Thais Harris, BCHN helps women feel amazing in their bodies and ensure long-term health for themselves and their families, so they can live an outstanding life.
She has successfully guided hundreds of people in their journey to optimal health through her signature group cleanses, online courses, and individual + family wellness coaching at Nourish Together.
How did you get started as a nutritionist?
I've been in the field for a little over a decade. I was my previous life, I was a graphic designer, and you know, working many hours on a computer, which I still do. But I had my own journey of having some digestive issues and figuring that out, working with a naturopathic doctor, and then deciding to go back to school for nutrition.
I got a certificate in holistic nutrition from Bowman College in California. Eventually, I taught there I was actually teaching therapeutic nutrition there for a few years.
For a time, I also worked for a nonprofit called Ceres community project. I was their nutrition manager, working with teens and then working on clinically tailored meals for people and cancer treatment and then later for also diabetes, congestive heart failure, and a couple of other conditions that we were working with the state and with Kaiser Permanente on solutions for the food.
I had five years of really focusing on nutrition for cancer and not just for prevention. But also how to really help people have a good quality of life during treatment and post-treatment. And then for my practice, which is now what I do full time.
I used to work part-time and my own business, and then part-time at Ceres, and then part-time teaching part-time - but now it's all my business, Nourish Together.
I have a mix of working one on one with clients and doing group programs. I have two main group program: One is a reset, which is basically a cleanse but it's very gentle. It's all food based, and it's really an elimination diet. I help people get off sugar, gluten, dairy, wheat, etc. for three weeks and then help them reincorporate those foods mindfully so they can see you know, how that changes their life for the worse or not. I also created a program to actually help parents feed their kids better and make their own lives easier in the process.
In my one-on-one work with clients is where I've been using Veri.
How do you incorporate Veri?
In my one-on-one work with clients is where I've been using Veri
For the clients that do have blood sugar issues, I'm helping raise awareness for them because the whole point for me is that you can see in real-time how food is interacting with your body. And for some of my clients that don't have a lot of awareness of how, even their mood changes and everything.
And I invite that too when they're keeping their food journals. But even that, I find that people will do it for three days and then they drop off and then they do it again. And with the Veri, they're better at least taking a picture and writing down what it is. They don't have to enter everything.
I love just being able to then review with them, I say, “these are your superstar meals. Look at this was a ten, ten, ten,” and then also invite them to see when they had the same meal, but then had two different scores, like a ten and maybe an eight or seven. I help them think critically about what was going on that day. Were they stressed? Did they get enough sleep? Were they drinking water? And it helps them connect the dots - they're starting to get a little more information and motivation to eat foods that actually agree with their bodies.
That's what I'm going for. It's really, I tell them it's about building awareness.
What food is the biggest surprise to your clients?
I think it's funny, rice and rice products has been like, oh my God, I thought I was eating something healthy.
And whether it's like sushi or a gluten-free bread or whatever it is, if it has rice in it, it tends to spike.
Rice tends to be a big surprise.
What are some earning learnings that you try to get across?
Adding fats and protein. So even if they're gonna have an apple, having that with a nut butter and some cinnamon, they can then see it's still an apple, but with the addition of these other foods, it's helping my blood sugar stay stable.
You can have oatmeal that's awful. And then you can have the oatmeal as you add in your seeds and your spices and your fat. Then it just keeps you steady all day. But say, for some people, just plain oatmeal would be a disaster.
Together, we figure out a meal plan based on putting together both the real-time information of what's happening right now and their predispositions for processing carbohydrates.
We do this learning period of two weeks. We review that and they understand, “okay, here are the foods that really work for me. Here are the foods that really don't work for me. Here's what happened is happening during my sleep.”
For some people, they can’t just stop eating at 5:00 PM. They're not sleeping well because their blood sugar is dipping in the middle of the night, so we add a healthy snack at seven or. There's something about timing too - I think it's very important seeing that.
Who has the most success with Veri?
It's the people that were having more disruption in their sleep and were having really high ups and downs. They're a little bit more successful and " oh I get it now I'm staying with this." One of them, my husband who's super healthy and in shape, but he said, "wow, my blood sugar is actually all over the place" and it was interfering with sleep.
And so I think there was a big motivation there to see because he doesn't have the external appearance of somebody who might have blood sugar issues.
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Thais Harris is board-certified by the National Association of Nutrition Professionals and holds a certificate in Nutrition Consulting from Bauman College, in Berkeley, CA. She graduated from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA, and also attended the University of Southern Santa Catarina.
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