If you are anything like me when I first embraced intuitive eating and started rejecting diet culture, you understand in a logical, big-brain way why diets don’t work and in theory why an anti-diet approach makes sense. Yet still, there is resistance.
I have found in this work, knowing the facts isn’t enough. We also need to process some intense emotional hurdles because diet culture gave us a powerful, albeit faulty, psychological safety net.
Read MoreWhen people first hear about rejecting diet culture, the idea of intuitive eating or adopting a non-diet/anti-diet approach, the reaction is rarely, “Cool, tell me more, this is the answer I have been looking for.”
More often, the idea sets off flashing red warning lights and a loud “Danger, Danger!” siren, followed by a list of objections that might sound suspiciously like your own internal monologue.
Approaching food and your body through this lens requires deep work to unlearn and untangle messages so ingrained you might not even realize they are there.
Read MoreMy first true nutrition “a-ha moment” was learning about the blood sugar rollercoaster in a group nutrition class. It felt like the secret to fix my body, the one I was hoping to learn in my dietetics undergraduate program, but didn’t. When I started eating to stabilize blood sugar, I almost immediately felt less anxious, slept better, and had more energy.
I learned blood sugar can impact everything from your energy levels to your mood and is particularly relevant for those with insulin resistance, Type 2 diabetes, PCOS, or those navigating perimenopause.
Read MoreAn overly simplified definition of body image is how you picture yourself in your mind’s eye. This often has strong focus on appearance – looks, height, shape, size, and other physical attributes.
And, yes, how you picture yourself is part of the equation. However, that definition falls short of the complex (and sometimes contradictory) way you think, feel, and perceive your body in this world. These beliefs about your body can be both positive and negative and can change over time as you are exposed to new information or experiences.
Body image is a deeply personal internal experience that can be heavily shaped by external influences.
Read MoreYou might be surprised to learn that fiber is actually a type of carbohydrate. Despite what you may hear from some health and wellness influencers, carbohydrates are an important part of a balanced diet and fiber is a key reason why.
Read MoreIntuitive Eating is not a random list of rules. The principles were developed to help you better sense, understand, and respond to your body’s internal cues. They help you improve your body awareness or remove obstacles that make it harder to have body awareness.
Strengthening interoceptive awareness will make it easier to notice and respond appropriately to your body’s internal signals, including hunger, fullness, and tricky emotions.
Read MoreFrom a young age, all of us have been lied to about diets and nutrition. Most of us believe, without question, that if you just find the right foods and the right diet, your body and your life will magically transform into something better. The details might change, but the societal pressure to get it right doesn’t.
Despite what we have been taught, there is another way, a better way, to think about food without restriction, elimination, guilt, or shame: Gentle Nutrition.
Read MoreBinge eating is consuming a large amount of food quickly and mindlessly without regard to hunger, fullness, or physical comfort.
Dieting taught me how to binge eat.
It started with calorie counting…
Read MoreIntuitive Eating is a framework of 10 principles that support self-care and can help you improve your relationship with food and your body. It helps you relearn how to listen to and trust internal cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction rather than relying on strict external diet rules.
Read MoreWhat we eat does impact how we feel. If we skip regular meals and prop ourselves up with caffeine, sugar, and refined snack foods, we are not only missing important nutrients, but we are also causing blood sugar, our brain’s preferred energy source, to erratically spike and drop throughout the day, which is very stressful on the body.
Read MoreIf you have been around here for a while you may have noticed a change in the language used to describe Whole You Nutrition. In the past few months, I have updated business materials including the website to explicitly state “anti-diet gentle nutrition.” You might be wondering, what exactly does anti-diet gentle nutrition mean?
Read MoreConsidered by some to be an “easy fix,” these drugs have to potential to exacerbate anti-fat bias. The affordability, spotty insurance coverage, and the fact it won’t work for everyone (either because it simple doesn’t work or the side effects are untenable), or someone simply doesn’t care to take a medication, means these biases will unduly impact those with marginalized identities including those in larger bodies, POC, trans folks, and those with lower socioeconomic status.
Read More
