"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.
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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.

I've waxed lyrical about my disdain for the commodification of yoga and how until very recently, it drove me away from yoga for nearly two years. You can read me being all anti-mainstream yoga Ranty McRantus, here.

But the other big reason I quit yoga was this: ​after I gave birth to my first child, my personal yoga practice was feeling spiritually unfulfilling. And physically depleting as hell. 

Following Archie's birth, the yoga I knew and loved - the dynamic, acrobatic, energetic practice full of dance and strong postures, inversions and fast flow - it just no longer... worked. It was not giving me the vitality, peace and stillness it once did.
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It has taken many painful mistakes, a near-complete abstinence from yoga for a time, and a rediscovery of yoga at a deeper level for me to come out the other side. Here's what happened after I had my first baby, and how you can avoid making the same mistakes I did.
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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.

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.
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So, I'm planning to have another baby.

Whilst some women shy away from telling people about their conception plans, I'm a massive over-sharer with an excitable soul! So what better way to revise my fertility nutrition basics in preparation for polishing up my own baby making equipment, than to share this information with you too.

I figure that since I've now had one kid, I have a little bit more personal experience to refer to than I did a couple of years ago, BC (before child).

​Nowadays, I also have more professional experience working with women of all sizes who have worked with me to improve their fertility - some "overweight", some "normal weight", some a little "underweight" as far as medical BMI ranges go - and nearly all have been able to fall pregnant by focussing exclusively on their HEALTH.

This experience flies in the face of the advice of many doctors, scientists, and health professionals that "overweight people just need to lose weight" in order to fall pregnant.

So before we dive into the 7 fertility boosting essentials that I work on with clients who wish to conceive, it's really important that you understand one important thing. This is so important that it's actually the first of my 7 fertility-boosting tips I want to discuss. To fall pregnant, you must...
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This is easily the weirdest, freakiest post I have ever written. But given that it's Samhain or Halloween today, it's kind of fitting!

The main reasons some new mothers throughout the western world are embracing placentophagy (the practice of mammals eating the placenta of their young after giving birth) centre around these: mood stabilisation and improvement which may reduce risk of postpartum depression, and nutrient replenishment after birth which can help with energy levels, recovery, and breast milk production.

Despite these purported benefits, I still struggle with how to explain my decision to eat my own placenta. Even though I instinctively felt it was the right decision for me, I had to do my own research to satisfy my left brain. So let me start off with the reasons why I initially thought I would not eat my placenta.

Today, I'm nearly 28 weeks pregnant. But it seems as if it were just yesterday when I saw two lines on the pregnancy test, confirming what I had intuitively felt for some time before that. I've since learnt that pregnancy is a sifting of the unsorted material of one's psyche to reveal the dross. Dross that must be burnt before a new life can enter the world under your care. A process as necessary as it is painful, uncomfortable, thrilling and insight-revealing.

Pregnancy: a sorting of the psyche, a polishing of the soul. ​

Short and sweet today...

We all know supermodels seem thinner than almost anyone we know or see regularly. We also know magazine images are airbrushed and manipulated so much the supermodels don't even look like themselves.

Supermodels must be 18% body fat or less. Did you know a woman's normal hormonal cycle can be interrupted at body fat percentages lower than 17 or 18 per cent? (This is the level required to have 'washboard' abs or a '6 pack' - it is too low for many women and girls.)

Can't sleep? It's past New Years now so hopefully any sleep deprivation or hangovers have been amended with rest and water.

But what if you can't sleep and your periods are out of whack, or you've got menopausal symptoms at age 35, or you're tired all day and wired all night? It might just be time to get off facebook and stop checking emails every five minutes. 

I've spent the last week on a lush hill on a tropical island with no internet or mobile reception (aside from the odd walk into town), and I've noticed something astounding - life has become much simpler. I hadn't noticed it as much before but now it's obvious: our interfacing with screens of all kinds has upsurged in recent years, to a point that feels like we spend nearly as much time looking at an iphone or computer screen as we do soaking up natural sunlight and gazing at something other than pixels. We are living in the digital age and the social transformation it has brought about is astonishing.

Have you noticed that there’s a particular crowding going on right now? I'm referring to the mad communication in all its shapes and forms. Posted letters are now an antiquated thing. Pre-2000, it used to be that we might get a couple of letters in the mailbox each day and that was it. Today, if you go through your inbox there may be hundreds of emails! If you switch off your phone for half an hour, there are texts and voicemails waiting at the other side of short-lived tranquility. It’s disrespectful to us as human beings to be interfacing with that onslaught.
 
I understand most of us are incredibly busy - we all have a lot going on in our lives, and we find ourselves sending a lot of energy OUTWARDS. Given the amount of stuff we have going on, this outward draining of energy diminishes our ability to sustain equilibrium and create beautiful lives by constantly responding to those stimuli, sometimes out of a feeling of obligation, and often to unconsciously evoke a feeling of business and worthiness. There’s the casual stuff – social media, texting and calling friends. Then there’s the work stuff, and that can often be a case of people biting off more than they can chew or having too much required of them. It’s like it starts to crowd in and we feel like we need a year to catch up on all of it!
 
All this activity gives us an opportunity to practice standing in our truth, and resist being pulled into obligation. If we take this from a spiritual perspective, we are only obligated to our own spiritual unfoldment. We have all these people and activities we feel obligated to.

Part of the practice of nourishing ourselves fully is letting go, being ok with the fact that it might not be ok with the other person, which of course strikes at our fear of not being liked and accepted, which is connected to a primal fear of being abandoned and alone. Instead of jumping each time an invitation lands in our inbox, let’s peel it back and dissect our reactions – if we’re feeling all this pressure, what program is being activated? We’re NOT obligated to respond to an email within ten minutes.
 
In mindlessly responding to every email, text or facebook message, and in spending more and more time staring at screens we sabotage our body's natural cycles. Take for example our Circadian rhythms. 


The 3 body clock cycles

Your circadian rhythm operates in 3 eight-hour cycles per day. This rhythm has been known for thousands of years within Ayurveda and TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine). Understanding and applying these body clock principles will allow you to enjoy easy digestion, keep your weight from fluctuating, never experience fatigue and optimise metabolism.  

These are the cycles:

    4AM-12PM Elimination
   12PM-8PM Appropriation
    8PM-4AM Assimilation

There's a lot you can do to start honouring these cycles and in doing so, improve digestion, enjoy better quality sleep and boost immunity! Personally I feel the elimination cycle  is possibly the most important of all to nourish in the digital age we live in, and its also the most neglected.

If we are using electronics beyond sunset, certain signals cannot be processed in the body in optimal ways. If you’re using screens anytime after 8pm – which is the time people often catch up on things - the artificial light not to mention the radiation will stimulate your various glands and has the potential to wreck havoc with hormones.

The hypothalamus gland sends messages to your pituitary gland to help put you to sleep when the sun goes down. This occurs sometime between 6 and 8pm to prepare you to be asleep before 10pm.

All internal cycles of rejuvenation happen between 8pm and 4am (or in other sources, between 10pm and 6am. It's probably safest to stay away from screens between 8 pm and 6am). During this time, the liver is detoxifying, matter is moving from the small intestine to the large intestine for morning elimination, blood is being cleansed by the kidneys, and so on. 

Just like flowers opening their petals and birds singing their morning songs, these cycles occur in perfect synchronicity because of obedience with nature. When we defy nature, we send mixed signals to the body. When women come to see me with hormone imbalances – instead of trying to fix them by putting more hormones back in (whether through food or otherwise), I ask why they’re functioning this way now? One major factor is circadian rhythms.

We really need to tune into our inner cycles. One of the biggest preventers of this is radiation-emitting devices and a lot of exposure to screens. Add the crowding of digital media and our perceived responsibilities, and we can really have the s*** kicked out of our natural rhythms.  

This is when immunity suffers and bad habits kick in with even more power. If our hormones are out of sync, our whole being out of sync. This is why it's SO important  to build boundaries and watch where you’re opposing nature, since wherever you're disobeying natural law, you’re impeding every cycle in your body.

Know your boundaries, be self-referring for your own approval, and above all - if it's past 8pm, get off facebook! And switch your mobile and wifi off while you're at it. Give it a few weeks - you might be surprised at the positive response of your body.