Federica S.

“I’ve struggled throughout my entire life. During my childhood, my mom would fix our plates. I would eat that, but when I was putting my dish away, I would sneak more food. I’ve tried so many diets over the years and even bought pills from watching infomercials to try to lose weight. I did lose weight but gained it all back. After having my daughter, I lost the baby weight, but then gained more despite trying to exercise. Nothing helped,” says Federica, a social worker and speech/language pathologist.

Federica decided to have bariatric surgery to jump-start her weight loss journey. Along that journey, she encountered Erika Van Calcar, registered dietitian, through Anchorage Bariatrics, a sister company of Dietitians of Alaska. After her recovery from gastric bypass surgery, Federica continued her appointments with her dietitian, Erika. Erika shared, “Federica is over a year post op from her bariatric surgery and she is doing very well with weight loss. She is changing her thinking and relationship with exercise and food.”

Federica says she is focusing on healthy habits because it really does make a difference. With Erika’s help, she has allowed herself to change how she thinks about food and now recognizes it as fuel for her body.

 “I just felt like an entirely new person, even though I’d had weight loss success temporarily in the past, this felt different. This is like a lifetime; a whole mind change on how to do it for me,” states Federica.

“Through working with my dietitian, I am also more conscious of how much I eat and what I’m putting into my body. I still use a tracker to monitor my eating habits as I have found this helps me. Some other things I do is to try to make sure I eat from a smaller plate. I really try to make sure I listen to the cues of my body and just eat to the point when I feel I’m satisfied or when I just feel like I’m not hungry anymore. I wasn’t doing that before. It was hard to learn to make those changes. That’s the beauty of having a dietitian who you can have conversations with. So it’s with support that these changes can happen. It is something that you mentally have to wrap your mind around,” Federica shared.

“I told Erika that this is truly a lifelong journey. It’s a process. She agreed. I said I feel like I need to have all the answers. It’s been over a year. I should have all the answers. Erika told me, ‘No, it’s still a process.’ So that is one thing that I still work through is getting out of that mindset of that yo-yo diet or restrictive dieting,” said Federica.

Federica is very appreciative of the support she received from her dietitian after surgery and how it has helped her maintain success. She says, “They are here for you wholeheartedly. They really believe in what they do. Erika and the whole team are amazing!”

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