Weight Neutral Vs. Weight Centric Healthcare; Two Dietitians, Two Approaches, with Dietitian Casey Lewandowski

Nutrition Unmeasured

TRIGGER WARNING: This episode contains a lot of diet and body composition talk. If this is at all triggering for you, please take care of yourself and go to another episode.

From Johns Hopkins University, Weight-centric thinking is the conventional–and arguably outdated–approach to health that suggests weight and weight management (primarily weight loss) are the primary determinants of health.

Today I have a civil debate about weight neutral vs. weight centric care. Honestly, this could have been more in depth, but I felt an hour was long enough, for now. My good friend and dietitian, Casey Lewandowski, is a wonderful dietitian who uses an approach not too dissimilar to mine. She meets people where they are at and she helps them change their health behaviors in a sustainable way. The difference? She and her clients often use weight and other body composition measurements as a measure of success. As a weight neutral RD, I do not, and never will use weight or body composition as a measure of success, EVEN IF research suggests a correlation between certain body fat percentages and health. Why? I feel like the stress of keeping weight off outweighs the affect that weight “may have”. In order to keep weight off for good, you have to follow certain rules and restrict certain foods, and live a certain lifestyle, forever. Not just temporarily, but forever (near impossible, and often leads to guilt when you can’t stick to it). I often find even after weight loss, people are still not happy.

What are we doing to ourselves? Join me as Casey and I dive into our own methods of helping clients. In the end, we both agree to disagree. Guess what? That’s ok. YOU can decide what YOU want to do and what method YOU want to use in your personal life or your dietetics practice. There are no rules. Take a listen.

Show Notes

Work with me using your insurance by emailing [e-mail]

My Website (one-on-one Intuitive Eating coaching)

If you’re interested in Casey’s approach, check here out here

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