Obrien Rhonda MS Rd Cde

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I pursued the field of nutrition in college because I wanted to make a difference in people's lives - to help people improve their health and longevity, and have a better quality of life. I've stayed in this field because it's tremendously rewarding to work with individuals who are motivated to change - whether it's eating healthier to prevent a heart attack, making food changes to reach optimal blood sugar levels, or stopping the destructive yo-yo diet cycle and making peace with food.

Healthy eating is so much more than knowing "what to eat". It's also having a healthy relationship with food. Restrictive diets are not healthy, and can actually worsen your health. Losing and then regaining weight over and over has been shown to contribute to several chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. 95-98% of dieters who lose weight will regain that lost weight plus additional weight within 5 years.

Dieting teaches you how not to eat, and to ignore your bodys built-in gauge of when and how much to eat - hunger and fullness. Diets also teach you to be afraid of certain foods. Have you every heard an adult say something like Ive been naughty (referring to the doughnut or ice cream they just ate)? This way of thinking promotes a dysfunctional relationship with food, which in turn creates a vicious yo-yo cycle of restriction followed by binge eating. The experience of several "failed" diet attempts causes guilt and wears at your self esteem, creating a love/hate relationship with food and your body.

Why, if dieting is so ineffective and detrimental, do Americans continue to try diet after diet? Dieting has become the norm in our culture. Its a terribly dysfunctional way to interact with food, yet everybody does it. You can bet that every January 1, you will hear people talking about the plan or latest diet they are starting. And with the media constantly reminding us that we are in the middle of an obesity epidemic, the guilt, shame and desperation increase until we decide to try the next great thing that comes along - hoping that this is the one. If guilt and shame were effective motivators for weight loss, wed all be thin.

I use an approach called Health at Every Size (HAES). You can read more about this approach in the HAES section of my website. In a nutshell, this approach encourages you to work on optimizing your health through healthy / supportive eating, a healthy relationship with food, controlling stress, and enjoyable physical activity. Success is not based on weight loss, but instead by measures of metabolic fitness such as blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, and resting heart rate, in addition to energy, stress level and general sense of well being. Weight may or may not change, however with healthier eating habits and consistent physical activity, health will improve. In addition to helping you make healthy, livable changes to what you eat, I will also help you transform your relationship with food and get off the diet roller coaster.

When I'm not working, I enjoy scrap booking, gardening, yoga, doing outdoor activities such as camping and backpacking in the summer, and snowshoeing and cross country skiing in the winter, and relaxing with a good book, preferably on a warm, sandy beach.