FAQ

Is Nutrition Therapy right for me?

Working with a dietitian can be invaluable at improving the quality of your life. This involves what you eat, but also your lifestyle, how you feel about food, your body image, and meeting any other goals you may have. We love to work closely with your therapist or counselor. Many clients see these positive changes naturally ripple out into other areas of their lives.

My therapist/doctor/psychiatrist referred me and I’m not sure what you do?

We collaborate and work closely with you and your therapist to support the work you’re doing. Nutrition counseling is an essential part of healing your relationship with food. Along with addressing food beliefs, we can help you understand how much food your body needs, your metabolism, plan meals and snacks, discuss nutrition science, provide accountability with eating, and handling difficult food situations.

A dietitian is trained to answer any questions you may have about food. Check out this short video discussing what it’s like to work with a dietitian.

How do I explain to my loved one/child/spouse/patient that they need to see a dietitian?

When food is an issue, it is something that often begins as solution and can develop into a coping skill that does not serve you. We are committed to making this process a positive one. Changing one’s relationship with food can be incredibly challenging but equally as rewarding and life-giving. Whether you’re coming to us because you’ve been diagnosed with an eating disorder or you want to learn to connect with food differently, we’re here to help you figure out how to make eating more enjoyable.

How do I schedule an appointment?

If you decide you’d like to schedule an intake session, please inquire to become a client. We will review your inquiry and get back to you in 24-72 hours (M-F). As long everyone feels like it’s a good fit, we schedule your first session.

Depending on the flexibility of your schedule, we may get you in within a week. Sometimes it can be upwards of a few weeks. We currently offer varied morning, afternoon, and evening appointments Tuesday through Thursday. As you can imagine, evening appointments fill very quickly.

After your appointment is scheduled, you will receive an email with the documents to fill out before our first session. This email will take you to the client portal where you will be given a login and password. This is the place you will enter in your demographic information, payment information, insurance information, answer intake questions and sign all consent documents.

What happens at an initial session?

An initial consultation lasts 75-90 minutes, and includes:

• Review of what you eat and your eating habits
• Discussion of your lifestyle, current challenges, and barriers
• Detailed review of your overall nutritional health and history
• Baseline goal setting and development of a nutrition care plan
• Recommendation to a program to meet your needs

This session is designed to be an assessment and mapping out a nutritional plan to meet your goals. Most clients go on to work with us in programs but occasionally clients find value and clarity from this single session. By meeting with us initially, you are not obligated to continue meeting.

Do I need to bring anything to a first session?

Not usually! Filling out our electronic forms generally eliminates a need for that! If you are keeping logs that you feel are relevant, taking any supplements, protein shakes, or anything you think we might want to look over feel free to bring them!

How frequently do you meet with clients?

We meet with clients weekly or every other week initially. After a foundation is created, we may decide to meet less frequently. Our programs are designed with this structure in mind and in the past have demonstrated positive clinical outcomes.

What can I expect the following sessions to look like?

Follow up sessions will be tailored to where you are and what you are struggling with. Sessions can be structured and directive, solving issues you keep facing, processing a difficult food situation, or open to what you need to discuss with us. We might continue to formulate your meal plan, options, or start bringing in foods for balance. We may be discussing nutrition science and how it relates to your food beliefs, uncovering issues hindering your flexibility with food, coming up with new meal and snack options, fueling for exercise, or addressing the intersection of body image and food.

Do I have to come at the same day and time for sessions, or can appointments be more flexible?

It can be very convenient and efficient for us to schedule at the same days and times of the week. For some clients with fixed schedules, we book sessions far out in advance. If that does not work for you or your schedule, we are usually able to accommodate and be flexible with scheduling.

Are you accepting new patients?

Nutrition therapy is a shorter term relationship because we accomplish your goals with eating and your food relationship. Occasionally, we run a short wait list but most of the time we are accepting new clients. If for some reason you are not a good fit for our practice, we might recommend other professionals or a higher level of care.

Do you work with other professionals?

We believe a collaborative approach to care is helpful for many individuals. We are happy to work with your existing treatment team. We gladly help clients establish a treatment team (i.e. physician, dietitian, psychiatrist etc) when we agree that this would be beneficial. 

Provider referring a client?

We look forward to collaborating care and hope to help support you and your client. Please instruct your client to reach out to us directly.

If you have any relevant clinical information you want to share, please fax to 614-987-8654, email us, or set up a call with Erica.

If we are not a good fit for your client, we will recommend other professionals that we trust.

What is the cost?

Initial consultations are 75-90 minutes and cost $225. Program costs vary on frequency of meetings. Program selection is a collaborative process discussed at the end of the consult.

Do you accept insurance?

We don’t take insurance but we can navigate this if you are interested in working with Erica. We are happy to provide you with a form you can send into your insurance for possible reimbursement. That means you’re responsible for the fees at the time of our appointment and, depending on your plan, a certain percentage of that may be paid to you by your insurance company.

It’s possible that your insurance doesn’t cover nutrition therapy as a plan benefit even if a provider “accepts” your insurance plan. It is best to call your insurance directly to find out. We’ve created a form to help you navigate that process.

If you are outside of Ohio or the US and participating in nutrition coaching, coaching services are not typically billable to insurance though many clients opt to use HSA or FSA funds.

More information on insurance, here.

Can I use my Flexible Spending Health Account or Health Savings Account for payment?

As long as your card operates like a debit or credit card, most clients are able to pay for our services with flex spending (FSA) cards or HSA cards.

Cost beyond initial session?

The cost of the programs are determined by the level of support needed, frequency of meetings, and full care collaboration. In other words, they are not determined based on an hourly rate.

Program selection is determined at the end of a first meeting by you and Erica. As you can imagine, the cost of the initial consult gives you an idea of what to expect.

What's the difference between medical nutrition therapy and nutrition coaching?

As licensed professionals, it’s important we make a distinction between meeting in person and virtually. We are licensed in the state of Ohio and cannot provide medical nutrition counseling out of state. However, we do provide expert nutrition coaching for out of state clients and worldwide.

Nutrition coaching is ideal for those able to work proactively and who do not have access to a local professional with our specialized knowledge and expertise. Coaching clients must demonstrate medical stability, ability to manage and resolve eating disorder behaviors independently (if present), and lacking any high risk psychological or medical needs and concerns. If a diagnosis or higher level of care is required, recommendations will be made to have these issues addressed.

Nutrition coaching is goal oriented, future focused, and are more recommendation based than prescriptive. Some common reasons clients seek nutrition coaching include: improving their food relationship, getting out of the overeating and restriction cycle, intuitive eating coaching, addressing difficult food beliefs, healing from chronic dieting or disordered eating.

The initial steps of healing from an eating disorder can often involve highly prescriptive medical nutrition therapy. If you are at a distance and require this level of nutrition therapy, we may encourage you to seek a local dietitian or higher level of care for treatment.

Do you offer nutrition coaching in my area?

We provide nutrition coaching to individuals all over the US and worldwide via our secure video portal.

Do you offer nutrition therapy in my area?

If you live in Columbus, Ohio or nearby we offer in person and video nutrition counseling. Because what we do is highly specialized, it’s not unusual for us to be working with a client that may live a few hours away. Sometimes, we will meet initially in person and choose to meet over video or alternate appointments virtually and in person based on scheduling, need, and availability.

Do I need to have an Eating Disorder to see you?

Eating disorders have their place on a large spectrum of eating concerns. We are experts and certified to work with eating disorders, however, we do not exclude anyone who feels that their relationship with food has gotten out of balance. All eating issues are serious, painful to experience, and take away from the quality of your life.

As dietitians, we are trained to deal with a number of nutrition-related conditions. We do focus on the eating issue component of your wellness. In other words, we know how to help you holistically address your food relationship and other issues you might be facing.

How do you handle weight loss? What if I want to lose weight?

Before setting up a consult, Erica likes those that inquire about weight loss to know she is a weight neutral in her practice.

She will evaluate your eating habits and see how your diet might better support you. However, she can’t/won't guarantee that you will lose weight. Sometimes her clients lose weight, stay the same, or gain weight.

She believes in supporting your behaviors, health, energy, and quality of life and believes that your weight will follow that. In other words, she sees weight as an outcome not a variable in a nutrition intervention.

She will personalize and tailor your program as much as possible and she will come to know your history including your weight history.

I’m a student, can I shadow Erica?

Erica is in a season of her business right now where she’s unable to take interviews or accept nutrition students. She created a video series on YouTube discussing her background, typical day, and advice to students/dietitians, here 

Regarding dietetic interns, Erica will take VERY limited dietetic interns. Interns must posses maturity, potentially masters-level, very specific interest in eating disorders and private practice. If you meet this criteria, Erica will evaluate those situations on a case by case basis determined by if she has space in her business.

Follow her on instagram @alignednutrition to keep in touch and feel free to reach back out in 3-6 months and she might have more availability at that time.

I’m a dietitian, can I meet with Erica to discuss private practice or eating disorders?

Erica offers professional supervision to dietitians looking for clinical advice in working with eating disorders and business questions regarding private practice.

She is a certified supervisor with IAEDP if you’re seeking your certified eating disorder dietitian. The cost of those calls, video meetings, or in-person meetings at her office are $180 for 60 minutes. If you are interested, please reach out directly to set up a consultation.

I want Erica to come speak at our event, attend a health fair, or meeting.

Thank you so much for thinking of us! Our expertise is highly specialized and specific and therefore community events we participate in are focused around eating disorders and mental health. In the past, we’ve spoken for the National Eating Disorder Association walks and relevant Ohio State University student organizations. Please contact us with information about your event, your budget, and specifics on what you would like from us. We’d be happy to discuss this with you!