Julia Zumpano has enjoyed counseling patients one-on-one for the past 19 years, but when the nutrition professional recently had the opportunity to expand her reach, she jumped at the chance.
Zumpano is a registered dietitian at Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Human Nutrition, and her professional insight helped shape guidelines for two programs featured in the hospital’s new health and diet coaching app, the Cleveland Clinic Diet App. Both programs aim to educate and empower users to make healthier diet and lifestyle choices.
The app was developed in collaboration with FitNow, part of the Everyday Health Group.
“Too often, we put our health in the hands of the health care providers we seek out,” said Zumpano, who is also the nutrition media liaison for the Cleveland Clinic. [app] It’s about owning it, understanding what’s going on in your body, and being involved in decision-making. [in order to] You will be able to make lifestyle changes that will support your health and overall wellness.”
We spoke with Zumpano about what the app has to offer 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 downloading it?
Julia Zumpano: First, you fill out a questionnaire and choose the plan that’s right for you. There are two plans: Heart Smart and BodyGuard. The BodyGuard plan is designed from a weight management perspective, but more importantly, from a health perspective. By design, it aims to reduce inflammation and minimize triggers that stimulate appetite and make you overeat. It also encourages you to eat foods that provide solid nutrition, including nutrients, fiber, and healthy fats.
The Heart Smart plan is for people with heart conditions or a family history of heart disease. This plan focuses on protecting your heart. It’s similar to the Body Guard plan in that it targets reducing inflammation and sugar, but with a special focus on sodium, saturated fat, trans fat, and fiber.
Once your plan is in place, you will be placed on a course designed specifically for the program you are participating in. This course is designed to be easily completed throughout the first week of your program and will help you understand where to focus your efforts.
EH: How does the app hope to achieve its goal of empowering people?
JZ: The main goal was to develop an app that could offer the services of a nutritionist and, eventually, a doctor or psychologist. It can never replace a real medical professional, but it will provide information that will allow clients to take control of their own health.
EH: As a nutritionist, you know firsthand how hard people have to lose weight. How has this past experience influenced your recommendations for this app?
JZ: There is a culprit in the standard American diet that is holding us all back. These overly processed, highly palatable foods are easy to overeat and are readily available everywhere. It is too obvious. Our society pushes processed foods so much that it has become normal to eat potato chips, candy bars, and even protein bars that are touted as healthy but never are (still ultra-processed foods). All of these wreak havoc on our systems, causing inflammation and dysregulating taste and satiety. All of these are impacting our weight, but no one sees it that way. The foods we have access to every day are a whole health, social, and food service problem.
If we can take ownership and look at what we’re eating and how it’s affecting our body, then change will happen. The more people want to change and start buying healthier products, the more change will happen collectively. That’s the goal.
EH: Are there any specific traits that have emerged from your experience as a dietitian?
JZ: This app combines the basics of food logging with advice and guidance from my experience as a nutritionist. It is similar to the Lose It! app (developed by FitNow), where you write down everything you eat, record it with audio, take pictures of what you eat, and the app calculates what you’re taking in. You can log throughout the day and it gives you nutritional guidelines for all macronutrients and minerals based on your goals. These plans are aimed at maintaining health, not just weight loss. The guidelines are aimed at controlling and managing heart health, weight management, but also from a disease prevention perspective.
Er: I understand that Cleveland Clinic partnered with FitNow to build the app. What did each side bring to the table during development, and how did this partnership impact the final product?
JZ: Both sides offered expertise. Cleveland Clinic’s specialty is patient care, and that’s what we delivered. With nearly 20 years of experience in patient care, I’ve seen trends, reasons why people don’t succeed, limitations, and so on. I tried to use this experience to inform what to include in the app and how to determine the criteria.
Aside from nutrition, the content that we provide in this app is what we tell our patients every day. We’ve put together posts, blog articles, or courses. We’ve been very strategic in creating content that we can provide to our readers to read on all of these topics that we talk about with our patients.
FitNow launched the first ever food tracking system. I’ve been encouraging my patients to use Lose It! for years, long before this relationship began. I always recommend food tracking because I think it’s a great way to take control of your own nutrition and meal plan. They have a lot of great cutting edge features, have been in the space for years, have a ton of experience, and have a great team that can build a great app. It’s not our specialty. So we combined two great companies and created something great.
EH: Who are the best candidates to use this app?
JZ: Any adult can benefit from using the app, except for those undergoing cancer treatment, children, the elderly, and those with a history of eating disorders. Of course, you should always consult with a medical professional before starting any new eating plan.
— Julia Zumpano, RD
EH: How do you expect the app to work for people taking semaglutide or other GLP-1 weight loss medications? Are there any special factors they should take into consideration?
JZ: Some of these medications can prevent you from getting enough nutrients and calories, putting you at risk for malnutrition, which increases your risk of sarcopenia. This is a great way to track if you’re getting enough protein, fiber, and fluids every day. It can also help boost the effectiveness of these medications, ensure adequate fiber intake, and prevent potential side effects like muscle mass loss, nausea, and constipation. Plus, if you’re not eating enough protein or skipping meals, the app can identify these trends. It gives you data and feedback on how the nutritional side of your weight loss journey is going.
EH: When it comes to weight loss, people often struggle to make permanent lifestyle changes. How does the app help users overcome this challenge?
JZ: Many of our lingering lifestyle problems stem from the fact that most diet trends are restrictive – they limit or eliminate foods, or make us fear something. While it’s OK to eat highly processed foods every now and then, it’s in excess that they cause problems.
This app is more about getting what you need, rather than not eating something. Someone who is focused on getting all of their nutritional needs isn’t even going to worry about what they can’t eat because they’re so focused on, “Did I get enough protein? Did I meet my fiber needs? Did I get enough omega-3 fatty acids?”
I like the idea of supporting your body and your health, not restricting. Is your goal to improve your health or to lose weight? Those can go hand in hand, but in my opinion it’s really about choosing foods for yourself that support your health and support your body to function at its best. Then the weight will come naturally. It has to come from a mindset and understanding. This is a health app, not a weight loss app.
EH: As a nutritionist, what part of the app are you most excited about or proud of?
JZ: What I like most about this app is the teaching aspect. It’s not just tracking, it’s teaching. It offers a lot of great content and a lot of great options. The biggest purpose of this app is to teach while using the app. This is something I can provide if I can meet someone every day, but now this app can help the user and provide good and accurate content.
