Featured Original Artwork by Rachel Glucksman.
Don’t lie: you hear the word “dietitian” and you cringe a little, don’t you? Someone who gives you a list of foods you can and can’t have. Someone who purses her lips and quietly judges the things you dared to put in your mouth last week. Wrong. At least this time, anyway.
In recovery from an eating disorder herself, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Alyssa Snow Callahan has absolutely no interest in either judging our choices or telling us what to eat, when to eat, how to eat… In fact, her refusal to tell you what to eat may even frustrate you if you’re looking to her to crack the “secret food code.” (Spoiler alert: there is no secret code.) Sure, “diet” is embedded in her title, but she knows by now that diets don’t work (on purpose, by design…) and she wants the world to know it, too.
Our relationship with food and our bodies is so much more precious than the poison-coated band-aid of any crash diet. It takes work. It takes strength. But where better to invest our work and strength than our own beautiful bodies? After all… the ole’ girl has gotten you through quite a lot. I think we owe her this one.
Join me as I pick Alyssa’s brain below, including her thoughts on Health at Every Size®, intuitive eating, and looking inward for the peace and validation we deserve. You can also get to know Alyssa and her gorgeous philosophies a bit better by picking up her recently published Mindful Eating Journal (barnesandnoble.com) or just picking up the phone and calling her (805.267.9338)—she might even let you talk to her dogs 😱.
Find Alyssa
Website: alyssacallahanrd.com
Instagram: @edrecoveryrd
Email: alyssa@alyssacallahanrd.com
I’VE HAD THE PRIVILEGE OF MEETING YOU BEFORE THIS INTERVIEW AND THEREFORE KNOW ALREADY THAT YOU PRESENT AS INCREDIBLY BRIGHT, QUICK ON YOUR FEET, AND CHARMING, YET COLLECTED. MEANING YOU PROBABLY COULD’VE DONE ANYTHING WITH YOUR LIFE. WHY NUTRITION?
I originally worked in a different field for about five years before I came to become a dietitian. I moved across the country and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do once I moved to California (I’m originally from the East Coast). I was previously working in more of a desk job, and I wanted to do something where I’d be working with people and helping them. I had gone to a dietitian when I was a teenager, and that experience was really life-changing for me. She was very accepting of what I was going through and really saw me as a person, saw the struggle that I was going through.
My brother thought that I would be a good dietitian and suggested that to me. I was thinking about it… I think he wanted me to be a “cool dietitian,” that I would help people get ripped or something. I said, “No, I don’t want to be that kind of dietitian. I want to be the kind of dietitian who helps people who are really struggling.” I thought I could do that. That would be really fulfilling. That brought me to the road to becoming a dietitian.
DO YOU THINK HE IMAGINED YOU BEING A DIETITIAN TO THE STARS, HELPING CHRIS PRATT GET RIPPED?
Oh, 100%, yeah, absolutely. I called him and told him that I didn’t think that would be as fun. I wanted to work in a way that’s meaningful and helps people NOT be worried about food, and stressed about food, instead of making people more stressed about food and more stressed about their body. I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to be less cool, haha. I was working in healthcare before, and I was thinking about all these different avenues: whether I wanted to maybe think about being a nurse, or I was thinking about being a veterinarian, or doing all these different things. Nothing felt quite right…
When I first went to college, I wasn’t drawn to becoming a dietitian at the time. I probably wasn’t in that position yet to dig deep with people about how they’re feeling about their food, how they’re feeling about their body, how they’re struggling with disordered eating, or food stress, or an eating disorder, or feeling out of control around food. It took me a while to make peace with food and with my body myself, which was a long process. It was later in my 20s that I was ready for it.
I struggled on and off with an eating disorder all of high school, and a little bit before with body image and feeling really uncomfortable with myself. It snowballed into an eating disorder after a couple years. It’s kind of funny now that I look back: I know so many therapists, and I worked with a therapist, but it never occurred to me to become a therapist, haha. Only a dietitian. I don’t know, that clicked. That’s it. A lot of people have a very different perception of what we do. When you go into the field, you either go into it because you love food and you want to help people enjoy their food. You want to learn about what happens with our bodies with food.
Then some people go into it because they’re currently struggling with or have previously struggled with food. I went into it knowing that I wanted to work specifically with eating disorders, disordered eating; I put that in my applications. The way some people try to approach nutrition is that they need to crack a code. That there’s this code about food and nutrition, and if only you just figured it out… that there’s magic, and that somebody out there knows the magic, and they’re just not telling you. Sometimes people even become dietitians to figure out what that magic is. By the time I went to grad school, I think I’d figured out there was no magic. But that’s definitely the approach that some people make with dietitians, that we’re holding out on everybody on the secret to food. I think that’s just the way our culture talks about food, and even sometimes the way some nutrition professionals or celebrities market how they achieve a certain standard.
IT’S A WONDERFUL MARKETING TECHNIQUE. THERE’S A REASON CULTS AND SUCH HAVE BEEN USING IT FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS.
It is! There’s a secret, and you just have to join us, and pay us money… and then we’ll tell you all the secrets. There’s a secret to being able to eat whatever you want, and look exactly the way that you want, and feel great, and have that for the rest of your life… and have amazing, close relationships. You’ll have so much room in your life to have all these amazing experiences, you’re never going to skip out on stuff from being stressed about food or your body… because you’ve cracked the code! No, there is no code. Grad school would’ve been a lot more entertaining if it were more like Hogwarts or something. But, it just wasn’t like that. It was a lot of science, like real science. In some ways science is magical, that all this stuff automatically happens in your body, and that’s really cool and kind of magical. But, generally, it’s not secret magic. Your body knows what to do, this stuff just happens automatically—it’s really amazing. But, there’s no way to hack your body’s systems. No.
YOU’VE LIVED AND WORKED IN SEVERAL PLACES. HAVE YOU NOTICED A REGIONAL DIFFERENCE IN HOW WE (HUMANS) RELATE TO FOOD? WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS, OR ISN’T?
I don’t know if it’s as much of a regional difference as the fact that food has so many differences to us personally. We all have these personal experiences with food around nostalgia, or stuff we ate growing up, or places we went or traveled to and the food we ate there, food that reminds us of our culture, food our grandparents made us from their cultures that their grandparents made them, food that makes us feel comforted. There’s also lifestyles in different places, like you’re more likely to go and eat out somewhere outside in California than where I’m from in the winter, where everyone’s bundled up and you don’t go anywhere—it’s freezing for four months out of the year.
I think there’s probably differences in the way that we perceive bodies, and food, which can be regional. But it can also be cultural and deeply personal, and have to do with our time and our resources, our finances… our cravings, what makes our bodies feel good. I feel like it’s more individual than regional because you can have a love for a certain cuisine. In Southern California, we have amazing Mexican restaurants because we’re closer to the border. Now that I’m here, I can be a little more of a Mexican food snob: “They only have one kind of salsa at this restaurant..? What’s happening here?” But, I grew up loving Mexican food and I’m from New England; my parents just loved Mexican food, so it’s also a kind of comfort food for me. I just happened to move to a place where we have a lot of Mexican restaurants because we’re close to the border.
I think it’s very individual.
THIS HAS BEEN A STRANGE YEAR. MOST PEOPLE’S HABITS HAVE CHANGED IN SOME WAY, BUT A LOT OF THINGS HAVE STAYED VERY MUCH THE SAME. WHAT’S BEEN YOUR FAVORITE WAY TO LISTEN TO YOUR BODY IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS?
There’s so many things that are so uncertain in our world, and it can be really overwhelming sometimes. It’s nice to focus on the things that you can do to make yourself feel good, feel connected, and feel grounded, even just in your own home. I’d never done yoga on YouTube before, so I’ve been doing that because I wanted to do more yoga. I was previously going to classes, and obviously we can’t do that.
I don’t know why I used to think that yoga at home, for free, just wouldn’t be as good, but I’ve actually really enjoyed it. I’ve been doing shorter snippets of yoga so that it’s not a full 60-minute class. So, I’m able to carve out 20 minutes most days to do to some yoga, and I’ve really been enjoying that. I also really like taking my dogs for walks. I can carve out some time at the beginning of the day or the end of the day to just get outside and enjoy being outside… walking my dogs, which they get so much enjoyment out of.
Most of the things I do are for making my dogs happy. It’s a bonus if it makes me happy, but if it makes my dogs happy, then that’s the true winner. I’m doing something right if I’m appeasing my dogs, so that’s taking them for walks, playing fetch with them in the backyard… it’s really easy to be present around animals because they’re nothing but present. All they have is what they’re feeling right now. They’re not worried about later, they’re not thinking about what happened yesterday: they’re just enjoying the current moment, which makes it very easy for us to be very present and enjoying the current moment with them… I have two dogs and two cats, and even when they’re just lying down and then stand up, they start to stretch and shake it out… they’re just so in touch with what’s going on.
SPEAKING OF CRACKING CODES, PETS HAVE FIGURED IT OUT.
They don’t really worry too much. Although, my dog does have separation anxiety. I think that’s probably the only way anxiety presents itself in animals: they want the whole pack to be together.
IN APRIL 2020, YOU RELEASED THE MINDFUL EATING JOURNAL: PROMPTS AND PRACTICES TO RESTORE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH FOOD. IT FEATURES TOOLS LIKE WRITING PROMPTS, INTUITION EXERCISES LIKE GUIDED MEDITATION, AND RELEVANT QUOTES TO INSPIRE SELF-REFLECTION. WHAT ULTIMATELY PUSHED YOU TOWARD PUBLISHING SOMETHING LIKE THE MINDFUL EATING JOURNAL, AND WHY NOW?
It’s not a very exciting answer, but it’s because they asked me, and this was the publisher’s timeline! I wrote it at the end of last year, working with a publisher, and this was their release timeline. It was always going to come out when it came out.
IN MY OPINION, IT WORKS OUT INCREDIBLY WELL. WE NEED SOMETHING LIKE THIS RIGHT NOW, BUT NOBODY KNEW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.
I couldn’t foresee that people were going to be at home a lot during this time: that would’ve been diabolical. It was always scheduled to come out in April. They wanted something that was a bit more of a guided journal that had to do with food, how we felt about food, how we felt about our emotions. So, I wrote it. I gave them an outline of my take on it: something that I thought would be very helpful and was also a bit of a taste of what it’s like to work with a lot of eating disorder dietitians, or intuitive eating counselors. I wrote it out as “This would be the process I would try to take somebody through if I were working with them,” and [the publisher] liked that… and when it was ready, it came out!
THAT’S INTERESTING. AS, SLOWLY BUT SURELY, THE CURRENT EVENTS OF THE PANDEMIC AND QUARANTINE UNFOLDED, THAT [RELEASE DATE] DIDN’T GET PUSHED OR CANCELED LIKE SO MANY THINGS DID, WHICH IS PRETTY MAGICAL IN ITS OWN WAY BECAUSE, WHEN WE’RE STUCK AT HOME, THERE’S ALMOST NO MORE DANGEROUS WAY FOR US TO EVALUATE FOOD AND EATING IF IT’S SOMETHING WE’VE BEEN AVOIDING.
It’s been really hard for a lot of people that I work with because you have to have enough food so that you’re going to the grocery store as little as possible. Some foods were getting sold out for a while. It was really scary, feeling like you couldn’t go to a store—it was always packed—feeling like when you went to the store they were out of the things you needed. It was really, really scary. So, when you do get food then you [feel like you] have to stockpile it. But, if you don’t feel safe around food, if it makes you feel out of control, that was really uncomfortable for people. To have that bigger amount of food just in their house and available to them. Knowing that they’re going to have to spread it out over a week or two weeks or a month.
Also, not being able to have the variety of going out to eat, and have the comfort of going out to eat and sharing food with friends. Some of my patients love that that’s not something they have to do right now, and a lot of my patients hate that that’s not an option. They find it so nice to go and share food with friends and family because it’s a distraction, and it brings positive feelings around food, as opposed to when you’re eating and cooking by yourself, which can be very anxiety-provoking. I think The Mindful Eating Journal is a nice way to start doing some of that work.
And, if there are things that are coming up for you [while] working through the journal, that’s a good indication that it might be good to work with an intuitive eating counselor, or work with a dietitian that specializes in eating disorders or disordered eating or body image, or work with a therapist who specializes in those things. A lot of it is so individualized, and it takes a lot to process: there’s a lot there for pretty much everybody. There’s a lot of emotions around [food].
FOOD IS NOT JUST CALORIC ENERGY. IT’S JUST NOT.
No, it’s really not. We definitely talk a lot about what food means and that we’re not robots getting fuel put in our tanks. Food means something to us, so you need to honor that, too, and honor the cravings we have, and what our body is telling us. That’s not the sexiest way that it’s sold to us to do, but it’s the best way to really have a positive connection with our bodies and a positive connection with food.
I WANT TO TALK ABOUT HEALTH AT EVERY SIZE® BECAUSE THE CONCEPT SEEMS PRETTY SIMPLE, YET ALMOST EVERYONE I TALK TO INTERPRETS IT WITH THE SAME VERY NARROW, VERY SHAMING LENS. SO TELL ME: WHAT IS THE HEALTH AT EVERY SIZE® APPROACH AND WHY SHOULD WE BE PAYING ATTENTION TO IT?
Health at Every Size® is one of those things that can be polarizing because people have extreme ideas in their heads about what it means. Even with intuitive eating, people have extreme ideas that intuitive eating means we’re just eating the same foods every day because that must be the food that we really want. However, once you unpack physiologically and psychologically what’s happening around food, you realize that our bodies are created to want variety and want all different types of food because we need all different types of food to survive. As much as people say, “I would eat X food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day for the rest of my life,” they’re going to get sick of it and want something else. That’s just fact. As far as Health at Every Size® goes, people have similar judgments.
Health at Every Size® to me means that your body has a size where it will be healthy, and we are not in control of that size. We have genetics that tell us what our set point is, and there’s a misconception that if we eat more than we need to then our bodies are going to continuously gain weight. And, if we eat less than we need to then we’re going to continuously lose weight. That’s not the case because our bodies aren’t going to [do the same thing] forever. Our bodies do continuously change: they’re going to evolve, we do age, our bodies change, and also what we find attractive in other people evolves throughout our life. That’s a good thing. Health at Every Size® means you can be healthy at any size, but it also means that not everybody is healthy. It’s saying that health and weight are two separate concepts. That you don’t have to go after weight loss to pursue health. That’s one preconception that we have a lot: that weight loss is always healthy and weight gain is always unhealthy. That’s not the case.
Health at Every Size® is also a larger movement about social justice, about people getting fair access to healthcare, about people not being discriminated against because of their body size, discriminated against because of their race or ethnicity, discriminated against because of their gender… discriminated against for any reason in order to achieve or pursue the health that they would like to have. Health at Every Size® also, to me, is not just about physical health. It’s about mental health and emotional health, as well. One of the things I think about with Health at Every Size® is that, in my personal values, I can’t value physical health to the detriment of my mental health. They go together. If somebody is restricting a lot of food or exercising in a way that their ideas about food and exercise are extremely rigid, and, if they go against that, it’s very anxiety-provoking, then following those rules might actually be very unhealthy for them because it’s detrimental to their mental health and their self-esteem. They’re going through different cycles of “I’m on the diet, so I’m good; I’m off the diet, so I’m bad, I’m a failure.”
It’s a lot of different things beyond the idea of “Whatever size you are, that’s healthy!” I think that’s what people think you’re trying to say, but in reality you’re saying, “You can pursue health at any size, and you have a right to pursue health at any size, in any body, in a way that is comfortable and safe for you.” There’s so much that goes into Health at Every Size®: you’re looking at health, at body size, from so many different angles. It’s a different angle if you suffer from a chronic disease, and your definition of health is different from somebody else’s definition of health. It’s a different definition if you are in a disabled body: your definition of health is going to be different. If you are transgender, or non-binary, your definition of how you view your body and how you’re able to access the healthcare system is completely different. I can’t necessarily speak to all of those because I have a lot of privilege; however, that’s what Health at Every Size® is about. I hope it’s raising awareness about every body being different, and that we need to have a lot of respect for everyone else’s body, everyone else’s experience, and help them pursue the level of health that’s ideal for them. It looks different for everyone.
Hopefully, when we come from places of privilege, we’re able to create opportunities to hold space for people who don’t have the same privileges as we do. Try to broaden the stereotypes when it comes to different mental health conditions, different disorders, what it means to be living in a larger body, what it means to be gender diverse. All of these things might have a specific stereotype, but [what we need and experience] is so often individual. We have an image in our minds when somebody says, “I know this person who has an eating disorder.” However, eating disorders are so diverse.
I CAN ONLY IMAGINE THAT WHAT YOU DO IN YOUR PRIVATE PRACTICE AS A REGISTERED DIETITIAN NUTRITIONIST (RDN) IS PRETTY EQUAL PARTS REWARDING AND CHALLENGING. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE PART? WHAT’S THE HARDEST PART?
My favorite part is working with my patients. I find them really inspiring. I always end an appointment, typically, feeling really good about the work that we’re doing. It’s very energizing to me, and I feel like I get just as much from talking with my patients as they get from me, which feels kind of selfish, haha. The hardest part is knowing what their struggle is, and knowing how hard it is to heal in this world, and go through these healing motions with all of this strong diet culture. Going through, trying to heal with your body in the age of every person becoming an expert at Photoshopping their Instagram. It’s just impossible to think about completely healing. I want to open the door and be like, “Look at this beautiful world out there, it’s perfect!” But, it’s so hard to heal.
When you’re somebody who’s trying to find respect for your body or some kind of appreciation for your body, you’re honestly in the minority. You’re going to go out in this world and hear so much hatred about bodies. All bodies, all bodies! Even for some bodies that are praised as being perfect, there’s some trolls out there tearing people down. It makes you think, “I don’t even stand a chance.” That’s probably the hardest part: wanting to have people in a little bit of a sheltered world where they can just sit and heal and become strong before they go back out into that world. You can’t do that. We’re always given those messages, sometimes from our own friends and family, and it’s about finding our own voice and building our own strength even throughout that. It can take a long time.
Especially when people know I’ve been in recovery for a long time, they ask, “How long did this take you?” I say, “You’re not going to like the answer…” It’s a long time because this is not a world that’s supportive of what you’re trying to do. It’s a world that’s giving you messages against what you’re trying to do.
THERE’S QUITE A BIT OF RESEARCH AND EVIDENCE BY NOW THAT CRASH DIETS AND YO-YO DIETING DON’T “WORK.” LIKE, THEY REALLY DON’T WORK, IN ANY WAY, NO MATTER HOW YOU SPIN IT. WHY DO YOU THINK THEY’RE STILL SO POPULAR IN THIS DAY AND AGE, ESPECIALLY AMONG WOMEN?
Because of the messages that we’re getting that there’s one quick fix. “Do these three simple moves and you can get the perfect whatever! This is the exact diet you need to follow for X, Y, Z, to lose X number of pounds and get your perfect summer body!” It’s so alluring to think if you just did this one thing then all of these other problems and struggles that you’re facing would just go away and get so much better. That’s really alluring. We always want that silver bullet: if I just focus on this one thing then everything in my life is going to get better. A lot of the time, what we’re focusing on is our weight and our bodies. “If I just looked the way I wanted to look, all these other things would be better.” That’s a message that our culture knows that we want to hear. “You’re just somehow missing the mark on this one thing, but, once you get it, everything else falls into place!”
As with anything, there is no quick fix. You have to put in the work, unfortunately. Fortunately, and unfortunately, you have to put in the work. In order to really develop a strong sense of self and improve your body image and relationship with food, it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of thought. It takes a lot of processing the trauma you’ve been through. It takes a lot of processing the messages that you’re getting, the critical thoughts, the ways you’re beating yourself up. All of this takes a lot of work.
YEAH, AND WORK ISN’T “SEXY.” IT’S NOT THE “SEXY” FIX.
No, it’s not! Following a 10-item to-do list is so much more interesting. And they know that’s going to sell magazines. That’s going to get people to turn on that channel or click on that link. Unfortunately, that’s just a money-driver, and one that’s really not what’s best for us. Making people feel like they’re just not quite “getting it” is a way that certain industries have found is very profitable. It’s very effective at getting our money. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work. Dieting is like perfectionism. “If you follow the perfect diet and exercise in the perfect way, you’ll get the perfect body and feel perfectly healthy; everyone will respect you and see you in exactly the way you want to be seen, and you’ll be sheltered from shame and judgment.”
But… none of that works. It’d be nice if that were the way it was, but it’s not because you’re never going to be “perfect” to everyone. It’s an inside job. You’re placing more emphasis on what’s going on outside of your body, like diet rules or cultural expectations or what other people think about your body or say about your body or MIGHT BE THINKING about your body… you’re placing all of that at a much higher importance than how it actually feels to be in your body and what your body’s actually telling you. You’re externalizing all of these cues, and a lot of my work is to take them back to the internal, which feels really uncomfortable for people because we’re told that we need to have everybody’s approval.
WHICH IS SUCH A WEIRD FANTASY; I MEAN, YOU DON’T EVEN WANT THAT. WHO WANTS THAT KIND OF RESPONSIBILITY?
You really don’t. When you come from a culture or situations where you feel shamed and you feel not good enough, it’s really easy to buy into that. “I’m just going to avoid that [happening] again and instead focus on doing everything ‘right’ and making everybody happy.” That doesn’t work because you can’t make everyone happy. For a lot of people, there’s no way to make them happy at all, so… you’re just setting yourself up for failure. Perfectionism is just a shield to keep other people from really seeing you. It’s a shield to deflect feelings of shame and guilt, but it’s a very heavy shield of armor, and it ultimately doesn’t work. There’s no way to please everybody, and, when you inevitably don’t please everyone, then you take it on as you just weren’t perfect enough. It’s a vicious cycle.
WHAT’S BEEN YOUR FAVORITE THING TO COOK—AND EAT 💟—RECENTLY?
It’s kind of a misnomer that all dietitians are really good cooks… I’m an ok cook. I’m grossly average in the kitchen. I’ve always really liked baking: I made these cookie dough truffle balls during quarantine and they were really good. You didn’t even have to bake them in the oven. They were really good. They were just butter and cookie dough mix. They were eggless—I’m allergic to eggs, so I can’t have eggs anyway. I made eggless cookie dough and then dipped it in chocolate and turned it into cookie dough balls.
I love summer fruit, so I just cut up a watermelon yesterday, and that made me really happy. Anything with cheese and peanut butter… it doesn’t have to be together. Probably best if it’s not. We’ve gotten Mexican takeout a couple times. I make a lot of tacos at home.
WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THE PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE—FRIENDS, FAMILY, COLLEAGUES, CLIENTS—HAVE STRUGGLED WITH OR ARE CURRENTLY STRUGGLING WITH AN EATING DISORDER, IF YOU HAD TO BALLPARK IT?
An eating disorder, I don’t know. I think it’s a lot more than what is out there for the national average percentage. But, the percentage of people who have disordered eating, or stress about food a lot, or stress about their bodies, or have maybe used some disordered behaviors (like “I have to earn my food”)… I would say that’s 100% of people. Ballpark, like 110% of humans worry about food in their bodies in America. Even people who are pretty natural intuitive eaters. During grad school, I would give my husband these assessments you can take about intuitive eating, and he always did so well. I thought, “Ugh, gosh, you’re such a well-adjusted human being.”
“YOU HAD SO MUCH SUPPORT GROWING UP; HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?”
It’s a miracle. But, even he will ask—and I’ve been a dietitian for four years—“How much protein do I need to be eating?” Or, he’ll go to the store and buy a bunch of stuff, and I’ll ask, “What did you buy?” And he says, “I looked on the Internet, and I don’t think I’m eating enough protein!”
THE INTERNET SAYS!
The Internet said this! And I said, “Ok, so tell me more about what the Internet told you. You’re married to an actual dietitian!” And he said, “Well, I don’t know, did you learn this in grad school?” YES. No, we never talked about protein at all. Pretty early on, that was a major thing. The other day, he asked, “How much fruit should I be eating? Because I’m eating no fruit right now…” In my typical dietitian way, I asked, “How much fruit do you want to be eating? What would feel good for you, and realistic?” “I don’t know, but how much fruit should I be eating?”
GIVE ME THE LIST: 8 WAYS TO GET ALL THE FRUIT. I’LL FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS.
Exactly. Give me the exact number of fruit servings that I need to be eating in a day to be doing this “right.” Of course, I’m so annoying, so I just say, “Well, let’s take a step back: what is fruit? It’s just fiber and water and vitamins and minerals. Are you getting fiber and water and vitamins and minerals from other places? Yeah! So, you can have fruit, but if you don’t… you’re going to be fine.” He did not like that answer.
NO. NOBODY LIKES THE ANSWERS THAT PROVIDE AMBIGUITY OR EVEN AMBIVALENCE. HOW DARE YOU MAKE US CONSIDER THAT THERE’S NOT A BLACK AND WHITE ANSWER TO THIS? HOW DARE?
Yeah. That’s what intuitive eating is. It’s living in the gray. A lot of what I work on with patients is figuring out how to question that black and white thinking: this is good, this is bad, if I’m not doing everything perfect then I’m a failure. We’re trying to figure out how to navigate that there is an “in between” here. There’s not an “eat everything just perfect” or “I’m completely unhealthy.” There’s a middle ground here that is where we’re all going to fall, so we need to start being ok with that.
THERE’S SOMETHING SO COMFORTING STILL, SO ANIMALISTICALLY COMFORTING ABOUT BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO, IN THE WEIRDEST WAYS. IT’S CRAZY THAT 30-YEAR-OLDS, 50-YEAR-OLDS, 60-YEAR OLDS STILL GET SO MUCH COMFORT OUT OF BEING TOLD, “EAT ONE APPLE IN THE MORNING. EAT ONE BOWL OF RICE AND BLAH BLAH BLAH FOR LUNCH. AND THEN YOU WILL HAVE CRACKED IT!” IT’S WILD HOW COMFORTING THAT CAN STILL BE WELL INTO HAVING A FAMILY OF YOUR OWN AND BEING THE VP OF A MAJOR COMPANY. WE STILL GET SO MUCH FROM BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO.
People want a “do this, not that.” People want black and white. They want the strict meal plan. When you’re realistic and say, “I’m not going to give you that because there’s no way that, in a year or two years or five years, you’re still going to be wanting to eat this meal plan, so it’s not realistic,” people don’t like that answer. People don’t like that they have to learn how to be flexible, even though that’s life. It’s not the most warm and fuzzy answer, but, as we’re all in quarantine right now, we know that there is no “normal.” We have to be flexible. We have to roll with the punches because, sooner or later, we’re all going to end up in quarantine and have to figure out how to eat when everything’s been turned on its head. Different situations will come up that are going to make it impossible to follow this “perfect meal plan.” What are we going to do then?
THIS HAS BEEN A FASCINATING CRASH COURSE IN REALIZING YOU MAYBE DIDN’T ACTUALLY HAVE A GRIP ON THE STEERING WHEEL. AND THAT THAT’S OK.
You are driving the car, and maybe your dietitian or therapist or support team are also in the car helping you navigate, but you’re the one in charge of driving the car. You’re not in charge of anything else that’s happening outside the car, but you do still have to learn how to drive it in case of bad things happening in your path.
excelente artículo.
Ihr Blog ist ein Erfolg, sehr voll. Ahhh Wenn die Leidenschaft da ist, ist alles 🙂 Gerty Dilly Latrice