Tula Wellness 2024: Nourish Your Whole Self!

In a world dominated by diet culture and the constant barrage of conflicting health advice, finding a balanced approach to wellness can seem like an insurmountable task. Enter Callan Wall, RD, LDN, the visionary behind Tula Wellness, where the philosophy is simple yet profound: food and body peace is for everyone. As the driving force of Tula Wellness, Callan has dedicated her career to guiding clients toward a harmonious relationship with their bodies and the food they consume. Callan's approach is refreshingly holistic, emphasizing self-care over self-discipline and advocating for mindfulness, body respect, and self-compassion. By integrating evidence-based nutrition with a deep understanding of the mind-body connection, she helps individuals discover what truly makes them feel balanced and well. In this interview, we delve into Callan's unique methodology, exploring how she works with clients to cultivate a meaningful and sustainable connection between mind, body, and food. Join Delivery Rank as we uncover the secrets to achieving genuine wellness and lasting peace with the help of one of the most insightful voices in the field of nutrition and dietetics.

What inspired you to pursue a career in nutrition and dietetics, and how did your journey lead you to establish Tula Wellness?

Truthfully, I was initially inspired to become a registered dietitian from my own obsession with health and healthy eating throughout my life that I now look back on and recognize as undiagnosed orthorexia (the unhealthy obsession with being healthy). Once I became a practicing registered dietitian and pursued more professional continuing education in the eating disorder realm, it became so apparent to me how much of our culture’s (and the medical system’s) unrealistic beauty standards and weight-bias drive our eating, exercise, and wellness behaviors. I created Tula Wellness with a mission to help clients move away from the harmful restrict/ binge/ shame cycle, learn that their worth goes beyond their weight, and find peace with their mind, body, & food so that they can spend more time and energy on the hobbies and people they love.

Can you explain the core principles of the Health At Every Size® (HAES) philosophy and how it influences your approach to nutrition and wellness?

The Health At Every Size® (HAES) philosophy is a set of values that health and wellness providers can adopt to inform their professional approach to helping clients across the size spectrum to improve their health without a focus on their body size. The core principles are centered around reducing shame around body size, recognizing body diversity, and providing non stigmatizing and evidence based care, especially toward clients in larger bodies. With this approach, I provide my clients with a trauma-informed, safe space to explore the pursuit of health, uncoupled from the size of their body, while helping them separate their weight from their worth as a human being.

What role does mental health play in your nutrition practice, and how do you integrate mental and physical wellbeing in your sessions?

Making any sort of change in our nutrition regimen can be a slippery slope that I have witnessed in my clients and have experienced within myself personally. Dieting is the number 1 risk factor for developing an eating disorder, so I work very hard to help clients release the diet mentality and build sustainable health behaviors into their lives while emphasizing the importance of their mental health in that process. If any changes we are working towards cause any negative shifts in their mental health, then we re-evaluate because mental health is a huge part of overall health and is not worth sacrificing for the sake of making a nutrition change.

As someone who enjoys exploring new restaurants, how do you balance the enjoyment of diverse foods with maintaining a healthy relationship with eating?

I think allowing myself to fully enjoy the experience of exploring new restaurants and restaurant food in general is what normalizes “fun foods” and helps maintain a healthy relationship with all foods, instead of having restaurant food feel “off limits”. It’s when we get into the mindset of the “I shouldn’t be doing this” thoughts that can trigger the tricky relationship with food and even can lead to some bothersome eating behaviors and/or compensatory behaviors. The process I am referring to is called habituation, which is a form of exposure therapy. When we are exposed to all sorts of foods on a regular basis, with the mental permission to have access to all foods, it allows us to then tune into how we want to feel after we eat. This can help guide balanced eating decisions consistently over time versus eating decisions being driven by the deprivation mindset.

How has your experience working in various settings, such as private practice, cardiac rehabilitation, and cancer wellness, shaped your approach to nutrition and lifestyle medicine?

I am so grateful for the various settings I have had the ability to practice, learn, and grow personally and professionally in. Working in private practice, cardiac rehabilitation, and cancer wellness has provided me the opportunity to understand not only the medical nutrition therapy of different disease states and medical conditions, but also connect with various personalities and allow me to fine tune my counseling skills to tailor my recommendations to meet people where they are. I have learned that my clients are the experts of their own bodies, not me, and that my role is really to be a co-pilot on their journey to behavior and mindset change.

To read more about Tula Wellness, please visit https://tulawellnessjourney.com/