But What About Health? The Relationship Between Weight & Wellness

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But What About Health? The Relationship Between Weight & Wellness

Diets don’t work. It’s a line you’ve surely heard before. Perhaps it’s a statement that’s even supported by your own lived experience. Maybe you are so burned out on diets that you are ready to consider giving up the pursuit of weight loss for good.

Except that, maybe you’ve also been told that weight loss is important for your health. You’ve been told your joints will feel better, your blood sugar will improve, your risk for X, Y, or Z diagnosis will decrease. Or maybe that you’re “healthy” now but if you don’t get or keep your weight “under control” it’s just a matter of time before you begin to experience those “weight-related” illnesses. Maybe you're fearful that if you do give up trying to control your eating you’re being reckless with your health.

So, what are you supposed to do? How can you get off the diet culture roller coaster and still honor your health?

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Food Rules: What They Are and What To Do About Them

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Food Rules: What They Are and What To Do About Them

These and other rules that we impose on ourselves when it comes to eating often lead us further from a health-supportive relationship with food. What may start off as a well-intentioned effort to be mindful of food-related behaviors can evolve into a rigid set of rules that leads to disconnection from your body and its needs. This can make knowing what, when, and how much to eat in order to adequately nourish our bodies and feel good, confusing at best. This confusion erodes trust in your body and its signals and may perpetuate further reliance on external rules to guide your eating, continuing the cycle.

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Reconnecting with Your Innate Inner Wisdom: 3 Tips to Get Started

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Reconnecting with Your Innate Inner Wisdom: 3 Tips to Get Started

Diet and wellness culture teach us that we cannot trust ourselves to make decisions about food. If left to our own devices we will subsist on only the most sinful and indulgent foods, and we’ll never stop eating, which will spell disaster for our bodies. If we’re hungry – diet culture tries to teach us how to ignore that cue or to prevent ourselves from feeling it to begin with. If we want chips – diet culture tries to convince us that some low-calorie alternative will be just as satisfying (hello air-popped popcorn with no added butter and kale leaves dried out in the oven).

What you need to know is, if these don’t work for you, it’s not because there is something wrong with you. It’s not your body betraying you. It’s actually your body, in its infinite wisdom, trying to protect you.

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Recipe: Roasted Summer Vegetable & Couscous Salad

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Recipe: Roasted Summer Vegetable & Couscous Salad

I’m a big fan of preparing dishes that make for good leftovers all of the time, but this seems to be particularly true in summertime. Summers being so short in VT, I’d much rather spend my free time outside, savoring the season, rather than instead, in my kitchen. This is even more true on those really hot days, when turning on any cooking appliance in my non-air-conditioned home is a non-starter. This roasted summer vegetable and couscous salad is a great make-ahead-and-eat-all-week kind of dish. Plus, the bright colors, seasonal veggies, and freshness of the lemon and parsley, make it a satisfying summer staple to keep on hand. I recommend adding this salad to your rotation and keeping a batch ready to go in your refrigerator at all times.

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Recipe: Satisfying Overnight Oats

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Recipe: Satisfying Overnight Oats

My clients report that breakfast tends to be one of their more challenging meals. They are short on time, they don’t know what they feel like eating, or they don’t have the energy to prepare anything are some of reasons that come up. But, they also know that getting adequate nourishment into their bodies early in the day is important for giving them the much needed energy they’ll need to follow through with work, school, childcare, and other obligations, and may play a role in setting the stage for what eating looks like the for the rest of the afternoon and evening, too. This recipe for overnight oats can be a game-changer.

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