Category: Eating Disorders

The Wellness Diet Cycle

17/7/2019

The typical person I see in my clinic is female, in her 20s, 30s or 40s.

She goes to yoga and only shops at organic markets. She makes her own bone broth, vegetable juices, and paleo "treats" (because gut healing is good, and dairy and sugar are "bad").

She spends a small fortune on vitamins, probiotics and herbal supplements.

She is very health conscious, sometimes bordering on being obsessively so.

She has seen numerous health practitioners prior to seeing me.

And despite her utmost efforts to be healthy, she has long list of seemingly obscure health conditions. The list of signs and symptoms I see in these women goes something like this:

Headaches, migraines, intense cravings, cold hands and feet, sleep problems, rough dry skin, brittle hair, hair loss, IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), dizziness, brain fog, low energy levels, low body temperature, constipation, low libido, bloating, indigestion, frequent need to urinate, anxiety, panic attacks, loss of muscle mass, heart palpitations, frequent colds and flu / thrush / UTIs / herpes outbreaks, unpredictable emotional swings, severe PMS, irregular periods, missing periods, infertility.

The woman in question usually doesn't have every single one of these (although some do), but she will have a significant number (around 80% or more) of them.

By the time they've come to see me, many of these women have attributed this long and baffling list of symptoms to candida. Or a food intolerance. Or simply "being too fat".

And they've come to the conclusion (via Google or some health guru) that the obvious solution is to embark upon yet another restrictive diet. Anti-candida, low-carb, paleo, keto, GAPS, SCD, vegan, intermittent fasting, and raw are the usual go-to's right now.

And herein lies the root of the problem.

The Big Thing most health-conscious people are missing (that's ruining their health)

Most of the women I see in clinic do NOT have a food intolerance, candida, or an allergy to grains. I should add that I have been trained to recognise and treat food sensitivity and intolerance so am well aware of what that looks like. Although it is a valid and very real issue, about ninety percent of the time, food intolerance is NOT the causative factor.

The root of these women's problems is this: They are trying too hard to be healthy and as a result, they are eating too restrictively.

The biggest mistake I see women making today is trying too hard to be healthy.

Intermittent fasting - is it for me?

26/6/2019

Intermittent fasting (or IF for short) is so hot right now. In fact it's been hot since it rose to fame with the arrival of Michael Mosley on the television and book publishing scene in 2012.

Basically, it means going an extended period without eating. Sounds technical AF, right? Unlike plain ol' healthy eating and regular movement, which is clearly not sexy enough to attract the attention of the masses!

IF is fancy-sounding enough to get the attention of those who want the next magic bullet that will help them lose weight and/or get healthier.

So, nearly everyone.

But especially those who already have issues with weight concern, body image, disordered eating or eating disorders - the folks I see the most often.

In actuality, we all intermittently fast. Every night. When we are asleep. Not so sexy, I know. So let's talk a bit about the sexier, newer, more restrictive version.

the "benefits" of IF - are they unique?

There are many variations of intermittent fasting, including 5:2 (which involves restricting caloric intake to 25% of a person's caloric needs for two days per week), and time restricted feeding e.g. 20:4, 16:8 or 12:12, corresponding to hours in a day spent fasting to hours where eating is allowed. For the variations of IF with the tightest feeding windows, OMAD or One Meal A Day has recently risen in popularity.

Based on the limited amount of (mostly animal model-based) research that has been done on IF, the purported benefits include:

life extension
reduced blood lipids
reduced appetite
reduced blood pressure
reduced markers of inflammation
increased fat burning
improved blood sugar control, and of course
short term weight loss.

It seems that these benefits are attractive enough to outweigh the fact that most of these reported benefits have been gleaned from research conducted on animals like rats and monkeys. Human experiments using IF are extremely limited, short lived, and often use poor experimental control groups.

Finally, like most fad diets with a sliver of scientific research behind them, the results are presented in a way that sounds deceptively, well, scientific. It's all well and good to hear something like, "intermittent fasting reduces insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which is a scientific-sounding thing that increases your risk of diabetes. So reducing IGF-1 is good."

But without an understanding of the complex physiology of human metabolism, and without knowing that there are literally dozens of hormones, enzymes, vitamins, minerals and factors that influence blood sugar and insulin levels in both the short and long term, the context and relevance of such an isolated finding are usually lost amidst the sciencey-sounding rhetoric in a weight loss-obsessed culture ("Science AND weight loss? I'm SOLD!")

It's like saying "surgically scrubbing your hands for 20 minutes with our fancy new soap significantly reduces your risk of food poisoning. So you need our soap (and our soap only) and a bunch of effort to not get sick."

A quick hand wash before meals with some ordinary soap is probably enough to help you avoid food poisoning. Likewise, imposing additional strict requirements to attain some level of health may be overkill. Especially when that same level of health could be attained by eating a varied, balanced, nutritious meals at regular times according to appetite and schedule, i.e. normal eating.

The fact is that any restrictive diet where calories are reduced will temporarily seem to improve blood markers. I mean, you're eating less - of course your blood sugar and blood lipid levels are going to drop.

Then there's the effect of stress hormones.

Intermittent fasting is a stressor

Despite the big list of supposed benefits listed above, usually the primary reason I see people trying IF is to lose or control their weight.

So let's do a Diet 101 Refresher.

Any time you restrict food (be it calories, carbohydrates, fats etc), you are placing a stressor on the body. With intermittent fasting, a calorie deficit is usually created by skipping meals and/or using the time restricted feeding windows. This is certainly the case with 5:2 and often the case with 16:8.

When you begin any form of diet (i.e. calorie restriction), there is an initial surge of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol.

These stress hormones elicit anti-inflammatory, immune-suppressive, appetite-suppressive, and pain-killing effects which is why many people report to feel better in the early stages of a diet. These effects could very well explain the above benefits of IF discovered in short term experiments.

As you become hopped up on your stress hormones, also known as "fight or flight" hormones, you feel more energised, and previously painful joints or old injuries are no longer troubling you. The adrenaline kicks in, you feel more alert, and your appetite is suppressed. Much like a truck driver who is jacked up on amphetamines and can drive for 20 hours straight without stopping to eat or sleep.

You do some blood tests and you see your inflammatory markers have reduced thanks to the increased cortisol pumping around your body. You may even notice your asthma or cold clear up for the same reason. Your glycogen stores are liberated, and the water that was accompanying the stored glycogen is released as urine. You lose a couple of kilograms (mostly water and some muscle) in just a few days. Tada! You feel terrific! The diet is working!

Actually, your body has detected a food shortage and your primitive hormonal regulation system (the one that only cares about your survival and doesn't give a shit about your diet or your weight loss goals) is using any available sugars and fuels to hunt or go searching for some food. Subsequently, blood levels of sugars and lipids go down quickly, especially once glycogen stores are all used up and are not being properly replenished.

People may see their cholesterol levels drop at the beginning of a restrictive diet. This is because cortisol is made from the base molecule cholesterol, and as your body kicks into stress mode it needs to turn more of its cholesterol into cortisol to keep you alive long enough to find some damn food.

After a while, your body can't keep up its high production of stress hormones. Those stress hormones eventually suppress the thyroid gland, causing metabolism to slow down. Energy levels fall. Weight loss slows to a grinding halt, even if the restrictive eating continues. Hunger returns with a vengeance. Some people, especially women, may develop hypothyroidism. Digestion can slow down and become deranged due to the overgrowth of bacteria in the now slow moving small intestine and reduction in microbiota (especially if you've restricted carbohydrates during your fast).

Finally, people may notice they've developed low libido, PMS, infertility and other hormonal problems that so often crop up with restrictive dieting. This is because the body has shunted so much of its cholesterol to cortisol production, that the production of other steroid hormones like pregnenolone, progesterone and DHEA (which also require cholesterol for their manufacture) decreases.

So the finding that intermittent fasting reduces IGF-1, blood sugar and appetite is not really enough information to extrapolate that IF is going to have significant, long-lasting, positive impacts on your health.

It is enough information to show us, yet again, that calorie restriction pushes the body into a stressed state. And that eventually, you will crash.

Just Another Restrictive Diet

The purported benefits of IF aren't unique to intermittent fasting - they happen whenever we temporarily restrict calories in whatever way.

If intermittent fasting is simply another way to restrict calories (in this case by skipping meals, rather than avoiding certain foods or food groups as many other diets like to do) then it’s JARD - Just Another Restrictive Diet. And we all know diets don’t work by now (don’t we?)

By “diets don’t work”, I mean that in the long run (within 2-5 years) 98% of dieters regain all the weight they may have lost, usually plus some. And the remaining small percentage who keep the weight off have usually developed some form of disordered eating / ED.

So the options are: weight loss followed by weight regain, weight loss followed by even more weight regain, or an eating disorder. Fun.

DISORDERED EATING & Intermittent fasting

Before I get bombarded with hate messages from IF fans, remember that I’m mainly speaking to people who have dicey relationships with their food here. If you’ve found IF has helped with your heart disease, sex life, or helped you live to 120 then that’s great. You probably don’t belong here.

I’m talking to the people who use IF as a tool to hide their disordered eating habits. And going by what I see in the wellness world, that’s a lot of people.

Many of the clients that I work with have used intermittent fasting as a way to justify what they were already doing. They were already skipping breakfast, and/or restricting all day, often followed by night time bingeing (because, y'know, they were starving.) With the rise of IF to fame they could now simply say, “Oh, I just intermittently fast. Science says it's good for me.” Sigh.

Here are the common arguments I hear from folks who are adamant about doing IF, despite having a screwy history around food and eating:

But... I’m NOT HUNGRY in the morning! Some people just don’t feel like eating as soon as they wake up. That is fine. Brunch is a beautiful thing. I’m not speaking to brunchers. I’m speaking to people who use IF as a reason to regularly skip breakfast as a way to restrict their overall calories. If you have a history of restrictive dieting or disordered eating, chances are your hunger and fullness cues have become seriously dulled. To the point where you don’t notice you’re hungry until you’re absolutely starving. You can’t trust your hunger and fullness cues if you’re coming off the back of this kind of thing. “I’m not hungry” may be an incorrect interpretation of long term deprivation-altered body cues.
But... SCIENCE! As noted above, the research on IF in humans is in its infancy and rapidly changing. The latest research is now moving from a 16:8 fasting:eating timeframe, towards a 12:12 window. It’s showing us that we can get the same "benefits" (and I say that with hesitation, again as explained above) from a shorter fasting window. A 12:12 schedule could mean dinner at 7pm and breakfast at 7am. In other words, it's not significantly different from normal eating patterns (as noted above). So... why not just eat normally?
But... FASTED CARDIO! DETOXIFICATION! FAT ADAPTATION! Ah, so many fancy dress costumes from disordered eating land. So little time.

Basically, if you have any history of disordered eating, then this is not an appropriate approach. Absolutely not. It’s just another way of masking excessive energy restriction. It does not foster a positive relationship with food. It could well - and from what I've seen in clinic, too often does - damage your relationship with food even further.

But I don't have an eating disorder - could IF be for me?

Let's for a moment ignore the fact that 20-30% of the population suffer from some form of disordered eating and shouldn't touch IF with a ten foot pole. If you truly have never had any food, body or weight concerns, and desperately want to give intermittent fasting a go, there are a few things to consider first.

Things like:

Are you meeting your nutrient requirements in that 8 hour block? (in the case of 16:8) If not, you are creating a calorie deficit i.e. you are dieting. If this isn't something you can happily, comfortably and healthily sustain for the rest of your life (clue: it's not), then why on earth would you even go there?

Does it impair your relationship with food? For example, do you feel guilty if you break the allotted feeding windows? If it does, hello disordered eating.

Does it mess up your ability to eat out with friends? Again, hello disordered eating.

The bottom line: IF is a stressor on the body. Any form of calorie deprivation is a stressor on the body. If you don’t have any other life stressors, and you have no history of disordered eating, and you REALLY want to try it... then I'd say a tentative "maybe".

If the purported benefits are the primary motivating factor for you, I would make sure that you've already covered your fundamentals before trying something as complicated and potentially restrictive as IF.

In other words, do you eat a balanced, varied diet of mostly whole, nutrient dense foods? Do you exercise regularly? Do you manage your stress levels? Do you get ample sleep and rest time? Chances are if you do these things, you’ll get many, if not all, of the benefits that IF claims.

periods, fertility & eating disorders

21/5/2019

"I have my period. So I mustn't have an eating disorder."

For years I thought that if a woman was menstruating regularly, she was displaying one of the ultimate signs of health.

I thought that if a woman had a regular period she must be well nourished. That the moment her caloric intake dipped below her requirements, her body would stop ovulating and periods would disappear.

That Mother Nature never lets our bodies grow babies - a highly energy intensive endeavour that demands massive amounts of resources - in a perceived famine.

For years, I was wrong.

In my time as an eating disorder dietitian, student naturopath, and having lived through an (undiagnosed but still very harmful) eating disorder, I have learnt a thing or two about periods and under eating. Here I'll attempt to bust some common myths around periods, fertility and disordered eating.

Witches don't diet.

6/9/2018

It's 6am, and I'm tired but excited. My 8-month old baby girl, with whom I co-sleep, is up at 5:30am every morning crawling around our bedroom. As I type this she's pulling apart my pile of yoga props and dismantling the crystals, candles and oracle cards that decorate my bedroom altar.

But she's not the main reason why I'm particularly tired and simultaneously excited this morning. In the middle of the night I was up for over 2 hours as a bunch of information and the backbone of this blog, among other things, was downloaded seemingly out of nowhere into my mind, demanding to be written down. It happens from time to time. It's the only time I feel sleep deprived and am cool with it.

So.

Witches don't diet. Let me explain the title of this crazy midnight-inspired blog. Starting with the "witch" bit.

Witches

Up until recently I've felt really uncomfortable with calling myself a witch. My concept of a witch was someone who was a wise woman or man, and a respected elder of years past. One who was a healer, a shaman, a master of herbalism. One who helped and served others in his community. One who understood nature at a deep level, who communed with nature and viewed herself as a part of it, not in command of it.

In our climate of cultural misappropriation, and of hashtags like #witch, #witchvibes, and #blessed, it seemed cliché, cutesy, and just icky to label myself as a witch. I rejected the label and the bastardisation I believed (and still to some extent believe) went with it, much in the same way I once rejected yoga culture, hard.

Sure, I align my energy with the wheel of the year; I observe the sabbats, seasons, and the cycles of the moon.
I use multiple tools to connect with and sharpen my intuition, including but not limited to meditation, embodied practices like yoga.
I love nothing more than to spend hours wandering by myself in the forest - although these days I'm usually accompanied by little people.
I use divination tools such as oracle cards and occasionally scrying.
Despite being scared of ghosts, I feel the presence of long dead loved ones and communicate with them, not frequently but from time to time.
Most mornings I cast a circle, set an intention, burn sage, commune with my ancestors, journal, and/or read oracle cards.
I have had visions of past lives, my own and those close to me.
I have created multiple altars and sacred spaces around my home. My family is just used to having weird stuff including talismans and many sage sticks lying around the place.
I work with the elements of nature and use herbs daily, and crystals sometimes. The main reason I am undergoing a degree in naturopathy is to add clinical herbalism to my tool belt, yet I also talk to plants and try to connect with plant spirits.
I cast my first spell at age 17 and it worked so well I got frightened and didn't cast spells again until my late twenties when I decided I wanted to get pregnant. That, too, worked incredibly well.

Despite all of this, I have long rejected the label of witch. Not wanting to frighten my Christian friends, or freak people out, and not wanting to further disrespect the archetype of wise healer and elder I hold in my mind.

When my spiritual teacher unflinchingly pointed out that I was, indeed, a witch, I immediately recoiled. I told her I didn't feel comfortable with that term, that I felt it was overused and misused. Perhaps at some level, collective long held negative connotations and echoes of painful ancestral memories sounded through my psyche; the centuries when the word 'witch' led women to be tortured, drowned and burned at the stake stored as warnings in my cells.

She gently reminded me that "witch" comes from the word wicca, which means wise. Witchcraft in ancient history was known as "The Craft of the Wise" because most who followed the path were in tune with the forces of nature, had a knowledge of herbs and medicines, gave counsel and were valuable parts of the village and community as healers and leaders.

My teacher showed me that in my haste to retract from cultural misnomers and in my disdain of anything trendy, I had perhaps forgotten what a witch really is.

In the words of author Lisa Lister, a witch is "a woman in her power. She is wise, a healer, someone who is aligned with the cycles of Mother Nature and the phases of the Moon."

A witch is a woman in her power. Her intuition is strong and she listens to it and trusts it. She sharpens her intuition like a knife and uses it to cut through cultural bullshit, allowing her to stay true to herself. She knows the difference between intuition and the voices of fear.

I know many wise, intelligent, heartfelt people who meet this description. Social and environmental justice warriors fighting for gender equality, opposing weight stigma, and lobbying to stop deforestation. The fiercely compassionate and scientifically justified proponents of the Health at Every Size movement. Herbal medicine masters who are fighting to grant cancer patients access to plant medicine that could save their lives in a medical climate where natural medicine is viewed with suspicion and derision.

They are all witches. And so am I.

And if you're still reading this, chances are you are, too.

Intuition

I agree with the notion that a witch is a woman (or man, but I'm mainly talking to women within my platforms) in her power. And a woman can only be in her power by regularly listening to, honing, and trusting her intuition.

Intuition is rooted in the body. Think of the words we use to describe intuitive hunches: I had a gut feeling. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I felt it in my bones. I knew it in my heart.

Think of the times your intuitive, instinctual nature has kicked into gear. When somebody has stepped into your space and something feels "not quite right". When you know your child is in danger and you check they're still in their sandpit only to realise they're about to cross the road by themselves.

When you sense the presence of a loved one who has passed on, something around 75% of us report having experienced. When you recognise a soul mate or lifelong friend by how your heart feels and the tingles running down your spine. These are usually gut feelings, a body sense. Not calculations you've made in your head.

Dieting and the religion of thinness have cut down many a modern day witch, leaving a gaping hole in our collective wisdom and capacity to heal ourselves and others.

Dieting

Intuition is rooted in the body. Food rules keep you up in your head, disconnected from your body.

Food rules keep you up in your head, disconnected from your body. It's hard to notice your witchy hunches and intuitive body-felt messages when you're mostly in your head thinking about food, eating, and/or your body.

When you're spending hours googling gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free recipes instead of doing your practice, whatever that practice looks like for you.
Calculating, compensating and calorie budgeting instead of nurturing your innate gifts, talents and skills.
"Saving yourself" all day for a dinner out with friends and starving in the process, dwindling energy stores that you could otherwise have spent honing your craft.
Being so cut off from your hunger and/or fullness cues and your body, that intuitive messages seem a distant memory or a far off concept, rather than a daily normal experience.

It's hard to stay connected to your spidey senses if you've skipped breakfast AND lunch, all you can think about is how hangry you are and how you could probably hold out for another hour before you really "need" to eat.

So many women I know (myself included) do a bunch of weird shit that has the capacity to - consciously or otherwise - sharpen our intuition. We wear crystals, read oracle and tarot cards, journal, meditate, practice yoga... all in an attempt to "be more intuitive". Or more accurately, to connect us to the wisdom and intuition we already embody.

But food rules pull us right back out of our bodies and into our heads. You can wear a bone necklace made by a Hopi shaman, burn sage until the neighbours call 000, and do a three-hour headstand atop a giant piece of clear quartz... but as long as you're still stressing about how much sugar you ate yesterday, you're going to stay largely shut down to your intuition.

Intuitive eating

Intuitive eating, intuitive EVERYTHING.

For women whose slavery to the thin ideal has cut them off from their full witchy capacity, intuitive eating is a way to open a doorway to intuitive living. As I once heard another non-diet advocate say, "Intuitive eating, intuitive EVERYTHING."

Intuitive eating asks that we begin listening to the hunger and fullness cues of our bodies. But that's not all. It also offers ways to reject the diet mentality and let go of the religion of thinness so pervasive in our cultural and inherited conditioning.

One caveat: If you've been chronically dieting, or you're in a semi-starved state, listening to and honouring your hunger and fullness can be difficult and complicated. This is where getting help from a non-diet practitioner can be of great value to re-nourish your body first so you can begin to receive and interpret those messages correctly.

Witches don't diet

Witches don't diet. It's impossible to be deeply connected to your intuition while you're still tracking macros like there's no tomorrow, you're not eating enough, or you're deadly afraid of carbs.

Getting a balanced, satisfying and adequate intake of food can ease mood swings, panic attacks, anxiety, and mild depression. Mental health takes a dive when we're in a state of semi-starvation as the body struggles to construct all the neurotransmitters it needs to remain healthy. Intellectual clarity and intuition is improved when the mind receives proper nourishment.

It's time to stop wasting your energy on the illusion of weight loss or maintaining a low weight as if that's the most important thing in life. It's not.

Sister, we need you. Now is the time to hone your craft, shine your light and offer your healing gifts, and dieting is only stopping you from reaching your magical potential. The world needs your witchy-poo self, and it needs it now.

Author

Casey Conroy is an Accredited Practising Dietitian, eating disorder specialist, herbalist in training, yoga teacher, and coming-out-of-the-closet witch.

I'm recovering from an eating disorder: can I still be VEGAN?

18/10/2017

I work with a lot of yoginis and yogis, alternative lifestyle leaders, animal rights activists, and environmentally conscious folks. I also work in the field of disordered eating.

So naturally I often find myself in the situation where I'm chatting with somebody who is very keen to heal their troubled relationship with food... but they don't want to budge on their vegan ideals.

This person may have been through the psychological hell that is a full blown eating disorder...

... OR they may fall into the spectrum of disordered eating on the end of the continuum that wouldn't be classified as a clinical eating disorder, but disordered eating and disordered body image - an issue that faces a significant number of women in Australia.

OFTEN, they've experienced both.

The big question here is, "If I'm actively recovering from a clinical eating disorder - or any other form of disordered eating - can I be vegan and still get better?"

Dieting your sex drive away?

21/7/2017

Who doesn't love vagina cupcakes. Image courtesy filmjamblog.files.wordpress.com

I have a question for you.

Which one factor is absolutely fundamental to women having a healthy sex drive?

Is it having "the ideal body", which we're convinced will make us the desire of every man?
Is it owning and wearing the most exquisite lingerie you can buy?
Is it being a yogi - gymnast so you can act out the entire Kamasutra without breaking a sweat?
Is it re-training your brain to think, breathe and live sex by mulling over your sexual fantasies and doing libido-boosting visualisations daily?
Is it having a sexually adventurous, Samantha Jones-esque personality and not being afraid to search sex shops far and wide for the latest and greatest toys?
Is it being comfortable with and well-practised at masturbation so you're familiar with what your body likes?
Is it being assertive and vocal in bed, and being able to confidently ask for what you want?

It's NONE of these. Whilst some of these are important ingredients to a healthy sex life, there's a HUGELY fundamental sex drive-promoting necessity that's glaringly absent from this list.

The most important thing you can do as far as your desire for sex goes?

It's having enough fat on your body.

Yep, having enough or ample fat, not as little fat as possible.

If, like most women, you're weight loss dieting... if you're partly starving and/or overexercising your body to get down to or maintain the levels of body fat approaching that of fitness and fashion models (the official body type desired by the average woman in our culture because we think it will buy sexuality)...

... then your fertility, your sexual desire, your fitness, your energy levels, and of course your overall health, will actually suffer.

And without these things, even the most dedicated Kamasutra practitioner, sex toy aficionada, "perfect" figured gym-bunny, or modern woman with sex communication skills of steel will not be able to get it on... let alone get off.

Pregnant? Don't take this celebrity trainer's dietary advice.

20/7/2017

Warning: this article mentions specific caloric quantities and specific weight loss diets. If this is likely to be a trigger for disordered eating behaviours for you, please don't read on.

I recently came across a celebrity trainer's 12 week weight loss program that really got my goat. Nothing new there, same old shit about restricting calories in via dieting and doing mega workouts to "burn calories off." Same old cheesy marketing and aesthetically pleasing presentation of just enough accurate information intermingled with bullcrap to confuse the majority of consumers who are not savvy about diet culture's sneaky AF ways.

But what really upset me - even more than the same old rubbish - was that as an extension of this dreadful program there were weight loss plans for pregnant and postpartum women. Complete with daily caloric "allowances" for these groups of women.

There is so much wrong with this I don't even know where to start. The quest for "body after baby" is massively prevalent in our society and it's harmful to both women and their babies.

Pregnancy is not the time to try to lose weight. And postpartum is one of the riskiest times in a woman's life for developing or worsening an eating disorder.

The caloric allowances allotted to these vulnerable groups of women on this particular diet plan are scarily misinformed, and dangerous. This is the kind of stuff that sets women up for deteriorating body image and developing eating disorders during and after the vulnerable time that is pregnancy.

But before we get to that, let's start with why calorie counting in the first place is a waste of time.

Firstly, calorie counting is generally pointless.

As a non-diet dietitian who loves food, you won't be surprised to hear that I rarely talk calories or kilojoules with my clients – unless its to point out they need more. There are so many flaws with the general idea of counting calories, including:

calorie counting grossly over-simplifies the ways body weight is determined and encourages subscription to the "just ensure calories in is less than calories out" mentality towards weight control. With this polarised lens, we forget the many other factors that influence body weight just as much if not far more than food and activity, including genetics, stigma, socioeconomic factors, stress, sleep deprivation, hormonal imbalances, environmental toxicity, gut bacteria, etc
calorie content (calculated in food laboratories by bomb calorimetry or indirect calorie estimation) reported on packaged food labels can be off by as much as 20% due to variations in manufacturing, season, and suppliers.
similarly, the calorie content of whole foods is wildly unpredictable. Two similar-sized Fuji apples can have vastly different calorie contents due to the soil and climate they're grown in, the time of season they're harvested, how they've been handled after picking, and how they're prepared.
calorie counting doesn't take into account the type or quality of food you're eating (and it matters.)

calorie counting is far more difficult and inaccurate than people think, whether in regards to calculating food intake or calories used in exercise. Under or over reporting is common and human.
calorie counting does not factor in the immense individual variation in metabolic rate. BMR calculators can be off by 20% or more, in which case, is it really worth calculating?
calorie counting is also complicated by variations in individuals' muscle mass, amount and type of physical and mental activity, and many other totally random and unpredictable genetic factors that we may not even be aware of, let alone have the capacity to plug into a caloric requirements calculator.

Then of course there's the elephant in the room: that weight loss dieting - whether by calorie counting and food restriction or some other method - does not work.

But myths abound over how much women should be eating. In conversations with women with weight concern, I notice a lot of magic calorie numbers being thrown around when it comes to how many daily calories they think they should be eating: 800? 1200? 1500? 1800?

And just how much more do you need to eat when pregnant or breastfeeding - "because this celebrity trainer says it's x" (P.S. she's terribly, dangerously wrong.)

So just this once, let's talk frankly about calories.

The SSSW ideal: What it is & why it hurts women

3/7/2017

It's mindful eating misused as a weight loss technique in a "Meditate Yourself Thin" program.

It's crash dieting rebranded as a juice cleanse that's an "integral part of your wellness journey".

It's a 12-week yoga shred challenge that focuses on making you lean, toned and taut, rather than preparing you for seated meditation (the traditional purpose of yoga asana).

It's a $5000 program that promises to "reveal your inner goddess" and make you happy, sexy, spiritual and confident all in one weekend... because once that goddess is unleashed, every man will want to be with you and every woman will want to be you.

It's a female sexuality course, a yoga training, or a detox program that teaches you how to be female - the "right" kind of female: Sexy, Slim, Successful, and let's not forget the one caveat that makes it all cool: Spiritual.

For years this has bothered me. As a yoga teacher and health professional, I've innately felt that there's something really icky about this kind of marketing, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. "It's just business, honey," I imagine the creators of these taglines would tell me, "It's the nature of marketing. It's just smoke and mirrors. Take a deep breath and exhale that negativity! Don't get your knickers in a knot."

Clearly, I only felt uncomfortable with this kind of marketing because I was "not ready for success", or deep down I "didn't think I deserved it."

And so, I'd uncomfortably push it to the back of my mind, tell myself I was being silly... and swallow the bile that had involuntarily made its way up into my throat.

3 types of diets to watch out for

18/4/2017

"It's not dieting, it's a lifestyle change."

Sound familiar? Let's clear something up. Dieting – whether a fad, old school diet, a “detox,” or a “lifestyle” – is not just a verb; it’s an entire way of thinking that pivots on the intention of losing or controlling weight. It is both an individual mentality, and a cultural paradigm.

So let's be super clear: Dieting is any approach to food and eating that is centred around weight loss or weight control.

The roots of dieting are diet mentality, and diet mentality is fertilised by diet culture. And no matter how abusive dieting is to our bodies or our minds, millions of people continue to cling to it.

It can be easy to think you're not dieting, even if you are. So here I'll list three main types of diets so you know what you're looking for when it comes to slaying that diet mentality.

The problem with "the new skinny"

11/4/2017

Spiky with rainbow skin is the new skinny. Seriously, why can't you be like this?

Nowadays it's hard to dodge those stupid memes about the new skinny. You know, the ones proclaiming that,

"Fit is the new skinny."

Or

"Strong is the new skinny."

Or even

"Curvy is the new skinny."

As if we needed yet another standard to live up to replace skinny! #facepalm

Whilst thin may no longer be (quite as) in, we are now seeing a migration towards the FIT IDEAL.

The fit ideal, or even the fit-with-curves ideal, are new ideals that are frequently celebrated and portrayed as "real" - as in "real girls have muscles" or even the seemingly more inclusive (but clearly far less inclusive when said aloud) "real girls have muscles AND curves."

In all honesty, this new fit ideal is just another unrealistic and painfully limited aspiration of beauty - albeit disguised as health - that excludes the majority of women while pretending to accommodate them.

We really may as well be saying "SPIKY, SCALY, HERMAPHRODITIC, AND WITH RAINBOW DNA is the new skinny." It would be just as "inclusive".

When will we all just make peace with the fact that women come in a billion different shapes, sizes, sexual orientations, colours, degrees of ability and disability, and body compositions, and that ALL of these bodies are OK?

By slightly shifting a narrow standard of beauty that places pressure on women to conform, with no regard given to which of the billion different and natural body types an individual was born with, we see the same obsessive, compulsive, unhealthy thoughts and behaviours that "the old skinny" standard generated - restrictive dieting, compulsive exercise, dangerous overtraining, and yes, body hate.