Meet Heidi Schauster

My Background

For the last thirty years, based in the Greater Boston area, I have worked as a nutrition therapist in the field of disordered eating. I’m a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP) and a Certified Eating Disorders Specialist and Consultant/Supervisor (CEDS-C). I’m licensed as a dietitian and nutrition professional in Massachusetts and in Maine, and I practice in-person and virtually. These days, I split my time between clinical counseling, writing (books and articles), and providing supervision/consultation for other professionals in the eating disorders field. I’m particularly interested in the intersection between disordered eating, body shame, and trauma.

My training includes nutrition science (M.S. from Tufts University, 1995), psychology, Somatic Experiencing® (SE), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), mindfulness-based and insight-oriented meditation, and elements of yoga therapeutics, dance, and authentic/improvisational movement. In my work, I feel called to assist clients, readers, and professionals in improving their relationships with food and their bodies. There is so much conflicting information about how to eat and care for ourselves. I work with my clients to sort through it all and to use their own inner wisdom to develop a style of eating, moving, and whole self care that works for their unique bodies and lifestyles. We also work on body connection and nervous system regulation, particularly if trauma, dysregulation, and/or stress affect their relationship with food or their bodies.

I have also recovered from bulimia, food restriction, and binge eating, which I struggled with in my late teens and early twenties. As a young dancer, I was confused about how to feed my active, developing body. With love and some help from others, I worked hard on my recovery, eventually studying nutrition because I wanted to help other people to be less in the dark about how to feed themselves and (at first) to do the last bit of healing of my own relationship with food.

I have continued to study various healing modalities—supporting my recovery, pursuing personal growth and nervous system regulation, and finding balance while working with clients. Becoming a supervisor/consultant to other eating disorders professionals feels like paying forward all the outstanding mentorship, therapeutic work, and supervision that I’ve received over my career. I love being a perpetual student, learning more so that I can offer more to clients, students, supervisees, and readers.

Life Now

Now that I’m in my 50s, I love being in my body and in my life. (Most of the time. Sometimes being human is humbling and hard.) I’m passionate about helping others overcome obsessions with food, self-criticism, and negative body image—no matter their size—though I own my thin privilege and the advantages this body type affords me.

I enjoy eating, cooking, gardening, and being a nutrition therapist, but even for a born “foodie,” eating is still only one way I nourish myself. Spending time in the natural world is one of the ways I refuel and resource myself. I’m also a lifelong dancer who recently choreographed a modern dance piece about the “empty nest,” danced by a troupe of women aged 40+. I aim to help my clients find ways to nourish and resource body, mind, and spirit. 

I live and work on the traditional and unceded territories of the Pawtucket people, now called Arlington, Massachusetts. I live with my daughters, two incredible young women, when they aren’t in college. Every day, I’m grateful for my family, dear friends, and professional
community, without whom I couldn’t do this work.

Clients sometimes ask what my personal eating style is like. I don't follow any particular "way" of eating. I strive to listen to my body and eat according to my internal wisdom and with flexibility. I find that my eating naturally shifts seasonally and during changes in my body and lifestyle, and I strive to be present and listen. In my book Nourish, I write about how to work towards this “self-connected” way of eating. I most enjoy food that is lovingly and consciously prepared, followed by a dishwashing dance party.