L'Officiel Philippines chats with Bianca Dualan of Sakro Space about working in her field, founding concepts aligned with her philosophy, and personalizing diets for her clients.

&ldquo;People get really surprised whenever they see me having pizza or cookies or supposedly "unhealthy" food,&rdquo; shares dietitian Bianca Dualan. &ldquo;There's this misconception that healthy food has to be boring or devoid of joy.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;
Many misconceptions surround the word &ldquo;diet&rdquo;. Upon hearing it, the mind tends to automatically think of avoiding food or losing weight.&nbsp;
But Dualan, a Registered Nutritionist-Dietitian (RND), has a different take on the infamous term.&nbsp; Instead of restriction, dieting should involve giving your body the nutrition it really needs&mdash;both physiologically and behaviorally. It&rsquo;s about finding a routine that works for your specificities.&nbsp;
This philosophy is materialized in the dietitian's wellness program, Sakro. The low-maintenance program zooms into the client&ndash;custom tailoring regimens that cater to nutritional requirements. Aside from Sakro, Dualan also creates adaptogen blends, which can be ingested orally for stress support.
L'Officiel Philippines chats with Bianca Dualan about working in her field, founding businesses aligned with her philosophy, and personalizing diets for her clients.&nbsp;

You&rsquo;re a Registered Nutritionist-Dietitian (RND), and this might be a term unfamiliar to many. What type of work do you do as an RND?
As a registered dietitian, I provide nutrition therapy. Nutrition therapy means managing health conditions, from nutrition imbalances, to food intolerances and allergies, to diseases that require strict interventions (ex. diabetes, PCOS, kidney, and other diseases related to digestion). This involves counseling, looking at the client's environment and strengths so we can plan their days from their first bite down to their nighttime de-stressing rituals.
What led you to follow this career path?
I used to have a high-stress but fun corporate job&mdash;travel, parties, fast food, and my favorite&mdash;break room donuts! Eventually, though, all that took a toll on me and I noticed that I was feeling less and less like myself. My mood got darker and I developed high functioning anxiety because I couldn&rsquo;t let the ball drop. That made it worse because all I wanted to do was curl up in bed all day.
I realized that so many of us were dealing with the same issue. My colleagues were working even when they got home. Stay at home moms do everything. Working moms also do so much at the office&nbsp;and&nbsp;keep the house standing. Even students get lost in the mess easily. We&rsquo;re all stressed out but rarely get the support we need to physically and emotionally handle what&rsquo;s asked of us day in and day out.
I thought there must be a better way to keep ourselves resilient. I realized that I could do my bit to help by nourishing the body properly and giving tips toward real rest so we don&rsquo;t run on empty.
Any funny stories or interesting anecdotes about your life as an RND? We'd love to hear them!
 It's a trip when people get really surprised whenever they see me having pizza or cookies or supposedly "unhealthy" food. There's this misconception that healthy food has to be boring or devoid of joy. So it's funny when they reply to my IG stories of me having sweets or see me eating something that doesn't resemble a salad. But it gets the conversation going about how leaning into your wants is still part of working on your wellness.

Tell us about Sakro, the wellness program that you founded. What does it entail?
We usually set up an initial meeting with the client to see if we&rsquo;re a good match for what they want to achieve, then we do a full assessment and order tests if necessary. From there we head straight into counseling and see what kind of support they need&mdash;specific meal plans or a more relaxed recipe book&mdash;all tailored specifically to their nutritional needs. After we discuss what&nbsp;they should eat, we move on to&nbsp;how&nbsp;they should eat. We use different tools for mindfulness and behavioral therapy to devise a plan to help anticipate challenges and how to prevent a relapse. Stress management is a huge part of the program so we monitor sleep and help clients create simple self-care rituals that they&rsquo;ll be consistent with.
Everything is done in phases and at the client&rsquo;s preferred pace, so when they&rsquo;re ready, we prescribe a movement plan as well like a curated yoga sequence for their digestive issues or a quick workout they can weave into their day.&nbsp;
Lastly, for female clients, a portion of their program is devoted to syncing their food and activities with their monthly cycle to better support hormonal shifts.
What&rsquo;s the philosophy behind Sakro?
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">Our philosophy is Eat + Practice. We must be aware of how food makes us feel so we can give our bodies the proper nourishment it needs. And Practice, to learn how to stay consistent even when conditions aren&rsquo;t ideal.

Diets are usually associated with restriction and calorie counting. But Sakro promises to make eating right feel good, even allowing dieters to eat their favorite food. How exactly does the program do this?
 All kinds of food can be part of a balanced diet provided that we don&rsquo;t overindulge in it. The problem now is that we crave for sweets, chips, etc. way too often. What we do is we target the root cause of cravings by correcting blood sugar, addressing any digestion issues, and balancing the gut microbiome. This lessens the cravings and with it the need to restrict ourselves, which makes us feel bad. When the cravings do happen, we guide the clients to learn how to make better decisions&mdash;giving in or holding out. This is because we believe in flexibility as the key to staying consistent. When you&rsquo;re consistent, you see better results and when you see better results, you feel good about yourself.&nbsp;
How does Sakro differ from the other popular diet programs one can find online?
I think what sets us apart from other programs is that we put equal importance on both the physiological and behavioral aspects of the nutrition care process. All the strategies are developed together with the client so they&rsquo;re steps that the client is willing and able to do.&nbsp;

Aside from Sakro, you also work with Boon Balance Adaptogens, a brand that creates blends of herbs for stress support. What&rsquo;s your role in the brand?
I do the research and development for all the blends and my partners Sabine Dualan and Katie Li handle the business and marketing side of things.&nbsp;
Break it down for us&mdash;what exactly are adaptogens and what do they do?
 Adaptogens are a class of non-toxic herbs that help the body respond better to stress. The theory is that they interact with the body&rsquo;s HPA Axis and make changes in our hormone production to be more resilient to physical or biological stress. A lot of these herbs are familiar to most of us already since they&rsquo;ve been used in Eastern Medicine and Ayurveda for ages like licorice, ginseng, and maca.
How do adaptogens play a role in your daily routine?
Every night I have a cup of Boon Calm in Golden Milk flavor. It&rsquo;s my favorite because it&rsquo;s my personal golden milk spice blend. When I have an extraordinarily full day, though, I have Boon Happy Blend in my coffee in the morning and skip my nightly drink.
 I like using either time as an anchor habit to build more wellness rituals on top of, like a quick workout, meditation, or breathwork, to remind me to keep my well-being a priority.

Speaking of your daily routine, what does your beauty and wellness regimen look like?
 Aside from supporting monthly hormonal shifts via diet, I try to focus on hydration so I drink 3L of water a day and pile on the moisturizers. I make sure to get adequate rest and squeeze in a sweat sesh a couple of times a week.&nbsp;
Any other health and wellness projects you're working on? Do tell!
We&rsquo;re adding more health professionals as part of the assessment team to give more insight on each client&rsquo;s oral health all the way to digestive health.&nbsp;
Before we go, what&rsquo;s your advice for anyone looking to take their nutrition and diets more seriously? What's a simple and inexpensive way to improve your nutrition?
2 things! Chew your food really well and eat more raw things like kefir, and salads to add more enzymes in your diet. This significantly improves digestion and when this happens, it brings with it positive changes in other aspects of health too!&nbsp;

Connect with Bianca on Instagram via <a href="https://www.instagram.com/sakro.space/?hl=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sakro Space</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/boon.balance/?hl=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Boon Balance.</a>

Dietitian and Nutritionist Bianca Dualan Says Diets Don’t Need To Be Restrictive

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