The number impacts: on Instagram, the nutritionist Laura Romano (@integralnutrition) He has a million followers. He surpasses many actors and singers from various fields and does so based on content that demystifies food, raises awareness about food, and shares healthy recipes. In times when everyone is a gourmet and seeks to eat better, his account is all the rage, and thus also explodes the agenda of his office and the orders for Íntegra, his line of bars and snacks created in search of “the perfect snack” for his patients.
Author as well as “Diets have an end” (Planet), is a faithful believer that the only thing capable of truly transforming the body is changing habits, and that is how she gave birth to her 80/20 method, in which she takes the Pareto principle to apply it to a way of eating in the that good decisions are the majority percentage, but there is always room for slippage and enjoyment.
News: How did you come to nutrition?
Laura Romano: When I was a teenager, in my fourth year of school, I began to internalize myself with diets. I started researching plan to lose 3.4 kilos. And without realizing it, it became an obsession, which later turned into depression. I distanced myself from my group of friends, I didn’t want to go out, I was always dressed in a bag because I didn’t want to show myself. Certain foods scared me and generated guilt. At the time I began to think about what to study. I took a vocational test and Communication came out. But since I was with my mambo with food, I thought I could study it to understand more. I enrolled in Nutrition and I set out to heal myself. My parents, who sent me to Buenos Aires from Carmen de Areco, gave me their vote of confidence and I returned it well, because step by step, focusing on something else, food took a backseat.
News: How do you see young people today? Are there still many disorders or does the more diverse mentality help the physique not have so much weight?
Roman: I see two things. On the one hand, I see more and more eating disorders at a young age, even from the age of 8. But on the other hand I see adolescents with fewer mambos with the body, because they wear tops and do not have a marked belly or legs like a womb. And when I was 15, if I didn’t have a flat stomach, I didn’t wear shorts. I spent almost my entire adolescence without using it, and only now at 36 years old do I show my legs…
News: Why did you decide to venture into networks?
Roman: I did it when I opened my practice in Buenos Aires. In 2015, Instagram accounts began to emerge, and I got involved. There was a world of fit girls, girls with a lot of covert eating disorders. And when I started to become known, I was the antithesis. I started by saying that it’s not bad to eat a carbohydrate, that you can not train every day. I never fought with anyone, but I tried to give the opposite message, and that’s how I started to grow. And then I had the stroke of luck that it was Dalma Maradona, who fell into the office because of his coach. He had a generosity like few others, every time he came he uploaded videos and photos and patients and followers rained down on me. Then Stephanie Demner arrived, who finished teaching me about networking and encouraged me to show myself.
News: Do you feel like you found a method?
Roman: Yes, 80/20 I have it registered. While that theory is cheap and exists, the weight loss method is mine. When I was trained in this “non-diet” thing, doing postgraduate studies with Mónica Katz, my head opened up a lot, because when I graduated we treated patients with the same formulas for everyone. It also happened to me that when I talked about eating everything but I had to outline it to a patient, I didn’t know how. Until I thought about applying 80/20 to nutrition, and I calendared and segmented it into meals per week, so it becomes sustainable. If not, guilt makes you make bad decisions.
News: Do you find yourself very emotionally hungry?
Roman: A lot, and the first step is to identify it. Emotional hunger points to sensations, textures. Real hunger comes from the belly and you would eat anything, it’s nothing specific. Emotional hunger is extremely salty or extremely sweet. He is very selective.
News: How was Integra born?
Roman: Not finding products to recommend to the patient so that he could have a snack. He ended up recommending an alfajor, because the bars that were on the market were without fiber and not at all filling. Or a nougat, and it’s a sweet with sugar. I started looking for ingredients and trying to find the perfect recipe, without thinking of selling it at first. I wanted it to give a lot of satiety. Many followers from abroad shared products with me and I discovered chicory root, which is the only natural fiber with prebiotic action, food for intestinal bacteria. I started looking for a producer who would give me the root. The initial batch I made at home. And when they came out, they started telling me to sell them. So I started looking for a partner to do it.
News: What do you think about intermittent fasting?
Roman: It’s not for everyone. When one analyzes the evidence, it shows that in terms of weight loss and improvement of metabolic parameters such as arterial hypertension, cholesterol and glycemia, everything improves just like a hypocaloric diet. It is one more way of doing caloric restriction. The evidence is seen much more in eating earlier and having breakfast later. I recommend that without the need for it to be exactly counting the hours. Also, be careful with what you break the fast…
News: What does your daughter Gaia eat?
Roman: As a nutritious mother, at home we eat a lot of vegetables. But she is a 3 year old girl. She likes chocolate, she eats candy on her birthday… I’m not going to be an alien. He still drinks water, he didn’t try Coca Cola and I never gave him chicken legs or medallions. I prefer to give him white noodles.
News: And you?
Roman: Like 80/20 always. I feel that with that I not only healed my relationship with food, but that I enjoy it.
