS will involve supporting your hormone balance and managing insulin resistance through balanced nutrition and mindful eating, and assisting you in developing sustainable lifestyle habits to manage your PCOS.
High Blood Pressure
High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is a condition that can potentially lead to heart disease. In treatment, we will work with you to manage your blood pressure by developing positive changes in diet and lifestyle habits. We help you to adopt a balanced and sustainable approach to eating that will promote your heart health without using extreme weight loss measures or restrictive diets.
Weight Concerns
If you are concerned about your weight or if your doctors have expressed concern, we want to assure you that health can exist at every body size and also want to offer support around your concerns. We can help answers questions you have about body size, weight and health, challenge internal beliefs about weight and body size that have been impacted by the health care system and culture around you, challenge the current dogma that you need to loose weight to find wellbeing and health, and help you develop self-compassion and kindness towards your body.
Pre-diabetes and Diabetes
Our treatment for pre-diabetes won’t be as simple as “eat better, lose weight, exercise more”. Our treatment will focus on improving blood sugar levels, preventing progression to type II diabetes, and/or managing diabetes without weight loss and dieting. Education on the importance of regular, consistent, and frequent nutrition without restriction will be at the core of our anti-diet MNT for diabetes.
Gastrointestinal Disorders
Dealing with gastrointestinal disorders, like Celiac and IBS, in a world that values diet culture is difficult. It can be challenging to find ways to consistently nourish yourself. We want to help develop a personalized nutrition plan to address your gastrointestinal disorder head on, whatever it may be!
At Bravespace Nutrition in Seattle, WA, anti-diet medical nutrition therapy looks like:
Providing you with an individualized care plan that is meant for you and only you.
Gaining a full, comprehensive understanding of your medical history, personal preferences, and unique nutritional needs to develop a nutrition plan that will address your health concerns
Identifying your health goals and prioritizing these goals in your treatment plan.
Meeting with you frequently to assess progress and identify potential areas of improvement in the treatment plan.
Practicing Health-at-every-size and operating under the belief that weight is not the sole determinant of health.
Introducing mindful eating, reconnecting you to your hunger/fullness signals, and honoring those signals.
Encouraging you to practice body positivity and body acceptance, and foster a positive relationship with your body.
Challenging your beliefs about weight, body size, and appearance to unlearn harmful messages of diet culture.
Ensuring you feel validated and supported in your experience with food and your body
Providing you with a safe space to vocalize health concerns without fear of judgment or conviction.
What’s holding you back from seeking medical nutrition therapy help?
“I’m worried that weight loss is the only solution to my health issues, and you won’t be able to help me.
It’s normal to feel this way in a culture that values thinness above all else, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Dieting and weight loss are not the key to your health issues, despite what the healthcare system has made you believe and in fact attempts at weight loss make health issues worse long term. Our dietitians promise to work with you on developing behaviors to live the healthiest and happiest life you can lead. We will validate your experience with food and weight while honoring your health and goals.
“Healthcare is expensive, and I don’t think I can afford medical nutrition therapy.”
We understand, healthcare can be incredibly expensive. While we recognize the financial burden that treatment can have, we also believe that it’s important to seek help sooner rather than later. Receiving help for your health issues now can prevent your health condition from worsening later on. Taking care of the health issue earlier is better than letting it progress into something that’s much more difficult to treat and manage. Remember, you deserve to receive help!
“If I can live a life free from diet culture and focus on my health without weight loss, why are my doctors telling me to lose weight? It just sounds too good to be true.”
Diet culture has conditioned many people, including doctors, to believe that weight determines health, but this just isn’t true. Scientific evidence has proven that BMI isn't a reliable indicator of health, and weight loss doesn’t automatically improve health conditions. Most research supporting weight loss and dieting is outdated and fails to acknowledge the harmful long-term implications of weight-cycling, weight stigma, and dieting. We want to assure you that it isn’t too good to be true. We will prioritize your health while honoring your experience with food and body image. A life free from the constraints of dieting that also improves your overall health is possible!
“I’ve been shamed by healthcare providers before for not wanting to lose weight despite my health concerns or I’ve been told that I “look healthy” so there’s nothing to worry about.”
We want to start off by saying that we are incredibly sorry you’ve had this experience. Unfortunately, weight stigma runs rampant in health care settings, and fatphobia does exist, even among doctors. If your healthcare provider has shamed you because of your weight, BMI, or body appearance, we recognize your feelings and apprehension. And if your doctor has told you that you “look healthy” so there’s nothing to worry about, this is very concerning too. Our anti-diet dietitians recognize your struggle, and we want to support you in a judgment-free space for you to voice your concerns, goals, and questions without fear of scrutiny. We know you value your health, and we want to help you reach your health goals, whatever those goals may be!
Begin anti-diet medical nutrition therapy in Seattle, Wa and New Jersey today!
You deserve to honor your health and your relationship with your body and food. Our dietitians are here to support you in your health journey! To learn more, follow these 3 steps:
Schedule a free 15-minute discovery phone by clicking the button below.
Meet with one of our eating-disorder dietitians.
Begin your health journey free of dieting and weight loss!
Other Services Offered at Bravespace Nutrition
Eating disorder treatment isn’t the only service offered at our Seattle, Wa-based therapy practice. Other services include therapy for body image, binge eating, intuitive eating, Bulimia treatment, Anorexia treatment, and chronic dieting. We also offer a body image support group, and business coaching as well. For more information, please feel free to visit our blog, FAQ or resources page!