Sally grew up in the 1980s, so the obsession with diets impacted her as an impressionable teenager. As a child, she had been obsessed with food, and loved baking, as she enjoyed the results herself and they also pleased her family. She studied food at university and worked as a food taster and then as food teacher. She spent years teaching food, healthy eating, and lifestyle change to children and adults, dishing out advice such as “move more and eat less”, and concentrating on what to eat, but she began to realise it isn’t that simple. As she says, “I resented yo-yo dieting, being a slave to the scales, and the way slimming clubs profit from teaching us to mistrust ourselves.”

Discovering Nutriri’s programme of compassionate self-nurture and the principle of Health At Every Size (HAES®), helped Sally enormously. She trained as a Nutriri facilitator and now practices as a food and wellbeing coach as well as working for the NHS as a health and wellbeing coach.

Sally’s own relationship with food and her body has been transformed. As she says, “I now feel less guilt, shame and judgement, and am more at ease and peaceful. Old habits die hard, but I am definitely on the right road! And now, both in my consultancy work as the Food and Wellbeing Coach and as a facilitator with Nutriri, I’ve been able to help other people to transform their relationships with food and their bodies too.

Furthermore, Sally has felt the benefit in her professional life. As she says: “My training with Nutriri has been an incredible way of enhancing my professional practice. As a health and wellbeing coach, I am much more compassionate and understanding towards all my clients. I’m committed to promoting inclusivity and supporting vulnerable people to access healthcare for the benefit of their mental and physical health. Being non-judgemental to people’s circumstances is key to the empathetic care that individuals deserve.”

Sally’s commitment to working weight neutrally and using weight inclusive language is such that she has already shared the Nutriri message with her NHS colleagues and other health professionals. As she says, “The Nutriri training and workshops also increased my understanding of intuitive and mindful eating, with practical tips and takeaways to enhance our life experience. The training was also lots of fun and delivered in a user-friendly way. Anyone helping people in the community to access healthcare, nutrition and fitness would definitely benefit from Nutriri’s training.”

Lauren had struggled with her relationship with food for most of her adult life. She says she was “trapped in a cycle of very restrictive eating (and inevitable bingeing), coupled with a punishing exercise regime. It made me isolated, stressed, anxious and unhappy, and gave me an overall feeling of great physical, emotional and mental malaise. This miserable preoccupation with food stripped me of my vitality and confidence.”

Initially training with Nutriri as one of our facilitators, Lauren undertook her own personal exploration of how working weight-neutrally can be liberating on an individual level. Lauren says: “It was a total revelation to me that there existed another perspective - that I didn’t have to hate my body and I certainly didn’t have to fear food. This new understanding absolutely changed my life. In the last few years, I’ve unlearned restrictive diet rules alongside practising true, holistic self-care, mindfulness and self-acceptance. I’ve transferred all the energy I used to spend on self-criticism and attempts at self-control, and now use it to fuel self-kindness.

Lauren has an academic interest in nutrition, with a Master’s in Food Innovation and Health, alongside a political understanding of how diet culture oppresses individuals, especially women. The Nutriri training consolidated her understanding of this oppression and enabled her to understand the damaging impact of weight stigma, and how it permeates our society, and our healthcare.

Training with Nutriri has enhanced her professional practice. She recognises that the Nutriri training helps her to promote truly inclusive practice and create a safe, inclusive space for her clients. By developing her understanding of weight neutrality and inclusivity, Lauren says her professional practice has been enhanced by promoting a more holistic, multi-disciplinary and compassionate approach to health. She’s able to support her clients to relate to themselves more compassionately and this has improved their engagement with, and completion of, her programmes of support.

Part of Lauren’s work is empowering people to take more ownership over their health and advocate for themselves within healthcare settings. She’s able to work with people from all walks of life and lived experience to reduce the barriers they experience in accessing healthcare. With a few years of practice under her belt, Lauren has developed an intuitive grasp of what kinds of language will create barriers for her clients, and how simple swaps in vocabulary can help to remove those barriers when clients use negative terms against themselves.

The Nutriri training is founded on the principles of inclusivity and non-judgment. Lauren says she “recommends the Nutriri training to anyone who wants to make their professional practice kinder, more inclusive, and ultimately more successful”.