What Dietitians can learn from the world of Therapy with Sarah Peck

What can Dietitians, and Dietetics, learn from the world of Therapy with Sarah Peck, NZRD

Sarah shares the decision behind her transition from dietetics to psychotherapy, experiencing burn out and finding the non-diet community, feeling disconnected with her story and body and finding opportunities to reconnect and disentangle, how the dietetic pathway / study could be improved with therapeutic elements, why we need to actively seek out feedback from marginalised folks and communities in our work (and some helpful examples), how we can ask for feedback respectfully, navigating weight stigma within university content as a student and the power of the student voice. 

Here Fi and Sarah speak about:

• Becoming fast friends and some fun adventures they have shared together. 
• Sarah’s transition from dietetics to psychotherapy;
  • The decision behind the move – the nudges and natural progression. 
  • Burning out in a weight centric framework and finding the non-diet community and weight inclusive paradigms.  
  • Feeling disconnected with her own story and body and the importance of finding opportunities to reconnect and disentangle ourselves.
  • Her experience as a therapeutic student studying in New Zealand.
• The core, therapeutic elements that should be included in all dietetic pathways/study;
  • Reflexivity; what it is and how it can help us to consistently show up for our clients.  
  • Social Justice; seeing dietetics and health models through the social justice lens so we can leave behind assumptions, change the narrative and accept and embrace complexities.
• The importance of inclusion and actively seeking out feedback from people who experience marginalisation when our work as dietitians impacts them and how we can ask for this support respectfully – Sarah gives us some real-life examples!
• Question and Answer time – Sarah and Fi provide some helpful advice to a student dietitian in response to a recent Instagram post on weight stigma and speaking up as a student – see it here!
• Power dynamics at university and the power of the student voice.

As mentioned in the podcast:

• Dr Isaac Warbrick
• 8th Annual Weight Stigma Conference 2020, Auckland, NZ.
• Fi’s Instagram post on weight stigma and question from student.

More about Sarah: 

Sarah is a human first but also happens to be a weight inclusive NZRD training to be a psychotherapist. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand with her family. Sydney, Australia is her second home, where she lived for many years, studied dietetics and had her three daughters.

Sarah has spent her dietetic career so far working in private practice and specialising in eating disorder recovery. She has a keen interest in how chronic health conditions impact relationships with self, body and food in both childhood and adulthood, fuelled by her own lived experience of a chronic health condition, raising two daughters with coeliac disease and the gifts of wisdom shared by her clients. Outside of private practice she has been passionate about working with organisations that support adolescents and young people with cancer and teacher education around age appropriate nutrition and health messaging for children

Find out more:

Body Balance Nutrition NZ