Author Archives: Sara Rima, RDN

This wasn’t a scheduled blog post on my calendar. In fact it was just the text on an inspirational infographic that I was going to post. As I began writing out the caption I realized that I’m advertising as a “weight loss expert.” See, I have debated whether I should call myself a “weight loss expert” or not. This label says that weight loss is my desired outcome for my clients. I think this tagline actually has the potential to make people think that “Weight DOES determine value.” I wanted to make it very clear to my clients and followers why I decided to carry this label if I truly believe that weight is NOT a determinant of value. So if I don’t believe that weight is a marker of worth why did I become a “weight loss expert?”

When you are a virtual nutrition coach, it’s essential that your Instagram is attracting your “ideal client.” The first thing a new client or follower will see is my tagline or bio. I have a second of their attention span to spark their interest. No, weight loss is not my desired outcome FOR my ideal client but weight loss is the desired outcome OF my ideal client. I want to work with women who are seeking weight loss because I want to be the voice of encouragement and truth that is telling them how worthy and valuable they are while they work to achieve their goal. I want to be able to offer them support and resources that stop the negative cycle of self-loathing and instead kickstart the cycle of sustainable healthy habits. My heart for my clients is that they would live a life of freedom; freedom from guilt, shame and distorted body image.

Weight loss will be an outcome of my nutrition plans and coaching packages because of the nature of my services. But just because weight loss is a product doesn’t mean it’s the purpose. True empowerment doesn’t come from changing something you dislike about yourself. Empowerment comes from appreciating and loving the body that God gave you and having the strength and the discipline to give it what it needs. Culture will define beauty and health as perfection. Social media posts, magazine covers, and television may not explicitly tell you that beauty = perfection but the content that they feed you portrays an unrealistic expectation. Don’t even get my started on the message behind fad diets!

My intention for my coaching packages and nutrition plans are to first help you understand that you are valuable right now before the successes and failures. In fact, your value will be EXACTLY the same after those successes and failures. How do I do this? I take the power away from the culture of perfection and I put it back into my client’s hands. Step one, of my 5-step plan, begins with YOU defining what health is. I provide you with a handful of questions that help you to determine your own definition of health. This definition then becomes the standard. We then assess and evaluate your current and future health on this standard that you have defined. Empowered women don’t allow themselves to be compared to a standard created by someone else. Empowered women set the standard.

The second step of my nutrition plan includes assessing both the strengths and weaknesses of your current health and/or lifestyle. Step three you will set goals that will help to redirect your habits to help you meet the new expectations that you have set. This change doesn’t come overnight. In fact, I ask that only one to three goals be set at a time. The beauty is in the process and the change is in the everyday. Step four of the coaching packing is planning. I provide resources and tools to help you make a plan that leads to success. During this stage we create realistic plans that fit into your everyday life. Step five is the Evaluation step. We use this same definition that you created at the beginning of the 5-step plan to evaluate your progress. This step is crucial because we begin to uncover any unrealistic expectations we set for ourselves and expose lies or and negative self-talk that you experienced throughout the weeks of the program.

The second step of my nutrition plan includes assessing both the strengths and weaknesses of your current health and/or lifestyle. Step three you will set goals that will help to redirect your habits to help you meet the new expectations that you have set. This change doesn’t come overnight. In fact, I ask that only one to three goals be set at a time. The beauty is in the process and the change is in the everyday. Step four of the coaching packing is planning. I provide resources and tools to help you make a plan that leads to success. During this stage we create realistic plans that fit into your everyday life. Step five is the Evaluation step. We use this same definition that you created at the beginning of the 5-step plan to evaluate your progress. This step is crucial because we begin to uncover any unrealistic expectations we set for ourselves and expose lies or and negative self-talk that you experienced throughout the weeks of the program.

Labeling myself as a weight loss expert is a very tricky move on my part. My goal is to help you achieve your own goals, even if weight loss is one of them. But my purpose is to teach you to value yourself for who you are no matter the number of the scale….by the way we won’t be weighing ourselves during the program, sorry. Be sure to click “contact” above if you have questions about the program and packages. And remember, “Your weight DOES NOT determine your value.”

Carbs vs weight loss…the classic debate. I continually find myself advocating for people to keep carbohydrates in their diet. The rapid weight loss that people experience with eliminating carb-rich foods often prevents them from believing the experts. So if people are seeing results with cutting out carbs, why do I encourage carbohydrate intake? (1) Eliminating whole food groups feeds into diet culture and (2) carbohydrates are essential to a healthy lifestyle.

When we feed into a culture that encourages cutting out whole food groups then we continue this cycle of unsuccessful dieting. When people create a lifestyle of “yo-yo dieting” or weight cycling they are reducing the efficiency of their metabolism and making it harder on their body to maintain a healthy weight. When you become a cyclic dieter you are actually doing your metabolism more harm than good. When your weight fluctuates drastically eventually your body’s metabolism stops allowing you to lose weight at a desired pace.

I don’t center my client’s success around weight loss but I also know that many people associated “health” with weight. Diet culture promotes the false-assumption that if someone is thin then they are “healthy.” Which is why so many buy into the carb-free trend. In the following paragraphs I hope to demonstrate not only why carbohydrates are essential to your diet but why this assumption is dangerous and inaccurate.

There is a variety of science-based evidence that demonstrates the vital role of carbohydrates in the diet. Carbohydrates are essential to energy production, they provide insoluble and soluble fiber, and can aid in weight loss and weight maintenance. Due to the lack of accurate information in our society I meet one too many people that are willing to put their health at risk to lose a few pounds.

Let me break down a few of the functions that I listed above. Our brain runs on glucose, which if you recall my last post, is the energy source that our cells need. Have you ever been so hungry that you aren’t able to think straight?? That’s because your brain didn’t have enough carbohydrates to allow your cells to complete metabolism. Metabolism is the system that our cells uses to create energy for our body to function. Glucose is the star of this show which means our body doesn’t do what it needs to do if we don’t have carbohydrates.

The fiber that carbohydrates provides goes beyond our gut health. We often know fiber as the source of a healthy bowel but what you might not know is that fiber is essential to reducing cholesterol in the blood. Fiber does this incredible thing…it grabs the cholesterol in our gut and allows our body to excrete it rather than absorb it into our blood. Do you know where fiber comes from?? CARBOHYDRATES. So to all my high-cholesterol friends trying to lower your cholesterol with the keto diet. That might not be the best idea.

Now I’m not ignorant to the fact that our society functions on energy dense foods with minimal nutrient content (i.e. “junk food.”) I am also not unaware that many of these foods fall into the carbohydrate category. Although I am not an advocate for eliminating carbs from the diet, I am a proponent of including nutrient-dense carbohydrates into your diet. When deciding on what type of carbohydrates to include in your diet choose minimally processed items. Fruits and vegetables are a great example of an unprocessed or minimally processed carbohydrates. These should be the foundation of our diets. They provide vitamins and minerals, fiber and antioxidants. Whether they are raw, cooked, canned, frozen, or juiced they should be the bulk of what we are eating.

Another type of carbohydrate that is minimally processed are whole grains like brown rice, 100% whole wheat bread, quinoa, barley, oats, etc. The last type of carb in this family are your processed grains and flours. These should be consumed in moderation. They include sweet treats such as cake, cookies, and brownies. As well as processed white bread and white rice.

I encourage you to fill half of your plate with fruits and vegetables, a quarter of your plate with whole grains and include the processed carbohydrates in moderation. If you only take away one statement from this article let it be this; All types of carbs can be part of a healthy diet and all food is good food.

Interested in Nutrition Coaching?

Carbs have been portrayed as the enemy to weight loss in recent years. Many think that their presence in a diet will wreak havoc on their weight goals. I have great news for my bread loving people! Carbs are friends and food!  I invite you to take a moment to allow me to educate you on what carbohydrates are, what foods fall into this category, and how they can actually be part of a healthy balanced diet. Remember nutrition is a science, so get ready for a small science lesson! As we talk about the different types of carbohydrates remember that the main function of any sugar/carb is to provide the body with energy. I will use the words, sugar and carb interchangeably because sugar is a type of carbohydrate and both provide energy for your body’s cells. You will also see that I use the word Glucose which is the type of sugar in our blood and is the main source of energy for our brain. 

To begin, let’s define carbohydrates.  A carbohydrate is a group of foods that are made up of different types of sugars; such as glucose, fructose, galactose, and more. There are different types of carbohydrates that perform different functions. When we think of carbohydrates we often think of bread, rice, cake, cookies, and potatoes. But what if I told you the carbohydrate category actually holds fruits, vegetables, sugary treats, and grains? This often comes as a surprise to many of my clients. Fruits and vegetables have carbohydrates just like grains and sugary treats do. Before you start throwing out ALL fruits and vegetables from your diet let’s talk about the difference between these types of carbohydrates and how they affect the body. The two most common types are Simple Sugars and Complex Carbs.

Simple Sugars provide quick energy for the body. Don’t let the name “Simple Sugars” send you into a frenzy. The title does not take away the value and nutrient content of these foods. Simple Sugars are made up of monosaccharides and disaccharides, which is just a fancy way of saying that your food has one type of sugar or two types of sugar.  Foods that might fall into this category are fruits, vegetables, white rice, and foods with processed white flour such as cake and cookies. It’s important to note that just because fruits and vegetables are in the same category as historically “unhealthy foods” does not mean that they themselves are unhealthy. It simply means that healthy or not, foods with these types of sugar will be processed very quickly. If a food is processed quickly then the body can use that sugar for energy much quicker. Simple Sugars are essential to exercises that require a quick release of energy, such as sprinting. 

Complex Carbohydrates are polysaccharides which are made up of a lot of different types of sugar. They differ from Simple Sugars because they take longer to break down and digest because they have more to breakdown. For example, the primary sugar in fruit is fructose which means the body only has to breakdown fructose. This causes energy to be released quicker to the body. A Complex Carbohydrate like brown rice is made of three different types of sugar (glucose, maltotriose, and maltose) which means it will take longer for the body to breakdown this complex food. This type of food will provide slow energy release. Complex Carbs are great for long distance or endurance exercises that require long lasting energy.

Though the body processes these carbohydrates at a different speed, it does not affect weight in the way we often assume. When it comes to weight loss the biggest impactor is actually calories, not carbs. Calories are the energy that is provided through food. Our body uses energy for a variety of different reasons. We need energy for our heart to beat, lungs to breathe, and cells to perform. If you’re exercising, taking a test, or just walking to your car, your body will require energy. Calories provide this energy through protein, carbohydrates, and fat.  Weight loss is simply an energy deficit. When we eat, our body processes our food and creates the energy that we need.  When we don’t use up the energy that we consume by walking to the car, exercising, or performing basic functions then it is stored on our body as fat to prepare ourselves for times of energy deficit. Now the best way to lose weight isn’t to cut specific food groups out, it’s to limit our calorie intake. 

Vegetables contain the same type of carbohydrates that a piece of cake does. This may come as a surprise since we have demonized sweet treats as a society. The difference between the cake and that vegetable, when it comes to weight management, is not their carbohydrate content but their calorie content. It’s simple, vegetables are only made up of vegetable. Nothing has been added to it. Where a cake is the product of many ingredients that are providing calories; such as the eggs, oil, flour, and sugar. Now if we were to take sugar from the cake and the same amount of sugar from our vegetable they would actually equal the same amount of calories. Because sugar is sugar to the body. The reason that you see drastic weight loss in diets like paleo and keto, isn’t because of the types of foods that they are cutting out, it’s because they are simply lowering their calories by eliminating these foods.

It’s important to understand that carbs are not the enemy of weight loss, and neither are calories. All food can be part of a healthy balanced diet that allows you to lose or maintain weight. When it comes to nutrition the best rule of thumb is moderation. When we learn to incorporate all types of food into our diets in a healthy and balanced way, then we create a sustainable lifestyle.

 Cutting out certain macronutrients can actually be more harmful than helpful. There is a variety of science-based evidence that demonstrates the vital role of carbohydrates in the diet. Carbohydrates are essential to energy production, provide insoluble and soluble fiber, and can aid in weight loss and weight maintenance.

Interested in Nutrition Coaching?