About Bracha
Hi! I’m Bracha Kopstick, a registered dietitian specializing in adolescent nutrition and food freedom for youth aged 8-15.
Because of my adolescent experience of gaining weight without many dieting concerns, while living in a dieting world, I feel connected to working with this age group to empower and educate them to have the same experience.
As a child growing up, I was always curious about learning something new, and very active. I was taking swimming lessons and ballet, along with leading the neighborhood activities, while taking weekly library trips to load up on reads.
When I started gaining weight around puberty, my parents weren’t concerned and took no measures to address it, despite outside family members heavily involved in the dieting world promoting weight loss. I continued feeling neutral to positive about my body and felt free to eat the healthy and not healthy food available in the house.
In middle school I was first exposed to eating disorders with a camp bunkmate; I would continue to have classmates and family members experience living with eating disorders over the years. Feeling powerless at those times, I became a registered dietitian.
In my work with children and teens as a dietitian, swimming instructor and day-camp program director, I’ve heard and seen how adolescents talk and feel about food and their body. Adolescence is naturally a time for increased growth, and often a time of decreased self-confidence. In my role as dietitian, I help you raise your kids to feel good in their body and enjoy what they eat, without dieting, guilt, or shame. I manage confusion around feeding adolescents with education around inaccurate information, and a process of building trust with food and body using a weight neutral approach. By addressing eating problems at this stage of growth, adolescents can grow and mature into healthy adults with interests that go beyond what they eat or how they look.
Contact me if your child or teen is experiencing difficulties around eating such as picky eating, restrictive eating, dieting ideation or other concerns.
