The Buffet: An Intuitive Eater’s Playground

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Out of all the situations that my patients find challenging, the buffet is the one they most commonly mention. No wonder that they do, as buffets are laden with many of the dynamics that can be tricky for budding intuitive eaters. Another way of looking at the matter is to think of buffets not as tests or proving grounds, but rather as playgrounds: a place to practice, have fun, and figure out which elements of intuitive eating might benefit from further work.

Consider the following factors and how you can use buffets to examine the role that they might be playing in your eating.

Quantity: As far as I can recall, every buffet I have gone to has been of the all-you-can-eat format without any external constraints to limit how much I ate. For people who are used to leaning on outside forces to put a cap on their quantity consumed – such as a restaurant’s serving size, the mound that mom puts on their plate, or a 100-calorie snack pack – buffets can leave them feeling lost and unsure when to stop. Some patients shy away from buffets for this reason, but I suggest instead running straight for them, as they present fantastic opportunities to practice recognizing and honoring our fullness cues. After all, without any external cues telling us when to stop, we have no choice but to look inward at our body’s cues to make the decision.

Cost: If you are a fan of the Phantom Gourmet, you have likely seen The Nordic Lodge featured several times over the years. Joanne and I went once several years ago to see what the fuss was about, and it certainly was an interesting experience. The adult admission price was lower than the current $125.00-per-person fee when we went, but it was certainly still expensive, and I found myself feeling anxious about making sure I got my money’s worth. Then I reminded myself that the entry fee was a sunk cost whether I stopped when I was comfortably full, made myself sick, or anywhere in between. Eating to the point of feeling physically gross was not going to somehow enhance the experience or make me feel differently about the money we spent. That is just me though, and I am not suggesting that there is a right or wrong answer here, as some people might indeed feel more positive about their overall experience if they leave a buffet feeling like they ate their money’s worth; but it is interesting to examine in real time how cost might be influencing your eating behavior.

Rarities: If you have attended The Langham Hotel’s chocolate buffet, you know that they do not allow doggy bags. Although our waiter did once discreetly slip me some extra napkins so I could wrap up a piece of pastry to take home, their official stance is you either eat the food there or you do not eat it at all. Feeling a pull to take advantage of a now-or-never, or at least a now-or-wait-a-long-time-for-another-opportunity, situation to eat something can be an example of beckoning. Even though some patients feel that eating in response to beckoning is a negative behavior, I disagree and feel it is a morally neutral action that is neither good nor bad. As I discussed in a previous blog, simply having an awareness of whether we are eating in response to humming or beckoning has its upsides, and there may be no better place to ask ourselves this question than at a buffet you rarely attend or may never go to again.

Scarcity: My college dining hall was an all-you-can-eat buffet format, but they nevertheless still ran out of the most popular foods sometimes. Although I cannot recall any specific examples, I know there were certain desserts that would run out quickly relative to the others. Whenever they were on the day’s menu, the race was on to get some before the other students finished it all. Looking back, I am certain there were days that I chose something not because I genuinely wanted it, but because I felt a competitive drive to get it before it was gone. Next time you are at a buffet and you spy an item that is running low, consider how your selection may or may not differ if the quantity were bountiful.

Dichotomies: One of my patients told me that when they were young and attended buffets with their parents, they sometimes tried to sneak extra quantities of “bad” food when their parents could not see them, such as taking some and eating it before they got back to the table. Some people feel compelled to balance out their intake of “bad” food by forcing themselves to take some “good” food too whether they really feel like having the latter or not. In reality, the dichotomies that people believe regarding food – whether they are good/bad, healthy/unhealthy, clean/unclean, etc. – have much less to do with science and more to do with the way we impose principles of spirituality on our eating. Buffets can be a great place to examine the role that such a dichotomy may be playing in your food choices.

Comparisons: Going back to our Nordic Lodge experience, I clearly remember looking around at other diners and their plates because I was curious to see how others were approaching the buffet. Some people take things a step farther by comparing their own eating to others. Such comparisons might be the basis for someone to feel virtuous or guilty about their own food choices. Beyond that, sometimes we might use the behavior of others as a determinant of the permission we give ourselves. For example, maybe we are considering going back for a third plate of food, but we do not give ourselves the green light until someone else in the party does it first, and if they never do, then we deny ourselves.

While buffets can feel triggering, they can be great playgrounds for practicing and developing our intuitive eating skills. Instead of shying away from the challenge, lean into it and have fun!

No Nutritional Value?

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People sometimes use the phrase “no nutritional value” to demean certain foods or to flagellate themselves or someone else for having consumed one of them. Whenever someone speaks these words, I curiously wonder: Do they mean the phrase literally or figuratively? Either way is problematic, unfortunately, and is indicative of room for growth in their relationship with food.

If someone perceives that a food literally has no nutritional value, chances are high that they are factually incorrect. Anything we eat that contains at least one macronutrient (carbohydrate, fat, protein, water, or alcohol) or micronutrient (vitamin or mineral) has – by definition – nutritional value. Check out a food’s nutrition label, and if you see any numbers other than zeros, you know it has nutritional value. Even if you see zeros across the board, unlisted nutrients are still likely present, or perhaps the quantities are low enough that labeling laws allow for rounding down to zero. Sitting here now, I am hard-pressed to think of even a single example of an edible entity that has literally no nutritional value.

Besides, criticizing a food for having little or none of a particular nutrient implies that other foods with higher concentrations of it are somehow superior, but this is not necessarily true. Some nutrients have a tolerable upper limit, which is the “maximum daily intake unlikely to cause adverse health effects.” For example, consuming too much zinc can cause a copper deficiency, as the two minerals compete for absorption. People have died from drinking so much water that their blood’s sodium concentration became perilously low. Vitamin A toxicity, which can also be fatal, can arise from eating just a single serving of polar bear liver.

Even if we consider smaller quantities, ones not large enough to seriously risk our health, consuming too much can prove useless. Purchase a supplement with a high concentration of B vitamins and note how your urine turns neon yellow, which results from our bodies expelling the excess vitamins it cannot use. (Insert here your own joke about flushing your money down the toilet.) Taking in a large amount of calcium at once does little good for our bones, as our bodies are limited in how much they can absorb at a time. The bottom line is that more does not always imply better or healthier.

Having said that, I know that most people who say “no nutritional value” do not mean it literally, but rather as an expression of how they deduce foods, ingredients, and nutrients into moral hierarchies. For example, someone may tell me pasta has no nutritional value because they see carbohydrates as inferior to protein. Another person may claim that butter has no nutritional value because they look down upon its high fat concentration. Yet another patient may say that juice has no nutritional value because their demonization of sugar blinds them from appreciating the vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and other nutrients swimming around in the beverage.

People are often hard on themselves or feel anxious for eating foods that they perceive as having no nutritional value, which hinders their ability to eat intuitively. Recognizing our body’s signals can sometimes be challenging enough even without guilt and stress complicating matters and clouding the picture. One of my patients described the situation to me with a simile, saying it is like playing a sport and straining to focus on what the coach is saying while other people on the sidelines loudly yell conflicting advice. Similarly, if we feel virtuous for eating a food that we perceive to have nutritional value, we might be at risk for blocking out signals from our body that the food is not actually hitting the spot.

See if this common scenario feels familiar. You are in the midst of eating a food that you perceive to have “no nutritional value.” Even though you can tell you are getting full, you decide to keep eating it because you figure today is ruined anyway, so you might as well finish it all so it is no longer in the house, and you can start fresh tomorrow. Here is another situation that might ring true. You are craving a specific food, but since you feel it has “no nutritional value,” you try to satisfy the craving with an alternative version that you believe has a better nutrition profile. Since the latter does not quite hit the spot though, you consume more of it in an attempt to make up for lack of pleasure with quantity. Still not satisfied, you try other foods. Your grazing may eventually encompass eating the food that you craved in the first place. Now you feel stuffed and maybe guilty, whereas if you had allowed yourself to consume the object of your desire in the first place, you could have had a more enjoyable and peaceful eating experience and then gotten on with your day.

When I was in nutrition school, I used to modify my cookie recipes in an attempt to make them “healthier.” It took me a long time to understand why I tended to eat so many of these modified creations in one sitting, but eventually I realized it was because these cookies – which were more akin to high-fiber pancakes than actual cookies – were not hitting the spot. That is not a knock against pancakes, which are of course fine, but they do not fill a cookie-shaped hole as well as the real thing. Once I came to understand what was happening, I abandoned those modified recipes and returned to the original. Instead of having a whole pile of the “healthier” but less satisfying versions, I would have a couple of real cookies, feel satisfied, and be done.

If any of what you have read here resonates with your own thought patterns or experiences, ask yourself this: How might my own eating change if I abandon the flawed notion that some foods have “no nutritional value”?

My Fat Knee

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About a month ago, I hyperextended my right knee while lying in bed. As a result of this (and a history of knee problems that I’ve had for the past decade or so), I had a very bad flare-up of osteoarthritis. I wish that I could say that I had injured myself doing something much more fun or exciting, but I guess when you are in your 40s, this stuff starts happening to you. Interestingly, aside from the initial sharp pain and chronic aching that ensued for several weeks, I noticed that I had some other feelings as well. The usual feelings of sadness and frustration were present of course, but there was something else too: panic.

When I tried to think about why I might be feeling panic in this situation, I had to wade through a lot of things: history, past trauma, hurt, and fear. Since I have always been in a fat body (although at times it has been straight size through restriction and overexercise), I have had a troubled relationship with medical professionals. Starting from a very young age, I became aware that my larger body was something problematic and to be feared. I have very early memories of feeling ashamed of my body whenever I would be weighed at the pediatrician’s office. I remember my pediatrician warning my mother about my weight percentile on my growth charts, and in turn she would turn her concern into “let’s fix this” mode, keeping an eye on my eating and monitoring my portions. I remember being weighed in my kindergarten class, and everyone’s weights were listed next to their names on the chalkboard, so everyone knew where they “ranked” in body size. I was the heaviest girl, of course.

As I got older, my fraught relationship with medical professionals continued. When I entered my late teens, I switched over from my childhood pediatrician to a family physician who was also a family friend. At one point, I believe he treated at least four of my five nuclear family members. And every year, I would dread going to see him as I knew that my weight would be brought up as an issue.  Of course, there were a few years when I had lost weight that I looked forward to going to the doctor as I knew that I would receive praise and encouragement to keep going (never mind that what I was doing to lose the weight could qualify as an eating disorder). But even occasional weight loss didn’t stop me from feeling anxiety when going to the doctor. Because I knew that my body was still “wrong.”

When I found Health at Every Size (HAES), I felt like I could finally breathe for the first time. At last, here was a paradigm that welcomed my body and encouraged me to take good care of it, no matter what size I was. I stopped my periods of dieting and worked on improving my relationship with food and my body. I found a physician who is weight-inclusive and treats me as a whole entity, not just my weight. I learned how to advocate for myself in medical situations when my weight would be brought up as an issue. I have helped countless patients navigate their own troubled waters of medical weight stigma. I have been in therapy for many years and continue to work on these issues as they arise.

But despite all of this work I have done and continue to do, most medical situations result in that pit-in-my-stomach feeling. I flash back to the decades where I was taught that my ailments or injuries were due to my weight and that feeling of shame and embarrassment that would wash over my face when a doctor would give me the “weight lecture.” All of those years of hearing that my fat body was to blame for almost anything negative occurring to it sunk in deep and etched into my brain. So whenever I have a medical situation, whether it is slightly elevated cholesterol in my lipid panel, a knee injury, or sleep issues, my knee-jerk reaction is to brace for the inevitable “weight lecture.” Never mind that I have found the unicorn of PCPs who not only understands and practices through a HAES lens, but also lives in a larger body herself which makes her even more empathetic. I know that my PCP’s office is a safe space and that my fat body will be treated with care and respect.

And even with all of this knowledge, the past trauma that I have received around my body in medical settings is still present. It makes me sad and also makes me incredibly angry. I think about all of my patients who have been through similar experiences with their healthcare providers. I think about the fact that I hold a lot of privilege (being small-medium fat, white, cis gender, heterosexual, able-bodied, financially stable, etc.) and that those who don’t hold those privileges are treated as less than at best and are downright abused at worst in these medical settings.

It is really enough to make me feel very cynical and jaded about the medical profession as a whole, and as a result, I am hesitant to seek out medical care. But despite this, I know that the only way things are going to change in our medical system is if enough of us stand up and refuse to be treated this way. The more patients that I can help to advocate for themselves in medical settings, the more doctors I can try to educate about the harms of weight stigma, and the more that I can speak up in moments of witnessed weight stigma (along with racism, homophobia, and a plethora of other abuses), the more I feel I can somehow make a difference, even if it is just for one person.

Credibility

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The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) recently issued a draft of their updated clinical practice guidelines regarding medical nutrition therapy interventions for what they term “adult overweight and obesity treatment.” The very last point in their draft recommendations reads, “For adults with overweight or obesity, it is suggested that RDNs [registered dietitian nutritionists] or international equivalents not use a Health at Every Size® or Non-Diet approach to improve BMI [body mass index] and other cardiometabolic outcomes or quality of life.”

As you can imagine, the Health at Every Size (HAES) community is pushing back against the AND’s draft recommendations. The Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH) published an open letter to the AND as well as one to the HAES community outlining the ways in which the AND’s position is problematic.

(Before continuing, I want to highlight that the latter publication makes reference to white supremacy and how it factors into the picture, which I can imagine might trigger some head-scratching from those unfamiliar with the history of diet culture. If you want to learn more about this topic, consider checking out Fearing the Black Body – which, to be candid, I have not yet read myself, so I am calling attention to it based solely on its excellent reputation – or the first chapter of Anti-Diet.)

While I do not always agree with ASDAH and we do not speak for each other, I completely support the sentiments conveyed in their response letters. Similarly, I agree with Ragen Chastain’s response, which goes into more detail than ASDAH’s letters. Rather than reiterate their same points, I want to take a step back and look at one of the dynamics at play in this situation and in healthcare in general: credibility.

Back when I was in school for nutrition and looking ahead to my career, I wanted to become a universally respected expert, which is one of the reasons why I worked so hard in school. Then I began my dietetic internship and quickly began to sense that my expectations might be unrealistic. While all of my clinical preceptors placed a great deal of emphasis on note writing, or charting, each of them differed in how they wrote them, yet each felt strongly that their way was best and the others were wrong. One preceptor would praise me for utilizing a writing style for which another preceptor would chastise me. With my superiors giving me contradictory guidance, I felt confused and a bit paralyzed. There was no winning, no way in which I could make everybody happy, for what they each wanted from me was mutually exclusive.

Once I began practicing, the theme continued. Each time I changed how I practiced, some patients and colleagues applauded my shift while others thought I was making a mistake. Forget striving for universal respect, as there is no such thing. Credibility is subjective, and the truth is that every practitioner, no matter their approach, level of success, or reverence, is still seen by many as a quack.

This dynamic is not unique to dietetics; it shows up in other branches of healthcare as well. Reflecting upon issues I was having with my back in late 2013 and early 2014, I remember meeting with six surgeons – all of whom were highly regarded – and receiving five different opinions regarding what type of surgery I should have. One of them went so far as to say that if one of his interns had recommended the procedure that his colleague had suggested for me, he would have given the intern a failing mark.

Just as I had to weigh the pros and cons of the surgical options and choose the one I felt was the best for me, practitioners and patients also must decide which approach to healthcare is the one for them while understanding that large groups of people will always think their decision is wrong no matter what they choose.

When I first discovered HAES, I was skeptical since it contradicted much of what I had learned up to that point. Additionally, I did not want to believe it because it posed a threat to the weight-focused care I was providing at the time. On a deeper level, admitting HAES had validity also meant having to face the harm I had inadvertently done to my patients. Nobody who chooses a career in a helping profession wants to admit that they instead brought about hurt. Perhaps the folks at the AND – an organization that reinforces diet culture and weight stigma – are feeling similar resistance now, hence their criticism of HAES, or perhaps they are critical of HAES simply because it is not the approach that they choose to practice themselves.

Matching

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Figuring out what to eat can sometimes be a challenge. We stare at the contents of our open refrigerator, knowing we are hungry but unsure of what to choose, before we close the door only to immediately open it again and resume the search. We ask the waiter to come back in a few minutes and then return our attention to the menu. Our uncertainty can lead to frustration, confusion, and wasted time, but we have a remedy: matching.

Matching is an intuitive eating tool that can help us to make food selection decisions based upon our body’s internal cues. Diet culture tells us not to listen to our bodies, that its cues are untrustworthy and therefore to be ignored in favor of external systems, such as points systems or lists of foods to eat and those to avoid, in order to make choices.

However, our bodies are actually quite good at letting us know which food is going to hit the spot at any given time. As examples, consider how much better water tastes when we are thirsty compared to when we are already well hydrated, or how some people with anemia feel naturally attracted to high-iron foods. The latter might not know that beef has a high concentration of heme iron, but they do know that right about now, they could really go for a burger. Our bodies give us signals; we just have to be tuned in enough to notice what they are saying and trust them.

Following is an outline for how to put the matching process into practice.

  1. Before opening the refrigerator, pantry, or restaurant menu, ask yourself these questions to help guide your decision based upon your body’s intuitive eating cues.
    1. “What temperature food do I feel like having?” Example answers include hot, lukewarm, room temperature, cool, or frozen.
    2. “What texture food do I feel like having?” Example answers include crunchy, smooth, liquid, or a combination.
    3. “What color food do I feel like having?” Example answers include multicolored or monotone in a specific color.
    4. “What flavor food do I feel like having?” Example answers include sweet, salty, spicy, or bitter.
  2. With your answers in mind, survey your available food options to see which ones match – hence the term “matching” – your criteria.
  3. Imagine yourself eating each of the options you identified and choose the one you feel is most likely to hit the spot.
  4. Eat the food you selected, then ask yourself how the eating experience compared to your expectations. If your choice hit the spot as you anticipated, great! If not, no worries, just consider it data for the future.

You probably will not be able to answer all of the questions regarding temperature, color, texture, and flavor, but being able to answer even one can be enough to point you in a direction. Also, these are not leading questions, and you are not trying to talk yourself into wanting – or not wanting – a particular food.

Lastly, keep in mind that the matching process is a tool, not a rule that can be violated. For example, if you go through the process and determine that you want crackers and cheese, but then you remember that you have yogurt that is about to expire and you opt to use it up instead, you are not doing anything wrong, nor are you bad at intuitive eating. We all live in the real world where a multitude of factors influence our eating, and it would be unrealistic to expect someone to always base their eating decisions solely on matching. Use this tool to the extent that you want to and find it helpful.

“As long as you’re healthy . . .”

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“Health.” It’s a simple one-syllable word with a deceptively simple definition: “the state of being free from illness or injury.” What I have come to realize over the decade-plus that I have been practicing nutrition therapy as a registered dietitian is that health means many different things to different people. Health is not black or white, but a million shades of gray. But the wellness industry (diet culture’s shapeshifted cousin) would have us believe that health is not only easy to define and simple to identify, but also easy to achieve, if we just try hard enough. Well, sorry, it’s not that simple.

When I was a preteen, I remember feeling like my body was wrong, too big, taking up too much space. My mother and I would go to my pediatrician appointments, where my doctor would hem and haw about my weight. I had always trended on the 95th percentile on growth charts, and every year my pediatrician would comment on it in a concerned way. My mom would echo these concerns at home, gently reminding me that my doctor was worried for my health. When I would cry to my mom about being in a larger body than my peers, she would always come back to this statement: “You are a beautiful girl. We could make some changes to how you eat and exercise. I just want you to be healthy.”

“I just want you to be healthy.” These words ring in my ears as they have been spoken to me in different iterations throughout my life. From concerned college friends after I had gained a significant amount of weight during my freshman year (post diet, of course): “We are just worried about your health.” From my first adult PCP when I was 22 years old: “We just want to make sure you are healthy.” From my mom when I announced that I would be going on a low-carb diet at age 25: “as long as you’re healthy!”

Everyone seemed to say that my health was the most important thing and that being healthy meant being in a “healthy-looking” body. When I actively engaged in dieting, restricting, tracking every morsel, weighing myself multiple times a day, exercising even when I didn’t feel like it or was sick or injured, eschewing lunch outings with friends, losing my period – during these times, everyone marveled at how “healthy” I was. “It’s so nice to see that you are finally taking care of yourself!” my family would crow. “Keep going, get healthy!” my doctor cheered. Little did they know the personal hell I was living in. But at least I “looked” healthy. Or at least my body fit the social norm for what we collectively believe is healthy, i.e., it was no longer considered fat. But inevitably as the weight would come back on, the concerns for my health would resurface.

When I finally gave up on dieting and learned about Health at Every Size® and intuitive eating, I was ready to hear the message. At last, I didn’t need to micromanage my intake and output. I didn’t need to obsessively count and weigh and measure. I didn’t have to give lunch outings with friends a second thought. It was like a freedom I hadn’t felt since I was a child, before I was told that I had a body that was “wrong.” I began to realize that health is not one-size-fits-all and that it looks different for different people. With individuals who have chronic illnesses such as celiac disease or cystic fibrosis or those with physical disabilities such as paralysis or amputation, they would never be able to achieve a state of being “free from illness or injury.” How about the millions of people who deal with depression or anxiety? Are they unable to achieve health as well?

I feel that we need to change our beliefs and expectations around health. In my opinion, health is a multifaceted amorphous concept that is not always attainable. It is also something that changes during our lifespan for a multitude of reasons. Even if we engage in all of the “health-promoting behaviors” we have been told to do, there is no guarantee that we will be healthy. In addition, there is no moral requirement for us to engage in these behaviors. As the wise Ragen Chastain so eloquently states: “Health is not an obligation, a barometer of worthiness, completely within our control, or guaranteed.”

The wellness industry loves to prey on our fears of illness and death. It purports to give us the answers to living longer, healthier lives. All we need to do is buy their program, supplement, or detox, and we can unlock the secret to immortality. It’s a brilliant marketing scheme that swindles millions upon millions of people every year. What if we decided to care more about our mental health and wellbeing? What if we made healthcare accessible to everyone? What if we eradicated weight stigma from the medical field? What if we decided that health doesn’t look the same on every body and that this is okay? My guess is the wellness industry would lose billions of dollars. Worrying about and obsessing over our “health” is most definitely not good for us. I wonder when our society will figure this out.

“You have permission to not eat.”

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Some of my patients who are relearning how to eat intuitively find it helpful to utilize a mantra, a phrase they can say to themselves to help them through a challenging situation. Because we often discuss the concept of unconditional permission, “You have permission to eat” is a refrain that my patients commonly use. One of my patients though flipped it on its head and began to use “You have permission to not eat.” At first, I was a bit perplexed, but the more I listened to her and reflected on these words, the more I realized their power.

Having the freedom to allow ourselves to eat whatever we want, whenever we want, and however much we want – otherwise known as unconditional permission – is central to intuitive eating. Without this foundation, everything else we study can easily warp into dieting tools. Given that, I initially bristled at “You have permission to not eat” because I thought it might be a veiled attempt at restriction, but that is not the case at all. Rather, the power in these words comes from acknowledging the times when we feel obligated to eat even when our bodies are saying no and freeing ourselves from the burden of feeling powerless.

As a first example, consider the scenario that my patient told me about when she was explaining the power of her mantra. She was at dinner with her extended family, and all of the latter were leaning towards ordering dessert. While my patient did not feel like having dessert, she also felt a social obligation to order it since others were. Then she reminded herself, “You have permission to not eat,” which reaffirmed that whether or not to order dessert was her prerogative, and she could act in her own best interests regardless of how the rest of her family went about their eating.

Thinking about other possible applications, I realized how helpful this mantra can be for people who feel pressure to not “waste” food. We are familiar with guilt-inducing refrains to clean our plate, such as “There are starving children in the world,” as if whether or not we finish the food in front of us has any impact whatsoever on the global politics of food insecurity. In these moments, “You have permission to not eat” reminds us that we do not have to be human garbage disposals for the sake of some theoretical benefit to others.

My thoughts then went to how this phrase could be useful for people working through compulsive overeating. Recovery is, of course, more complex than simply reciting a mantra, but just as the concept of unconditional permission is essential for diet survivors who are building healthy relationships with food, “You have permission to not eat” reminds compulsive overeaters that they have the freedom to move away from the urges to overconsume that have felt so irresistible.

Lastly, I considered how “You have permission to not eat” can aid those who overconsume due to habit or tradition. Maybe we eat to the point of physical discomfort every Thanksgiving because we have come to accept that this is the norm on the holiday, or maybe we buy popcorn every time we go to the theater regardless of whether or not we are hungry or feel like popcorn just because eating the snack feels like an intertwined and essential component of movie watching. “You have permission to not eat” reminds us that even if we have long engaged in certain eating behaviors, we have the freedom to move away from them if we feel that they no longer serve us.

You may discover other applications in which “You have permission to not eat” is a helpful mantra, but guard against the temptation to use it as a tool to restrict because that would likely backfire and be counterproductive. If you feel yourself tempted to go down that road, remind yourself of the phrase from which this mantra came: “You have permission to eat.”

“What should I do for exercise?”

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When the topic of physical activity arises, a common question I get – especially if the patient knows I used to work as a personal trainer – is some version of, “What should I do for exercise?”

Before I get to my answer, a little history: Back when I was in nutrition school and working on the side as a trainer, I began my relationship with a new client by asking about their exercise-related goals. With their answer in hand, I researched the best (in theory, anyway) physical activity approach towards achieving said goals. Whether or not the client enjoyed my exercise prescription was largely immaterial. I offered a means to an end, and they were going to do what I suggested whether they liked it or not.

Furthermore, my clients hardly seemed to mind my approach. They expected trainers to have a no-pain-no-gain mentality, an element of an exercise-as-punishment culture that is so harmful yet prevalent, and I was giving them what they thought they deserved. Clients wanted clear and crisp answers, and I was providing them. Whether I was right, wrong, or somewhere in between seemed a distant consideration to the reassuring comfort that came with being told what to do.

At this point, I should add that I was a fairly horrible personal trainer. With hardly any experience, little oversight, and no mentors, I was on my own to take what I had learned in academia and apply it to the real world. Humans, it turns out, are way more complicated than straightforward case studies in a textbook. Clients became burnt out, got hurt, lost interest, or dropped off for other reasons, and they almost always blamed themselves instead of my flawed approach.

If that sounds similar to how dieters tend to place the blame for weight regain on themselves rather than on the diet, know that the parallel stands out to me too. Just as I cringe at the way I used to train clients, I am embarrassed and ashamed of how I practiced dietetics at the beginning of my career. The difference is that I have been a dietitian long enough to have outgrown those painful beginnings, whereas I worked as a trainer for such a short time that just when I was beginning to recognize my mistakes, it was time to move forward in my career.

When patients ask me about exercise, I now know that the straightforward answers they want and expect – the very kind of answers that I used to provide as a trainer – are not all that helpful even if they would be welcome. Just as is the case when it comes to our relationships with food, our relationships with physical activity are nuanced and unique. The answers come about through discussion and collaboration. Here are five factors that I encourage my patients to consider:

  1. Enjoyment: My decision to lead with a factor that is often shoved towards the end of the priority list or set aside entirely – yet in my eyes is so essential to consider – is a conscious one. If you do not like doing an activity, how likely are you to sustain it? If you repeatedly put yourself through an unpleasant experience, what kind of ripple effects will that have in the rest of your life, whether it be seeking out rewards, being in a bad mood, etc.?
  2. Risk: We can get hurt doing literally anything, but some activities are riskier than others. Injury risk also depends on the person in question. For example, some people can run their entire lives, whereas a friend of mine had to give it up due to a recurring injury that arose whenever he attempted to resume jogging. Risk extends beyond musculoskeletal concerns and includes other factors, such as a maximum heart rate that a cardiologist may suggest their patient not exceed.
  3. Access: If you enjoy swimming but cannot afford a pool membership, or you like walking but live in a mosquito-infested area without sidewalks, or you are into a team sport without a league in your area, you will face more challenges than someone with ready access to the facilities and opportunities they need.
  4. Goals: Choosing activities that advance us towards our goals increase our chances of achieving them. An aspiring strongman will get little benefit from participating in cycling brevets, whereas someone with osteopenia in their hips may be better off skipping both of those pursuits entirely and instead going for a walk.
  5. Options: Remember that physical activity is comprised of more than just “exercise” in that the latter typically conjures images of things like elliptical machines and dumbbells, whereas the former is broader and can include gardening, cleaning, shopping, dancing, hiking, chair yoga, isometric contractions, and anything else that engages the body.

So, what should you do for exercise? Look for a mode that you enjoy, have ready access to, makes you physically feel good, and helps you towards your goals. Whatever your answer is, that is what you should do for exercise.

An Open Letter to Daycares, Preschools, Nursery Schools, and Elementary Schools

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We so appreciate the care you take of our little ones. In fact, I am sure that most parents would agree being able to send our kiddos to daycare, preschool, and/or elementary school is a huge factor in maintaining our sanity. The way that you help our children learn, grow, and adapt is amazing, and we are grateful for you. Having said all this, we need to talk about the policing of our kids’ food in school.

Lately, I have begun hearing more and more from parents whose kids are being sent back home with notes about their packed lunch. One parent received a phone call from a daycare saying that they were not going to give her daughter the 10 M&Ms that she had packed in her daughter’s lunchbox because they were “unhealthy.” Keep in mind, this mom had the forethought to pack in her daughter’s lunch The Feeding Doctor’s lunch box card stating that she did not want the staff to interfere with her daughter’s eating of lunch and that her daughter is allowed to eat any or all (or none) of the foods packed in the lunch in any order she wants. The staff overruled these directions and said that candy is “frowned upon” in their program.

Listen, I get it. In our fatphobic, diet culture world, we’ve been taught that sugar is the enemy. That if we give it to our kids, they will turn into sweets-addicted, hyperactive lunatics who will be out of control, that their bodies will balloon up like Violet Beauregarde in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, and that their teeth will fall out due to cavities. As a registered dietitian who has a Master of Science in Nutrition and Health Promotion with over a decade of experience in the dietetic field, I’m here to tell you that all of this is false.

Kids are naturally born intuitive eaters. Newborn babies cry when they are hungry and drink breastmilk (or formula) provided by their caregivers until they are satiated. They are perfectly in tune with their bodies’ cues and eat in response to them.  As babies grow and they start eating solids, they continue to eat intuitively. If you’ve ever tried to get a baby to eat anything they don’t want to eat (I’m looking at you, strained peas.), you know they just won’t have it. As kids reach toddlerhood, often their eating habits become erratic. Some days, it seems like my daughter barely eats anything, but on other days, she appears to eat more than a grown adult. Despite this seeming chaos, our kids’ bodies know what they are doing. While meals might seem hit-or-miss during one day, it’s best to look at our kids’ eating over a period of days as things will usually average out.   

Kids usually remain intuitive eaters until the adults in their lives start interfering with their food. Whether it be pressuring kids to take “one more bite” at dinner even if they are no longer hungry, limiting their access to sweets and other highly palatable foods because they are “unhealthy”, or expressing concern about their eating “too much,” parents and other adults can really throw a monkey wrench into their kids’ relationship with food.  Many parents worry about their kids gravitating towards foods that are high in fat, sugar, and/or salt because they themselves have a complicated relationship with those foods. In reality, if we relax around these foods and include them regularly with more “nutrient-dense” foods, we can neutralize them and take the “shine” off of them as well. In my work with kids and families, it’s the kids who are the most restricted around highly palatable foods that end up bingeing on them when they get the chance, sneak eating them in their room, or being hyperfixated on them at their friends’ houses. If we teach our kids that food has no moral value (i.e., eating vegetables doesn’t make you a “good” person and cookies aren’t the devil’s food), they will be able to make choices about what and how much to eat based on their internal hunger and fullness cues.

In addition to being natural-born intuitive eaters, young kids have very binary thinking. That is, when we present them with the idea that there are “good” foods and “bad” foods, they take this information quite literally and are unable to see the gray. So many children feel guilt or shame for enjoying “bad” foods because they feel like they are bad for eating them. This is setting our kids up to have a very charged emotional experience around these foods which can continue on into adulthood for many of them.  If we teach kids that all foods fit and that the most important thing is getting a good variety of all sorts of foods, we can help foster their relationship with food and their bodies.

Another thing to consider is the concept of helping our kids become “competent eaters.” Coined by child feeding therapist and dietitian Ellyn Satter, competent eaters are those who eat in accordance with their hunger and fullness cues while taking into consideration their bodies’ needs and preferences. Parents’ (and caregivers’) role in this process is to be in charge of certain aspects of meals and snacks. Satter’s Division of Responsibility further clarifies that parents are in charge of what food is being served, when and where this food is offered. Meanwhile, kids are responsible for whether they choose to eat the food provided and how much they want to eat of said food. Ideally, parents offer their kids a variety of foods, including both highly palatable foods and foods that are more nutrient dense, and then let their kids eat in accordance with their bodies. This model posits that interfering with kids’ eating by cajoling them to eat more vegetables, discouraging them from eating other foods, or even praising them for eating more nutrient-dense foods will lead to power struggles at the dinner table.

So what can we adults do to help our kids develop a healthy relationship with food and their bodies? Here are some strategies:

  1. Avoid categorizing some foods as “junk” or “bad” and others as “good” or “healthy.” Food is just food and does not have moral value. Food is only “bad” if you are allergic to it or it is rotten or spoiled.
  2. Parents need to provide a wide variety of foods to their kids, including regular access to highly palatable foods in order to take these foods off the pedestal and make them morally equivalent to more nutrient-dense foods.
  3. Caregivers at school should refrain from pressuring kids to eat certain parts of their lunch before letting them eat other parts (e.g., “You need to finish your sandwich before you can have your cookies.”) If a child wants to eat their cookies first, please let them.
  4. Caregivers at school should also avoid confiscating food from kids’ lunchboxes unless those foods are an allergy or choking risk. If the parents packed the lunch, please respect that they know how to feed their kids.  
  5. Finally, school caregivers, please be mindful about sharing your own food anxiety with kids. Kids should not be hearing about your latest diet or how you don’t allow yourself to eat X, Y, or Z. Children are like sponges and absorb all of this information.

Again, thank you for everything you do for our little ones. We are so grateful to have you in our kids’ lives. Let’s help our children develop a healthy relationship with food and their bodies by setting a good example and not letting diet culture into the classroom.  

Weight Stigma in Healthcare Harms Us All

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The following is a guest blog written by Deirdre, who has given us permission to use her real name.

All my life, I’ve been sick. I can remember being five years old and waking up in the morning sobbing because my eyes were swollen shut, I could not breathe, I was always tired, and had severe skin conditions and rashes all the time. I had to go on nasal sprays, steroids, oral allergy medicines, and eye drops almost year-round from that age. Around the age of 14, I started to present with vomiting up bile every single solitary morning before proceeding with my day. Despite complaining to doctors all my life about all these things, I was ALWAYS considered healthy. The number one indicator for doctors? I was thin. I always had a “healthy” BMI, and all my bloodwork looked good, so nobody ever took me seriously.

Fast forward another decade. At this point, my body was so inflamed from consuming gluten – a protein which I later found out I was severely allergic to all along – that I had gained a significant amount of weight. I was 24 years old at this point, vomiting and having diarrhea after every single meal, suffering with mental illness (depression and anxiety, some from trauma but also largely because I *never* felt well and had no choice but to press on), smoking cigarettes constantly to suppress my appetite, abusing Adderall to suppress my appetite, exercising excessively (3-5 mile runs, 10 on weekends, and 2-hour workouts daily). Doctors still would not listen to me.

When I was thin, my health complaints were ignored because I was thin. When I was big, my health complaints were ignored because I was big. This is how weight stigma harms people of all sizes. When doctors are trained to view the BMI as such a strong indicator of our health, they tend to miss out on treating the whole patient and the concerns they are actually presenting. In this way, fatphobia continues to dominate our medical fields in the most insidious ways, regardless of a patient’s size.

When I was younger, I felt like my only sustainable solution was to put restrictions on my eating. I felt like I needed to do everything in my power to just not really eat. The only thing that ever felt good to me was mint chocolate chip ice cream. It was the one food that never made me sick. I ate a pint of it nightly, then would feel guilty, throw up the next morning involuntarily, feel good about that because I was disordered in my eating habits by then, and the cycle of “weight management” continued to wreak havoc on my life and destroy my gut health, self-esteem, and brain chemistry.

At 25, I was accepted to my dream graduate school for my health degree, and thus I was always in Boston. This meant finally seeking out primary care at Fenway Health and getting a fat-positive, conscious, and compassionate doctor for the first time in my life. Dr. Karen Kelly literally saved my life, as I know I would have attempted suicide that year if I had not met her. I was at my wit’s end.

Karen’s team allowed me to face away from the scale when they took my weight. I told Karen all the symptoms I’ve always had. She referred me to an incredible gastroenterologist who finally listened to me and tested me for a bunch of autoimmune gastroenterological diseases.

Notice that only now, because I finally was seeing a fat-positive doctor, was my weight looked past in order for me to receive the care I truly needed. My current health care team, including Karen, is amazing. It is a shame that all the doctors I ever saw prior assumed that being thin meant I was healthy. That mentality destroys a doctor’s ability to see clearly, and my chronic autoimmune disease was completely missed for 25 years as a result. If my celiac disease had been caught sooner, it could have meant avoiding severe damage to my organs, and possibly even reduced my chances of long-term health implications. Now I have to live with whatever damage has been done.

More and more public health research is finally showing that fat people can be healthier than thin people. More and more people are catching on that the BMI as a marker of health is a limited, archaic, outdated, weak, inaccurate, and frankly incredibly lazy way to approach medicine. It is a way for doctors to not do their jobs. All doctors should first and foremost be researchers and scientists listening, looking, and hypothesizing with open minds. I am almost the heaviest I have ever been now, yet my cholesterol, blood pressure, oxygen, etc., are all fantastic.

The concept of weight management is a barbaric and inhumane way for any doctor to practice. One hundred years from now, we will look back at the ways we tried to force mutilation on humans through diets and bariatric surgeries and see the oppressive reality of that kind of hatred of fatness. Doctors that focus on “weight management” and miss what is really going on need to start being held accountable – sued and fired by their patients.

I think that numbers are detrimental, and so is excessive monitoring of size and shape. We came here to live in these sacks of skin as vessels for our non-physical selves, our souls, and nothing more. The BMI is bullshit and was invented by an astronomer in the 1800s who only used white Anglo-Saxon males in his sample size. BMI does not account for muscle mass, bone density, or genetics. It does not leave room for all the boobs and butts and hips our bodies create to cushion us or to grow or feed our babies.

Someday I will have chapters in a book titled “the BMI is racist,” and “the BMI is sexist.” Once I am a doctor or nurse practitioner, I will create a new tool for epidemiologists to test that will actually be inclusive of all sexes, genders, races, etc., without poisoning our minds with self-doubt and self-mutilation.

If I had unbiased doctors all my life, I may have been diagnosed with celiac disease much earlier on and could have potentially saved myself from having cancer or infertility someday. I hope to live a long life and to have children and grandchildren, and I hope to leave them in a world with less weight stigma and more active listening, especially in the field of medicine.