Nutrition Counseling Therapy in Denver

Rethinking Nutrition Counseling

Traditional nutrition counseling often focuses on rules, restrictions, and "fixing" your eating habits. My approach is different - I provide nutrition counseling that:

• Rejects diet culture and weight-focused approaches

• Honors your body's natural hunger and fullness cues

• Addresses the emotional and psychological aspects of eating

• Integrates mental health support with nutrition guidance

• Recognizes how trauma, stress, and life circumstances affect eating

• Supports eating disorder recovery and disordered eating healing

You deserve nutrition support that treats you as a whole person, not just a collection of eating behaviors to fix.

Who Benefits from This Approach to Nutrition Counseling

Eating Disorder Recovery: If you're recovering from anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, or other eating disorders, traditional nutrition advice can be triggering. My approach supports recovery by helping you rebuild trust with food and your body. Learn more about eating disorder therapy.

Disordered Eating Patterns: Many people don't meet criteria for an eating disorder but still struggle with food obsession, emotional eating, or restrictive patterns that nutrition counseling can help address.

Diet Culture Recovery: If you're tired of the cycle of dieting, restriction, and guilt around food, nutrition counseling can help you break free from diet mentality and find food freedom.

Chronic Dieting Aftermath: Years of dieting can disconnect you from your body's natural signals. We'll work to repair this relationship and restore intuitive eating abilities.

Emotional Eating Support: Learning to understand and address the emotional triggers behind your eating patterns without judgment or shame.

Body Image Integration: Developing nutrition habits that support both your physical health and your relationship with your body.

My Liberation-Focused Approach to Nutrition

Anti-Diet Philosophy: We'll challenge diet culture messages and help you develop eating patterns based on internal cues rather than external rules.

Trauma-Informed Nutrition: Understanding how trauma, stress, and adverse experiences affect eating behaviors and body relationship.

Intuitive Eating Principles: Learning to trust your body's wisdom about hunger, fullness, cravings, and satisfaction without moral judgments about food choices.

Health at Every Size (HAES): Working from the understanding that health exists at all body sizes and focusing on behaviors rather than weight outcomes.

Cultural and Social Context: Examining how your cultural background, family food patterns, and social experiences have shaped your relationship with eating.

What Nutrition Counseling Includes

Food Relationship Assessment: Understanding your current patterns, triggers, and beliefs about food and eating without judgment.

Intuitive Eating Guidance: Learning the principles of intuitive eating and how to apply them in your daily life.

Emotional Eating Exploration: Identifying and addressing the emotions, situations, and needs that drive eating behaviors.

Body Signal Recognition: Reconnecting with hunger, fullness, satisfaction, and craving signals that may have been disrupted by dieting.

Practical Meal Support: Developing flexible eating patterns that work with your lifestyle, preferences, and body's needs.

Trigger Food Work: Healing your relationship with foods you've labeled as "bad" or "forbidden."

Family and Social Eating: Navigating food situations with family, friends, and social events without anxiety or restriction.

Nutrition Counseling and Mental Health Integration

As a therapist, I understand how deeply connected eating behaviors are to mental health:

Anxiety and Food: Addressing how anxiety manifests in eating behaviors and using nutrition support as part of overall anxiety management. Learn more about anxiety therapy.

Depression and Appetite: Understanding how depression affects eating patterns and supporting consistent nourishment during difficult periods. Learn more about depression therapy.

Trauma and Eating: Processing how traumatic experiences impact your relationship with food and body, often requiring approaches like EMDR therapy.

Perfectionism and Food Rules: Challenging perfectionist tendencies that create rigid eating patterns and food anxiety.

Therapeutic Approaches I Use

Intuitive Eating Counseling: Systematic approach to rebuilding your natural eating instincts and rejecting diet mentality.

Mindful Eating Practices: Developing present-moment awareness during eating experiences without judgment.

Internal Family Systems (IFS): Understanding the different parts of yourself that have relationships with food - the critic, the rebel, the caretaker.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Identifying and changing thought patterns that create food anxiety and eating difficulties.

Somatic Approaches: Reconnecting with your body's physical signals around hunger, fullness, and satisfaction.

Trauma-Informed Care: Addressing how past experiences with food, body, or eating have created current patterns.

What Nutrition Counseling Recovery Looks Like

Recovery isn't about perfect eating - it's about developing a peaceful, flexible relationship with food:

Food Freedom: Eating without constant mental chatter about whether foods are "good" or "bad."

Body Trust: Believing that your body knows what it needs and trusting its hunger and fullness signals.

Emotional Regulation: Having multiple ways to cope with difficult emotions beyond food restriction or overeating.

Social Comfort: Enjoying meals with others without anxiety about food choices or body image concerns.

Flexible Eating: Being able to eat consistently and adequately regardless of stress, schedule changes, or emotional states.

Reduced Food Obsession: Spending less mental energy thinking about food, calories, or eating "perfectly."

Nutrition Counseling vs. Traditional Dietetics

Traditional Approach:

• Focus on weight loss or body change

• External rules about "good" and "bad" foods

• Calorie counting and portion control

• One-size-fits-all meal plans

My Approach:

• Focus on relationship with food and overall wellbeing

• Internal wisdom and body cues guide eating

• All foods can fit into a healthy relationship with eating

• Individualized support based on your unique needs and experiences

Who This Approach Is NOT For

Weight Loss Focus: If your primary goal is weight loss, this approach may not align with your expectations. I work from a weight-neutral perspective focused on overall wellbeing.

Quick Fixes: If you're looking for meal plans, food rules, or rapid changes, traditional dietetic services might be a better fit.

Active Eating Disorder: If you're currently in acute stages of an eating disorder, you may need medical nutrition therapy from a registered dietitian alongside mental health support.

Ready to Transform Your Relationship with Food?

Nutrition counseling that honors your mental health and rejects diet culture can help you find the food freedom you've been seeking. You deserve to eat without guilt, trust your body's wisdom, and find peace with nourishment.

Your relationship with food can become a source of pleasure and nourishment rather than stress and conflict.

Schedule a consultation to discuss how postpartum therapy can support your healing and recovery.

Related services: Depression Therapy | Anxiety Therapy | Trauma Therapy | Body Image Therapy | EMDR Therapy | Relationship Therapy | Postpartum Therapy | Nutrition Therapy

More about my approach: My therapeutic philosophy