Depression and anxiety are widespread mental health conditions that affect millions of individuals daily, severely impacting their ability to lead fulfilling lives. While therapy and medication are commonly sought after for tackling these challenges, incorporating nutrition counseling into the treatment plan can significantly enhance overall well-being and aid in the recovery process.
How ADHD Can Impact Your Eating Habits
When you have ADHD, it can be challenging to remember to or know how to fuel yourself throughout the day. Reasons like hyperfocus, struggles with time awareness, the ability to be organized, or even ADHD medication itself are just a few reasons why eating is so easily forgotten. And because it is so easy to forget, people with ADHD often struggle with their relationship with food and can even develop disordered eating habits, like the restrict-binge cycle, without even recognizing it.
Breaking Up With Food Rules
It never feels good enough when it comes to food decisions and our minds are always racing. We want to feel like we are making the right decision but we always end up back in the same cycle of punishing our bodies, feeling shameful and moody, and ultimately are left feeling negative about ourselves. It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to live in society's food ‘rules, ’ feel guilty, shameful, or confused about food any longer. There is another way!
Loving Your Body, Even When It’s Hard
It’s hard to love your body when you have so much dislike, even hatred for it. Our thoughts, feelings, and emotions about our body image heavily influences our personal experiences and plays such a big role in how we experience life. Oftentimes, (from my own personal experience too), our negative body image holds us back from truly experiencing present moments because we are too preoccupied with our appearance.
"I'm Not Sick Enough To Have An Eating Disorder"
Despite what society, the world, your family, or even you, yourself, has been told about eating disorders there are unfortunately so many misconceptions. You can be intensely restricting and obsessively over exercising and still think you are too big to have an eating disorder. You could also be restricting or binging and still show up in a body that is considered ‘normal’ or ‘overweight.’ You can be purging daily and your labs could still come up normal.
Time to Reset Our Relationship with Food
Diet culture has implanted nutrition “education” into our minds that leads us to confusion. But it’s not really nutrition, it’s dieting. It’s meant to make us confused and overwhelmed, so we’ll sign up for the next ‘best’ approach. Enter Whole 30, Keto, Intermittent fasting, WW, Noom. It makes sense that we’re drawn to these programs and approaches they appear to simplify the jungle. But really, they just add to it. It’s time for a change. Food doesn’t have to be this confusing. You don’t have to have these reels in your head about what you should or shouldn’t be eating.
Why Your Nutritionist Should Honor Your Cultural Heritage
Every culture has their own food likes and dislikes that have been heavily influenced by their ancestry. However, when we begin to restrict ourselves from our cultural foods because of diet culture and society's expectations, it can make us feel separated from a core piece of ourselves. And again, we often easily convince ourselves that we should restrict ourselves from that food because it is a smart nutritional decision.