How We're Different - Weight Loss & Nutrition Counseling

Unlike other weight loss programs that use group meetings, we believe that one-on-one nutrition counseling works best for understanding your habits and helping you make gradual improvements to your eating routines.  An American College of Physicians review of studies from 1980 through 2006 found that nutrition counseling has a statistically significant effect on weight loss above the impact of independent diet changes.  Your visits are designed to help you confront your challenges and focus your time and energy in areas where you are ready to make changes.  Our philosophy offers the following benefits:

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Personalized meal outline – it’s flexible:

We know that a one-size-fits-all approach to weight loss does not work.  Based upon your demographic information (age, sex, height) and current lifestyle constraints (travel schedule, work hours, kids and other dependents), we work with you to figure out how you can prepare and schedule your meals to give you energy and help you feel full.  As you lose weight, your nutrition counselor will ask you the important questions to help you find the proper portion sizes to continue sustainable and healthy weight loss.  It is an ongoing process; if you feel hungry, your nutrition counselor will give you options on where to increase your intake, and if you feel full, we will help you identify where you can continue to scale back your food intake.

 

Confidential meetings with nutrition counselors – twice a week:

The information you share with your nutrition counselor always remains confidential, and will never be shared outside the nutrition team.  We hope that you feel comfortable discussing the uncomfortable and difficult challenges that stand in the way of losing weight.  Two meetings per week (held in-person and via video conference) encourage you to regularly reflect on small victories, and position you to make incremental improvements to your routines and choices.  Over time, you will likely be amazed at how much ground you have covered.

 

Dedicated time to solve your challenges – it’s a relationship:

One-on-one meetings allow our nutrition counselors to focus on your specific circumstances to help you build a plan that will guide your weight loss.  This dedicated time is spent teaching you about nutrition, discussing recent challenges you are facing, and helping you to build and implement to a plan that you can knock out of the park.

We know that nutrition and scientific terms may sound like a foreign language to you.  Because of this reality, a key pillar of our mission is to help you understand what is in your food, help you learn what makes certain foods healthy or unhealthy, and to teach you fundamental skills such as how to read food labels and compare food options.  As part of the educational process, we focus on the following key areas:

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You learn how to speak “nutrition”:

• Macronutrients – your food is made of up many different types of molecules, which fall into three major categories: proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.  Everything you eat contains these building blocks in different proportions, and your body processes, digests, and stores these substances in your body differently.  Your nutrition counselor teaches you about each of the three macronutrient categories, and how you should think about them practically as you go about preparing and eating your meals.

• Calories – The word “calorie” has become a buzzword, in terms of people counting them, cutting them, or trying to forget about them altogether.  Fundamentally, the term “calorie” represents how much energy you will gain from the food that you eat.  Things get complicated because your body digests foods at different rates, and the timing of this energy release affects your appetite and mood.  Your nutrition counselor will help you better understand how to think about calories, and will integrate this discussion into building your meal plan.

• Food composition – Eating and feeling full is far more complicated that understanding macronutrients and calories.  How you combine foods and how often you eat contribute to your success.  Your nutrition counselor will help you think about your new knowledge in the proper context, and will guide and challenge you to apply these academic and educational lessons in your everyday life.  After all, we wouldn’t work with you if we didn’t think you could handle it.

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The process is iterative: you learn as you go:

This information is best digested in small bites.  Because you will meet with a nutrition counselor twice a week, you will regularly add new pieces of information to your knowledge bank, and you will be able to put these concepts to work as you learn them.  Learning, followed immediately by action, brings these academic concepts to life, helps you remember them, and makes them more valuable to your weight loss and lifestyle journey.

 

Our materials will help you sustain your lifestyle change:

The materials we provide (both in-paper, and online) are yours!  The Nutrition Guide echoes the information and concepts that your nutrition counselor will cover with you each week, and provides a resource for you to reference when you have questions.  Furthermore, materials such as the Complete Food Guide will help you evaluate meal choices, and our Guide to Eating Out will assist you in picking a healthy choice on a restaurant menu.  Taken together, the in-person support of your nutrition counselor, in conjunction with your program materials, will teach you the science and logic behind the changes you make, and enable you to make your initial weight loss transformation a permanent one.

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Your nutrition counselors are healthcare and nutrition professionals, not salespeople.  Each staff member has earned undergraduate and/or graduate degrees in nutrition-related fields (Nutrition, Food Science, Dietetics, Public Health, and others).  Through this academic study, our staff have studied both the metabolic processes within your body and how your body interacts with the environment.  To this end, our mission is to help you achieve steady, ongoing and sustainable weight loss through learning about you as an individual, and understanding the pressures and stresses you face during your everyday routine:

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This is our passion:

Our professional staff have spent countless hours both developing their knowledge base and practicing the principles that they teach.  Your nutrition counselors understand the struggles that you face because they have faced similar struggles throughout their lives, and are committed to helping you achieve a healthier and more realistic lifestyle.  To be involved in the process of teaching others how to regain control over their eating is a privilege that we never take for granted.

 

We’re flexible – as the research changes, our approach changes:

The academic nutrition community is dynamic and constantly evolving, and our nutrition counselors stay abreast of recent publications and advancements in the field.  As a result, we base our methods on the latest discoveries and scientific best-practices. Our bodies are very complicated systems, made up of very complicated components.  Each day brings new discoveries and information that we relay to you in a way which is understandable and useful to your weight loss efforts. 

 

Experts and coaches:

A significant portion of the weight loss battle is mental, and staying focused and motivated can be very difficult on your own.  You need a support system, and we hope to be a critical part of your team.  In this way, your nutrition counselor is not only your academic go-to person.  She is also your coach.  In this role, our nutrition counselors will encourage you to achieve your goals and also to celebrate milestones as you progress through your weight loss program.

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An independent Registered Dietician will likely charge ~$100 per hour, and many do not offer frequent enough meetings to troubleshoot and help you learn from the challenges you face every day.  At the other end of the spectrum, low-cost automated weight loss systems are not flexible and do not offer the level of attention you need to successfully lose weight.  We have developed an effective model midway between these two extremes.

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From a cost perspective, we strive to deliver incredible value throughout your weight loss journey, and we will never sacrifice service quality.  The main cost driver of your program is its length.  The longer the weight loss process, the more expensive the plan.  During your Consultation, your nutrition counselor works with you to determine how to design your program in a way that is both nutritionally effective and cost-conscious.

 

Although each program is unique, all programs consist of a weight loss phase and a weight maintenance phase.  If you do not lose weight as quickly as we expect, we will work with you to adjust your plan while being sensitive to your financial situation.

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