Insights From a Cleveland Clinic Diet App Nutritionist
Julia Zumpano has loved counseling patients one on one for the past 19 years. But the nutrition pro recently got the opportunity to extend her reach — and jumped at the chance.
Zumpano is a registered dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Human Nutrition, and her expert insight helped inform the guidelines for two programs featured in the hospital’s new wellness and diet coaching app, the Cleveland Clinic Diet app. Both programs aim to educate and empower users in making healthier diet and lifestyle choices.
The app was developed in collaboration with FitNow, which is part of the Everyday Health Group.
“A lot of the time we give our health off to the provider we’re seeking,” says Zumpano, who is also the Nutrition Media Liaison for the Cleveland Clinic. “The goal of this [app] is to take ownership in that and understand what is going on in our bodies — be involved in decisions that are being made [in order to] be able to make lifestyle changes that support your health and your overall health outcomes.”
We spoke with Zumpano about what the app offers and how it can help people achieve their health and wellness goals.
Everyday Health: How does the app work and what can users expect after they download it?
Julia Zumpano: You start with a questionnaire, which places you in your proper plan. There are two: the Heart Smart plan and the BodyGuard plan. The BodyGuard plan is designed from a weight management perspective, but even more from a health perspective. By design, it aims to reduce inflammation and minimize things that may trigger your appetite or cause you to overconsume. It also encourages eating foods that provide you with solid nutrition — nutrients, fiber, healthy fats.
The Heart Smart plan is for those who are experiencing any cardiac symptoms or have a family history of heart disease. This plan is more geared toward protecting your heart. It’s similar to the Body Guard plan in that it aims to reduce inflammation and sugar, but it takes an extra look at sodium, saturated fat, trans fats, and fiber.
Once in your plan, you’ll be placed in a course curated specifically for the program you’re on. The course is designed to be easy to complete throughout your first week of the program and will help you understand where you should focus your efforts.
EH: How does the app hope to achieve its goal of empowering people?
JZ: The main goal was to be able to have an app that would provide the service of a dietitian and then eventually evolve into providing the service of a physician or a psychologist. While it cannot take the place of a real health professional by any means, it provides information that empowers the client to take ownership over their own health.
EH: As a dietitian, you know firsthand how much people often struggle to lose weight. How did this previous experience inform your recommendations for this app?
JZ: There are culprits in the Standard American Diet that are inhibiting all of us. These hyperprocessed, hyperpalatable foods that are so easy to be overconsumed are readily available everywhere. It’s so in your face. Our society is pushing so much processed food that it’s become normal to eat potato chips, a candy bar, or even a protein bar that’s marketed as healthy, but by no means is (it’s still an ultraprocessed food). These are all wreaking havoc on our systems, creating inflammation and dysregulation of our taste and satiety. It’s all affecting our weight — and no one really looks at it that way. The foods that are available to us on a day-to-day basis — it’s a whole health societal and food service issue.
If you have ownership and you’re able to look at what you’re eating and how it’s affecting your body, that will result in change. The more that people want change and start to buy products that are healthier for us, the more we will shift that as a whole. That’s the goal.
EH: Are there any specific features that resulted from this experience as a dietitian?
JZ: The app combines the foundations of food tracking with advice and guidance from my experience as a dietitian. It’s similar to the Lose It! app (also developed by FitNow) in that you can write down all of your foods, voice-log your foods, and take a picture of what you’re eating, and the app calculates what you’re consuming. You can track your entire day and it will provide you nutritional guidelines for all of the macronutrients and minerals based on your goal. These plans are designed to be health sustaining and not just for weight loss. The guidelines are driven toward controlling and managing heart health and managing weight, but from a disease prevention perspective.
EH: We understand that the Cleveland Clinic partnered with FitNow to build this app. What did each side bring to the table during development? How did this partnership affect the final product?
JZ: Both sides offered their expertise. As the Cleveland Clinic, our expertise is patient care, and that’s what we provided. Having almost 20 years of experience in patient care, I saw trends including what’s driving people’s lack of success or limitations. I really tried to use this experience to decide what was going to be included in the app and how I determined the criteria.
Separate from nutrition, the content we offer in this app is what we tell patients every day. We just put it down in a post, blog article, or course. In all of these topics that we speak to our patients about, we’ve now created content that you can read and have fed to you on a very strategic basis.
FitNow launched one of the first ever food tracking systems, and I have suggested that my patients use Lose It! for years, way before this relationship started. I’ve always suggested food tracking because I think it’s a great way to take ownership of your nutrition and eating plan. They have a lot of great, state-of-the-art features, they’ve been in this space for a really long time and have a lot of experience, and they have a great team that can build a phenomenal app. That’s not our expertise in any way. So we paired two great companies together to produce a phenomenal outcome.
EH: Who are the best candidates to use this app?
JZ: Except for those undergoing cancer treatment, children, the elderly, and anyone with a history of disordered eating behaviors, any adult could benefit from using this app. Of course, always check with your healthcare professional before starting a new eating plan.
— Julia Zumpano, RD
EH: How do you foresee this app working for those who are taking a semaglutide and other GLP-1 weight loss drugs? Are there any special factors they should consider?
JZ: There’s a big risk for sarcopenia with some of those drugs and not getting enough nutrients and calories — even to the point of malnourishment. This is a great way to track whether you’re getting enough protein, fiber, and water every day. It can also aid the outcome of those drugs, ensure sufficient fiber intake, and help prevent potential side effects including muscle mass loss, nausea, and constipation. Plus, if you’re not consuming enough protein or are skipping meals, the app can identify these trends for you. It provides data and feedback on how the nutrition portion of your weight loss journey is going.
EH: When it comes to weight loss, people often struggle with making lasting lifestyle changes. How does the app help support users through this challenge?
JZ: A lot of the lasting lifestyle issues come from the fact that most of the diet trends are restrictive. They’re restricting or eliminating foods or causing fear around something. Hyperprocessed foods can be eaten on occasion, but it’s the overconsumption that creates the problem.
This app is really focusing on getting what you need rather than not eating something. If someone focuses on getting all of their nutrient needs, they won’t even worry about what things they cannot eat because they’re so hyperfocused on things like “Have I gotten enough protein?” “Have I met my fiber needs?” “Am I eating enough omega-3s?”
I love to see it be more the mindset of supporting your body and health rather than restricting. Is your goal to improve your health or to lose weight? They can go hand in hand, but, in my opinion, it should be really to support health and take ownership of the foods that can support your body to work the best that it can possibly work and then the weight loss will just come naturally. It has to come with a mindset and an understanding. This is a health app, not a weight loss app.
EH: As a dietitian, what portion of the app gets you the most excited or makes you the most proud?
JZ: The teaching aspect is what I love most about the app. It’s not just tracking, it’s teaching. It’s providing a lot of great content, a lot of great options. The whole point of the app is to teach as it goes along. It’s what I could give someone if I could see them every single day, but now the app can empower users and provide them with good, accurate content.
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