My Journey with Intuitive Eating & Disordered Eating

Why did I choose to become a dietitian? Why do I believe in intuitive eating, health at every size, fat positivity, body acceptance, anti-diet nutrition, repairing your relationship with food and your body, and tying faith to health nutrition and body image? Let me tell ya! Let’s start from my childhood.

As a child my mom allowed me to have the foods I liked. Bless her. We had all the food groups- starches, dairies, proteins, fruits, vegetables. We cooked at home at lot. We ate out sometimes more than others. I had chicken nuggets and salads and toaster strudels with hot chocolate for breakfast. Nothing was restricted. Different foods were provided. I grew up in the south - we had a lot of fried foods and ranch. I never felt like I couldn’t have something that I wanted and I never experienced any shame or guilt for what I was eating. My mom was honestly an ANGEL about this. No we didn’t have all of the most healthy choices and my parents didn’t buy organic or even make a lot of things from scratch, but I’d say the food environment in my home felt relaxed overall. I remember hearing about people on diets and seeing diet books, but not really thinking twice about it. I remember my mom going on diets and being off agin, on again but that was never projected on me or shaming my body. It just seemed like an adult thing that when you became a grown up you did diets where they tell you want to eat and not to eat so you can lose weight. I wasn’t very interested because it wasn’t a kid thing but I remember thinking that didn’t make a whole lot of sense and sounded like a lot of hard, boring work for weight loss when there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with my mom in the first place. (Love you, mom!)

When My Relationship with Food & My Body Took a Hit

Then around 1st grade (maybe) I gained weight and noticed that my body was bigger than a lot of other girls. It felt kind of uncomfortable that I had rolls and had to buy bigger clothing sizes. I didn’t think a whole lot about it though. Then I started going to an after school program and got a ton of time to hang out with my friends, play games, and jump rope. Jumping rope was 100% my favorite thing to do. My best friend and I even did a jump rope performance for DARE. Wow - elementary school, am I right? I was spending less time at home in front of the TV and more time being active. We didn’t live in a neighbor hood so it wasn’t as easy or common for me to play outside with friends after school. Somewhere around this time (I think), I started playing softball. I wanted to do dance, but dad said softball so softball it was. I enjoyed it for a long time! I mean if you ask me, I think I got pretty good. I made a lot of friends and found some team spirit but eventually got bored with it. Very on brand for me. Anyways, maybe around 3rd grade?, I started to grow, get taller, and thin out. This is when I actually started noticing my body.

After I “got skinny” people started commenting on my body. I felt praised and seen for being skinny, for thinning out, for having a smaller figure. Obviously associating thinness with worth in my adolescent brain. I learned that small and active was best and I too could be praised like the other girls if I was like that. I later learned that some people close to me secretly told my mom that she needed to put me on a diet when I was “heavyset,” “chubby,” “chunky,” “fat.” She obviously never did and told those people off like a real queen but that really sucked to hear. his made me feel embarrassed and ashamed that there was something wrong with my body and I was totally oblivious to it - as a CHILD. In hindsight I’m glad my mom told me because it taught me how rude and ignorant people can be when it comes to talking about and judging bodies. ESPECIALLY in children. Sorry not sorry that I said ignorant.

After I lost weight, people freely made “harmless” remarks about my body. People that were close to me and I trusted to love me and protect me made comments about my weight and appetite and honestly bullied me. I guess they thought it was ok because I wasn’t “fat” anymore. But the names that they called me indicated that I should be ashamed and embarrassed about weighing more and that fat bodies were bad and should be made fun of. I felt uncomfortable with my body and my appetite. I wished that I could be satisfied with eating less, didn’t want to have to order the adult meal and wished that the kid’s meal was enough. Thankfully, I recognized that it just wasn’t and accepted that as a growing child the kids meal (that toddlers eat by the way) wasn’t gonna cut it.

I had a normal relationship with food in high school. I wouldn’t say health is a highly pursued thing in my family historically and its not something I was exposed to. Instead I was just aware of the health conditions that run in my family and dieting. The health advice I received was either, “eat what you want to while you’re young because when you get older you can’t have anything” or “start making healthy habits now.” Conflicting. Then I found magazines like Seventeen, Women’s Health, Shape, etc. and I was VERY aware of what a woman’s body and health were supposed to look like. These magazines had the most ridiculous tips in them like eating in front of the mirror naked but I became fascinated with reading every article I could find about becoming healthier. Unfortunately, this was my only source of information at the time. Stemming from my new found love for health, my now mother-in-law offered to connect me with the dietitian at her work for my senior project. I had no idea what a dietitian was but working with her and learning more about nutrition made me confident that I should go to college for dietetics. Honestly nothing else sparked my interest and choosing to talk about food for my career seemed pretty solid at the time.

I went to college and dove straight into major (nutrition and science) classes. I didn’t realize how freaking hard it was going to be until I got there but by then I was like “heck no there’s no way I’m quitting now” and I persisted - even into grad school. As I learned more about nutrition, I became more and more obsessive about my food and health. I became preoccupied with health, the “food is medicine” mentality, preventing chronic disease, curing diseases with food, eating clean, eating healthy, having a perfect diet, being in the best shape, having the perfect body fat percentage, eat only local whole foods, etc. I mean when you learn exactly how to have the “perfect” diet, it should be easy to just do it, right? I believed that if I was going to teach people how to be healthy, I had to be perfect. I had to be the image of health. I had to know every vitamin and mineral forward and backwards. I had to eat all the vegetables, know how to cook all of the foods, read all the science. And yes, a lot of that is true but I approached it from a place of fear, inadequacy, rigidity and striving for perfection. I thought about diets and toyed with the ideal of being vegetarian or vegan but I never did. Mostly because I just didn’t want to. Also very on brand for me.

Any type of diet or elimination for the sake of weight loss never sat right with me. My grandma, who I loved more than anyone, had diabetes and I remember she was always just told to lose weight and given a long list of things she shouldn’t eat and couldn’t eat. Basically she was told to restrict and be skinny and she wouldn’t have diabetes. And that infuriated me and made me sick. I continued to pursue nutrition through college because I wanted to help people like her. I wanted health care providers to care and explain things like I was learning in school. Her doctor didn’t even take the time to teach her how to eat a balanced meal and why - he just told her to not eat things. Which is just disgusted restriction leading to feelings of deprivation and never being good enough or having the will power to cure a chronic health condition because you can’t stop eating. In my gut I always felt like diets weren’t healthy and felt incredibility uncomfortable recommending weight loss and weight loss diets. It didn’t sit with my soul to put myself on a diet knowing good and well I was in good health, was mostly satisfied with my appearance, and needed to learn how to actually be healthy.

That’s not to say I did not struggle with food and exercise, though. I definitely struggled with perfection - being a perfect student, knowing every answer, exercising 60 minutes ~6 days a week, drinking the recommended amount of water, eating the recommended servings of all of the foods, eating whole and clean foods. This quickly turned into a fear of chronic disease - so I aimed for perfection in my diet and exercise regimen in order to have a BMI right on track, perfect labs, no sign of illness in sight. At times it did become stressful and I had thoughts like “if I just said no to that milkshake I would have a flatter stomach,” “if I just eat more of the right foods, I’ll have a bigger butt.” It’s pretty common to have these thoughts, unfortunately. They are not normal. They are disordered. This way of thinking is disordered.

You’ve probably wondered if I’ve struggled with an eating disorder. No I haven’t. I’m here to tell you, it’s only by the grace of God that I haven’t. Only because that was not what the Lord had for me. But dang if I’ve faced so many hardships that could’ve pushed me into an eating disorder. I’ve had a really hard family dynamic, lost a loved one, felt unloved and inadequate, felt unworthy, had really hurtful comments made about my body, been praised for weight loss, been taught to cope with food and exercise, been taught to have food rules and fear food, struggled with anxiety and perfectionism, struggled with loneliness and sadness, and pursued nutrition as a career. Many dietitians and nutritionists have eating disorders and pursue dietetics because of their eating disorder. In no way am I saying that my experiences are the same as having an eating disorder or any of these circumstances cause eating disorders. I’m just saying this is my experience of living with bad body image, in fear of my health and my body and striving for perfection.

So what the heck changed?

My dietetic internship was HARD for me mentally and emotionally. I experienced sadness and loneliness I had never before. I missed my family, now husband, and it was just an all-around hard circumstance. I found podcasts - the Chasing Joy Podcast by Georgie Morley in particular. She discussed her eating disorder and recovery and I immediately felt connected and intrigued by the stories of people living with and recovering from eating disorders. I was presented with a new perspective and an approach to food and human bodies. This just felt good. It felt right and I knew that this was how I needed to be and was meant to be practicing nutrition. My relationship with food, my body, and my career immediately changed.

I found a new love for this field that I had dedicated so much to and was beginning to question if I even liked in my internship after seeing the day to day. I was starting to figure out why weight loss and diets and shaming people into being healthy always felt so disgusting and harmful to me. I began to dive into everything I stand for now - intuitive eating, health at every size, fat positivity, body acceptance, anti-diet nutrition, repairing your relationship with food and your body, and tying faith to health nutrition and body image. Through my own research and practice of intuitive eating, health at every size, body positivity and giving a big middle finger to get culture and the thin ideal, I have found freedom. I’ve found peace with and love for my body that I never thought was possible for adults. I’ve found enjoyment in food - all foods without sacrificing my health. It’s actually improved by body and my health overall. Before saying F*** YOU to diet culture, I thought being and adult and dietitian meant constant striving for health and thinness and perfection for the rest of my life. THANK YOU JESUS that that’s BS and I’m doing what I do now. It’s been a continuous process of pursuing independent education, unlearning, and relearning. Dang it, it’s been so worth it though. I’ve learned and grown so much as a practitioner and a person & I will continue to learn and grow so I can help others over come diet culture, weight loss culture, body hate, and disordered eating. I know it’s possible and I’ll continue to stand by it because 1. The research supports that diets are a load of crap and 2. It changed my life - my relationships with people, my relationship with myself, the trajectory of my career, my dreams, AND my faith. To be quite honest, if I were the kind of dietitian now that I thought I was going to have to be up until the middle of my dietetic internship, I would have quit by now. Living that way isn’t living in fullness and joy. It ain’t me, sis. And it’s not for you either.