If diet culture, childhood dinner tables, and toxic beauty standards have stolen your peace with food, this is where you start to heal.
We provide anti-diet, weight-inclusive, and LGBTQIA+ affirming nutritional services to support you in reconnecting with yourself, food, and your body.
What Nutritional Counseling Is
...and isnโt
Nutritional counseling at Open Space isn't about meal plans, calorie counting, or "fixing" your bodyโit's about healing your relationship with food and reconnecting with the wisdom your body has always held. It's not about willpower, restriction, or earning your worth through what you eat. It's a space to exhale around food. A place to unlearn the harm, explore what you've been taught to believe about your body, and discover what nourishment actually means to youโwithout judgment.
At Open Space, nutritional counseling is a collaborative process rooted in body liberation and values-based care. It's a space where you can name the systems that failed you, grieve what diet culture stole, and imagine what peace with food might feel likeโwithout shame, without scales, and without having to defend your right to exist in your body.
Our dietitians provide consistent, compassionate support as you dismantle the lies you've internalized and reconnect with your natural hunger, fullness, and satisfaction cues. Whether you're recovering from chronic dieting, healing body image wounds, navigating medical nutrition needs, or seeking peace with food, we hold space for your story with nuance and radical acceptance.
We believe that all bodies deserve respect, that health exists at every size, and that your relationship with food can be a source of joy rather than control. Nutrition isn't something we impose on youโit's something we explore with you.
This Space Is For You If...
We provide care that is deeply affirming of folks in larger bodies, LGBTQIA+ individuals, BIPOC clients, people with disabilities, those recovering from eating disorders, chronic dieters, and anyone who's been harmed by the traditional medical model's approach to nutrition and health.
If you've ever been told your body is wrong, if you've been prescribed weight loss instead of actual care, if you've felt unseen or shamed in healthcare spacesโyou're not alone. This space was built in direct opposition to those systems.
Our Approach
At Open Space, we view nutritional counseling as an act of resistance against diet culture and the systems of oppression that disconnect us from our bodies. Our dietitians are Health at Every Size (HAES) aligned, anti-diet, culturally affirming, and specifically trained in LGBTQIA+ affirmative care. We don't reduce you to numbers on a scale, and we don't perpetuate the myth that thin equals healthy.
We understand that for LGBTQIA+ folks, nutrition conversations can't be separated from conversations about safety, dysphoria, medical transition, and systemic oppression. We know that eating disorders disproportionately impact queer and trans communities. We recognize that your relationship with food might be tangled with your relationship to gender, and we hold space for that complexity.
Whether you're a trans athlete needing nutrition support that affirms your identity, someone navigating how HRT affects hunger and metabolism, a new parent figuring out how to nourish yourself while caring for others, someone managing chronic illness who's tired of weight-focused medical care, a person in recovery learning to trust your body again, or anyone healing from family food trauma, we meet you with understanding and evidence-based care that actually fits your life.
Your nutrition journey may incorporate frameworks like Intuitive Eating, Values-Based Nutrition, somatic practices, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), or medical nutrition therapyโbut always through a lens of body liberation, always honoring your gender journey, and always at your pace. Our goal isn't to shrink youโit's to support you in living fully, freely, and authentically in the body you have today.
What to expect
Beginning nutritional counseling can feel vulnerableโespecially if every past experience with nutrition has been about changing your body or has ignored crucial parts of your identity. Here's what you can expect when you work with us:
A dietitian who uses your correct name and pronouns without question.
Understanding of how gender-affirming care, chronic illness, pregnancy, recovery, or life transitions intersect with nutrition.
Support for body goals that align with your values and identity (building muscle, athletic performance, gentle movement, body recomposition) without diet culture messaging.
Collaborative exploration of how dysphoria, body image, medical trauma, or past experiences show up around food.
Strategies for navigating family meals, social eating, cultural food expectations, and spaces that may not feel safe or affirming.
Nutrition support that works with HRT, medications, surgery recovery, pregnancy/postpartum, chronic conditions, or other medical needs.
Space to explore how cultural identity, family systems, spirituality, queerness, and food intersect.
Practical guidance for fueling your body through transition, athletic training, binding, pregnancy, disability, recovery, or whatever season of life you're in.
Values-based approaches that honor what matters to youโnot what diet culture says should matter.
Permission to find joy, pleasure, satisfaction, and embodiment through nourishment.
Reconnect with Your Body
Rebuild trust in your natural hunger, fullness, and satisfaction cues.
Unlearn Diet Culture
Identify and challenge the food rules and beliefs that no longer serve you.
Heal Your Relationship
Develop a peaceful, compassionate connection with food and your body.
Address the Root
Explore the experiences and systems that shaped your eating patterns and body image.
Values-Based Wellness
Create sustainable health practices that align with what truly matters to you.
Find Food Freedom
Nourish yourself consistently without guilt, shame, or rigid rules.
You donโt have to know what you needโjust bring your story.
Your first session is about connection and curiosity: learning about your body story, your relationship with food, and what healing might look like for you.
We want to understand the weight you've been carryingโthe kind that has nothing to do with numbers.
Intake Session
Your first session is exactly thatโyours. This is a chance for us to slow down, get to know you, and understand what brings you in without pressure or assumptions. With your permission, weโll explore only what feels comfortable and relevant for youโwhether that includes your relationship with food, body image, medical or mental health history, stress, sleep, movement, identity, or anything else that shapes your experience.
Together, weโll identify a starting point that feels supportive and manageable. Weโll talk about the level of care youโre looking for, how often youโd like to meet, and what you hope to get out of therapy.
Above all, your needs, boundaries, and goals guide every step. Our work is a partnershipโand you deserve a therapeutic space that feels affirming, inclusive, and fully centered on you.
Follow-Up Sessions
Our follow-up sessions are where the deeper work unfolds. This is the space where we slow down together, unpack whatโs been coming up for you, and build tools that actually support your lifeโnot the life diet culture told you to want.
Depending on your needs, we might explore unlearning harmful food rules, creating structure that feels supportive (not rigid), expanding flexibility and variety with eating, reconnecting with your bodyโs cues, or strengthening the relationship you have with food and your body. We move at a pace that honors youโyour comfort, your readiness, and your goals.
Throughout this process, weโre right there with you: supporting you through discomfort, celebrating your progress, and helping you build skills that make navigating the world feel more grounded and self-aligned.
This is your space to bring anything youโre carryingโyour emotions, your lived experiences, your questions, your winsโand be met with compassion, affirmation, and real support.
Why this work matters
You've likely spent years at war with your bodyโa war that might be compounded by dysphoria, medical gatekeeping, chronic illness, pregnancy loss, disability, trauma, or family rejection. Maybe you've restricted food trying to control a body that didn't feel like home. Maybe you've navigated providers who pathologized your identity, dismissed your pain, or ignored your actual health needs while focusing only on your weight. Maybe you've wondered if peace with food is even possible when the world tells you your body is wrong in so many ways.
For LGBTQIA+ folks, diet culture intersects with transphobia, homophobia, and rigid beauty standards that police our bodies from every angle. For folks in larger bodies, the medical system routinely denies care until weight is lost. For BIPOC communities, wellness culture appropriates traditions while imposing white beauty standards. For disabled folks, health is weaponized as a moral obligation. For people who have given birth, the pressure to "bounce back" steals the joy of transition. The medical system that should support us often demands we shrink ourselvesโliterally and figurativelyโto receive care.
Nutritional counseling at Open Space offers something different: a relationship with food that isn't ruled by fear, dysphoria, or shame. A way of nourishing your body that affirms who you are. A practice of eating that supports your transitionโwhether that's gender transition, recovery, parenthood, healing, or any other becomingโand honors your joy, your culture, and your life.
You don't have to choose between nourishing your body and living your truth. You don't have to earn the right to take up space. Your bodyโin all its queerness, all its complexity, all its history, all its becomingโdeserves care and nourishment.
We're here when you're ready to come home to your body, exactly as it is and exactly as it's becoming.