Nourish in the New Year
By Cristen Harris, PhD, RDN, CSSD, CD, CEP, FAND
Nutrition Therapist & Owner | Aim 2 Nourish LLC | drcristenharris@gmail.com
Nutrition Therapy for Eating Competence – Nourishing the joy in eating, feeding, and moving.
The New Year ushers in the promise of new beginnings, implying freshness, newness, originality, novelty, and dazzling brightness. Yet, the typical American also welcomes in the New Year with the same old weary promises: promises of eating healthier; promises of exercising more; promises of “this year, I’ll get it right.” To this end, gyms, fitness facilities, and exercise classes are crowded during the month of January; and the marketing of weight loss programs, products, and services is relentless as get-rich-quick schemers and medical professionals alike try to get their piece of the $70 billion annual weight loss industry pie. Every new diet offers the promise of thinness or leanness, beckoning the masses who are fed up and feeling disgusted, hopeless, and shameful about their bodies.
What do diets actually offer? Diets dependably offer unsustainable food restriction, elimination of favorite foods, increased feelings of hunger, constant thoughts about food, lost time spent tracking food intake, loss of muscle and water weight, lower metabolism, and short-term weight loss followed by inevitable re-gain… not because anybody fails a diet but because diets fails them. In short, diets offer another ride on the dieting cycle: being “fed up” with one’s body > food restriction > deprivation > “what the hell?” > eating to feel better > disappointment about eating > negative emotions (guilt, stress, shame, anxiety, depression, poor self-esteem) > getting fed up again > and the next round of dieting. The dieting cycle is the epitome of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. Do people really want yet another false promise, false hope, and failed diet? No.
What people truly want is to eat enough of the foods they enjoy. People want to feel good about food and about eating. People want to enjoy eating with other people. Parents want to feel positive and effective with respect to feeding their children. Cultivating such positivity about food and eating is only possible from a mindset of self-compassion, grace, respect, and kindness towards one’s body and oneself. This mindset allows a person to become eating competent, which means: 1) To feed oneself faithfully, providing a positive context for reliable and consistent meals and snacks; 2) To turn inward and connect with internal signals of hunger, appetite, and satiety that gently guide food choice and eating (i.e., what and how much food); 3) To gradually improve food acceptance skills that facilitate a wider variety of food selection, contributing to high dietary quality; and 4) To cultivate positive feelings and attitudes about food and eating. In essence, eating competence develops out of permission, pleasure, and mental and emotional presence with eating. In contrast, diets offer rigid control, restriction, and distraction from physical and emotional hungers. What would you prefer? In the words of Jason Soroski, “There is nothing magical about the flip of the calendar, but it represents a clean break, a new hope, and a blank canvas.” What will you paint on your canvas this year? Another gloomy dieting cycle, or a luminous vision of nourishing self-care and joy in eating and moving? The choice is yours.
