Your journey begins before we even have our first session. In addition to completing a comprehensive intake questionnaire about your nutrition and health history, you’ll also do a baseline assessment of where you are at as an intuitive (or perhaps not-so-intuitive) eater, including a look at your food rules…and your family’s attitudes about food and body when you were growing up.

As we begin our work together, we’ll start with some unlearning. Specifically, you”ll start the process of untangling yourself from our culture’s diet mentality, hitting pause on any assumptions about the connection between health and body weight, and challenging society’s constant messages that health is all about “personal responsibility.”

One tenant of mindfulness is non-judgmental awareness, and you’ll learn how cultivating that trait is important for both mind and body. Mindfulness is also one of the three elements of self-compassion (the other two are self-kindness and common humanity), and you’ll learn how that will help be happier—and even healthier—than the elements that are the opposite of self-compassion (self-judgment, isolation and over-identification). We’ll also discuss how to create mindfulness and self-compassion practices, which might include meditation (although they don’t have to).

Why do we sometimes eat when we’re not hungry…and is that necessarily a problem? We’ll cover when emotional eating might serve a purpose vs. when it’s simply working against your health and well-being. Your body has a lot of wisdom…if only you would listen to it! In this module we’ll discuss how to start building body trust, and you’ll learn about your untapped (or maybe just undertapped) superpower: interoceptive awareness. Together, these two elements help you hear and heed what your body is telling you.

Self-care isn’t all chocolate cake and bubble baths. Self-care, when it’s really meaningful, can sometimes feel hard, oddly, but it’s worth it. We’ll look at what you need in your life to thrive, not just survive. And, because years of following diet rules can make you doubt your intentions at times (“Do I want that broccoli because ‘diet mind’ says I should, or because I want it ‘intuitively’?”), will look at the difference between making decisions from a place of self-care vs. self-control. We’ll also explore what it means to “regulate” your nervous system.

How do you know when it’s time to eat…or time to stop eating? We’ll explore why hunger and fullness cues are natural and normal and how to use them to guide your eating without turning them into rigid rules. We’ll also cover why some people have trouble feeling these cues (perhaps due to trauma or simply years of ignoring them), and what to do while you encourage them to reemerge.

Nutrition doesn’t have to be complicated — or rigid — but much of the information out there makes it sound like eating for well-being has to be a full-time job, and if you take a day off then everything’s ruined. In this module, we’ll talk about why there’s no one perfect way to eat and how you can make peace with food while also supporting your health.

Why do so many people think that pleasure = being out of control? In this module, we look at why pleasure is an important part of self-care, in part because it can help you form healthy habits that stick. This includes finding true food satisfaction and exploring what pleasures you may have been giving up in your life because you don’t feel comfortable in your skin.

When things are going well, it’s easy to believe that they will continue going well, effortlessly. But life throws us curveballs, and sometimes you find yourself taking an unexpected detour onto a path you don’t really want to be on. The reality of making changes and forming new habits is that it’s not a simple linear process. There will be at least a few twists and turns and bumps in the road. In this module, we’ll cover how to develop a mindset that helps you get back on track easily, as well as how to tap into sources of internal motivation (including your deepest values) that can help you avoid getting derailed.

Feeling better about your body isn’t just butterflies and rainbows…it’s important for overall wellness. But trying to become “body positive” isn’t always the best goal. You’ll learn other ways of making peace with your body, discovering (or rediscovering) enjoyable ways to move your body, and how to identify the impact of weight stigma (whether internalized, externalized or both) in your life so you can liberate yourself from oppressive standards. As part of this, you’ll learn how to identify if your social media feed is lifting you up or if it’s crushing your spirit, and how to change it up if it’s the latter.

We’ve talked about the “why” of eating…but what about the “what”? In this module, we’ll talk about “gentle nutrition” — a flexible and intuitive approach to eating that can help you enjoy your food and feel your best, rather than feeling like you want to tear your hair out. We’ll also cover how to stand up to the food police (especially the precinct that lives in your own head).

We’ll follow up on the previous self-care module by looking at how, and why, to set boundaries. This is important for protecting yourself against the harms of diet culture, as well as for fostering respectful relationships with yourself and others. You’ll get fresh ideas for dealing with diet talk, how to avoid the pull of old “time to diet” triggers, and how to advocate for yourself with healthcare providers (and others) who have outdated ideas about weight.

In this final module, we’ll look back over the previous six months, assessing what has changed, what still has room for more change, and what logical next steps would be.