About Dr. Haica Rosenfeld

We live in a diet driven culture that makes people struggle with their relationship with food and their bodies. Whether it is by dieting to fight against their natural size and fit into society ideal size; using food to cope with difficult feelings; or losing touch with internal hunger, satiety cues and pleasure with food, because of emotional turmoil, stress, or mental health struggles. Diet culture makes it difficult to trust our bodies and figure out how to feed and nourish ourselves. Therapy with me can help you explore the roots of your eating behavior, get a better understanding of the role these behaviors have in your life, and create an individualized treatment plan to move you toward a greater sense of well-being, selftrust and empowerment.

My practice moves away from a weight-centric or weight-normative approach that emphasizes weight and weight loss as defining factors of health and wellbeing, to a weight-inclusive approach, which emphasizes viewing health and wellbeing as multifaceted; weight is not the focal point of health, and size and weight are not viewed as behaviors to be fixed; aims to do no harm and reduce weight stigma; rests on the assumption that everybody is capable of achieving health and well-being independent of weight, given access to non-stigmatizing health care. This approach challenges the belief that a particular BMI reflects a particular set of health practices, health status, or moral character.

The Health At Every Size® Principles are:

1. Weight Inclusivity: Accept and respect the inherent diversity of body shapes and sizes and reject the idealizing or pathologizing of specific weights.

2. Health Enhancement: Support health policies that improve and equalize access to information and services, and personal practices that improve human wellbeing, including attention to individual physical, economic, social, spiritual, emotional, and other needs.

3. Respectful Care: Acknowledge our biases, and work to end weight discrimination, weight stigma, and weight bias. Provide information and services from an understanding that socio-economic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and other identities impact weight stigma, and support environments that address these inequities.

4. Eating for Well-being: Promote flexible, individualized eating based on hunger, satiety, nutritional needs, and pleasure, rather than any externally regulated eating plan focused on weight control.

5. Life-Enhancing Movement: Support physical activities that allow people of all sizes, abilities, and interests to engage in enjoyable movement, to the degree that they choose. To learn more about HAES visit www.sizediversityandhealth.org

Intuitive eating is an approach that was created by two registered dietitians, Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S and Elyse Resch, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S, Fiaedp, FADA, FAND, in 1995. It is aligned with a nondiet approach to health and wellness that helps you tune into your body signals, break the cycle of chronic dieting and heal your relationship with food. Intuitive Eating is the practice of mostly using internal cues, rather than external rules, to guide your food choices and decisions about when and how much to eat. Approaching food and movement choices from a place of self-care, permission, and body acceptance rather than selfcontrol, deprivation, diet culture and weight stigma. It has 10 principles and you can learn more about it at www.intuitiveeating.org

I first became a psychologist in Venezuela and worked in my community as a school psychologist. I later earned my Master’s and Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the Institute for Graduate Clinical Psychology at Widener University in Pennsylvania. I completed her pre-doctoral internship at The Delaware Psychiatric Center and La Salle University’s Student Counseling Center, where I became increasingly interested in the treatment of eating disorders. My post-doctoral residency was completed at The Renfrew Center of South Florida, the country’s first residential treatment facility for woman with eating disorders. While at the Renfrew Center, I worked as a primary therapist in their residential program for eating disorders, and provided individual, family and group therapy.

After years of experience in Private Practice and focusing on the treatment of individual struggling with Eating Disorders, Disordered Eating and Body Image concerns, I perceived a need for specialized treatment of Binge Eating Disorder. Driven by my passion, I decided to move to Vermont and accept the position of Clinical Psychologist at a retreat center for women. While I was there, I provided weekly intensive therapeutic treatment to women struggling with binge and emotional overeating, and led daily group workshops at the retreat, informed by principles of weight inclusivity, Health at Every Size®, mindfulness and intuitive eating.

I am a professional member of the American Psychological Association (APA), the Florida Psychological Association (FPA), and have served as the Fundraising Committee Chair and Vice-president of the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals (IAEDP) Miami Chapter.