Rethinking The 'Why' Behind Your Nutrition Goals
Kate Irwin • September 7, 2020
Replace Diet Culture With a Healthier Outlook on Food
Have you ever tried to make nutrition changes or go on a diet? What are some of the reasons you have gone on a diet or changed your nutrition in the past? Many of the clients I have worked with attempt ‘diets’ in order to see body composition changes, lose weight, lose inches and overall feel better. While this is a valid reason to begin focusing on your nutrition, it’s important that we take a step back and appreciate the fact that it is not the only reason one might focus on their nutrition.
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Diet culture is something that is very real, a culture where we comment on people's weight, tell them they look great when they have lost weight or make a mental note when it looks as though they have gained weight. Chasing a specific size or number on the scale has become widely accepted and even encouraged. What if I told you that the number on the scale is not directly correlated to your health? What if I told you that sometimes focusing on that number and making nutrition changes based on your desire to weigh a certain amount can negatively impact your health, rather than being a positive.
Yes there are certain situations where fat loss can be extremely beneficial. Examples include situations where the individual suffers from weight related high blood pressure, has type two diabetes, or high cholesterol. Outside of a medical reason, losing weight and getting to your goal weight may not be necessary. It’s important to note that even though it may not be necessary for your physical health, it can be important to you for other reasons and that is also okay. But I am here to tell you it is okay to not want to lose weight, even if you are 5, 10, 15 or 20 pounds heavier than what you have coined as your ideal weight.
That being said, if you decide to ditch the diet, ditch the scale and gain freedom from diet culture, I think that it is still important to focus on nutrition, but not for the typical diet culture reasons. Have you perpetually been on a diet or chasing a scale weight? If so you may forget that food can make you feel great! It can give you energy, help you improve digestion, help improve sleep quality (hello carbs!), improve workouts and increase strength and muscle mass!
When we start to talk about nutrition on a purely functional level it changes the voices we use to discuss it. It takes our mindset from negative (I can’t have that, I’m not allowed to eat that, that will make me fat) to the positive (This food will help fill me up, the protein in this food will help me build muscles, these carbs before bed will help me get better sleep, these veggies have tons of nutrients in them to help improve my overall health). When you begin to think about nutrition in terms of the great things food will do for you, it makes wanting to eat a variety of foods more appealing. It takes the focus off of the foods that we have typically deemed ‘bad’ for us and switches it to the foods that are going to do amazing things for our body!
Is ditching the scale and diet culture something that speaks to you right now? I always like to start clients with a few small steps.
Write down your why.
For me my why, includes being able to run (because it’s a passion of mine) and being able to keep up with my energetic children. I have always said I never want to be the mom that says “no running” because I don’t have the energy to run beside them.
Write down three positive things you want food to do for you from this list:
Improve digestion, increase energy, increase muscle mass, improve sleep, improve hormone regulation
Ditch the ‘NO’ rules and add some ‘YES’ rules .
There are no good foods or bad, but rather some foods do a lot of great things for you and some only do a little bit for you. Candy for example only gives you energy - and your body needs energy, and candy can have a place in your nutrition. On the other hand a potato gives you energy, but also has vitamins, minerals and fibre as well, it does a lot of good for us! By switching the focus to getting more foods that do our body lots of good it puts the power back in your hands and takes power away from the food.
Don’t restrict yourself from having any one particular food.
This may sound unhealthy but I promise it works, allow yourself to have foods you would normally restrict any time you want. This takes the power away from them and it becomes easier to just have a couple candies or a couple pieces of chocolate. On the other hand, when it’s a food you aren’t supposed to eat, it means that once you’ve had one cookie you’ve ruined the diet anyways so you might as well eat the whole box and start over again tomorrow.
Again, no matter what you decide your goals are, or how you want to approach your body, that’s for you to decide! I’m here to support our Nutrition Clients no matter their goal
but I thought it was important to make sure each and every one of us has the right to not chase a number, or want to lose weight. Health is an important factor in longevity, and health (both physical and mental) should be made more of a priority than fitting into a certain size or being a certain weight.
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