Tag: healthy eating

As a Registered Dietitian, I Don’t Tell People How to Eat and Why You Shouldn’t Either.

~ Green Apple Dietitian ~ Leave a comment

Doing what I do for a living makes it hard to ignore the plethora of horrendous nutrition advice I hear from people around me or on social media. The hardest truth I try to accept is how my knowledge as a dietitian means nothing to someone with an agenda. When patients seek advice about healthy eating, it often involves something more complicated. Something no meal plan can fix. A negative sense of self makes folks vulnerable to misinformation and unsolicited advice that misses the mark.

I hate the word healthy as it relates to food. As I watch others preach about healthy eating all I see is an obsession with weight loss. While others act with a sense of entitlement, they dramatize and incite fear around what we eat. Most general nutrition advice people share is a culmination of inaccuracies or partial truths. Whenever I ask where they heard that, I hear something like “I don’t know, I heard it somewhere,” or “I saw it on TikTok.”

It behooves you to awaken your inner critic and question what you hear within today’s landscape of advice overload. The most educated choice will be one that’s made after careful examination of both sides of a story. Let’s take carbohydrates. If you’re unwilling to listen to unpopular evidence of why you don’t want to completely avoid carbs, you won’t learn what they can do to benefit your health. But there may be other reasons driving your choice to avoid carbs.

Most folks giving health advice don’t consider behavioral health a vital component of food choices. A patient with an eating disorder avoids calories for fear of weight gain, while another with OCD who loves animals becomes vegan to avoid feeling shame around eating meat. Both have less to do with healthy eating and more to do with a distorted view of themselves. These are serious mental health issues that often lead to severe malnutrition if left untreated. This is where dieting misinformation and unsolicited advice becomes irresponsible and self-serving. You don’t know what you don’t know, so it’s better to keep unresearched opinions to yourself.

The word healthy means different things based on who’s teaching it. For a vitamin supplement company, it’s nutrition supplements. For a dieting company, it’s weight loss. But not everyone needs a supplement or should lose weight. As a dietitian, answering the question, “How can I eat healthier,” is not easy to answer because everyone has their own set of core values tied to their food choices. Telling a patient what they should be eating won’t be as helpful as they would like to believe. The greatest success I have with patients is by not acting like I know best about what they eat.

Unsolicited advice doesn’t help in fact, it can be harmful

It’s natural when we perceive something is wrong, we want to fix it. Let’s say Anne noticed Sally gained weight recently. Anne cares about Sally’s health. She lectures her on how obesity leads to chronic illness and that she should find a way to lose weight. Sally was already aware of her weight and never asked Anne for advice about weight loss. Sally has been meeting with a therapist every week to work on her emotions around eating since her father died. Anne was not aware of that. Even with people who are close to us, we don’t know everything they struggle with.

Lately, it feels like everyone believes they know everything about everyone else’s health. So, it’s hard to explain why well-intentioned diet advice from Aunt Edna at the family picnic is short-sighted. But here goes.

Why I won’t tell others what to eat

People often don’t do what they say they’re going to do. It’s not because they’re lazy or they lack willpower. It’s because they haven’t gotten to the root of the real issue. Often folks believe weight loss will make them feel better about themselves. But what they want is to go back to a time when they were more active, had less responsibility, and felt happier. Even patients as young as eighteen reminisce about an easier time in their life. Growing up is hard.

Food choices often have nothing to do with eating healthy. Eating disorders are complicated mental health issues that often hide in plain sight. Consider a person who loses a lot of weight, and now everyone around them is saying how good they look. Senseless judgment, criticism, and unsolicited advice are detrimental to the person who is suffering. I don’t blame people who don’t know better, I blame our society that stigmatizes mental health and drags its feet in distributing helpful information to folks who need it.

Rigid thinking gets in the way of making lasting lifestyle changes. If there’s a reason not to do something, you’ll always find it. If you’re looking for negativity, you’ll find that too.  The fear of uncertainty that comes with change is often why we talk ourselves into doing nothing. Getting out of your comfort zone is easier said than done, but there’s more power in changing your view of yourself instead of asking me how you should eat. What drives your actions is how you think and what you believe.

When my career was in its infancy, I made a lot of mistakes while stumbling over my personal biases to figure out the best way to help someone. The more I learn the more I realize there’s so much I don’t know. My experience came with paying attention and listening, not lecturing on nutrition facts. Unless a patient is willing to share their story, what I say means nothing. Giving unwanted or the wrong medical nutrition therapy is a useless waste of everyone’s time. Chances are great that many patients sitting in front of me thought I didn’t know what I was talking about. When it came to their personal experience with food, they were right.

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 here.

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.

GLP-1 agonists promise weight loss, but what about the consequences of perpetuating the thin ideal?

~ Green Apple Dietitian ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few years, the medical landscape has turned completely upside-down. With all the recent hype around GLP-1 agonists, we don’t need any more proof the world’s gone mad.

Semaglutides are effective for significant weight loss and may have other health benefits. Many great resources explain their effectiveness, so I won’t discuss them here. The main thing to know is they slow down the stomach’s digestion and curb appetite, which can result in weight loss. However, some people lose their appetite completely and stop eating. This is where I have a problem.

Losing your appetite is a serious side effect that can lead to severe consequences

  • Significant weight loss in a short amount of time puts patients on the fast track to malnutrition. Fat cells don’t go away, they shrink. Unintended loss of lean muscle mass diminishes strength, stamina, and resting metabolic rate.
  • Dehydration and constipation are major side effects of weight loss that need immediate attention.
  • Gastroparesis which is claimed to be a rare side-effect of GLP-1 should be assessed by a health practitioner.
  • Significant weight loss and meal restriction are associated with depression, anxiety, and disordered eating.

No one is immune to the pressures of the ideal body weight

I’m not pretending that I understand another person’s struggle with weight or health issues. As a female living in the US, I’d be lying if I said I never experienced negative thoughts like feeling bad about my body size, being unhappy about what I see in the mirror, or feeling guilty after eating certain foods. Conducting medical nutrition therapy sessions over the years has fine-tuned my ability to pick up on the hatred of fat in our society, and how people sell themselves short because of their body size. Let me tell you it’s no picnic to inform patients I don’t specialize in weight loss. The conversation often comes to an incredibly uncomfortable abrupt end. It’s an emotional hot button that’s impossible not to push.

The psychological perspective is always ignored

We all know there are consequences for our actions. The likelihood of maintaining a healthy weight decreases If you are clinically depressed and anxious. There’s no doubt in my mind that mental health issues affect normal eating patterns. So, chances are your weight will go up or it will go down. No matter the direction it won’t be healthy or sustainable if you don’t find a way to deal with reoccurring issues in your life that are holding you back. A healthy mind usually follows a healthy body. Usually. If someone spends most of their time dieting, there’s no way they feel good about themselves. That’s where the focus should be, not on body weight.

What adds to this is when well-intentioned friends, loved ones, and health practitioners validate a person’s bad feelings about themselves and comment on their weight. If you’re somebody who comments on other people’s weight stop it. It’s not helpful and you’re not earning points by doing it. It was once said that if shaming worked everyone would lose weight. Well, it doesn’t. So, knock it off. If people in larger bodies bother you, maybe you should find out why that is.

Are GLP-1 agonists the cure for obesity?

I don’t believe obesity is a disease the way social media preaches it. It’s way too complicated for medication to “make it go away.” As I see it the medical profession continues to ask people in larger bodies to sacrifice way more than thin people to be healthy. As much as it’s proclaimed that side effects are not the norm for most people, it isn’t comforting to those who’ve taken the drug and experienced gastroparesis gotten so bad they couldn’t get through the day without vomiting to the point of severe dehydration. For them, the “rare side-effects” have made a huge impact on their lives. Either way, it’s a lot to expect from folks when there are so many other factors that cause ill health other than obesity.

It’s too early to know what the long-term efficacy will be

If you don’t have an eating disorder, there’s reason to believe you could develop one while taking semaglutides. Medically induced appetite suppression still leaves us with many questions. But what we do know is that severely restricting dietary intake and losing a significant amount of weight messes with the brain and creates an unhealthy obsession with food.

If you’re considering semaglutides for weight loss, you still need to make major lifestyle changes. It’s not a magic pill. You are still responsible for the outcome. An adequate diet and exercise will be necessary to get results. Don’t do it alone. There are plenty of great dietitians out there. Remember no one can predict how your weight will trend within your lifetime. You might need to take the drug for the rest of your life. With the recent shortages, you might not be able to take it the way it’s prescribed. Most importantly, think about how you might feel if your weight doesn’t trend the way you want it to. Semaglutides won’t do much for your mental health.

Increase your awareness by being a devil’s advocate

For every practitioner prescribing this drug, there’s a pharmaceutical company with an inexhaustible marketing budget earning record profits. Semaglutides are already in a nice comfortable space within the diet culture which has welcomed them with open arms. You can be sure there are plenty of weight loss companies vying for the extra dollars by adding them as a weight loss option.

As a consumer, you have the choice to take the wait-and-see approach. Dig your heels in. Don’t let the catchy jingle on the commercials or the celebrity weight loss stories give you false hope. Learn about every side-effect and don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions. In the grand scheme of things, you are the strongest advocate for your health and well-being. No one knows more about what you need than you do.

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.

Dessert Designed by Mother Nature

~ Green Apple Dietitian ~ Leave a comment

Apples

I’m biased about the apple because it’s in my name. The symbol for health and education, as an RD I want the best from each category for my patients. Apples can last in storage for a long time before eating and come in many varieties. The uses are endless, although my favorite utility for apples is in a pie right around Halloween. But a granny smith also tastes good with cinnamon in my morning oatmeal. When feeling peckish, the undeniable crunch of a honey crisp best satisfies.

Bananas

The most portable fruit of all comes in a self-recyclable wrapper. Once you’re done with it, the skin can feed your plants as compost. They don’t store as long as an apple, and once they become ripe and sweet, it’s a crime not to make banana bread. A banana improves the taste and texture of a smoothie without more ingredients. Once you know what it takes to grow and bring a banana to your table, it’s harder to take them for granted.

Strawberries

They will always remind me of my mother. She used to grow them in our backyard when I was a kid. One of my greatest joys was picking and eating them from the plant. The ones from the store never tasted so good. But of course, I also had an “in” with the gardener.

Blueberries

Rarely, my breakfast oatmeal doesn’t come with fresh blueberries. Unless you count when I eat it with an apple and cinnamon instead. Blueberry muffins were also made in my house while I was growing up.

Pineapples

They’re as funny-looking on the outside as they’re tasty on the inside. Pineapple slices on ham or off the grill give meals that special sweetness. Vacationers like to sip a Piña colada in the tropics, but I love them fresh right after they’re peeled and cut.

Fruit is best when Nature is in charge

Mother Nature designed fruit with the right vitamins, minerals, and carbohydrates as part of a balanced diet. All for us to enjoy and ripe for the picking.

She always looks out for us.