Staff Spotlight- Deborah Hinds- Nutritionist

  Staff Spotlight, Blog

Alsana nutritionist, Deborah Hinds, has a wonderful marriage, beautiful children and a rewarding career. She is committed to the recovery process with her clients because she has been there.   In her late teens and early twenties, Deborah was plagued with anorexia, binging, purging and hoarding food.  When Deborah went to treatment her experience was one of medical stabilization, very little therapy, and a lack of compassion and understanding. She left treatment with little insight gained, no sense of what she was eating, and negative body image. Deborah said, “I had no accurate sense of hunger and fullness.” Deborah’s road to recovery lacked the appropriate therapeutic approach to understand and treat what lied beneath the behaviors. This is what Deborah works to understand with her clients;  what no one  initially tried to understand in her.

Deborah has made it her personal mission to make sure that she never allows a client to feel the hopeless despair that she felt.  It is a priority for her to make sure each client knows they have her support and attention.  It is because of her past that she has such empathetic understanding, and a solid foundation to the successful treatment of eating disorder. She meets the clients where they are and supports them through the many stages of treatment with encouragement from  prior experience.

Deborah is a firm believer that recovery is not a pipe dream, but an attainable reality.  She was able to commit to the recovery process and prosper. Deborah will be the first person to not only tell you, but prove to you that it is possible.  The recovery process is a true reality, she experienced it herself, and she is motivated to help guide her clients down the same path.

It was eleven years ago when Deborah came to work at Alsana.  Deborah has been a crucial part of the treatment team, due in part, to her experienced perspective.  “I know that left to my own devices I wouldn’t be here today, I had to learn to trust other people and my body and to invest in myself and be honest with people about who I am, what I think and be true to that,” said Deborah.  She continues to evolve and grow because she has a supportive world around her both personally and professionally.

“I continue to check in with my feelings and I learned I never have to be alone again,” said Deborah. During her eleven years at Alsana she has gotten married, started a family and guided countless numbers of clients towards their own road to recovery.

Deborah feels that her recovery positively impacts her work with clients, “I am uniquely able to empathize with and relate to my clients journey and challenges because I actually have walked in their shoes. This enables me to have a better understanding of their recovery process, “ stated Deborah.   She is able to provide what was  lacking in her treatment to her clients at Alsana. During her nutritional counseling sessions and at the table she works with clients to develop accurate hunger fullness cues, to address all maladaptive and ED behaviors,  and to address their negative body image. Her recovery process makes her exclusively qualified to meet the clients  where they are, provide motivation and assist in guiding them towards a successful recovery.

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