A Guest Post

Today is a guest post of sorts. When Miranda approached me for nutrition counseling, she brought up the idea of contributing a couple of posts on her progress. Partly to keep her accountable, but also to share her story, which I think most women will relate to in one way or another. Each and every client I work with is unique, but when they describe their history, there are some themes I hear again and again. Miranda's story is the perfect example of how our society's expectations of body size and the booming, profit-focused diet food industry can negatively effect one's relationship with food. The barriers she faces in reaching her goals are obstacles many deal with on a regular basis.  In her words...

I approached Rachael in hopes of getting a grip on my weight. But then, I realized, I have never actually had the upper hand. I reached out to Rachael recently surrounding the aftermath of my pregnancy weight gain. Though I was careful while pregnant, I did gain nearly 30 pounds, and the last 12 pounds are clinging on for dear life.  Amusingly enough, I lost 35 pounds before I got pregnant, and was down to the lowest weight that I had reached in years. However, my weight began to slowly creep up right before I found out that we were expecting.

The first time I began to obsess over my weight was when I was 10 years old. I asked my dad at 8PM if I could eat a rice krispy treat because my stomach would not stop growling. My father (understandably so) would not allow me to eat it due to the late hour, but I suspected there was more to it. There was. I’m not going to go into a head-shrink amount of details here, but my family was never secretive in pointing out I was not the thinnest of girls.

Even when on the strictest of diets, and when my husband and I were consistently running 6-8 miles, I still did not lose weight as quickly as I should. I would love to blame hormones or a slow metabolism (though based on my history I do think I can claim 15% or less to be the result), but mostly it is a lack of nutritional education, and even will power.

Up until I left for college, my breakfast was either a sugar packed cereal or a pop tart. My lunches were packed lovingly by mom and consisted of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread, a canned fruit, pringles or baked lays, and a little debbie desert.  I point out the “loving” part because we did not have the same knowledge in the 1990’s and early 2000’s as we do now (Again, this isn’t a therapy session- I do not blame my mom for my weight).  I realized later that these were not the most balanced meals possible.

I left for college at a “chunkier end of thin” weight, and in two years packed on 45 pounds. It was a combination of alcohol, lack of sleep, and lack of nutritional education. I fell prey to a lot of fad diets, green tea pills, and a lot of things that sounded healthy (aka nutri grain, yoplait yogurt, etc), but are far from it. After my father passed away in my junior year, the weight gain stemmed from emotions, the stress of working two jobs, and lack of appetite. I began drinking multiple sodas and/or Starbucks beverages daily to stay awake and to stay full.

Now, as I mentioned to Rachael, My biggest culprits of weight gain are 1) When I am at home with my daughter I do not eat lunch, but I try to snack during the day as much as possible on healthy foods, 2) SWEET TOOTH/overeating in general. I always make it about 3 days, and then go crazy on day 4 with the sweets or "oh I'll just eat one more of those..." and end up overeating even on the 'healthy' stuff. 3) My husband HATES most veggies and hates to eat healthy. 4) Temptation/Not accepting my diet must be unique. My husband loses weight every time we shake up our diet, and I don't. He will bring home ice cream or an unhealthy dinner, and I struggle to say no. I do not blame him for this, he simply doesn’t have to watch what he eats the way that I do. 5) Understanding calories. How many is too few? How many is too many? How much sugar in a day? How to cut out sugar? How many carbs? etc. etc. etc. 6) Stress.

Rachael and I have come up with a great plan to help me get on track, and to stay motivated! We’re excited, and we’ll be keeping everyone updated with my success and even challenges! I hope that I can inspire others to do the same.

Miranda was ready to change her life.  Being a new mom, it was important for her to be healthy and a help her daughter develop a positive body image and relationship with food. She absolutely did not want to go “on a diet.”  Which is a good thing, cause lifestyle change happens to be my specialty! 

When counseling someone to make lifestyle changes, the most important thing to do is figure out what has held them back from sustaining changes in the past, otherwise, they will likely to repeat the same mistakes. 

During our appointment, we found one major issue was her irregular eating schedule.  She tended to go long periods of time without eating, then overeat at night or give into her sweet tooth. Miranda was really hard on herself for a lack of willpower, but really, she was just hungry! When you get ravenously hungry, your stomach gets a lot louder than your brain! You can have all the right intentions, but your stomach will always win that battle. The combination of being a new mom and her work schedule made it difficult impossible for her to follow a set schedule, so we developed a flexible meal and snack schedule that incorporates more substantial, filling snacks (mini-meals if you like) and healthy meals she can eat on the go.   

After hearing about her upbringing, it wasn’t surprising that sweets were her downfall. You can imagine the conflict one might feel if on one hand, they were part of your everyday “healthy” lunch, but on the other, were "bad," off limit foods. When one categorizes food as good and bad, often the bad foods become forbidden fruit.  To combat this mentality, I instructed Miranda to plan in a few healthy or portion controlled sweets throughout the week. Ideas for her healthy options included dark chocolate, frozen banana ice cream or my healthy chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. And I gave her the green light to enjoy a completely unhealthy but absolutely delicious dessert on special occasions.  I mean, a birthday without a giant hunk of cake is just no birthday at all!

Counseling one half of a married couple can be complicated, since one spouse's food preferences and eating habits can significantly affect the others. Luckily, Miranda’s husband is very supportive. Some of you might have interpreted his bringing home ice cream or dislike of healthy food as the opposite, but keep in mind, he is completely entitled to his food preferences and you can't force someone to change if they're not ready. He loves Miranda no matter what she weighs, so in his mind, bringing home ice cream is an act of love, not sabotage. In cases like this, it's important for spouses to communicate as specifically as possible what they can do to help them other succeed. Almost always, they want to help, but just doesn't know how.

I did a few things to help keep him happy. I encouraged Miranda to set aside one meal a week where he can choose what he likes. It might end up being healthy, or it might not. But it’s his choice. And I know guys, one meal might not sound like much of a compromise, but he can eat whatever he likes for lunch and since she’s doing most of the cooking, Miranda's got the upper hand on this one! When I developed meal ideas, I also included healthy versions of her husband’s favorite foods.

Hopefully this post gives you some insight into the counseling process and how to get past some of the barriers you might face when making lifestyle changes. We’ll check in on Miranda in a month and see how she is doing! I know some areas will be harder to change than others, and more than likely she will struggle at times.  But I also know she is committed to making this change, so as long as she can learn from her struggles, she will come out on top!

P.S. I do not disclose any information about my clients.  This post was something Miranda wanted to do so I made an exception.  So don't get all HIPAA on me :) 

P.P.S. You may not know, but I do a little bit of private work outside of my normal 9-5.  For more information, please see my listing of services and contact me for more information.