Weight Inclusive Prenatal Nutrition Counseling
It’s common in conventional prenatal care for pregnant women to feel shamed for body changes that are almost always out of their control. This is a problem. Not only are prenatal weight gain recommendations flawed due to their reliance on BMI (a poor indicator of individual health), over-emphasis of prenatal weight changes is linked with worse mental and physical health outcomes for mom and baby.
At Nurtured & Well, you will receive nutrition guidance that is rooted in the health of your body. Not the size of your body.
Non-Diet Gestational Diabetes Management
As with weight stigma in pregnancy care, many moms who are diagnosed with gestational diabetes (GD or GDM) during pregnancy experience shame and feel at fault for their condition. Traditional approaches to GDM management can feel incredibly restrictive. This is particularly true for any pregnant moms who have struggled with their relationship to food in the past (MOST women!).
At Nurtured & Well, we will approach GD nutrition with gentleness, compassion, and flexibility. You can manage your blood sugar AND still feel at peace with food. But you need a provider (hi!) who will prioritize this.
Intuitive Eating During Pregnancy
Pregnancy can be an incredible opportunity to listen to your body and learn how to care for it. Unfortunately, many pregnant people struggle to trust their changing bodies. Diet culture has a way of interfering with your ability to honor your body’s needs during pregnancy. This can look like:
- misguided diet advice from medical providers
- social media influencers getting in your head
- fear of gaining too much weight
- a history of chronic dieting
- fear of harming your health or your baby’s health
Intuitive Eating is a non-diet approach to nutrition that has been shown to improve pregnancy outcomes. Intuitive eating can help you compassionately manage food aversions, nausea, cravings, food fears, and heal disordered behaviors.
Gentle Nutrition is a core component of Intuitive Eating where we can focus on specific diet choices that can support your individual pregnancy without restriction or feeling deprived.
Eating Disorder Recovery During Pregnancy
Eating disorders don’t disappear during pregnancy. If you have struggled with an eating disorder in the past or are currently in active recovery, Nurtured & Well can help. I specialize in supporting pregnant people who struggle with:
- Anorexia or restrictive eating
- Bulimia or purging behaviors
- Binge eating
- Orthorexia or obsession with “healthy/clean” eating
- Avoidant-Restrictive Food and Intake Disorder (ARFID) or very selective eating
- Poor body image and disordered eating
Note: Due to the nature of outpatient nutrition counseling, I require that clients in eating disorder recovery also be working with a mental health therapist and feel capable of achieving goals between sessions. If more support than this is needed, I will help you find appropriate care that better matches your needs.
