Non Diet Approach by Aliza Eisenstein

About

Aliza Eisenstein on the Non-Diet Approach Heal Your Relationship with Food Aliza Eisenstein is a nutritionist with over 18 years of experience, licensed in the US and Israel. Eschewing the dieting approach, she offers individual nutrition coaching and workshops for pre-teens, teens, and women with the goal of helping her clients develop a healthier relationship with food and implement sustainable changes. How did you develop your unique approach to nutrition? I kept seeing diets fail, again and again—for myself and many others. People were coming to me for diet guidelines and expecting to solve their weight ‘problem’ once and for all. Although unrealistic, that’s what was expected of me as a nutritionist. I felt stuck. I went to a life coach, and started to see that my own beliefs about food and my relationships with others impacted not only my career, but also my eating habits. Once I was able to differentiate between physical hunger and the emotional sensation of wanting food, I could explore and tend to the emotion rather than silence it with food. I understood that this type of work was key to helping future clients. I trained as a life coach, and ever since, I’ve been offering my clients a much deeper and more effective approach to addressing their eating problems. What’s wrong with dieting? Research shows that if you go on a diet, you are actually more likely to gain weight in the long run. This is because restriction—a basic component of a weight-loss diets—triggers psychological and physiological responses that make most weight-loss diets a setup for certain failure. It’s a vicious cycle where the repeated failure reinforces shame and inadequacy, which set us up for more failure. How is your approach different from that of other nutritionists? Hashem created us with internal cues that let us know when we need fuel and when we’ve had enough. Many of us learn to distrust those cues over time. I teach my clients that they can trust themselves to decide what, wh