All posts tagged: diet

Setting 2017 Diet Goal? Start Here First. Seriously.

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  Along my journey tinkering with my dietary habits and eating patterns I consciously reshaped my relationship with food to support the way I live. So many people live to eat or just eat to live. Either one of those relationships with food can seriously mess with the mind and body! I eat to support what I set out to do each day.  I don’t eat for some result in my physic. The results are a side benefit of eating to support my active lifestyle.  The purpose of food is to support my experiences by keeping me nourished, energized, and ready to try the next thing that interests me. Recently that thing was skate skiing! Most people interested in being healthy and nourished  know what to eat. They too often let their judgement be clouded  however by negative thinking about what should or shouldn’t be eaten. Eating based on mood can also lead people astray from what they know. Here are five things to get in order before setting course for dieting in 2017: 1. …

Dietary Guidelines Bore Me

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A few weeks ago the United States Department of Agriculture published the eighth annual update to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.  I used to get very excited about the guidelines. I would read the advisory committee report line by line and anticipate the publication of the guidelines based on expert review of science.  Each year I would read the guidelines and feel a little more let down that “this was it” and think “we know all this already”. Now, the guidelines just bore me. It isn’t because the guidelines are bad or wrong. And it isn’t because I don’t love nutrition.  I think it is because after being a dietitian for eighteen years it always comes down to the same simple recommendations of eat more vegetables, eat more fruit, eat more beans, lentils, legumes. Basically, eat more plants and less of everything else. It is commons sense. I would feel bad having someone pay me to give them this advice. It’s just not that exciting anymore. Every five years a committee of the brightest and …

January is Diet Month

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It is that time of year when well-intending people set themselves up for a miserable battle with that thing we can not live without: FOOD. Resolutions turn into obsessions and suddenly the very ingredients that invigorate us are leaving us to feeling guilty and bad about ourselves. This doesn’t have to be however. I cringe when friends and family tell me what is on their list of restrictions for “diet season”. Often times these restrictions are self-imposed and nonsensical, nutritious foods like bananas, carrots, or whole grains. In life, where a lot of things are out of our control, food can take the brunt of our control issues. Imposing rules and restrictions on calories, fat, carbohydrate, gluten, dairy, or protein can make us feel we have control over something  that  can seem uncontrollable. Even as a dietitian I have been there. Dietitian confession alert! Once upon a time I would get up in the middle of the night and munch like a little mouse in the cupboards. I wasn’t hungry, I wasn’t fully awake, and I would …