2021: A Year In Review

Posted on December 15, 2021December 14, 2021 by Crowncreatives

What a year! 2021 was our second year in a pandemic, and seemed just as chaotic and challenging as 2020 was. Take a moment to pat yourself on the back for making it to the end of this year, it certainly hasn’t been easy, but I’m so glad you’re here. This too shall pass, and until it does, I’ll be here to support you virtually to stop feeling out of control and gain a sense of calm in relationship with food and your body

This year, more than ever, people experienced anxiety and burnout. If you’re feeling like you’re running on empty, you’re not alone. I hope you get some quality time to rest and recuperate this season. It’s always important to rest, but with the constant chaos of existence right now you might be feeling the need to slow down more than ever. I encourage you to lean into it!

You’re allowed to have periods of rest, and it’s important to listen to your body when it’s trying to tell you something. Consider this your permission slip to do nothing but self-care for the rest of the year!

Every year, I like to round up all of my blog posts from the year in one place. It’s fun to look back on the year through these posts, and I hope you find them useful as you work toward peace with food.

Here’s what I wrote about this year:

5 Reasons not to Diet in 2021 (or Ever)

“Unless you are taking a break from social media and the news, you most likely have been bombarded with messages about dieting and weight related New Year’s resolutions. Diet programs are promising the magic bullet for good health and weight loss in the New Year.

Maybe this year you are re-thinking your New Year’s resolutions. Perhaps you are beginning to notice that dieting is taking up too much space in your life or you are tired of worrying about what you eat or what you look like. It could be you are looking to “get off the diet roller coaster” permanently and heal your relationship with food and your body.

If you are ready to give up dieting, you’re not alone. Consider these five reasons to quit dieting for good.”

Anorexia Nervosa: One Size Does NOT Fit All

“Unfortunately, there are many incorrect assumptions associated with eating disorders. One I see a lot is the assumption that in order to have an eating disorder, particularly anorexia nervosa, one has to have very low body weight. This is simply not true.

Sadly these assumptions block those suffering from eating disorders from getting the life-saving treatment they need. In fact, most people with eating disorders don’t necessarily fit neatly into an eating disorder category.

Eating disorders are more about how the person relates to food, exercise, and body than what a person looks like.”

The Body Image-Eating Disorder Connection

“How we perceive our bodies is influenced by many factors, including family, friends, media, gender identity, culture, and the health-care system, to name a few. Body image is not static. It may change depending on our mood, situation, stage of life, or the season.

The majority of those who suffer with eating disorders have a negative body image. One of the key features of eating disorders is the overvaluation of weight, shape, and eating habits on self-worth.

Self-worth is how and what we think about ourselves. In other words, those who struggle with eating disorders equate much of their self-worth with their ability to control their weight, shape, and eating habits. Having a negative body image often keeps the eating disorder going.”

Maintaining Eating Disorder Recovery as a College Freshman

“College can be a difficult transition for anyone, but if you’re in recovery for an eating disorder, it can be a particularly stressful transition!

Some of the challenges of maintaining your recovery while returning to school include change in routine, increased demands and independence, and exercise/diet culture.

Remember: it’s normal for eating disorder symptoms to recur in times of high stress and periods of transition. But by taking time to consider how your recovery will be impacted in this period of transition, you can create a plan to cope with stress and continue with your recovery.”

Why You Should Try Body Acceptance Over Body Positivity

“The idea of body positivity has its roots in fighting diet culture, but the term doesn’t resonate with everyone. After all, feeling positive about your body is a tall order for a lot of people.

First of all, there is a multi-billion dollar diet industry that uses its considerable resources and influence to convince us all that there is something wrong with our bodies. Feeling insecure about how our bodies look is a surefire way to get us to buy products that will “fix” us. However, consider the idea that there was nothing wrong with your body in the first place.

People who are chronically ill or disabled might not feel like they can be positive about a body that is constantly in pain or not able to move through the world easily. People who are recovering from eating disorders might not trust their body’s cues or might feel distress when thinking about their bodies.

Body acceptance might feel like a more attainable goal than body positivity.”

4 Tips for Anyone Who Loves an Adult in Eating Disorder Recovery

“It’s possible for eating disorders to initially develop later in life, not just during adolescence. It’s also possible that adults suffering from an eating disorder developed it during adolescence and never fully recovered. Life stressors (like a pandemic, for example!) later in life can also cause a relapse of eating disorders.

Eating disorders develop for a variety of reasons including genetics, temperament, gender, and dieting history to name a few.

It is less important why and how the eating disorder developed, and more important to focus on supporting your loved one in their eating disorder recovery.”

I’ll be back in 2022, writing more about ED recovery, food peace, and weight bias. If there are any topics you want me to cover next year, let me know. You can send me a message here, and you can also follow me on Facebook. Every week, I share resources from myself + other eating disorder experts, so follow if you’re looking for more information.

Podcasts to Help Reject the Diet Mentality

Posted on May 14, 2020May 13, 2020 by Crowncreatives

Although the idea of ‘body positivity’ has become more mainstream in recent years, we’re still firmly stuck in a culture that is obsessed with dieting and thinness. While many semi-savvy companies have hopped on the body posi bandwagon, it’s easy to become disenchanted with the idea of body positivity when it’s advertised to you as a way to sell more products, including diet products (looking at you, WW). Instead of using the words body positivity as a cheap way to lure in new customers, they should focus on the foundations of the fat positivity movement and work toward creating an actual cultural change in the way we view dieting and bodies.

However, even though the culture at large can be disappointing, there are fantastic resources that you can find with a little digging on the internet. It’s easy to be wary of what you find related to body positivity and anti-diet resources, since the movement has been flooded with people trying to cash in without spreading the actual message of the anti-diet movement. When looking for a trusted resource online, make sure that they mention on their website (hopefully prominently!) that they believe in dismantling diet culture, center larger bodies, and don’t mention weight loss anywhere on their site. Even with those starting points, it can be tricky to find people doing the work sometimes, though.

If you’re looking for true anti-diet mentality resources, here are some of my favorite podcasts to listen to on the topic:

Body Kindness® with Rebecca Scritchfield

As the name suggests, the purpose of this podcast is to teach you how to be kind to your body in realistic, gentle ways. As you are probably aware, the preoccupation with diet culture leads us to treat our bodies pretty terribly as a society. We ignore the messages our bodies send. We try to change its shape. Sometimes we let it be hungry. We punish it when it doesn’t look the way we want it to.

Rebecca interviews guests on a wide variety of topics, like diet culture, weight stigma research, fat activism, and the Me Too movement, just to name a few. The mission statement of this podcast is basically “Health is about being kind to your body,” as the Body Kindness® website states, and this podcast will give you permission to be kind and gentle with yourself as you make peace with your body.

FoodPsych® with Christy Harrison

Christy Harrison is a big name in anti-diet circles. She just released a fantastic book called Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating. Christy has been doing anti-diet work for years through her practice and through her podcast, FoodPsych®. Each episode is a conversation with interesting and thoughtful guests, and Christy is a talented interviewer. She uses the podcast to ask her guests about their relationships with food, their own body image, fat acceptance, and recovery from diet culture and eating disorders. This podcast has been going strong since 2013, so there is a massive backlog of episodes to listen to. If you’re ready to dive in to anti-diet culture, FoodPsych® is a fantastic place to start.

Dietitians Unplugged Podcast with Aaron Flores and Glenys Oyston

Like the podcasters above, Aaron Flores and Glenys Oyston are registered dieticians who use their podcast to focus on health and wellness from an anti-diet perspective. They discuss topics like Health at Every Size®, Intuitive Eating, fat representation in popular culture, thin privilege, and self-care in a larger body. Aaron and Glenys often have guests on the show to talk about a particular topic – past guests have included Jes Baker, Dr. Lindo Bacon, Ragen Chastain, Rebecca Scritchfield, Christy Harrison, and dozens more. This show doesn’t have quite as large of a backlog as the others mentioned, but there are still over 70 episodes to listen to!

The BodyLove Project with Jessi Haggerty

Finally, the BodyLove Project, hosted by Jessi Haggerty, focuses on discovering what body love means. This is different for everyone! Jessi interviews guests on topics like Health at Every Size®, Intuitive Eating, eating disorder recovery, body image, and mindfulness in each episode, and often dives deeper than just those topics. In each episode, you get to listen in as Jessi and the guest discuss what body love means to them and how it can transform lives in general. This show has almost 70 episodes currently, so there’s plenty to listen to!

In a culture that is constantly talking about dieting, these podcasts are a wonderful way to tune into a perspective that will uplift and inspire you to abandon diet culture. Each one of these podcasts offers valuable information on diet culture, our relationships to our bodies, and on being kind to ourselves.

What are your favorite anti-diet podcasts?

2018 Year In Review

Posted on December 18, 2018December 5, 2018 by Crowncreatives

As we come into the end of the year, I wanted to reflect on the posts I’ve published here in the last year, so here is 2018 in review!

If you’ve read the blog before or visited my site, you’ll know that my mission is to help people make peace with food & their bodies. My goal is to help people challenged with ED and other food & weight-related concerns to move from constantly worrying about food and their weight to being free to create the lives they want.

This year, I wrote a lot about recovery, intuitive eating, and supporting loved ones with eating disorders, to name a few topics. I’ve compiled every single post from this year, so you can catch up if you missed a post or refresh your memory if you’d like!

Are you already feeling diet culture pressure?

Before the new year, read why you should Forget About Diets To Improve Your Health This Year. Another concept to become familiar with is how Rejecting the Diet Mentality is Key to Healing Your Relationship with Food.

How can you support the people in your life to develop positive body image and/or work through disordered eating?

Here are 5 Surprising Ways to Support Your Loved One with an Eating Disorder and a post especially for Dads: 6 tips to Help your Daughter Develop a Positive Body Image.

Recovery from an eating disorder is not an easy process.

This year I wrote about 4 Tips to Cope with Weight Gain in Recovery from Anorexia Nervosa, Tips to Support Eating Disorder Recovery this Semester, 5 Steps to Reconnect with Exercise in Eating Disorder Recovery, and How to Stay on Track with Eating Disorder Recovery during the Summer: Tips for College Students.

Are you curious about Intuitive Eating?

Here are 3 Important FAQs about Intuitive Eating that you should know.

Recognizing that it’s time to get treatment for your eating disorder is a huge step.

Here are 5 Signs That It Is Time to Get Treatment for Your Eating Disorder.

And finally, a treatment team can make all the difference.

Here are my tips on how Building a Treatment Team to Help You Conquer Your Eating Disorder, and 5 Ways a Dietitian Can Help Reduce Binge Eating.

I hope you have enjoyed all of the posts from this year! Please let me know if there are any topics you would like for me to cover in 2019. If you’re looking for even more resources, make sure you’re following me on Facebook and Pinterest – I share tons of resources from me + other experts in the field on both platforms!

2017 Year in Review

Posted on December 12, 2017November 29, 2017 by Crowncreatives

Wow! This year really flew by! Can you believe we’re already at the end of 2017?

I’ve covered a bunch of different topics on the blog this year. You can find them here, all in one place. Now, you can look back with me and see everything we covered with ease!

If you’ve been reading for a while, you can revisit some past favorites or refresh your memory on any of the topics that speak to you. If you’re new here, this is a great place to get to know what I’m all about and become familiar with my style. My goal is to work collaboratively with clients to reduce food and weight preoccupation and teach clients to trust their bodies, rather than a diet, to know how to feed themselves.

First off, make sure you check out 5 reasons not to diet in 2017!

It’s relevant for every year, not just 2017. Since we’re heading into the season where everyone and their brother will be talking about their New Year’s Resolutions it’s good to have these facts in mind to support you in your choices.

Don’t suffer in silence!

The theme for National Eating Disorder Awareness week this year was “It’s Time to Talk About It.” Check out this post for the best place to get started on your journey.

Are you ready to break up with dieting?

Learn about what intuitive eating is, and the 10 basic principles that can help you get off the diet roller coaster for good.

There are a lot of questions you can ask yourself about your relationship with food.

Do you feel out of control with food? Is the good-bad food trap ruining your relationship with food? Are you an emotional eater?

Diet culture is everywhere these days.

It surrounds us on social media, on TV and in movies. It’s even present in the interactions we have with others. It’s important to understand that dieting is hazardous to your health. There are lots of myths and inaccuracies floating around that people use to justify diet culture and that lead to misunderstanding eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and binge eating disorder. Eating disorders don’t just affect teens- they are common in midlife, in people who suffer from anxiety disorders, and can even occur in people who are perfectionists.

There is hope.

Eating disorders are treatable, and there are resources available for people who are ready to ditch diet culture. It’s possible to like your body better without having to change it!

Let me know if there are any topics you’d like me to cover in 2018. Don’t forget to share your favorite posts with friends and family!