Tag: eating disorders

How to defend yourself against Diet Culture during the holidays

~ Green Apple Dietitian ~ 1 Comment

I was in a big box hardware store yesterday, looking for purple and orange lights to add to my Halloween decorations. In one aisle, an oversized skeleton let out an evil laugh, while in the next aisle, Christmas music was blaring near the leftover Thanksgiving swag on sale at 20% off. I’m not sure how everyone else feels, but I need breathing room between Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas to take it all in.

Now that it’s October, for many folks, their attempts at dieting are all but a memory. In my experience, patients who succeeded in slimming down have realized some weight gain once their hunger soared out of control and the “healthy diet” fell hard against normalized eating patterns.

In starvation mode, the hungry body fights for calories by accelerating cravings for carbohydrates, which are impossible to ignore. With three holidays back-to-back, there are opportunities for delicious and savory foods that aren’t available any other time of the year. But with new insight and introspection, it doesn’t have to be a recipe for disaster.

This year, I followed the diet industry’s yearly cycle and wrote about ways to rise above it.

How to Avoid Plugging Back into the Diet Culture this January

January is over. How is the weight loss diet going?

Right now, advertisers are heavily focused on holiday giving to maximize sales, which will soon be followed by the dieting and exercise industry’s application of pressure to eat less and move more. And the only way you can attain the thin ideal is with (add whatever diet/exercise company here) in your corner. What a perfect time to declare us all as gluttonous for being “too merry” over the holidays. This year, harness your inner strength so you can turn your back on all this nonsense once and for all.

Three ways to build a healthy body image

It won’t be easy. But nothing worthwhile is easy. I’m going to share with you the accumulation of my experiences with patients who struggle with their weight and their relationship with food. I offer a different approach to the holidays to help you find the confidence to eat and nourish your body on your own terms.   

Practice body compassion

No matter where your weight falls on the BMI scale, your nutrition needs are unique. Most people parrot nutritional information without much thought. If everyone’s doing it, it must be right. Except that it’s not right when people who are otherwise healthy go to extremes to be in a smaller body, or believe that the only way to better health is to lose weight. Ask yourself how much joy you’ve lost by telling yourself you can’t eat certain foods while limiting yourself during social situations. Body compassion will shield you from a negative body image by avoiding unhealthy comparisons. Focus on what you can change instead of what you can’t change.

  • Gratefulness: appreciate how your body works and its functions that keep you alive. All the systems in your body work together to keep you going. As humans, we are aware of our own mortality and possess the ability to change the course of our lives in many ways to achieve positive outcomes.
  • Acceptance: acknowledge the imperfections of your body without harsh judgment. Acknowledge the good things, whether it’s your eyes, your hair, your smile, or your ability to do something most others around you can’t do.  
  • Kindness: Tell yourself that you’re doing your best with what you know right now. As Maya Angelou once said, “Once you know better, do better.” Treat yourself like you would your best friend. Kindness costs nothing.

Tune out the health and wellness chatter. Most of it isn’t worth your time and attention.

Nutrition is a topic everyone has had a lived experience with. It’s not like neurosurgery, where a select few possess the knowledge. Everyone has their list of eat this, not that, but most advice falls within the “I didn’t ask you” category. All the good intentions won’t make it helpful.

Social media makes it extremely difficult to know what advice to trust. Even credentialed health practitioners don’t always share accurate information. They’re experts in their field of practice, but remain severely uneducated in the study of nutrition. I’ve witnessed highly educated practitioners share ideals that were disproven by science long ago. It can be overwhelming, and I sympathize with my patients who come to me looking for clarity.   

Most advice on social media is shared without much thought about the consequences to the viewers. It becomes proliferated by all the clueless and rigid opinions in the comment section. It’s important to know that health practitioners who truly care about your health are not spending time spreading misinformation on social media. They’re in hospitals and clinics working hard to help patients make sense of it all. If you know that social media marketing strives to evoke strong emotions to get a reaction, you’re already halfway there. Here are three ways to navigate nutrition’s complicated landscape.

  • Match the expertise with the advice.
    If a famous actress is selling a weight loss program, chances are it’s a lived experience that worked for them, but would require a complete overhaul of your current lifestyle. It can be hard to tell if what you’re hearing is coming from someone who’s currently struggling with their own issues.
  • Avoid getting pulled in by generalizations
    Savvy marketing uses sound bites to pull buyers in. Notice how many times you hear the words, “all natural, clinically proven, FDA cleared, and lose weight and keep it off.” They create a convincing veil of legitimacy to make a sale by counting on the fact that most people aren’t science experts. But you don’t have to be an expert if you understand what’s behind their tactics.
  • Be skeptical of any nutritional advice from friends or loved ones. People who care about us often believe they’re helping when they comment on something they see as wrong. They want to fix it. Weight gain is almost always viewed negatively and criticized without understanding the true cause. Weight loss is celebrated even if it happens unintentionally. Health advice given without proper training and experience shouldn’t be taken seriously, regardless of good intentions.

Ask yourself how you can be more flexible

The holidays can trigger individuals with rigid eating habits, picky eaters, and patients with eating disorders. Selecting foods only for perceived health benefits is limiting and promotes anxiety around eating. Rigidity should never justify restricting a meal when your thoughts tell you there are no good options. Food is all around us, but unless you’re financially unfortunate, there is no lack of nutritious food. Start with these ways to increase flexibility around foods from any source.

  •  Focus on healthy eating behavior, not the health of specific foods. The efficacy of nutrition is found in pairing many foods together. Health is in variety. Eating one type of food while forgoing many others only leads to vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
  • If a food is new to you, try a small sample. The best way to know if you will like an unfamiliar food is to use all your senses. Judging a food by looks won’t give you enough information. You won’t know what you could be missing out on.
  • Be curious about any anxiety related to uncertainties around food. Be mindful of any fear related to certain foods and why. Find a qualified practitioner if you suspect or have a history of an eating disorder.  

The power to be as you are

While practicing compassion and tuning out the noise of unsound advice, you will find the flexibility you need to be present during the holidays. You’ll no longer be lured in by the “new year, new you” dogma. Balancing a mix of self-care while going with the flow can keep you strong enough to push away the diet culture’s insistence that you need to fix yourself. You’ll gain the power and confidence to believe that you are worthy of being and looking just as you are.

Type 2 Diabetes. When family history makes a healthy lifestyle ALMOST irrelevant.

~ Green Apple Dietitian ~ Leave a comment

I’ve known for a while that diabetes was always a few steps behind lurking in the background. Eventually, it will catch up. Why? Family history. With five family members who have the disease, I understood a long time ago that membership in this club wouldn’t be optional. During my last physical, the doctor focused on abnormal lab values indicating diabetes could still be a reality. But of all the diseases I could end up with, diabetes is a disease that can be more or less of a burden based on the choices I make.

For most of my life, I did a decent job taking care of myself, but I also did two of the best things anyone can do for their health, quit smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol. These habits in tandem make any effort toward a healthful lifestyle useless.

As a teen, taking up smoking was a window to the in-crowd and a way to rebel. What I felt was a symbol of freedom would’ve been a severe detriment to my health if I continued. Luckily, there were enough people around who reinforced the harmful effects of smoking. After a while, I stopped smoking altogether.

The best way to describe my alcohol intake was problematic binge drinking. Like many of us, having a few made socializing easier. I abstained from alcohol use during the week, but I wasn’t a person who could stop after having just one. Luckily again, someone close to me nudged me toward better health. I stopped drinking altogether.

Alcohol abuse puts patients at risk for diabetes. I’ve met patients in my practice with a history of alcohol use disorders and a prediabetes/diabetes diagnosis. Most of them were admitted with a metformin prescription and were confused as to why their bodies became insulin-resistant after they stopped drinking. One patient believed it was a punishment for their detrimental habits.

The World Health Organization published its views this year on the unhealthy effects of alcohol and the National Cancer Institute maintains ethanol and ethyl alcohol as carcinogens that contribute to many types of cancer. Click on the links above to read more.

Did alcohol use increase my risk? I don’t know for sure, but heredity on the other hand isn’t something I can change. My mother was diagnosed with diabetes over 10 years ago and her brother and sister also around the same period. My father died of complications related to the disease. In 2018, my brother lost his toes to gangrene from uncontrolled hyperglycemia.

Becoming a dietitian helped me support my mom in many ways and I learned more by observing her experiences. I remember going with her to her first appointment with the diabetes educator when she said, “I want to control my diabetes.” A phrase she kept true to this day by keeping her appointments and doing what her practitioners recommended. She’s been a positive role model for me as she rose to the challenge of necessary lifestyle changes. I’m proud of her for it.

There isn’t a clear path to heredity when it comes to diabetes, but does this mean I shouldn’t care for my health since I probably won’t prevent it? I can’t say what the future will bring if I become insulin-resistant enough to start treatment, but the life I’ve lived so far has put me ahead of the game. Diabetes complications can range from neuropathy, heart disease, renal disease, and gangrene, but this doesn’t have to be my story or anyone else’s.

Knowledge and insight are my best defense against this disease. As my journey unfolds my experience with diabetes will give me an edge to help patients who are motivated to maintain their health.

When to see your physician

Insulin resistance is when the body doesn’t digest glucose properly, it overstays its welcome in the blood. When the insulin in your body isn’t stimulating liver, muscle, and brain glucose metabolism to remove it from the blood, elevated blood glucose levels eventually affect the heart, blood vessels, and kidneys.

If you’re at risk of developing diabetes, there are a cluster of three symptoms to discuss with your doctor, like increased:

  • HUNGER: when meals aren’t satisfying or there are perpetual cravings for sugary foods
  • THIRST: unable to quench thirst even after drinking adequate amounts of fluid  
  • URINATION: are you always in the bathroom?

Other symptoms include fatigue, blurred vision, slow-healing wounds, and weight loss. Have you lost significant weight recently but are unsure why? Unexplained weight loss related to hyperglycemia isn’t healthy. Along with the other symptoms, it signals that your body isn’t producing enough insulin or metabolizing insulin appropriately.

If you have any combination of these symptoms, make an appointment with your doctor, don’t wait.

Counting Carbs

Since the 1920s, tracking carbohydrate intake with insulin or other diabetes medications has been the gold standard for managing hyperglycemia for patients with type 1 diabetes. However, researchers continue to explore the efficacy of tracking for T2DM. Recently the medical community has been moving away from it. The American Diabetes Association offers a diabetes plate approach similar to MyPlate. More recently patients informed me that their endocrinologists don’t emphasize medical nutrition therapy while using glucose meters and insulin pumps. My RD brain thinks they should’ve been referred to a registered dietitian diabetes educator. In my experience, MNT should be tailored to the individual. Some patients are more willing than others to utilize education, while others want to be told what to eat.

Avoiding carbs altogether is never the right way to go. Even with hyperglycemia the body still needs adequate carbohydrates. Your muscles and brain need them to function. Avoid listening to negative messages about carbs and learn why the body needs them. Arm yourself with education from trusted sources. Avoid Clickbait websites offering cures using vitamin supplements or other unproven remedies. There’s no cure for diabetes and spending too much time looking for one is a sure-fire way to miss out on healthy successful management.   

Get enough fat in your diet

I’m old enough to remember the fat-free frenzy in the 80s and 90s and guilty as charged following it without questioning it. Society learned its lesson with a hungrier population that overconsumed carbs.

A balanced diet includes heart-healthy fats in avocados, nuts, seeds, and fatty fish. Fat adds flavor to food and helps us feel fuller longer. The jury is still out on whether saturated fat should be limited for heart health, but it’s important to remember your overall dietary intake and eating behaviors. Even so, to manage diabetes, I don’t recommend the Adkins or Carnivore diets.

Avoid high-protein fad diets

Fat-free mania gave way to the protein obsession that’s evident at every grocery store. Everywhere we’re told we don’t get enough of it, and of course, there’s a product to help with that. Healthy people on a regular diet, while not restricting their dietary intake, usually consume enough. Overconsumption leads to weight gain and is harmful to the kidneys, especially with the overuse of protein powders and supplements.

Get moving

Physical activity improves muscular, skeletal, and cardiovascular fitness while it improves glucose metabolism. If you are sedentary, look for opportunities to move more. I know it’s easier said than done, there are barriers to exercising and it’s never easy to start. How can you increase activity by making it part of something you enjoy? I like to hike in state parks to get fresh air while watching the butterflies and bees interact with the native plants. You don’t have to join a gym or jog on the side of the highway. Check with your doctor before starting any exercise program if you’re experiencing any health issues.  

Take care of your mind

Receiving a diabetes diagnosis can be a slap in the face for some patients. It’s usually followed up by the overwhelming education from health practitioners which results in information overload. It’s understandable to feel a range of emotions after going through that. There’s nothing wrong with letting things settle and giving yourself time to process it all.

Even though I mostly accepted my situation, I can’t help but wonder if there’s something else, I can do to prevent a diagnosis. Deep down inside I hope for a cure. But then I think of the privileges I was fortunate to possess for maintaining my health and how my choices benefited me later in life. I also believe that if there is breath in your lungs and a beat in your heart, it’s never too late to keep learning and doing.

Plenty of research points to weight loss for diabetes management. Science continues to evolve and rarely considers a patient’s individuality and how they think and feel. I recommend staying focused on improving your body’s physical fitness and making necessary dietary changes. Your weight will trend accordingly because your body will respond to how you treat it. Steer away from black-and-white thinking: good foods vs bad foods or thinner bodies are healthier than larger ones to avoid increasing anxiety and allow for an open mind. Self-blame and unacceptance won’t move you forward. To reach your fullest potential, accept what nature gave you then maximize it.

DISCLAIMER: The Green Apple Dietitian blog/Substack provides nutrition information for education only and is not intended to offer medical advice or cure any health conditions. The content should NEVER be used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment of any health condition or problem. Any questions regarding your diet and health should be addressed to your specific healthcare providers. NEVER disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking treatment because of something you have read on this blog/Substack website or social media.Green Apple Dietitian makes no warranties expressed or implied regarding the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, comparative or controversial nature, or usefulness of any information posted or shared on this blog/Substack. Green Apple Dietitian does not assume any risk whatsoever for your use of any information contained herein that was posted or shared on this blog/Substack in the past, present, or future. By accessing this blog/Substack, you agree that neither Green Apple Dietitian nor any other affiliated party is to be held liable or otherwise responsible for any decision made, or any action taken or not taken, due to your use of any information presented on this blog/Substack website or social media.

How to Avoid Plugging Back into the Diet Culture this January

~ Green Apple Dietitian ~ 1 Comment

Here we go again! It’s that time of year when “being merry” fades into another tiresome weight loss resolution. The diet industry once more pushes the promise of losing weight and keeping it off. If you are healthy and are planning to go on another diet to shrink your body, here are some reasons you might want to reconsider.

The diet industry is a big part of the diet culture. It uses generalized assumptions to motivate us to criticize ourselves, or perhaps instill a negative body image that wasn’t there in the first place. Internalizing standards of thinness while wasting precious time achieving it can produce dire psychological consequences. Dieting is a risk factor for developing a serious eating disorder.

January is a prime time to lure folks back into unrealistic resolutions under the guise of health. People want to get healthy by reducing their food intake, which is short-lived as they slide back into old eating habits within a few weeks. The all-too-obvious clue is that weight loss programs aren’t sustainable. But what is sustainable? The availability of another recycled weight loss program that makes the same empty promises year after year. The emphasis is on changing behavior while focusing less on other factors that cause weight gain or the mental health consequences of chronic dieting.

How can you stop the tidal wave from dragging you back in? Start by deconstructing the ads you see. Look for baseless generalizations. Question the easy solutions to difficult problems. Here are four concepts to awaken your skepticism.

Body acceptance isn’t profitable, but failure is.

The body transformation industry needs a conduit to low self-esteem, or it won’t survive. It’ll lie by withholding the truth about how our bodies grow, develop, and mature. By tapping into the desire for self-improvement, it wants you to believe that every extra pound, wrinkle, and gray hair that deviates from the ideal standard is your fault. They sell hope while they coach you into a better life. They don’t want you to accept what you’re born with and will always convince you to keep paying despite the evidence that what they’re selling isn’t working.

Body acceptance means, in part, accepting, respecting, and caring for your body even though you don’t like certain aspects. Acceptance of yourself reduces the power of ideal standards and the desire to subscribe to them. Failure has no meaning in this perspective.

If you’re new to body acceptance here are three ways to begin moving toward it:

  1. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else. This includes comparing your body size to the images of the before and after photos in weight loss ads. Instead, focus on how far you’ve come. Whether you survived or achieved it’s your story.
  2. Whenever a bad thought about your body surfaces, say (out loud) something nice about yourself. Choose words you can believe in.
  3. Acknowledge your worth and value in the body you are in right now.

Sure, it’s easier said than done, but how is not accepting yourself working so far?

Diet culture encourages you to demean yourself.

I’m too fat. I need to stop eating so much sugar. I’m getting old. How many times have phrases like these entered your mind? The diet industry is notorious for promoting ways to compare yourself to others. These generalizations can apply to almost anyone:

  • “Just eat the food and lose the weight!”
  • “Our program is clinically proven to help you lose weight.”
  • “Join millions of others who lost weight and kept it off.”
  • “I feel like my youth came back, it’s amazing!”
  • “Losing weight gave me the energy and the confidence I need!”

One popular diet company encourages food logging. Food records don’t work for everyone and recording every bite of food is unnatural. Obsessing over calories and portion sizes encourages unrealistic expectations and unhealthy categorization of certain foods. The potential danger of keeping a food diary is that it can worsen the symptoms of an eating disorder.

Separate yourself from the gimmick of weight loss.

Any company selling a product or service, whether it involves losing weight (or not), works toward a bottom line. The small ones want to earn profits, and the larger ones owe their shareholders. At what point are they focusing on their customer’s best interests?

People don’t start out believing they need to lose weight. At some point, we all develop beliefs based on the culture that surrounds us. We are taught that fat is bad. In developed countries and on the internet limiting exposure to thousands of weight loss ads is impossible. The diet industry seeks out the vulnerable and coerces them into the fantasy of weight loss for a better life. Their message tells them what nature gave them, isn’t good enough. Every ad has its niche, but all accomplish the same thing, to make viewers fear fat.

You are good enough now not in some future utopia.

There’s no guidebook to life. So don’t leave your life in the hands of conglomerates peddling unrealistic standards that convince you into useless misery. Protect yourself by knowing that most ideals about body size aren’t your own, they are learned. How you internalize them will affect how you treat yourself, and not in a positive way. When it comes down to it, you get to decide what comes into your life and what does not.

All of us are caught in a tug-of-war between the food industry selling convenience food and the diet industry telling us we’re fat. The fault is always placed entirely on consumers while they harp on self-control. Most of us are forced to work long hours to pay for the rising cost of food with less time to figure out how to feed ourselves.

As this post was written, the diet industry is scrambling to stay competitive in response to the heightened demand for GLP-1 injections. The price for weight loss skyrocketed. Even with insurance, patients on Wegovy can expect to pay $650 monthly for 28 doses, about $7800 a year. Not to mention the inconvenience of the weekly injections while placing sharps in an FDA-approved container and legally disposing of them. As with all medicines, there are risks, and once they are discontinued the weight returns.

DISCLAIMER: The Green Apple Dietitian blog provides nutrition information for education only and is not intended to offer medical advice or cure any health conditions. The content should NEVER be used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment of any health condition or problem. Any questions regarding your diet and health should be addressed to your specific healthcare providers. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking it because of something you have read on this blog.

Green Apple Dietitian makes no warranties expressed or implied regarding the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, comparative or controversial nature, or usefulness of any information posted or shared on this blog. Green Apple Dietitian does not assume any risk whatsoever for your use of any information contained herein that was posted or shared on this blog in the past, present, or future. By accessing this blog, you agree that neither Green Apple Dietitian nor any other party, is to be held liable or otherwise responsible for any decision made, or any action taken or not taken, due to your use of any information presented on this blog website.