What is Intuitive Eating?

Overall, to me Intuitive Eating is getting back to your inner intuition and knowledge when it comes to food, eating, and connecting to your body. I say "getting back to" because I believe that everyone is born as an intuitive eater and then as we grow up in the society that we do, we can lose the ability to connect with that inner knowledge and body cues.

How does this happen?

I think the way that it happens is going to be unique for everyone. I also don't want to place blame on any one place. Often times the feeding rituals that we had growing up had the best of intentions, they just might not be how our body wants to naturally operate.

I will give a few examples from my own story.

I grew up in household that was a proud member of the Clean Plate Club. Meaning that I could have no dessert or leave the table until every morsel on my plate was gone, including the boiled spinach with no seasonings and the gigantic glass of milk. Again, not to place blame but I grew up partially with my grandmother, a woman who grew up in The Great Depression and the era of food recommendations like everything cooked with no salt, no fat and that you should drink 2-3 glasses per day of cow's milk to build strong bones (hence the earlier example). This in turn caused be to get the message that even if I was full, the portion that I was given was the right amount for me, dessert was a treat that I only deserve under certain circumstances and vegetables are a disgusting punishment. I also now know the stomach ache I had from drinking dairy was because I was lactose intolerant, not because I was getting too little fiber.

Again, I am telling this story with compassion and understanding towards my grandmother because she was doing what she thought was right and healthy. Of course in retrospect I can see how many of these messages backfired and I had to re-learn and develop a lot of new relationships with foods and my body cues in my adult life.

This is a common thing that I help clients with, though the details will be different. Often times, there are circumstances that causes us to not know how to listen to our bodies anymore, or caused us to think our bodies were broken in some way because they don't do what we want them to do, ie. diet, lose weight, eat no sugar, crave plain boiled spinach, etc.

This is where I see Intuitive Eating come in. When we start to understand our origin stories with food and our bodies we can start to understand where we received the messages that we have today. It's not that your body is broken or needs to be fixed, it's more of a re-learning patterns that work better for you and your body.

It is about re-learning your hunger and fullness cues so at any one time your body tells you what portion of food works best. It is about making vegetables delicious so that not only do you crave them, but they are a staple of the meal because they feel good in your body, and not used as punishment. You have dessert after dinner most times, but sometimes not, because it just doesn't sound that appetizing, but you have that choice because you know it's available to you whenever you want it. You've switched to oat milk and know that you are getting plenty of calcium because it's fortified and you now love spinach.

I definitely don't want to over simplify this process or say it happens overnight. It's complicated, confusing and emotionally uncomfortable a lot of the time. Food is not just food. We are complex humans that have complex feelings and emotions and thoughts about food. But I can say that it's worth it. It's worth every bit of the process because you give yourself the ability to trust your body again. I don't want to sound like a cheesy credit card commercial but to me, this is priceless.

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!

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Eating As Self Care

Self Care, the Latest Buzzword?

First I would like to start on what I think the definition of self care is because I think that it can get a little lost, especially now that companies have picked it up as a marketing buzz-word.

To me, self care can be anything that recharges you. Everyone is a little different so it could be exercise, sitting in the park, painting, getting you hair done, swimming in the ocean, gardening, playing with your dog, building something, etc. I think there is also an element of rebellion that can come with self care. In this western society there is a culture of hustle, individuality and perfectionism. To which rest, vulnerability and being a human can be rebellious acts. This is where I think eating can come in as a rebellious act of self care.

So how does eating play into this?

When we think about it, eating should be the most instinctual thing we do. Along with sleeping, drinking fluids and practicing safety measures (ie. not getting hit by a car or eating poisonous mushrooms) it is the thing we do every day to keep ourselves alive. So why is it so confusing and sometimes so hard to do?

Because we humans are complex creatures with emotions, memories, social influences and preferences. We have seemingly endless access to overwhelming amounts of information and opinions. Along with all this information, there is $$$ to be had. Each time that a company, magazine article, program, etc can plant a seed of doubt that you don’t know how to feed yourself, they can come in with The Answer. I also want to pause for a second and point out that this is coming from a dietitian, a profession where I literally learned all about how to nourish a human body. If eating is so instinctual, why should you need me, a dietitian, to tell you what to eat?

First I would like to say that this is a major misconception about what I do. I actually don’t want to tell you what to eat. I am more interested in helping you facilitate a relationship with your body so that you can listen to those instincts. Where I do use my degree is when I’m working with people with disease states like allergies, kidney failure, diabetes, etc because there are important food and nutritional components to that. When I think about my work with eating disorders and disordered eating I think of it as a way to help people weed through the noise of nutritional marketing and fear mongering and provide the actual science. So much more of it though is giving permission. Permission to eat when you are hungry. Permission to have your favorite foods. Permission to gain weight. Permission to listen to your body.

If we think about the typical meals, we usually feed ourselves 3 times a day, maybe with some snacks in between. When did this concept become so radical and so out of the norm? To me, it is when weight loss became the gold star indicator of health (which it’s not) and the fear mongering that is the “o*esity epidemic” that was deemed to be running rampant throughout the US (which was wildly misrepresented). Starving ourselves, “hacking” our internal body cues, cutting out entire food groups like carbohydrates or fats, taking laxatives, throwing up after meals, drinking water instead of eating lunch, exercising three hours a day (when we aren’t professional athletes); when did this all become the norm?

I will have to admit, sometimes I get self-conscious about giving up on diet culture. Usually I can ward off remarks about what I am eating or my body with comments like “I am a dietitian that works with eating disorders so actually I don’t really follow the diet trends” or “I don’t know if I’ve lost weight, I don’t track that.” People will comment on if I am eating a salad “Oh you’re so good!” or if I am eating chocolate “Wow, the dietitian eating candy, didn’t think I would see that!” I have to admit sometimes it gets tiring. It feels like I am swimming upstream all the time because not engaging in diet culture is going against established norms. But then I remember that every time I eat when I am hungry, I am standing my ground. Every time I eat a donut or a salad because my body is telling me that is what I need, I am engaging in self-care. Every time I go for the full fat yogurt or the vegan ranch dip because that is what I want vs what I think I should have, it is self care.

Feed yourselves, I give you permission.

I won’t even say that you deserve to eat, because that shouldn’t even be in the conversation. You ALWAYS deserve to eat, no matter the circumstances. Eating is as fundamental as breathing. If we were on “oxygen deprivation cleanse” or working towards taking less breaths in a day, people would look at us like we were in a cult. Eating is no different. Eating when I am hungry, trying out a new baked good recipe, discovering a new favorite restaurant are amongst the things that bring me joy. These are my self care.

Though sometimes it is hard, I will continue to stand my ground that I will always and forever, deserve to eat - and you do too.

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!

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Organic vs. Conventional Produce, Is Organic Healthier?

Some food myth busting with organic vs. conventional foods.

The first myth I would like to bust is no, as a dietitian, I do not ‘only eat organic foods’. I am not going to knock eating organic, I just want you to know the truth sans the marketing. I also have some great resources on this topic that I will link below and cite throughout this post.

What is does organic mean?

I would like to start with the definition of organic. I think we have come to have it be a catch-all for this “clean eating” movement (which is another email for another time - lots of thoughts on this) but what are the actual parameters around something being organic? Because yes, there are parameters set by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), which has some pros and cons. Some farmers are producing crops via “organic” methods but may choose to not be labeled as such because it needs to be certified and therefore costs extra money, time and energy. Some farmers may also choose to not be certified because then it creates parameters for the “bare minimum” instead of being able to focus time and money towards practices that could be above even the USDA’s standard of what “organic” means.

All of this lead up to say is that organic is a term set by the USDA, not actually a term meaning any increase in nutrition, quality or safety of the item. From this point I will label anything not organic as conventional, meaning the “regular” stuff.

Myth #1: Organic means no pesticides

This actually is not the case, and in some cases the same pesticides with the same amount of residue on the produce can show up in organic and conventional produce. How does this happen? There are pesticides that are approved for use by the USDA and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and like I said earlier some conventional produce farmers may not want to spend the time and money to get organic certified, even though they would meet the qualifications. “…the vast majority of conventionally grown produce tested by United States Department of Agriculture could qualify to be labeled “organic,” specific to their residue levels”¹. Conventional also doesn’t mean that the farmer doesn’t care about their produce and many only use pesticides as a last resort just like organic farmers.

Myth #2: You should pay attention to the “Dirty Dozen”

If I am being completely honest this was a myth that I myself did not know needed to be busted. I even learned in my nutrition courses about the Dirty Dozen and had to memorize what they were - meaning they were meant to be taken seriously as something I would counsel future clients and patients on. To those that don’t know, the Dirty Dozen is a list of 12 fruits and vegetables released by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) each year that is said to be the highest in residues and therefore should be avoided or bought organic. First, there has been research to show that the residues that show up on these fruits and vegetables are still negligible and that the methods that the EWG uses to come up with these are not accurate. In a statement by Dr. Carl Winter he clarifies this point: “To accurately assess consumer risks from pesticides, one needs to consider three major factors – 1) the amount of residue on the foods, 2) the amount of food consumed, and 3) the toxicity of the pesticides. The methodology used by EWG ignores all three.”¹ To see what this means I used a calculator available on the website SafeFruitsandVeggies.com to go through a real life scenario. I took one of the fruits listed on this year’s dirty dozen list - apples. I put into the calculator of how many servings you would have to eat in a day to consume unsafe levels of residue and here are my results:

If you are a….

Man = 1,190 apples/day

Woman = 850 apples/day

Child = 340 apples/day

Case and point, the amount or residue matters, not the fact that it exists. So why does this matter so much? The Dirty Dozen list is not produced by any credible entity, it is not like when the USDA or FDA issues a food recall on something that has been deemed unsafe to consume but it likes to come across as such. It uses fear-mongering to make people think that these products are dirty and therefore un-healthy.

Imagine if you are a conventional strawberry farmer that cannot afford to get the organic label and jump through all these bureaucratic hoops and then some random group releases a list saying the crop that you have poured your life into is “dirty” and will therefore negatively impact consumption rates.

I think everyone can agree that it is good to have fruits and vegetables in your diet and that many people do not get enough. This list has been shown to lower people’s consumption of fruits and vegetables because of the fear and/or inability to afford organic. Imagine the negative impact and shame that something like this can create if you cannot afford to feed yourself or your family with only organic versions of the Dirty Dozen so you either don’t eat them or eat the conventional versions thinking that you are poisoning your family.

So what is the takeaway here?

I am not against buying organic if you can afford it and it is your way of consuming produce. What I do want to do is take away the shame and fear if you DON’T buy organic. If you buy conventional it does not mean the foods have any less nutrition, quality or safety. It does not mean that the farmers do not have sustainability practices in place like crop rotations and soil enhancers. You are not “dirty” if you buy conventional, you are not consuming unsafe levels of pesticide residue (you can email me if you are consuming 1,200 apples in a day and we can talk more) and you are not dumping toxins into your body.

The fact is the “organic” label might not mean all that you think it means. I know as consumers there are 1,000 choices we have to make every time we go to the grocery store and we like labels like this because we think it makes the choices easier. “Clean”, “guilt-free”, “lite”, “all-natural” are all there to sell us comfort, peace of mind and the feeling of “being good”. “Organic” is just that, another marketing term that is used by products to make you feel clean and good.

I am here to say eat the fruit and veggies you like whether they are organic or conventional, you’ll still be doing your body good.

Citations: (because that is how serious this blog got)

¹ Facts About the Dirty Dozen List

Website resource: SafeFruitsandVeggies.com

Podcast episode: Sound Bites Podcast Episode 97

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!

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A Dietitian's Take on Collagen and Other Nutrition Trends

If I am being fully honest staying up with the latest food and nutrition trends is not my, shall we say.. priority?

This is very different than me staying up to date in my field with studies and emerging nutritional science because those are important for me as a practitioner to stay up to date in my field. The reason why I don’t follow food trends as closely is just that, they are trends. They changes with the seasons, tides and which company is the latest push on Instagram. However, I get a lot of questions about trends so I feel that it is good for me to dive into the deep depths of these “made for you supplements” and Goop-blessed morning routines every once in awhile.

First up, collagen. What is it, who needs it, what does it do.

Collagen is a protein that is found in your body. The marketing is true that it has a role in building skin, bones and nails. However, as with everything in your body it is not a simple equation of digest collagen then collagen goes right to your skin cells building elasticity and clearing wrinkles. (Remember when collagen in skin creams was all the rage and dermatologists were looking at us like wtf? On top of skin does not = absorbed into skin to be used.) It just doesn’t work like that. The research on the positive outcomes of collagen supplementation are limited and a little sketchy as supplements do now have to be FDA approved and therefore do not have to prove much in terms of “effectiveness”.

Collagen is a protein that is found in animal proteins but that doesn’t mean that vegetarians and vegans don’t have collagen in their bodies because once again, our bodies don’t follow a simple equation like that. Instead of collagen in = collagen taken to skin, bones, etc, it actually is eat foods, foods get broken down into simpler building blocks, those building blocks are transported to the places they are needed, you body constructs it. This is why I am skeptical of any supplements that over simplify this equation. Do I think taking collagen is harmful? Largely, no. Do I think it is probably a waste of money since it is a current trend? Yes. To me when people see positive benefits to something then it may not be so much because of this one magic supplement but rather because maybe they were not getting enough protein and now they are, (AKA no longer under-nourishing themselves) caring for their bodies is becoming more of a priority, etc. It is also very interesting to me that we keep circling around to proteins are our saviors and “clean” macros when fats can also help your skin, nails and bones too.

To address other trends along the same lines as collagen…

Gelatin. Same as collagen, just boiled down. Apparently this has made a comeback because when I was in high school gelatin was villainized as “that gross thing in gummies made of horse hooves.” Again, this is why trends are both boring and fascinating to me.

Bone Broth. I thought this one had died down about 8 years ago but I guess not. From a nutritional stand point, bone broth is just a soup-like substance that is made from boiling down bones to release the collagen. From a cultural standpoint I want to make clear that bone broth is not new. In many places it has been around for thousands of years as a dish to promote health, community and comfort. Often times I see bone broth has been commandeered by Western society with the idea that it was something that was invented by Los Angeles juice shops when it definitely was not. So what is my opinion of it? Bone broth is great, personally when I have a cold a nice warm hearty bone broth based soup dish is just the ticket. Do I think the bone broth protein power on your Instagram ads is your answer to enteral life? No.

Weight loss/metabolism/clean eating. Because I think that collagen and all of the subsets above also tend to dance in the same circles as weight loss and clean eating I want to also address this aspect of it. I will say of the studies that I found in regards to weight loss and collagen, there are few and even fewer human studies. This is important to note because few studies do not make a solid recommendation. What I will say is that collagen is a protein, just like other proteins. Your body will do with it what it needs to do. So when we fragment certain ingredients to be “fat burners” or “metabolism boosters” I am instantly skeptical and you should be too. Because back to our equation from above, whenever that equation is simplified, question the marketing! Fat burning is purely a marketing term, it does not actually happen in your body like that. Metabolism boosting, again, purely marketing. Our metabolisms vary throughout the day, seasons and our lifetime. So much of this is just genetics with a little bit of wiggle room. It’s like an architect with building plans, sure you can probably have a different stain on the wooden doors but you can’t change the foundational beams around, it just doesn’t work like that. Be the architect when these hot shot advertisers come to you trying to sell you new plans to change the beams around. Laugh and then go about building your building. (Annndd my building analogy ends here.) Collagen for weight loss, metabolism boosting blah blah is just the latest in what they will try to sell you products for. The weight loss industry has billions in revenue every year, of course all food and supplement roads lead back to there, it’s where the money is at baby!

Bottom line…

If you love your daily collagen power added to your smoothie and you have found it has helped you in some way, great. Again, I don’t think there is any harm besides the healthism and orthorexia that can come with any food and diet trend. You are not being “unhealthy” if you don’t consume these collagen supplements because your body is building collagen for you when you eat other proteins. So if you find yourself breaking the bank and chasing the white rabbit down the influencer marketing holes then I would stop and have a convo with yourself. Are you trying to “fix” yourself because there is a deep unhappiness in some other area? Are you seeking perfection like it is obtainable? Do you stress constantly about what you are putting in your body and are consuming these things because they have been deemed “clean”? If so, then I think there are larger things at play.

If you feel like you are struggling to figure out what to eat but also don’t know what is just marketing and what is actually based in nutritional science that is definitely something I can help with! My 1:1 sessions are to answer your specific questions because we all have different circumstances so these sessions are catered to what is needed for you and your body, sans food trends of 2021.

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!

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Burn It To Earn It: Metabolism Myths

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!

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