No diets. Not ever. Never.
Gray Area Nutrition will not give you a diet. We aren't going to count anything - no macros, no calories, no points. There will be no food rules. Food beliefs will be explored and dismantled. Our work together will be to find freedom and peace surrounding food choices. You won't hear us talking about eliminating a food or food group. You won't hear us talking about food being healthy/unhealthy or good/bad. More often than not, we are working to add food back into your day. You will learn how to find your internal compass when it comes to taste preference, hunger, fullness.
We will not toe the line
There are providers who prescribe Intuitive Eating and/or HAES approach to some clients, but diets to others. There are providers who say they work with people who have eating disorders while also prescribing weight loss meal plans. We are not those providers. We won’t compromise our values from client-to-client. When you come to us, you can trust that we will be treating you and all of our clients with the same set of ideals. We are weight inclusive, anti-diet and aligned with HAES principles. We work with all people over age 12.
The 'why' of eating
We will not only explore what is happening with food in your life, we will also explore the why. Why are you eating the way you are eating? Why are your behaviors part of your life? You developed disordered eating or eating disorder behaviors not to be malicious towards yourself. More often than not, behaviors started as a coping mechanism to help you get through a time in your life. The behaviors where helpful...till they weren't. Knowing the why will help us on our path towards your eating recovery. Your “why” may be have started because of any of the below reasons or any reasons not listed:
- Emotional reasons including depression, anxiety, stress, etc....
- Body image
- Society’s pressure for bodies to look a certain way
- Physical reasons, such as hunger and fullness
- Diet culture
- Trauma
- Biology/Genetics
At Gray Area Nutrition, we firmly believe that we cannot merely work on actions around food, but also the reasons why food and eating behaviors helped you during difficult times. The combination of this work and working with a therapist will help us to find a path towards food freedom.
Intuitive Eating
We work with clients from an Intuitive Eating approach. You were born to eat. You were born knowing what, when, why and how much to eat. Somewhere along the way well intentioned people corrupted that instinct in your body. We will work with you to find your intuition with food again.
Health At Every Size
We believe all bodies can be healthy at every size. We know that the world pathologizes fat bodies and idealizes thin bodies. We, at Gray Area Nutrition believe all bodies deserve respect, that people are people and we need to learn about their behaviors, not just make assumptions.
Meal Plan
Do those two words make your heart sing or fill your stomach with lead? Depending on your definition; it could go either way. In my eyes a meal plan is this: a plan for your meals, a vague idea about what you will eat for the week and it helps to define your grocery list. A meal plan is not a hard and fast, rule bound contract that you must follow. A meal plan in my eyes is not a set number of calories or exchanges.
A meal plan is something that YOU will be doing most of the work to create. Only you know what your taste preferences are. Only you know what your trauma foods are. Only you know what your eating disorder rules are. With our guidance, you will slowly be coming up with a plan for meals and snacks that makes sense to you, your work schedule, your family life, your recovery. We have been in this world long enough to know that when we make the meal plan, it is rarely followed. It feels like the step-brother of a diet. It can feel very shame based if you don't follow it during the week. It is setting you up, and we don't want any part of setting you up for a failure.
***Now if you have been in treatment or you need weight restoration, this is a whole other story, you might need to be more 'rigid' with eating in the beginning of our work together.
What happens in a session?
Our first few sessions is all about us getting to know each other. We want to learn about who you are--what your home life is like, what you like and dislike, what brings you to us, and so on. We'll be listening, connecting and learning about you.
You might not walk away with actionable steps after this first session, that is by design. The purpose of our first meeting is for you to get to know us. It is a time for you to determine if we have what you want. If our ideas, thoughts, concepts about food, diets and weight is something you want to learn more about.
Post-Eating Disorder Treatment Care
One of the most important actions you can take after you leave treatment for an eating disorder is to set yourself up for success. This includes finding a Certified Eating Disorder Registered Dietitian (CEDRD)* to support your continued recovery. Sarah Gleason offers a comfortable and safe place to maintain your meal plan. If you come to us with a meal plan from a treatment facility, our work will start by following that meal plan. Eventually, our work will transition towards a less rigid plan, with the ultimate goal of working on Intuitive Eating. We will be in touch with the dietitian you had in treatment, if you allow me to talk with them.
A note about the CEDRD credential: Not every dietitian has this credential, there could a few reasons for this. If an RD does not have the CEDRD behind her name it doesn't automatically mean she should be crossed off the list of possible RDs you are working with. There are SO many qualified RDs who should be in the running for a possible team member. Some things to ask her to make sure she is the right fit for you:
1. What extra education (official or unofficial) are you taking part of to learn more about ED nutrition recovery?
2. Have you attended or do you plan to attend ED specific conferences in the next year?
3. Are you getting supervision from a qualified CEDRD?
Off Site Sessions: Grocery Store Tours & Restaurant Outing
These services are on hold indefinitely.
So much work can be done by talking through eating problems in meetings. But, at some point, you will want to put your new tools to the tests. If you are struggling with stressful food shopping or restaurant outings, the off-site sessions with Sarah might be what you need.
Grocery store tours
Shopping for food can feel overwhelming when you are recovering from disordered eating. Both Sarah and Alyssa offer grocery store tours aimed at helping our clients feel comfortable walking through the store again.
The week prior to the tour, your session with us will look a little different. We will be preparing a “game plan” for the tour. This is different from client-to-client, because struggling at a grocery store looks different from client-to-client. Some people want to work on making grocery store trips shorter, others want to work on not checking food labels, and still others have unique struggles that they want to work on.
The day of the tour, we will meet at the store and have a quick mental and emotional check-in. Once we go inside, the experience begins. Your dietitian will be with you, walking you through what a “normal” grocery store experience would be like. Afterwards, we debrief any feelings or thoughts that arose.
The goal of this process is to find peace around a common life experience: buying groceries.
Restaurant outings
Struggling with an eating disorder or disordered eating means that going to restaurants may also be stressful. We offer restaurant outings to give support to clients in real time when at a restaurant.
Restaurant outings involve similar planning to the restaurant tours. The session prior to the outing, we will plan where to go, what you want to work on, and what you want the experience to look and feel like. For example, if you have business lunches often, we might work on eating at a similar style restaurant so that you can build skills for those meetings. Every client's needs are different and we cater to all of those diverse needs.
Similar to the grocery store tour, we will meet briefly before going inside the restaurant to check-in. Throughout the outing, we will be dining in a "regular" fashion to help you become immersed in the experience. Afterwards, we process the experience in a supportive and reflective way. The goal of this exposure is to learn how to begin entering restaurants again without disordered eating behaviors.