Alumna Kimmie Singh on building healthy relationships with food and yourself
Diet culture bombards the public with promises for weight management. In the 1990s and early 2000s this included programs from Atkins, Weight Watchers and Slim Fast. More recently it’s marketing for meal delivery plans, tracking apps, and popular Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) medication such as Ozempic and Wegovy. UNC Greensboro alumna Kimmie Singh has a different approach. As a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Body Honor Nutrition in New York City, she emphasizes individualized care for her clients. Her goal: teach her clients sustainable health behaviors through the science of nutrition.
“I want my clients to leave this work feeling like they each have their own nutrition philosophy and feel confident in their wisdom around nutrition and their bodies,” Singh says.
Intersection of health, diet, and weight
Singh enrolled in UNCG’s Master of Science in Nutrition Program with the goal of forming a private practice and an open mind.
“There are so many different ways to look at nutrition,” she says. “As I got into the coursework with nutrition science, food science, and so on, I realized that different people need different things. There is no one method that will fit everyone.”
In her practice, she works one-on-one with clients to learn about their health profiles and their histories and relationships with food. Many of her clients are recovering from eating disorders and other health issues.
“Everybody is different, but the one thing they all share is that they want to make some changes to their relationship with food and explore the barriers to those changes,” she says. “Over time, I help people trust themselves around food and feel empowered in their bodies.”
Singh works with clients to find goals where health and nutrition are paramount. A lot of her work involves deprogramming diet culture.
“The more people focus on trying to change their weight, the harder it is for them to build consistent healthy eating habits,” she explains. “If they chase a number on the scale, they disconnect from their hunger and fullness cues. They’re not creating space for pleasure in the relationship with food and other things that affect overall wellbeing. My goal is to help them create sustainable health promoting behaviors.”
She does this by introducing goals beyond weight loss, including managing blood-sugar levels, reducing the frequency of binge eating, and creating a diet to support chronic health conditions.
“Clarifying misinformation is a big part of my work” she says. “Once my clients learn to understand their own health and how their bodies respond to food, they realize myths like ‘carbohydrates are bad’ are harmful because they aren’t considering the science of which foods work well for their bodies.”
Another trend she’s been researching the past few years is the now-popular use of Ozempic and Wegovy in weight management.
“It helps people lose weight at first, but then it isn’t sustainable,” she says. “It’s tough because some folks who have used it have long-lasting gastrointestinal issues, and many folks gain weight back and then some, which you don’t hear about in the marketing. My job is to help my clients feel informed about their decision to use it as a weight-management tool.”
She also balks at the idea that the GLP-1 drugs “quiet food noise.”
“If you’re thinking about food all the time, that’s something that you should talk to someone about,” she says. “If it’s taking up that much head space, I have a feeling it’s affecting your life in so many ways and the GLP-1 is just a Band-Aid.”
Helping the next generation of nutritionists and dietitians
Beyond her thriving private practice, Singh is a sought-after speaker at conferences across the United States. She speaks to practitioners, educators, and community members to raise awareness about the harms of weight stigma, advocating for body positivity and weight inclusion. In addition, she is a consultant for the Health at Every Size dietetic internship concentration at UNCG, working closely with Babbi Hawkins, director of the Dietetic Internship Program, a nationally accredited program that meets the supervised practice requirement that prepares students to take the credentialing exam for Registered Dietitian Nutritionists.
“I feel so fortunate to get to do this,” she says. “All dietitians, after we go through the academic part of our training, must complete an internship. I work with UNCG to ensure there’s a Health at Every Size rotation and offer guest lectures, modules, and other collaborations with other dietitians in Greensboro.”
She recommends the program, saying that it’s the support of her professors, their investment on staying up to date with latest trends in the nutrition field, and their connections in the greater nutrition community that helped her find her path and solidified her ambition to start a private practice.
“I love staying connected to UNCG,” she says. “The nutrition program has been so great, and they continue to grow and change with the field. It makes me so proud to have studied there.”
Story by Alice Manning Touchette
Photography courtesy of Kimmie Singh
