All-Inclusive Nutrition for Lasting Recovery
The Nutritional Dimension of Alsana's Adaptive Care Model® helps clients restore the balance between pleasure and nourishment.
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Nutritional healing
The Nutritional Dimension of Alsana’s Adaptive Care Model® balances nourishment and pleasure on a physical and emotional level to develop a positive and nurturing relationship with both food and body. ...
With guidance and exposure to flexible food choices and real-life eating experiences, you will restore your confidence in eating to support a well-lived life and learn to enjoy the meal experience as more than just food itself.
With our “All-Inclusive Nutrition” approach, we believe in flexibility and enjoyment of foods without shame or judgment. Alsana’s All-Inclusive Nutrition approach embraces the usefulness of all foods including those foods that are compact, innovative, and nutrient-rich to aid in the restoration and healing of the brain, body, and gut microbiome. This approach broadens nutrition healing for our clients from all cultural and diverse backgrounds. Our goal is to create food neutrality by taking out the moral judgment of food and focusing on nourishment, flexibility, and pleasure in the nutritional healing process.
As in all aspects of our philosophy, we believe in healing that reflects your unique life story and adapting your meal plan to embrace your own personal journey to recovery. Our registered dietitians and culinary team will work with you to establish nourishing eating patterns and restore a trusting relationship between your food and your body within a compassionate, supportive, and safe environment.
The Alsana® distinction
Alsana’s All-Inclusive Nutrition program integrates the balance of nourishment and pleasure within real-world scenarios without using measuring tools or exchanges. Understanding that an eating disorder thrives on rigidity and judgment, ...
Alsana is committed to helping you change patterns that can hinder your full recovery by introducing a new way of thinking about food and meal planning from your first day of admission to the day you step back into your new life of recovery outside of Alsana.
Read more Read less ...Using fuel groups and simple real-life visual guidelines, your new relationship with food embraces flexibility, balance, and curiosity and reflects a relationship with food that can easily and immediately transition with you when you are back home and living life within your own community.
Read more Read lessWhat to expect
At Alsana, nutritional care is completely integrated into the other dimensions of the Adaptive Care Model®, with a progressive movement toward client autonomy. Your dietitian works closely with your entire clinical treatment team to develop nutritional experientials designed just for you ...
– experientials are meant to gradually create a food-neutral and balanced perspective of food as both nourishment and pleasure. Often, these challenges come in the form of different exposures, which may include activities such as:
- Eating with peers on the Alsana grounds
- Eating independently Read more Read less ...
Going on a group outing to a local restaurant (currently limited due to COVID)
- Restaurant experiential at which a restaurant meal is delivered on-site
- Grocery shopping
- Individual and group cooking sessions
- Meal planning
- Portioning and plating practice
- Kitchen life-skills interactions
Through these activities, along with ongoing support and education, Alsana’s nutritional care heals the body, as anxiety often triggered by food choices is reduced and shame around eating and body changes is eliminated. Your dietitian partners with you to create nourishing and sustainable eating patterns that begin restoring your confidence in eating and renewing a trusting relationship between your food and body within a compassionate, supportive and safe healing environment. Read more Read less
Learn more on our blog:
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The Adaptive Care Model Nutrition Component
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Treating Vegan Clients Through Medical & Nutritional Collaboration
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Handling Food Challenges Over the Holidays
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Eating Disorder Treatment and Food Exposures at Terra in Westlake
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End Weight Hate: Weight Stigma Awareness Week
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Intermittent Fasting resembles eating disorder behavior
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Alsana’s Response to Diet Culture and Weight Stigma
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Eating Disorder Recovery & Bringing Vegans Into the Fold
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Allergy or Rigidity? Getting Honest About Diet Restrictions
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Assessing Vegan Clients and Building Recovery Meal Plans
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Prioritizing Your Eating Disorder Recovery: 5 Tips from a Dietitian
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Serving the Vegan Population with Holistic Eating Disorder Treatment
Nourishment for a sustainable recovery
Explore the work of Alsana's Nutrition dimension.
Honoring Science
Consistent, balanced, and flexible nutrition is the foundation for healing. The Alsana dietitian works closely with the culinary team to craft meals and snacks that provide all the nutrients needed to ensure that recovery progresses safely and effectively.
Your dietitian uses the most current medical evidence and research to support and guide your nourishment plan, altering and customizing as needed based on your body’s response. Consistent nourishment designed and adjusted for you will heal your brain and body so that the critical work of the other components of the Alsana Adaptive Care Model can occur.
Removing Judgment
All foods have a place in recovery, including nutrient-rich foods and trendy foods. We take judgment and shame out of eating, helping our clients take an all-inclusive approach to the nourishment and pleasure of food.
We do not discuss food in terms of calories, measurements, or exchanges, but embrace the concept of nourishing energy and protein through fuel group combinations to plan both meals and snacks. Our goal is to eliminate anxiety, reduce rigidity, and introduce a flexible approach to nourishment, as all food and culinary experiences promote healing, joy and deeper meaning.
Providing Extra Care
In addition to weekly assessments, experiential and educational groups, and kitchen life skill interactions, each client participates in individual nutrition sessions for one-on-one guidance and care during residential programming.
Our weekly nutrition psychoeducation groups and eating disorder process groups are co-led by a therapist and a dietitian, a unique part of our programming that is exclusive to Alsana that reflects the collaboration of mind and body in the healing process. Alsana nutrition groups are known for real-life creative analogies that help translate science into a clear understanding of how food works to heal instead of hurt.
Adaptive Care
Model®
The Adaptive Care Model reflects our holistic, integrative approach to eating disorder treatment. Our multi-disciplinary teams support clients in their recovery by empowering them to heal through medical, therapeutic, nutrition, movement, and relational practices.
Medical Treatment
We heal bodies and minds.
Nutrition
We believe in and practice all-inclusive nutrition.
Movement
We support movement for every body.
Therapeutic
We cultivate compassion.
Relational
We are accepting of all lived experiences.
Start the road to recovery with Alsana.
