Rasa Troup, MS, RD, CSSD, LD, OLY

About

  • Pronouns: she/her

  • Occupation and Specialty: Registered and Licensed Dietitian

  • Location (Clinic/hospital): Rasa Nutrition

  • Location (City): Minneapolis/St. Paul

  • Offers Telehealth: Yes

  • Contact Information: https://www.rasanutrition.com

  • Bio: Rasa’s passion is to bring more joy, kindness, compassion, and love to human lives by showing respect and care for, and attunement with, the inner wisdom and inner values of all human bodies, all human abilities, all our communities, and our planet. Rasa is grounded in practicing nutrition using non-diet, weight inclusive, trauma informed and body trust-informed approach. It is important for Rasa to practice inclusivity, curiousity, and respectful perspective toward all humans, to their lived experiences, to their culture and to their upbringing. Rasa is committed to practicing bravery by standing up and speaking up for injustice in her practice and everyday living.

Approach to care

  • What does it look like for you to provide care to patients in larger bodies? How is, or isn’t, your approach different from how you care for patients in smaller bodies? If you work with children, how is or isn’t your approach different when working with children?

    I want to learn and listen to patients in larger bodies, I want to acknowledge that marginalized bodies experience consistent messages of non belonging and that their bodies require some sort of fixing. These messages create a lot of harm. My role is to understand, to provide truth, to provide empathy, to provide space for curiosity, to acknowledge what I do not know. I try to focus on nourishing and behavior and not dieting and fixing persons weight. I also have to know that hold thin privilege and know that I do have blind spots and that this work is messy in a society that does not accept diverse bodies, eating experiences and cultures.

  • What is your perspective on how weight is or is not related to health?

    Weight has nothing to do with health

  • Finish this sentence: “Fat people are…” 

    humans that experienced much harm from thin, white, cis and any other dominant identities. They are fully human and they are not worse or better then any other human on his planet and deserve care, love, and belonging and they are making this world more diverse.

  • How do you, your clinic, and the healthcare system you work in use BMI (i.e BMI cutoffs for accessing certain services, BMI on charts and printouts, etc)? Is this flexible?

    I do not use BMI.

  • If a patient declines to be weighed, how do you and/or your staff proceed?

    I do not weight most of my clients. There are rare occasions when I may need to help with hydration for athlete, but that is done with a lot of education and sometimes blinded

  • If a patient declines to discuss weight loss, nutrition, and/or exercise, how do you proceed?

    I hardly talk about weight loss unless clients bring it up.

  • What does the physical accessibility of your office space look like? What kinds of accommodations are present for people in larger bodies? Are there things you wish were in place that are currently not? 

    virtual visits from their home
    elevator
    wheelchair accessible office
    comfortable sofa in the office to accommodate all bodies

  • What do you do to allow fat people to feel comfortable and welcome in your office? 

    Furniture and space for all bodies

  • If you’d like to use this space to talk about any identities (gender, race, size, sexuality, etc.) you hold and how this relates to your care, please do so. 

    I love to create space and care for all human bodies and that requires me to listen, understand, learn and accept all humans as they are.