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Part One

Tell me a little about yourself? I’m the coordinator of professional nursing practice here at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, Vermont. I have a great job. I do a lot to support our nursing staff, we have about fourteen to sixteen hundred nurses, and in the organization we have 6,000 employees. We are the largest health care provider in the region. Basically, my role is to help support the nurses who do the direct care. We do a lot with evidence base practice. We want to really make sure that we’re practicing using the best science to support our patients, for the best outcome.

How did you hear about Vtrim? I found out about Vtrim through a conversation in a hallway with a friend. I’m like ‘Vtrim, what is that?’, so I went online and read about it. I read about some of the work of Jean Harvey-Berino, and read the cookbook. What really interested me in the program was that it’s an evidence based program, it is based on solid science.

Have you tried other weight loss programs in the past? I’ve tried a lot of other programs in the past, I’ve done Weight Watchers, and Atkins Diet, and the South Beach Diet, the Calorieking.com Diet, and the list goes on and on. While I’ve had some results with those programs it has always been ephemeral and somewhat limited. It hasn’t really stuck. It’s been a diet. What’s different about Vtrim is it’s more of a lifestyle.

Why did you decide to join the Vtrim program? I learned about the program and signed up. I had a conversation with my physician before I started the program. My big challenge and my big interest here was to get my BMI (my Body Mass Index) into a healthy range. I was on the boarder line. I was definitely over weight and almost into the obese category. That was my concern. I wanted to be healthy. I love what I do, I have a great life, great family, and I just didn’t need all this extra weight. It put me at risk; I had a family history of heart disease and diabetes. Everything I read from the science says that you don’t need to be overweight. That really puts me at greater risk.

What did you like about Vtrim? What I really liked about Vtrim was that it was a gradual process. It is a facilitated process. There was someone to guide me through the steps of learning the behaviors I needed to have; the relationship with food, and physical activity that I needed to have to achieve the goals I was after. I liked that it was gradual. It helped me understand: what is food? Really what is the value of food? It’s to nourish us. What is the whole calorie piece? Having mindfulness about food and the food choices we make and keeping track throughout the day of caloric intake. That I only take what I need and not more, that was very helpful. It was also helpful to figure out a way to do it so I wouldn’t be hungry. All the other diets and things I’ve tried, there was usually an element of deprivation. Vtrim is not about that. It’s not about being deprived or setting a weight goal. It’s not about that. It is about figuring out how to make healthy choices everyday, keep track of what you eat, and understand the relationship of physical activity to your overall being.

What helped you integrate Vtrim into your life? What helped me get used to integrating Vtrim into my life was the expert facilitated approach that it offers. I never really felt alone, it’s not self-help like a book you pick up off the shelf. It’s really a dialog, it’s a conversation, and it’s some reflection about: these are the behaviors, these are the strategies. Think about how to integrate them into your life. It is going to be different for everyone, everyone who looks into Vtrim and considers it. ‘We’ll come up with something different that works for them’. It is not a total cookie-cutter approach.