Why Summer Brings More Food Rules and Body Pressure
As the warm weather hits us, there is often an influx of summer dieting and weight loss messages. The pressure to look a certain way for the summer is in full effect during these months. As social plans kick up, often including vacations, swimsuits, and less clothing covering up our bodies, the desire to lose weight also increases. You are not alone if you are feeling this way! Scrolling through social media or reading a magazine, you will see endless summer diet trends or hacks to get a “summer body.”
Diets disguised as “clean eating” may seem more enticing because after all, what’s so wrong with eating healthy, right? Well, clean eating often goes hand in hand with “cheat days”. Regulating certain foods to one day and considering it “cheating” is quite problematic and introduces the black and white mentality of good vs bad, especially when it comes to food. Rigidity around food and eating also can contribute to increased anxiety around eating, especially in social settings. As we are more social in the summer with BBQs, beach days, vacations, and summer parties, there may be an increase in social eating. Oftentimes, we associate social plans with “bad” foods, which causes stress on the pressure to eat “clean” and lose weight. This is what happens when the joy of summer is taken over by the pressures of dieting and having a perfect summer body.
An intuitive eating nutritionist NYC can provide guidance on challenging disordered food beliefs, ensuring consistent and adequate nutrition, and making connections with body image and food or eating patterns.
What an Intuitive Eating Nutritionist NYC Helps Clients Unlearn
A core tenet of intuitive eating is making peace with food. Through doing this with an intuitive eating nutritionist NYC, we separate morality from food and recognize that there are no “good” foods nor “bad” foods. This can sound like a far off concept to many people, but with the help of a dietitian who specializes in intuitive eating, you can learn to adopt this mindset. Something that comes along with removing labels from food is often the fear of eating freely. As a dietitian who works with clients on their intuitive eating journey, I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say “if I start eating xyz, I’ll never stop!” This is rooted in a place of deprivation. If we don’t allow ourselves to eat certain foods, of course we will want to eat large amounts of them when we are around them!
Another contributing factor to perceived lack of trust around food is ignoring hunger cues. Your brain is not smarter than your body. If your body is sending you signals that it is hungry, honor that. This can feel like a foreign concept and of course sounds easier said than done. That is what working with an intuitive eating nutritionist NYC can help with. Many of these habits are disguised as “healthy,” right? Another common culprit of diet culture in disguise of health is compensating for eating with exercise. We do not need to exercise to “earn” or “burn off” our food. In fact, you’re likely overestimating just how much of a factor exercise plays in how much you “deserve” to eat. If you’ve fallen victim to this or any of the aforementioned beliefs, a dietitian specializing in intuitive eating can help you break free from these mindsets.
How Intuitive Eating Supports Eating Disorder Recovery
If you’ve struggled with an eating disorder, you likely have become disconnected from your hunger and fullness cues. As a matter of fact, many people have, eating disorder or not! Reconnecting with these cues is a process of relearning and requires building trust with your body. If you have ever had the thought “I shouldn’t be hungry” and not allowed yourself to eat, for whatever reason, you have denied your hunger. This has taught your body not to trust you to feed it when it sends the signal to do so. This sets you up to be more likely to get to the point of extreme hunger. When hunger is ignored and we finally do eat we may feel “starving” and end up overeating. This can lead to thoughts of “I can’t be trusted around food” and subsequent restriction and avoidance of food as the “solution.” In reality, all this does is trigger the binge-restrict cycle that so many find themselves stuck in. The good news is that you and your body are not to blame, dieting and restriction is. There is no place for guilt or shame when it comes to food and eating. You did not harm anyone, lie, or steal. Those are things you should feel guilty about, not eating a cookie or extra slice of pizza.
Reconnecting with your body and bringing mindfulness into your eating allows you to cope with your emotions without the use of food as your only coping mechanism. Through the intuitive eating process, you can learn to reconnect with your hunger and fullness through building trust with your body.
In the early stages of recovery from an eating disorder, intuitive eating may not be appropriate since those hunger and fullness cues have been suppressed and warped. Through working with an intuitive eating nutritionist NYC, they can help you learn to consistently feed your body and reawaken these cues. When appropriate and ready, you can start to become a more intuitive eater and close the circle on healing your relationship with food. Intuitive eating helps to put an end to the binge-restrict cycle, denying your hunger, and improving your emotional well-being around food. All of this is supportive to eating disorder recovery and a sustained recovery throughout your life.
How Nutrition Professionals in NYC Support Body Neutrality
At Nourishing NY we encourage you to move away from appearance based goals. Instead, we focus on building habits that support your well-being in a non-obsessive and sustainable way. Shrinking your body and losing weight is not the key to health.
True health involves practicing body respect through nourishing your body adequately, finding joyful movement, hydrating, sleeping well, and managing stress. You cannot hate your way to health. Punishing your body through restriction, diets, cleanses, or overexercise is not what health is. Though there are many body image triggers that may arise in the summer, you can learn to cope with this in a way that cares for your body rather than trying to shrink or change it. When you work with a dietitian on our team, we help you to create sustainable goals and self-care habits that are realistic for you and support your overall well-being. Health is not one size fits all and it is extremely beneficial to work with a qualified professional who can work with you on individualized goals.
Finding an Intuitive Eating Dietitian in NYC Clients Can Trust
When looking for a qualified intuitive eating nutritionist NYC, the first thing to look for are the registered dietitian nutritionist (RD/RDN) and certified dietitian in NY (CDN) credentials. This ensures you are working with someone who studied nutrition and is nationally certified through board examination as a qualified professional.
Not all dietitians are created equal and may specialize in different areas so beyond those, some key specializations to look out for are: intuitive eating, eating disorder/ disordered eating, body image, or HAES.
You can ask questions about what your provider’s nutrition philosophy is, such as:
- Are you affiliated with any professional group memberships or certifications?
- Do you practice nutrition counseling through a weight-neutral lens?
- Do you have any experience working with eating disorders or disordered eating?
If you are interested in weight-neutral, health at every size (HAES) aligned-care considerations, be sure to ask questions and advocate for yourself.
Remember, health is not a size and smaller is not always better. Additionally, at Nourishing NY it is important to us that people have access to affordable care which is why we offer insurance-friendly nutrition counseling options.