Category: Health At Every Size
It’s a special year this year (not because of all the craziness in the world right now) but because cinco de mayo falls on Tuesday…Taco Tuesday. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have known this except a Mexican restaurant that my family likes sent me an email pointing out how significant this was. And while I like […]
Eating and not hungry? It can still be intuitive eating. (Just diet culture says otherwise.)
April 28th, 2020 by Sara Upson
During quarantine for COVID-19 I’ve been posting frequently about eating consistently to support eating disorder recovery, healing your relationship with food, and self care in general. While most people have found these posts supportive, some people have decided instead to tell me about how I’m incorrect and that they’re eating “intuitively,” listening to their body, not […]
Food Is So Much More Than Fuel.
April 20th, 2020 by Sara Upson
“I want to eat to live, not live to eat” is a statement I hear so often from new clients. And while on the surface that might seem like a good thing- it’s 100% diet culture. Food is so much more than just fuel for your body. Yes, food provides sustenance and nourishment, but food is also joy, pleasure, […]
4 Common Eating Disorder Thoughts To Challenge Right Now. (Yes, In a Pandemic.)
April 6th, 2020 by Sara Upson
There’s a common theme of struggling amidst quarantine, anxiety, fear of the unknown, and significant unexpected shifts to life that I’ve noticed meeting with clients (virtually of course) through COVID-19. With everything going on it makes sense. Eating disorder recovery is hard. Healing your relationship with food is hard. Doing so during a pandemic is so much […]
Your desire to focus on weight and eating during stress is normal thanks to diet culture…
March 30th, 2020 by Sara Upson
We are in unprecedented times. The coronavirus, COVID-19, is spreading all over the world, millions of people are quarantined at home, people are sick and dying, hospitals are overloaded, jobs have been lost, there’s financial stress, food shortages, and just so much going on. Even with all this, people are more focused on diet culture: not gaining […]
“You don’t look sick… “You look fine… “You haven’t lost weight…. “Your weight’s not low enough… …you don’t have an eating disorder.” All some of the most harmful comments that you can tell someone struggling with their eating. The truth is- weight cannot tell you whether or not someone has an eating disorder. Weight cannot tell you […]
What is disordered eating?
February 10th, 2020 by Sara Upson
Whenever I talk about diet culture I almost always talk about disordered eating. Why? Because diet culture is disordered eating so whenever I’m talking about diet culture, I’m also talking about disordered eating. Disordered eating has become so normalized; it’s sometimes hard to distinguish what it is. While it might be easy to imagine what disordered eating is, […]
Elementary Nutrition education lays the ground work for disordered eating.
February 3rd, 2020 by Sara Upson
I’ve been dreading the month of February since September, when my 5 year old started kindergarten. At her school, February is the month where the curriculum centers around food and nutrition education. Last year’s nutrition curriculum was awful. One day, when my daughter was in the pre-k class, I just happened to take her to class […]
It’s not you. It’s not the food. It’s diet culture. And you can unlearn diet culture.
January 27th, 2020 by Sara Upson
Diet culture is a monster. And to be clear- diet culture is more than just dieting. It’s getting caught up in the culture that values body weight, shape, size and “wellness” or dogmatic approaches to heath over true wellbeing. Diet culture has strict rules around which foods are good or bad, healthy or unhealthy and even rules on […]
Feeling anxious about quitting diet culture? That’s normal. (It’s worth it.)
January 20th, 2020 by Sara Upson
Imagine if there was a product or industry that failed 95-98% of the time and then you were blamed for the product failing…It’d be unbelievable, right?! For example, imagine getting into an elevator where the cable broke 95-98% of the time- and then you survive but the elevator technician blames you for breaking the elevator- when all you […]
Intuitive eating isn’t giving up. It’s letting go and there’s a big difference.
January 13th, 2020 by Sara Upson
Imagine you’re standing at the edge of canyon and on the other side of the canyon is diet culture, your eating disorder, or your history of dieting/disordered eating (aka a monster). Between the two of you is a long rope that you’re each holding in your hands in an ongoing game of tug of war. […]
Imagine if it was your funeral and you got to watch or listen in…what would you want people to say about you? Take a second and think about it. How would you want to be remembered? If you have a minute- jot your answer down. I highly doubt that being thin, your body size, 6 pack abs or […]
Clarifying Truths about what Health At Every Size® Is and Isn’t. I’ve always found it so frustrating when people played an air flute backwards. It’s seriously not that confusing and the flute always goes to the right. I did my bachelors degree in music and I played the flute, so when someone does the air flute backwards […]
What is Weight Stigma
June 4th, 2019 by Sara Upson
Weight stigma is defined as negative thoughts, attitudes, devaluation and social rejection of a person because their body shape or size doesn’t comply with the cultural norms (from diet culture) about what a body “should” look like. Weight stigma also includes: stereotypes about people who live in larger bodies, bullying and teasing, nasty comments, being […]
Our culture (diet culture) makes food and eating so stressful! Diet culture has strict rules about what you should eat, but those rules are always changing. When you try to follow the rules from diet culture, it’s a guaranteed way to feel more stress, anxiety, guilt and shame around food. To truly feel at peace […]
Over the weekend, a client emailed me a link to an article about intuitive eating (IE). It was one of those articles about IE that appears on a diet culture fitness page- where in reality it had very little to do with IE. The client was emailing it to me saying- “look someone I know […]
If candy’s haunting you, here’s what to do
October 22nd, 2018 by Sara Upson
I remember when I was 10 years old my 5thgrade English teacher was afraid of Halloween. She described it as the worst day of the year. I can vividly remember her saying that after school was over she’d rush home, hang up sheets over her windows and turn out all the lights so that no […]
Ending the Legacy of Dieting
October 8th, 2018 by Sara Upson
Several years ago I was at an eating disorder conference where one of the presenters showed a video clip from Oprah about a very young girl (I think 5 -6 years old) who had anorexia nervosa. They interviewed the mom in the video and she repeatedly stated that she had no idea where the daughter […]
The Legacy of Dieting
October 8th, 2018 by Sara Upson
Remember that part in the movie Forrest Gump where Lieutenant Dan is talking about how it’s a tradition in his family to die in combat? He describes how his father, and his father’s father, and his grandfather’s father (and on and on) were killed in war; that this is the legacy in his family. He […]
The Average Weight Watchers Member Has Signed Up Four Times & Now They’re Marketing To Teens.
February 12th, 2018 by Sara Upson
Have you seen Weight Watchers latest marketing gimmick in the news? If not, let me update you- weight watchers recently announced that they will offer free membership to teens over the summer. I know on the surface this may appear to be a kind and generous thing that they’re doing to help teens, but please don’t […]
