Overview of Services

“Wellness education has been my passion since I was in my early twenties and I learned about the connection between disease prevention, nutrition, and health.” – Teri Underwood

In 1984, Teri Underwood trained with Don Ardell (one of the pioneers of the wellness movement) at the National Center for Health Promotion and learned about the concept of wellness. Wellness is a continuum that stretches from complete vitality at one end, to disease and poor health at the other extreme.

For several years she taught the Be Trim weight loss program in Michigan. Inspired by Be Trim and all the people who were losing weight and keeping it off, in 1987 she went to grad school for advance study in behavior modification, nutrition, and heart disease prevention. There she developed Healthy Habits, a behavior change, cholesterol-lowering, weight loss program and researched its effectiveness.

Teri’s award-winning research found significantly more weight loss in the program containing behavior modification techniques. In the 1990s, she expanded Healthy Habits into several different programs.  Since then Teri has continued to teach and improve these programs and update them with cutting edge nutrition and wellness information and proven effective behavior change techniques.

Sustainable Diets currently offers  “Healthy Heart Habits” and “The Permanent Weigh Down” as group classes and company programs.