Welcome from Mary Beth Kavanagh, MS, RDN, LD, FAND

Welcome to designing your personal weight loss plan. My name is Mary Beth Kavanagh, and I am the instructor for this course. I’m faculty in the Department of Nutrition in the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I teach undergraduate and graduate level nutrition courses to our own majors. And I also teach nutrition courses to our medical, dental and nursing students. I’m actually a graduate of the Masters Degree Coordinated Dietetic Internship Program here at our university. I have been a registered dietitian nutritionist for over 25 years, and I have helped thousands of people lose weight. In group sessions and individual counseling programs, and even in research studies. One of my biggest research projects was developing and delivering a weight loss intervention study for endometrial cancer survivors. I’ve always had a strong interest in food and nutrition. As the second child and first daughter in a family of eight children, I was cooking meals for the family by the time I was 12 years old. I became very interested in the nutrition piece when I worked in the food service department of a large hospital and could see firsthand how good nutrition improves health. This is a five week course that will provide you with a complete evidenced based program that, on completion of the course, you can use to start losing weight. While you might choose to start using what you learn immediately, this is not a weight loss program like Weight Watchers. This is a project based course in which you will design your own personal weight loss plan. I’m confident that you’ll leave this course with a very detailed plan that has all the essential components to get you started losing weight. Thank you for enrolling in this course. Now, let’s get busy designing your personal weight loss plan.