Our patients are the stars here at Catalyst Nutrition and Training!
We want to start taking some time to highlight them and share how they started, struggled, learned, progressed, and ultimately began achieving their nutrition goals.
We hope you find their stories as inspirational as we do!
If anyone out there has been hesitating for any reason to see a Catalyst dietitian to help you with your health goals, we want these patient success stories to show you there’s nothing to be nervous about! We are here to help you become your best self.
Below, you’ll learn about our patient Liz Saba, who experienced weight gain after bariatric surgery but who has worked incredibly hard to get herself back onto a healthy path.
We’re proud of the efforts she’s been putting in, and now we’re thrilled to share her story with you!
Starting Out
This story starts well before we even met Liz here at Catalyst.
Liz had gastric sleeve surgery in 2018, a weight-loss procedure in which a portion of the stomach is removed to make it smaller and help the person feel fuller faster.
This type of surgery doesn’t make you lose weight automatically. It helps along the way, but the patient still needs to maintain a sustainably healthy diet post-surgery.
This is where Liz struggled.
“What’s mostly unknown about weight-loss surgery is that a large percentage of people fail,” she said. “I was on that trajectory. After a few years, my weight started to increase, and before I knew it, I was up to 260 pounds, with my lowest after surgery being 215 pounds.”
Liz knew she couldn’t continue this way, but, as she told us, modifying your lifestyle to be balanced and healthy is often easier said than done.
“I wanted to be able to live my life and not stress about my daily food choices. I wanted to be able to look in the refrigerator or look at a menu and make a good and healthy selection without feeling forced and ultimately hating it. I knew I needed help and guidance.”
Why a Dietitian?
Liz knew very clearly what she wanted to achieve.
So when we were talking to her for this story, we asked why she wanted a dietitian’s help as opposed to working on her own.
“I knew I needed long-term encouragement, support, and knowledge. Everyone’s life changes daily, and we all have struggles. To overcome different struggles requires different skills, expertise, and a different way of thinking.”
With that in mind, Liz did a quick Google search, found us at Catalyst Nutrition and Training, and reached out. We spoke that same day, and once we started exchanging information and ideas on the phone, Liz almost immediately found us to be a fit for what she needed.
“I knew right then that this was the place for me.”
Working
As many of our patients know, creating a healthy lifestyle can include much more than just “losing weight.” It involves changing long-held ways of thinking, forming new habits, and staying balanced in nutrition over time.
In short: it takes consistent work.
We asked Liz what it was like to start the work of remaking her lifestyle.
“Brooke has helped me learn about myself and my success. With her help, I now know that my success is reliant on a few factors:
1. I’ve learned that what works for me is to stay away from foods that, if I’m near, I will overeat. Sweets and candy are my number one problem, so I don’t keep them in the house.
2. It’s a team effort. My family needs to be on board with my success. My parents have a giant candy bowl at their house, and my mother now moves the bowl out of sight when I visit. They also support me when I choose to go to the gym instead of trivia night.
3. My success is largely based on routine. If I fall out of that routine, it quickly becomes a slippery slope for me. I need to maintain my daily and weekly routines to maintain my success.
4. Brooke and I work on goals together, short-term and long-term. We talk about challenges that I could face and how to overcome them. I remember talking with her about my first set of goals and what I was going to “gift” myself when I achieved the goals. It was hard because the first thing that came to mind was to go out for dinner and drinks. We worked together to create better and healthier prizes for my achievements.”
Of course, when we talk to our patients about lifestyle, we cover EVERYTHING. For Liz, it wasn’t only about food.
“I also wanted to exercise regularly,” she told us. “I sit a lot for my job. I’m mostly sedentary, so it was important for me to get up and move. At first, I was very resistant to exercising outside of my comfort zone, but Brooke was patient with me and over time gently urged me to take that step.”
Getting Creative
As Liz can attest, having a dietitian there to help guide you doesn’t necessarily mean the struggles are over. Old habits can be stubborn in our lives, but we tell our patients all the time that we don’t expect perfection (because it doesn’t exist).
“Many times, I get stuck in my way of thinking about challenges or circumstances,” Liz said, “and Brooke is there to help me get me out of my own way. She presents a different perspective. Truthfully, at least twice during every session with Brooke, I say ‘I didn't think about it that way.’ She makes me think and helps me change my viewpoints.”
And no two patients are the same. The methods that Liz has found to work for her may not work for someone else. Discovering those approaches often involves our dietitians getting creative to devise unique solutions to our patients’ toughest struggles.
We combine our educational focus with our discipline in holistic nutrition to teach our patients how to respond when a new food challenge presents itself in their daily lives.
“What’s different about Catalyst is food positivity,” Liz said. “I have gone through life struggling over what I eat and feeling like the only things I can eat are things I don’t want to eat at that moment. An example: if I really want a piece of cake, in the past, I would eat an apple–that apple wouldn’t satisfy me, and I would end up eating three more apples, cookies, and other snacks all to try and fill that void. And eventually, I would end up eating the piece of cake, too. With the help of Brooke, what I’ve come to realize is: eat the cake, because it’s better to just eat the one piece of cake rather than all the other stuff AND the piece of cake.”
Now, at Catalyst, we don’t advise patients to avoid any foods. Liz found that method to work for her in the context of her nutrition and relationship with certain foods.
But that’s just an example of how nutrition works differently for everyone.
We’re all about getting to know our patients here at Catalyst. Helping Liz with the specific problem of craving cake wouldn’t have been possible if we didn’t take the time to listen to and understand her.
This is what we’ve always done with our patients, and we always will.
Liz’s Perspective
Getting healthy is a journey. It isn’t an activity that you do once or complete after a length of time.
It’s ongoing.
It’s a LIFESTYLE.
It usually takes changing your thinking and forming new, sustainable habits.
We’ve seen the work Liz has put into maintaining her healthy lifestyle. She has maintained her weight loss for more than a year now and still sees us for goal setting and improving her physical performance. And it’s worth noting she doesn’t need as many accountability appointments as she once did!
Throughout it all, her determination has been simply incredible.
We asked Liz to think about her experience working with us and what she might say to someone else considering seeking a Catalyst dietitian for their health journeys.
“Do it,” she said. “It provides a different way of looking at health, wellness, and food. Don’t wait on yourself. Go for it, and have an open mind!”
Thank you so much to Liz Saba for speaking with us. We truly hope her story inspires even just one other person to take control of their nutrition habits and overall health.
If Catalyst Nutrition and Training can help with any of it, know we are here for YOU.
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