About Golda
Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. Body Love Coach
Golda’s mission is to empower plus sized women to live their best, most joyful lives, free of stress and shame over what they eat and what they weigh.
Using a unique combination of judgment-free coaching, Divine Feminine connection, and Health At Every Size principles, she supports her clients in living the lives they were meant to live.
Golda’s Story
Golda’s struggles with weight and body image started early – she went on her first diet at age 4 when kids in nursery school started calling her fat. For the next 24 years, she tried every diet imaginable from meal replacement shakes to diet pills to Atkins to Weight Watchers and back again.
Like many people who don’t feel good about their bodies, she focused on achieving in other ways, particularly academically. Golda went to New York University on full scholarship, eventually being inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and graduating summa cum laude.
While in college, she developed fibromyalgia, and at times, could barely walk. Finding that doctors could do little to help, she began her own sideline study of holistic health, and ultimately healed herself of this debilitating illness. Still, the pressure was on for Golda to keep achieving, and she was not sure what to study in the holistic health field. So she opted to attend New York University Law School and began a prestigious career as an attorney.
To the outside world she had it made. She was making good money, had lots of friends, and an awesome apartment (a particular rarity among twentysomethings in New York), but she knew being a lawyer wasn’t for her. Still, Golda’s experience as a plus-sized woman in the corporate world gave her the insight to understand the challenges her current clients face in their own careers.
And in all those years Golda, like 95% of dieters, hadn’t cured her “weight problem.” So in 2005, while still working very full-time as a lawyer, she attended the Institute for Integrative Nutrition to learn about nutrition, holistic health, and coaching. And to “finally get thin.” She never got thin, but she did learn lots of skills that inform her coaching practice today.
It wasn’t until 2007 that Golda had an epiphany about dieting. She’d exercised for 6 hours straight at a “workout retreat,” and it was dinner time and she was really hungry. She couldn’t stick to her diet and satisfy her body’s desire for food, so, in that moment, she decided that she and dieting needed to break up. After some frantic Googling, she began her journey with Health At Every Size and body acceptance, and throughout that year she continued to develop the system which allowed her to break the diet cycle and love her body. She now uses that system (tweaked and updated) with her clients.
Golda's Been Featured In...
Because she strongly believes that one’s goal should be not just body acceptance, but radical body love, Golda founded Body Love Wellness in 2008. She now coaches other plus-sized women on how to get off the dieting roller coaster, how to give their bodies what they really crave, and how to love their bodies—and themselves.
Publications and Media Appearances
Golda’s book, Stop Dieting Now: 25 Reasons To Stop, 25 Ways to Heal, was published in paperback and Kindle editions in June 2010. She is also a featured weekly columnist at Persephone Magazine and More of Me to Love. She has written articles for Jezebel.com and Daily Venus Diva, and has a popular podcast (36,000 subscribers and growing) on body acceptance and intuitive eating. Golda is also featured in Big Big Love: a Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size (and Those Who Love Them), by Hanne Blank and the upcoming anthology Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love & Fashion, edited by Virgie Tovar.
Golda’s counseling programs and activism work have been featured on CBS’s The Early Show, ABC’s Nightline, NBC’s LX New York, USA Today, Psychology Today and Time Out New York, among others.
Golda is the creator and organizer of the annual Body Love Revolutionaries Telesummit, which features size acceptance authors and activists.
What Some Awesome Folks Have Said about Her
“Golda is a wonderful spokesperson for Health At Every Size.” —Linda Bacon, PhD, nutrition researcher/professor and author of Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight
“Golda Poretsky is a Fat National Treasure, which means she’s a hero for all of us, all sizes of us, who want to live happily, healthfully, at home in our very own bodies.” — Marilyn Wann, author of FAT!SO?—Because You Don’t Have to Apologize for Your Size!
And because she couldn’t pick and choose from the client success stories, check them out at your leisure here.
Get In Touch
If you’re interested in working with Golda: Click here to schedule a free Body Love Breakthrough Session, or contact her at golda@bodylovewellness.com or call (347) 559-4259.
For media requests: Contact her at golda@bodylovewellness.com (and please reference any deadlines in your e-mail) or call (347) 559-4259. Here’s a link to her short bio.
