Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in health and wellness but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Hannah Pfohl, Founder of Mind Belly Soul Nutrition, located in Philadelphia, PA, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

I started Mind Belly Soul Nutrition to provide nutrition counseling and coaching to people who want to reclaim their relationship with food, cultivate body love, or live GI symptom-free. My clients are primarily women who are exhausted by the traditional approach to dieting and weight loss and want to heal their relationship with food so they can honor their health from a place of self-love and mindfulness rather than shame and restriction. I help women free themselves of chronic dieting by developing a deep connection with their bodies. This relationship and deep trust allow bodies to communicate what, when, and how much nutrition is needed to meet their physical and emotional needs. My clients build the mindset, skills, and habits necessary to respond intuitively to honor their mental and physical health. I utilize different forms of energy healing with my clients, including somatic meditations to heal old wounds related to food and body and strengthen hunger/fullness cues. My clients no longer rely on diet plans, calorie counting, or other people to tell them how to eat. Instead, my framework teaches them to find the answers within themselves to nourish and move their bodies intuitively.

Tell us about yourself

When I went to school to become a dietitian, I wanted to help people be healthier and learn more about nutrition to reduce chronic disease. I started my career as a clinical dietitian, working in hospitals mostly treating malnutrition, providing nutrition education, and managing tube feeding/intravenous nutrition. The more I worked in the field; I learned that giving nutrition education just doesn't work. It's an ineffective intervention. Patients repeatedly were re-admitted for the same issues, written off as a lost cause, and labeled "non-compliant" by the health care system. All the time and energy I spent educating and counseling felt like a waste of time. Research shows that the more you tell someone "what to eat," the more they will do the opposite of what you say. Our health care system's traditional approach to nutrition education and healthy eating is ineffective and harmful. And then there's the shockingly evident weight bias riddled throughout our health care system. Navigating our health care system as a person with a BMI over 30 is a nightmare. Knee pain? Obesity. Gastrointestinal issues? Obesity. Symptoms of cancer? Obesity.

I had patients who begged their doctors to work up their symptoms because they felt something was wrong and were told they just needed to lose weight. Later they came back with a stage 4 cancer diagnosis. So, there are a few key problems I noticed. Our healthcare system's weight bias and obsession with "stopping the obesity epidemic" has led to more nutrition education to "fix the problem." However, nutrition education and obsession with weight loss have created a culture where disordered eating is normalized and called dieting, leading to poor relationships with food, weight cycling, and eventually long-term weight gain. Keep in mind that every time you go on a diet, you increase your chances of long-term weight gain. So, this got me thinking - dieting, calorie, counting, and nutrition education don't effectively help people "be healthy." So, what does? Dietitians are taught to find the root cause of issues and fix that rather than simply treating symptoms. The root of all these issues is what we call diet culture - we have all been conditioned to have an unhealthy relationship with food and rely on other people to tell us how we should be eating and moving. But, who knows what your body needs better than YOUR BODY? No one.

Healing one individual's relationship with food starts a ripple effect. They have a healthy relationship with food, start dismantling diet culture, and open others' awareness to this alternative approach to health, movement, and living. This ripple effect helps dismantle diet culture, so the next generation of children is raised knowing their body's size does not define their self-worth, health, or ability to be loved. This is what motivates me to do this work every single day.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

My biggest accomplishment as a business owner is the impact I have made on my clients and the resulting transformations. I've had clients get pregnant. I've had clients who couldn't feel the sensation of fullness start feeling full and learn to respect it intuitively. I've had clients who didn't get any enjoyment out of eating begin experiencing ample amounts of pleasure and satisfaction from foods they had never even tried before. I've had clients who "hated" their bodies start to honor and worship their bodies from a newfound place of self-love. This motivates me to keep going every day.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

For me, the hardest part of running my business is not being able to fix all my client's problems for them. I find this personally challenging. I often wish I could wave a magic wand so my client thinks their body is beautiful, drops the obsessive food thoughts, or stops hoping they lived in a smaller body, but I can't. My role is to empower and guide each client to shift their beliefs and behaviors and find self and body love from within. It's extremely difficult when I'm listening to a client talk about how much they hate their body or want to lose weight. I am just sitting there looking at them, thinking, "you are beautiful and don't need to change anything."

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. If you want to start a business but haven't started yet, it doesn't have to be perfect. Get the bones in place and just get started. You have your whole career to tweak and perfect things. If you already have a business and feel like no one is responding or interested in your services, keep going and stay consistent.
  2. Don't forget your purpose. Why did you start the business? Remember, it's about impact, not money. Yes, no money means no impact, but the impact is always number one.
  3. You are worth what you believe you're worth. Shifting your mindset and beliefs around money and your value to your clients will allow you to provide that value to your clients.

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

Just keep going; you got this!

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.mindbellysoul.co/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theintuitivegidietitian/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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