“How are you different?” is a question many professionals ask me, regarding my decision to provide weight neutral diabetes care.  While clients often comment meeting with me was “not what I expected,” appointments with a weight neutral diabetes educator share the same end goal as a traditional diabetes education but the difference is how they get...Read More

Creating a connection with your clients is easy when they share their deeper desires. It’s lovely when our job as educators and coaches are straight forward yet, what do we do when the client isn’t able to tell us what is wrong or what they want to work on? In this issue, we will continue...Read More

Open-ended questions are a way to obtain information from a client that prevents a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response. For example, “Did you eat breakfast?” isn’t an open-ended question but “What did you have for breakfast?” is a better-phased question and in MI, using OEQ’s whenever possible is the preferred form of inquiry.  Asking closed-ended questions...Read More

The Weight-neutral Self-assessment offers four categories starting with weight-centered, moving to a weight-neutral stance, expanding to weight-inclusive, and ending with a weight-liberated view. Many professionals may incorrectly assume that the last category, weight-liberated is the same as Health At Every Size, HAES. Health At Every Size is identified with many things ranging from the non-dieting...Read More

Many professionals are shocked to learn that research estimates that up to 40% of people with type 2 diabetes have disordered eating patterns and even more suffer from chronic dieting. How can you, as a weight-neutral professional assist them to create peace with food and with elevated blood sugars? Using Motivational Interviewing, can help you...Read More

Being nonjudgmental allows you, the professionals, to see the charlatan and separate fact from fiction. You know that the latest health fads lack the necessary research to prove that its effective. The persuasive argument, promising results, are hard to resist if your client believes that it fixes what ails them. Etiquette prevents you from saying,...Read More

Its that time of year when clients come to see you, energized to change. As a weight-neutral educator, how do you navigate the annual desire to lose weight? The following is a fictitious dialog using Motivational Interviewing to illustrate how to remain nonjudgmental when your clients want to lose weight. Client: “It’s the New Year,...Read More

It was more than five years ago that I sat across from Mary at lunch. We had snuck out from the Food Nutrition Expo Conference to have lunch at Legal Seafood. Our view of Boston harbor on that warm October day seemed to frame our shared passion for helping making nutrition counseling kinder. We talked...Read More

Many people are unaware of all the decisions in making a food choice. I created the “Nice Pants” activity, from Core Concepts of Mindful Eating to help clients understand food, eating, and choices aren’t really simple.  Many clients are unaware of the endless number of decisions they make when eating. When I ask people if...Read More

Mindful Eating provides a professional with a unique set of tools. These are not the tools of knowledge, facts, or data, but the information from our direct experience. This embodied experience is powerful to introduce in a counseling session. One of my most beloved counseling tools is asking a client about his/her/their experience and to...Read More