How To Be Healthy, From a Dietitian Nutritionist
Health is complex and the pursuit of health can leave you with more questions than answers. What are the benefits of seeing a dietitian nutritionist for health?
“Help me be healthy!”
Whether from clients, co-workers or any stranger that hears what I do for a living, this is one of the most common requests I get after “how can I lose weight?”
This question is always interesting to be because it is so complex, yet we throw around the word “healthy” like we are all supposed to know what it means. So what does it mean?
The definition of health used to be simply the “absence of illness” but now has rightly been corrected to mean so much more. Health involves so many things including your social and physical environment, your access to food and healthcare, the oppressions you face. It is a mental, physical and emotional embodiment. Health is both individual and involves the environment around you.
So why do people constantly ask dietitian nutritionists to make them healthy?
With so much media messaging and marketing around food, bodies and health it makes sense to me why this is everyone’s goal. However, this can be a very dangerous way to try and create a positive outcome for yourself because it often involves a perfectionistic idea of what health means. Because like perfection, if we think of health as a goal to seek, we will never get there. We will never be perfectly healthy. NEVER. Because we are human. Perfection is not in our nature or DNA, sorry not sorry. So why do I say it’s dangerous? This idea of perfect health can lead us to disordered patterns with food and our body because perfection cannot be obtained yet we shame, chastise and berate ourselves when it isn’t.
I believe that our western society definition of what is healthy is warped. We think low weight, clean eating and constantly going to the gym is our ticket. Where is reality, our bodies can determine what the best weight for us is. Eating routinely and happily might be our key. Enjoying the movement that feels best and right for our bodies is where we shine. We understand that chronic stress wears down our bodies, but what about the chronic stress of trying to control our weight, eat the exact right thing and workout even when our bodies are begging us to stop?
Where is health that includes the pleasure and joy we can get from food. The hug from a loved one. The walk through the park to hear the birds sing. The security of knowing where your next meal is. The nurse listening to your when you say you don’t want to know what your weight is. Taking time from work when need rest.
Health is complex.
I understand why we want to pursue it and I also know that not everyone has the same privileges. When we have this narrow view (AKA perfection) of what health can be we cause harm to ourselves and others. We judge ourselves and others for their choices where they might not be choices at all. It becomes right and wrong instead of nuances and individual.
There are no set parameters, no target to reach or gold medal to obtain. You can expand what your definition of health is for you.
Katy Gaston Nutrition
Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA. Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body. If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below. If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!
Can Dieting Cause Eating Disorders?
My experience with dieting and an eating disorder.
Dieting, an eating disorder gateway?
TW: dieting thoughts/patterns, weight loss, eating disorders
I have been thinking lately about my own healing journey from an eating disorder and what the start of that really looked like. As anyone knows who has or had an eating disorder, it doesn’t start in one day. You don’t just suddenly think to yourself, “Oh, I would like to have an eating disorder!” It is more of a gradual, slippery slope into eating disorder thoughts and patterns, so much so that you might not even realize it. Today I want to talk about what the start of that slope looked like for me and likely many others.
If I think back, I believe the desire to change my body, lose weight and therefore begin dieting started around 6th grade (12 years old). I was just starting puberty around that time which for me looked like widening hips and butt which was then commented on by family members in ways that made me think this was not okay. To illustrate this point more specifically we live in a society that values thinness and especially during this time the very straight-shaped, very thin model type was “in.” Before puberty my body looked more like that, I had a very straight frame and not many curves as is often the case in girl’s of that age. Therefore when my body was changing this translated in my head that this change was bad, a failing on my part, to control my body. I was eating more (because I was growing) and when this was commented on I made the connection that eating more = growing = bad.
Again, I cannot pinpoint the day where these dieting patterns started coming in, but I can start to see it when I first wanted to become a vegetarian. I know this really was rooted in my desire for better animal treatment, but I also know it was a way for me to start having control over my food intake while still living under my parents’ roof.
I remember my mom would causally diet and around this time I started joining her, it felt like a bonding experience and I can still remember the excitement of new diet and the feeling of sacrifice when we were “good” and only ate the foods that were on the list of approval. This would last for a few weeks, slowly drop off and we would go back to our normal routine, only to start again in many 6 months of so.
I then remember I took these dieting patterns more under the radar, I wanted to lose lots of weight to the point when even then I knew it wasn’t going to be seen as healthy. Bringing in how my body image was at the time I knew it was tied to feelings of wanting to be as small as possible. I very much wanted to be the Manic Pixie Dream Girl that needed to be saved from herself. I wanted to be so broken that people noticed my broken-ness.
In early high school I started on the covert diets like the Special K one (where you eat two bowls of cereal or bars a day instead of meals) and skipping meals. I then tried fasts all while convincing myself that I was “cleansing my body” to the point where my GI tract was so messed up I had to be rushed to the doctor for severe stomach pains only to show that I was so constipated that almost my entire GI tract was full. (At the time I was so happy the doctor didn’t “catch me” but now it makes me so sad to see that this prominent red flag was not addressed.) There were many other “dieting” things that I did around this time but I want to not overload this newsletter with potentially triggering things.
This continued throughout high school and into early college. My primary eating disorder behaviors had started in 8th grade and these common dieting behaviors were just adding fuel to the fire. I then went on to study to become a dietitian and in the course of healing one eating disorder I started to develop new patterns. Finally towards the middle-end of college I was on a course of healing and true recovery.
So, what about others?
According to Intuitive Eating by Tribole and Resch, “35% of so-called “normal” dieters progress to pathological dieting. Of those, 20-25% will progress to partial or full-blown eating disorders.” This prevalence is only increasing and I personally have never worked with a patient or client with eating disorders that didn’t start with some kind of dieting thoughts about food, even if they were not weight-related.
Recovery is so difficult not only because it takes so much devotion to heal yourself but also because we live in a society where dieting is so normalized. I see a lot of shame and guilt in my clients coming for help with that healing because it was a slippery slope that they feel got away from them. A lot of times it is this sense that dieting is okay but then they took it too far. I give so much compassion to clients because dieting it not normal, dieting is disordered eating that society has normalized. You are not broken because you have “failed” at dieting and you are not broken if things have “gotten away from you”.
That is why I like to say that I work with people with eating disorders and disordered eating because I see that line as so blurred. In fact I don’t even see it as a line, but more of a spectrum where people can be going from one end to the other or progressing along it. I see dieting as harmful patterns that can be taken as seriously as those who have then taken those patterns into eating disorder territory. The harm might be there, but then so is the healing.
Sending so much virtual love to everyone because I know what that feels like, I have been there. I have free 15 minute consults if you’re or anyone you know is confused or a little lost on how to get help or who to get it from. Here is the link to my services page and there is also a FAQs page with some more information on these subjects.
Don’t be afraid to take disordered eating and dieting patterns seriously and seek help if you want to break free from them!
Katy Gaston Nutrition
Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA. Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body. If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below. If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!
Burn It To Earn It: Metabolism Myths
Can you change your metabolism? Can you heal it? What does it mean to have a fast or slow metabolic rate?
Ah, metabolism. The wildly misunderstood and most marketed topic for bogus weight loss wellness products.
Let’s start with the basics - what is metabolism?
Metabolism the is the rate in which you use energy, or Calories. Everyone has a “basal metabolic rate” or baseline rate in which they use this energy to stay alive. Everything in your body takes up energy: maintaining your body temperature, organ function, breathing, digesting, fighting off sickness, using your complicated brain, etc. Everyone is going to have a unique basal rate because every body is unique. That is why the calculators that you see online about how many Calories you should eat in a day are not really helping you out - it is an over simplification of a complicated thing. Even me - a professional Calorie estimator - use these calculations with a grain of salt and have a range with multiple factors that I take into account. Even then, I look to each person’s body to tell me how much energy it truly needs, because really only your unique body can tell you.
Let’s dive into some common metabolism myths.
Myth #1: If you eat less Calories, you lose weight because your metabolism stays the same. To boost you metabolism even higher, you add exercise into the mix.
First major thing that I must stress. YOUR BODY NEEDS ENERGY. Your body is still in the “caveman” era where we lived out in the wild. Food was not guaranteed and the winter months were hard. Therefore your body follows this logic: you’re under-eating (dieting) -> you are hungry and losing weight -> your body panics as this is not good (it thinks it is going into a famine) -> your metabolism slows so it can hold onto any energy it can -> your weight loss plateaus -> you get frustrated and stop under-eating so you gain back weight (usually more than when you started because your body is trying to save up incase it goes into famine mode again) -> you get even more frustrated and again try to under-eat (go on another diet) -> and the cycle starts over and over. You add exercise into this and your body goes into even more panic, not only are you not getting enough energy to maintain, now you’re exercising and using more energy than you usually would. It breaks it down anyway that is can which includes going for muscle. Yes, that is correct, muscle is easier than fat to break down through certain catabolic mechanisms, therefore when you have weight loss, it is not all going to be fat cells - it will be fluid fluctuations and muscle as well. Muscles are right there at the ready, fat cells are like long term storage - you’re not going to go for the emergency funds when your savings account is right there.
On this tangent - “fat burning foods, teas, pills, etc” = marketing BS. Which leads to my next point.
Myth #2: Metabolism “boosters” like teas, weight loss pills, etc really speed up your metabolism.
So incredibly false and harmful. Without looking deep into the ingredients I am going to say the metabolism booster teas probably just have caffeine (along with other things I’m sure), yes, it will give you a burst of energy, maybe make your heart work a little hard but in the long run will NOT “boost” your metabolism. Your body is an expert at adapting, if you suddenly lost all your valuable weight just from drinking a cup of tea everyday then that would not be a very useful evolutionary trait. Remember - to your body weight loss potentially means death. If you are unable to catch enough food on the day-to-day, unable to fluff yourself up for the winter - YOU DIE. Yes, it is that dramatic. But look at it from the stand point of your body - it is an amazing, complicated, intricate, beautiful system that is constantly keeping everything in line so that you can keep on living.
Weight loss pills - basically legal speed. Yes, you will have bursts of energy that cause you to do more but at what cost? So many studies and recalls of diet pills because of the harm that they do to your body. I don’t care if they are marketed as “all natural ingredients” with some berry that is found deep in the rainforest that is the “magical secret” to weight loss. I know weight loss can be a very emotionally charged and desperate search for the Holy Grain (which was a typo but I’m keeping it because it fits) - but just think for a second - do you really think this “magical secret” would be sold in the energy bar aisle of Target? If this was such a gold mine ingredient from the remote jungle, why can you get it for $49.99/bottle next to the cans of Slim Fast? It’s all marketing, marketing banking on your desperation to try ANYTHING. That you’ll be of the 0.0000000000000000000000000000001% that the product “works” on, that this will be the secret key to you making the pounds melt off in 30 days and then stay off forever when you stop taking the pills. Please, please, please stop for just a second the next time you think about giving one of these companies your money. I know the marketing is getting pretty convincing these days because they know consumers have caught on to their usual or cliche terms - so just know - your metabolism is much more complicated than to be “boosted” by a G00p flower petal suppository or whatever else that nonsense has come up with lately.
Myth #3: Your metabolism stays the same. Ie. “I have a fast/slow metabolism.”
Tying into myth #2, your metabolism does not stay the same. It can fluctuate throughout the day, weeks, months, etc. Again, it includes a lot of different factors but like the example I used above, your metabolism might slow if you’re not getting enough energy and it might increase again once you do. Yes, the part about everyone having a different metabolism and basal metabolic rate is true, this is largely due to genetic makeup but it might also be the social environment you’re living in, your history of weight cycling, if you have thyroid abnormalities or other such disease factors, how your body reacts to starvation/famine (under-eating), etc.
So what is the takeaway here?
Your body needs energy to survive. In this modern world with food everywhere and a bombardment of nutrition messages and marketing how do you sort through it all? In my opinion, that is where intuitive eating comes in. When you get back to your roots of listening to your body and trusting your hunger/fullness cues and giving yourself permission to eat any food so that there is not feeling of desperation or deprivation, your metabolism and weight will find their balance. Your body is peaceful and chillin’ when it knows there will be energy when it needs it and therefore you can maintain your weight homeostasis or “set point weight”. This is the weight your body feels best at, so if you are at this weight range and you eat more, metabolism will go up, you eat too little, metabolism will go down. Your body will keep it all in balance. And that is the true “lifestyle change” that you can actually maintain for life.
Katy Gaston Nutrition
Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA. Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body. If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below. If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!