Navigating Diet & Wellness Culture is Hard
Navigating diet and wellness culture is hard. And if you’re on this planet, in one way or another, you are doing so every day.
Navigating diet and wellness culture in the context of having a chronic illness is hard. And just like everyone else, we contend with this noise on a daily basis. But I think it’s okay for me to recognize that in the context of managing a chronic illness, these messages feel a little extra, extra.
A little extra pressure.
A little extra stress.
A little extra self-doubt.
A little extra urgency.
A little extra sense of responsibility.
A little extra sense of should.
A little extra sense of shouldn’t.
A little extra sense of the need for out of body expertise.
I wish that this were easier. I wish the messages were a little less loud and a little less convincing and a little less assertive. I wish that Dr. Google didn’t have seven answers for every question. I wish I never felt compelled to search Dr. Google for an answer.
There are obvious exceptions to my suggestion that focusing on getting enough food is more important than focusing on specific minerals, vitamins, nutrients. If you’re allergic to a thing, don’t eat it. If something makes you feel poorly, don’t eat it.
But if you have done body healing work already, if you are practicing intuitive eating, if you’ve moved beyond diet or disorder and feel as though you need to outsource your dietary expertise, I would ask you to pause.
Living with a chronic illness is stressful. Being terrified of food? Also stressful. Feeling unable to eat food without the risk of harming yourself? Also stressful.
Stressing about minutia in terms of what you’re eating may provide temporary relief because self-care works that way. But in the long run, stressing about food is good for no one.
Food is not medicine.
Stress reduction is not medicine.
And diet culture’s message that food is the cure for or cause of any and everything? Definitely not medicinal.
Stress Reduction is Awesome
Am I suggesting that food should be the only way that you manage stress?
Nope.
Am I suggesting that if you eat, you won’t experience stress?
Nope.
But the act of not getting enough food puts stress on your body. Your body prepares for famine, and in doing so, activates a cascade of stress hormones to protect you because inadequate energy means you need stress hormones to function.
Another neat human trick for survival!
You can’t be both undernourished and simultaneously relaxed.
This applies whether you’re on a new year, new diet, are contending with an eating disorder, or just didn’t have the ability to eat because of a chaotic day. Your body doesn’t need to know the WHY. And it does know how to respond.
This applies to EVERY BODY. This is not dependent on body size. AT ALL.
Stress reduction is awesome.
Food is mandatory for engaging in ANY stress management anything.
Body Diversity is Intentional
This is why your instagram #fitspo influencer is not helpful. Moving like they do will not result in you looking like they do. Assuming they look like that, anyway.
This is why #diet culture icons messing with your food choice is not helpful. Dietary salvation is for sale, but it is not interested in anything but creating return customers. You might eat like ‘them,’ but you won’t have their lives or their bodies. And there’s no telling how honest they’re being, anyway.
This is why your #wellness guru is not helpful. Many of the humans peddling solutions are unqualified to do so, (hey @gwynethpaltrow), and worse, use their qualifications to keep you coming back. For the benefit of their wallets. Wellness deities are my least favorite things.
With any and all messages about being in a body, consider the flow of cash. These messages are banking on your vulnerability. And are completely unsound.
Move if you are able. If you want to. In ways that feel good. Eat a variety of food, if that is accessible to you. Eating anything is always better than aiming for perfect food. Not.a.thing. Don’t bother your head with fancy supplements or cleanses or detoxes.
Practice self-care, your way.
You can do all the things, and your body is going to look like your body. That’s not a mistake. That is very much by design.
BODY DIVERSITY IS INTENTIONAL.
Save your time.
Save your sanity.
Save your money.
Read: resilience
I think about this all the time.
I talk with my clients about this all the time.
By virtue of being children, we have fewer resources than we do as adults.
This is not a matter of opinion, but rather a fact.
This is why it is so essential for children to have healthy attachment figures.
This is why it is so important for children to have permission to eat all the food.
This is why it is so important for humans who are raising young humans to address their relationships with food and body and bias as they raise eaters.
AND
If you used food as a coping strategy as a child, that was an act of resilience. Not an act of gluttony. Or some naughty thing. This may well have been a means of survival. Read: resilience.
Because the act of eating leads to the release of neurotransmitters that help us feel good. This is not a matter of opinion. This is one of the reasons that humanity has persisted.
The act of eating leads to dopamine and norepinephrine release. The byproduct of eating certain food leads to serotonin release. These are…
REAL LIFE FEEL GOOD HORMONES.
When nothing feels good, eating does.
Reliably.
Consistently.
On a chemical level.
Thank goodness and gracious.
Many of my clients have experienced being shamed in the context of feeding themselves as young people.
Many of my clients experienced shame in response to their bodies changing related to eating resourcefully. Mostly projected on them by early attachment figures and medical professionals.
And it doesn’t matter if this body shame happened ten years ago, or thirty or fifty.
I know these memories stick around. And I’m sorry.
Your body was never a problem. Not then, and not now. You were resourceful and brave and I am so grateful that you persisted today.
How would your relationship with food change if you viewed it as a means of being resourceful?
How might you feel about your younger self if you reframed your eating patterns in the context of resourcefulness?
Evolve or repeat
New Year reality; “you’re not enough so buy this” message is going to be replaced with “you’re not enough so diet...” This year, consider that there is another way.
Change is so hard. And being stuck in a pattern that doesn’t serve us? Sometimes, even harder than the change itself. And other times, the change itself is hard as can be, and worth the difficulty.
Recovering from an eating disorder and moving away from diet culture is hard. It takes work, persistence, patience, self-compassion, drive, and all of these things, repeated, endlessly.
But we are presented with two choices: evolve or repeat.
In my life, I have chosen both. You likely have, too. Living with a chronic illness and a progressively debilitating illness, at that, is a lot. I have fought against my body. I have talked shit about my body. I have gone to great lengths to change my body. I have paid real money for miracle solutions that left me miraculously with less money and less self-confidence. And by no means, is this process over. But when I choose to sit with acceptance of what is, I’m not judging myself or my process or my body.
I’ve had MS for over 20 years. I’ve been disabled for the better part of 10, probably. I didn’t realize that my body moved differently until seeing myself on video eight years ago. And then after that, I acquired a limp that my dentist teased me for…I didn’t go to the dentist for two years after that.
In the last five years, I have started using mobility aids. I am disabled. And my disability is changing. My body is evolving in ways that I don’t love. But I am not repeating the pattern of beating the hell out of myself for the sake of beating the hell out of myself.
I wonder if you can offer your self, your body, similar compassion. I wonder if you can make the next choice one that frustrates your eating disorder, or flies in the face of diet culture. Expect it to feel uncomfortable. And keep going.
Our bodies are in a state of constant evolution. When our minds are doing the same, there can be harmony.
EVOLVE. Let’s go, 2020. Ready.
This year, opt-out
And we don’t know what it’s going to look like yet, but there is going to be another diet trend it is going to sweep the nation in 2020. And it is going to work in the same way that all other diet trends have worked.
Briefly, with minimal effect for most, costing a lot of money and even more mental and moral blowback.
THIS YEAR, OPT-OUT.
I don’t know what the sparkly trend will be this year, but you better believe that there will be something new and fantastic and promising to save us all.
Grapefruit didn’t work. Cabbage soup didn’t work. Fat-free didn’t work. Low-carb didn’t work. Extra high-protein didn’t work. Paleo didn’t work. The caveman diet didn’t work. Weight Watchers didn’t work. Nutrisystem didn’t work. Slim fast didn’t work. The whole 30 didn’t work. Clean eating. Is not a thing. Celery juice? Gross. Oh, and noom? That’s a diet.
The history of dieting is extraordinary.
Restriction by another name is still restriction. Your body doesn’t care that THIS ONE is supposed to be THE one.
The most common and frustrating outcome: unsustainable metabolic challenges that don’t serve most humans and leave folx feeling like failures. Except failing a diet means that your body is choosing to keep you alive. Which makes me wonder why we call that failure, at all.
If we are going to play with the new year, New You concept, then let it be about a year of rejecting diets.
I am a Fat Positive Nutritionist
I AM A PROUD FAT POSITIVE NUTRITIONIST
And while I’m here for all bodies, I am not interested in the unfair elevation of the experience of privileged bodies.
I get messages from folks telling me that they hate me and my page. That I am not to be trusted as a nutrition professional. That I must be speaking to small-fat bodies when I say that all bodies are worthy of care, of recognition, of recovery, of respect.
And although the discourse in my inbox is upsetting, it is NOTHING compared to the bullshit that humans who live in larger bodies are made to contend with, every day.
I can block folks. I can choose to not respond. I can choose to educate and fight and advocate.
And these are my choices because of the privilege that I live with.
So when I say I am fat positive dietitian, I’m here for ALL fat bodies. Small fat, medium fat, super fat, infinity. Fat bodies that live with and without disease or disorder. Fat bodies that have dieted and felt as though they failed, and dieted again. Fat bodies that engage in physical activity, or not. Fat bodies that are able to access nutritious food, or not. Fat bodies that have experienced disordered eating or eating disorders, or not. Fat bodies that prioritize health, whatever that means to an individual, or not. Able fat bodies, and fat bodies with disability.
I am a fat-positive dietitian because working otherwise is perpetuating weight stigma. Weight stigma is deadly. I am a Health at Every Size® dietitian because neglecting to operate from this paradigm, particularly in the context of treating humans with eating disorders, is negligent at best, deadly at worst.
I’ve learned a lot in eleven years. Most importantly, about the importance of sitting down, learning from those with experiences that I have not had, and challenging the weight-centric treatment paradigm.
I am looking forward to a new year of LOUD fat positive voices. Dismantling fatphobia and weight stigma is good for ALL bodies.
Vadiveloo, 2017
You still need to eat
Your body image might be terrible. The bottom of a trashcan kind of terrible.
You still need to eat.
Regularly.
Adequately.
Consistently.
Forever.
The fact that body image is actually a processing in your brain issue and not an actual body issue means that attempting to change your body will not address the root cause.
Have compassion.
Be gentle.
Experiment with speaking kindly to your body, even if you do not feel comfortable in it.
Especially if you don’t feel comfortable in it.
Don’t let the decoration fool you
Diet culture at the end of the year is the same life vacuum that it is all year round.
With glitter. And tinsel. And bows.
Same false promise.
Same body pressure.
Same success(?) rates.
Same noise.
Don’t let the decoration fool you.
And I understand that you might be tempted. And I see you if you’re not ready to reject diet culture. And I understand that fatphobia may keep you in the diet cycle. And I apologize if weight stigma has led to others to recommend that you stay with it. Just. One. More. Time.
And I’ll be here, either way.