Embodied Nourishment

19. The Most Important Piece of Body Image Recovery

I know you hate your body and you think that weight loss will make you love it, so you restrict HARD.
But a malnourished brain is a brain that can’t perceive things accurately, so the image of yourself becomes increasingly distorted.
And then whatever body changes you do experience might make you feel better in some ways, but deep down it doesn’t solve everything.
So you might try a different diet...and then a different diet...and then a different diet...etc...
All the while body image never really improves, or worse yet, it gets more dysmorphic.
Rehabilitating your nutrition intake is the number one, most important part of body image recovery.
As long as you fear adequate nourishment, you will continue to live in fear of your body.
This might sound cliche BUT the only way to get over your fear is to face your fear.
In the cases of severe eating disorders, nutrition rehabilitation is paramount in recovery. In hospital settings, work with a dietitian is prioritized even over the work with a therapist.There are some individuals who can fully heal their eating disorders without ever seeing a therapist, as long as they stay steadfast in their work with their dietitian. (Not throwing shade to ED therapists you guys rock and are totally needed! I know you know that some people are just resistant to therapy or decline it and they can still go a long way on their own).All of this to say, even if you don’t claim a full blown eating disorder, even if your relationship with food is just slightly disordered…you can not underestimate the power of adequate nutrition in feeling better on a holistic level.It is paramount in healing the mind, body, and soul all together.We can talk alllllll dayyyy longgggg about core beliefs and not feeling good enough or worthy or deserving of love and your childhood trauma and your trauma responses etc etc etcBUTUntil you start to finally commit to adequate nourishment, the neurons in your brain that fire together to produce body dysmorphia will NEVER heal. They will NEVER rewire to a positive self image as long as you are engaging in restrictive thoughts and behaviors.This is precisely why I named my nutrition counseling program “Nourish to Flourish.”Nutrition is the most important step 💕
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Join Nourish to Flourish here: 1:1 Coaching

18. When Intuitive Eating Isn’t Working

If you've been trying intuitive eating and you feel like it is not working to bring you the peace and health you are looking for, I am going to tell you why right now...
The practice and principles of intuitive eating are IDEALISTIC. They are the end goal. But the end goal is not always the means to that end. Yes it sounds IDEAL to trust your hunger and fullness and to not have any food rules, BUT if you have a bunch of internalized rules that dictate your life, it's damn near impossible to adopt intuitive eating just because you want to.
Becoming an intuitive eater takes hard and challenging work. You have to actively and intentionally implement a nutrition practice that DIRECTLY challenges your food rules head on. For example, if you believe that you are only allowed to eat carbohydrates once per day, then you need a nutrition prescription that includes eating carbohydrates 3-4 times per day. And this must be followed every day for at least 6 weeks before your body starts to connect with carbohydrates and give you clear somatic feedback on how they make you feel.
While intuitive eating sounds like a walk in the park, the process of getting there is anything but that. It's emotional, it's challenging, and the experience of coming back home into your body is vulnerable. But it's also the most empowering thing you will ever do.
In today's podcast episode I dive deeper into why intuitive eating might not be working for you and I give you step by step instructions on how you can start to make it work for you, FOR REAL.
Find me on Instagram @embodied.nourishment
Work with me 1:1 here

17. Body Discomfort

"I want to lose weight because I am just so uncomfortable in my body."
Raise your hand if you've said these words!
What if I told you that there was a way to learn how to be comfortable in the body that you are in right now?
And what if I told you that your resistance to learning this comfort is not protecting your health like you think it is?
I know what you are thinking. You're sitting there saying "If I learn how to be comfortable with the body I have right now then I'm afraid I'm going to continue gaining weight."
I know you think that shame and judgment about your body are going to be the things that motivate you to lose weight or be healthier, but the truth is that shame and judgment are the very things that are keeping you stuck in the cycle of disordered eating.
There is a way to be kind to yourself, feel comfortable with where you are at, AND achieve your health goals.
In this podcast episode, I show you exactly how to do this.
Follow me on Instagram @embodied.nourishment
Work with me 1:1 by clicking here

16. Interoceptive Awareness, Fullness versus Satisfaction

If you don’t eat a 700 calorie cheeseburger because you think it’s unhealthy but then proceed to eat a bunch of “healthy” stuff devoid of the essential proteins, fats, and nutrients that your body was craving in the cheeseburger, bringing your total calorie intake to 1,200….why do you keep doing that?
So many times people will express to me that they eat so healthy but can’t understand why they keep gaining weight. Well guess what, if you’re constantly denying your cravings, which is your body’s way of trying to communicate to you what it needs, and instead you’re forcing yourself to eat foods that your body actually isn’t look for and doesn’t need, then of course your weight and appetite homeostasis is going to be way off.
You have plenty of room in your diet to get all the vitamins and minerals your body needs and still have room for something like a cheeseburger. Not everything you ingest needs to be jam packed with vitamins and minerals. Your body also needs major macronutrients like protein and fat (cheeseburger).
Your cravings aren’t trying to deceive you. Your body is very smart. It regulates your heart rate, respiration rate, and body temperature, and it can also perfectly regulate your appetite and cravings as well if you decide to finally TRUST it.
In this episode, I dive into your sense of interoceptive awareness and show you how to prioritize satisfaction so that you can stop obsessing over food, achieve health, and be free to move on with your life.
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Email inquiries to melissa@thesaltydietitian.net
Work with me 1:1 by clicking here

15. Why You Don’t Trust Yourself With Food

Relationships that are characterized by control and manipulation stem from a lack of trust. When we are in a relationship with someone we don't trust, we tend to deploy our controlling side. This might look like creating rules to follow, invading the other person's privacy by going through their things, and picking fights.
What does your relationship with food look like? Is that relationship also characterized by control and manipulation? Similar to controlling relationships with other people, controlling relationships with food ALSO stems from a lack of trust. But this lack of trust instead stems from a lack of trust for ONESELF.
When you don't trust yourself with food you may deploy food rules and regulations such as:
no eating after 7pm
no more than 1,600 calories per day
only one serving of bread allowed each day
must exercise at least 5 days per week
I know you think that one day you can food-rule your way into peace and freedom with food, but reflect...has following diets and food rules every brought you peace or has it only made you more obsessed and anxious?
The way to actually arrive at peace and freedom around food is to work on the relationship that you have with yourself and to learn how to develop trust for yourself.
 
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Work with me 1:1 by clicking here

14. Stop Stepping on the Scale

I know you think that stepping on the scale is giving you control over your body and your food intake. But what if I told you that stepping on the scale is the very thing that is making you out of control?
It goes a little something like this:
1 - You step on the scale
2 - If the number is higher than desired, you eat less. If the number is lower than expected you continue eating less to “continue your progress”
3 - Your food intake in controlled by the number, not your intuition or your body’s actual needs
4 - The restriction is unsustainable leading to chronic episodes of overeating
5 - anxiety takes over and you step on the scale again repeating numbers 1-4
I know you think that stepping on the scale is going to one day be the thing that connects you with your body.
I promise you, it will never be the tool that does that for you. In fact it is the very tool that is preventing you from connecting with your body.
I know it’s scary to think about ditching the scale. And it’s a very normal human reaction to want to ease the anxiety right away. And you may feel a relief temporarily when you step on the scale but continuing to step on the scale is just deepening the void of this cycle. The only way out is to stop stepping on the scale.
Only then does the journey of reconnecting with your body and making peace with food become possible.
Good news for you, you don’t have to try this alone!
⚡️ MARCH 7th - 28th I am hosting a FREE 21 day challenge to DITCH THE SCALE ⚡️
What’s included in this freebie?
⚡️ a workbook to guide you through 3 weeks without the scale
⚡️ a private Facebook group for communal support to help cheer each other on
⚡️ some other surprises 🤫
Click this link and enter your email to join us!
Ditch The Scale Challenge

13. My Birth Story, Sex, Kink, Divesting from Systems

This episode is a little different today. I talk about my unmedicated birth story, kink, sex, divesting from oppressive systems and somehow tie it all together back to diet culture. I understand this episode may not be for everyone, it sure is a little "out there."
If you're a kinky freak, you'll certainly love it. 
Regardless of your sexual preferences, I recommend that everyone read the book that I referenced in this podcast,
Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott, PHD
Find me on Instagram @embodied.nourishment

12. Food Allergy or Just Anxiety?

I can not count the number of times I've met people who have confused anxiety for a food allergy or food sensitivity.
Serotonin is a mood regulator and is responsible for helping us to manage our emotions. Most of our serotonin is created in our guts. In the case of anxiety, extra serotonin is produced which can cause stomach discomfort and ruin appetite.
Many people will bounce between gastroenterologists and functional medicine doctors trying to find the root cause of their stomach pain. This is where the spiral of elimination diets begin.
If you have tried elimination diets with no relief, the reason is because elimination diets can disrupt the microbiome in your gut making stomach pain even worse. Additionally, elimination diets in it of themselves can cause stress and anxiety.
More stress, more anxiety, more stomach disruption and on top of it all, no answers for a way out.
Has your pursuit of finding which foods upset your stomach completely destroyed your relationship with food? Have you been left feeling more confused and more out of touch with your body?
In this podcast episode I discuss how easy it is to confuse the symptoms of anxiety for a food allergy and how the pursuit of finding a food allergy when there is no evidence to support one, ends up destroying the composition of the gut even further causing more pain and anxiety.
I also show you how to break this cycle and how to eat in a way that will make you feel good again.
Follow me on Instagram @embodied.nourishment
Find my services here: https://embodiednourishment.net/

11. Exercising for Health

Meet exercise culture - diet culture’s fraternal twin sister.⁣⁣Are you under the impression that unless you’re doing a bootcamp 7 days a week and you’re sweating for an hour straight each time, the workout doesn’t count?⁣⁣What if I told you that that’s not what’s necessary to reap the health benefits of exercise? I can bore you with the research…”exercise is beneficial for health…”blah blah blah, yes, yes it is beneficial for health. But how much? The research certainly does NOT suggest that your workout needs to be a bootcamp to “count.”⁣⁣The research shows that any movement beyond sedentary improves health outcomes. This means that if you are sedentary most of the day and you add just 10 minutes of walking to your routine, you get to reap the cardiovascular and muscular benefits of exercise!⁣⁣ALSO, if you do a kick ass workout and then eat fries and a milkshake afterwards, guess what? You STILL get to experience the health benefits of exercise. Food in fact does not “cancel out” your workout.⁣⁣Does your relationship with exercise go hand in hand with your relationship with food? Do you have really big plans of starting an intense workout routine along with a really strict diet? And then once you come off your diet, your exercise plans go in the trash as well? How long have you been stuck on that cycle only to grow more and more frustrated in your attempts to get healthy?⁣Here’s some more research - people who do not push themselves to do workouts that are uncomfortable, end up moving and exercising more over the course of their lives than those who are stuck in the diet/exercise-binge/sedentary cycle. In other words, people who practice joyful movement end up exercising more than people who subject themselves to intense, unsustainable workouts. Are you scratching your head? Ironic, I know.⁣⁣This doesn’t have to be your story anymore. You can break this vicious cycle. In what ways do you enjoy moving? 
In this episode, I explain how you can start to build a healthy relationship with exercise.
 
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Work with me 1:1 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-4HeEBh1eJ3ujUYt0QiIWEA3TsaLn0F98rwYcAngCK4/edit
Book Referenced: Intuitive Eating. A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch

10. Science is Limited but Your Intuition is Not

The research behind nutrition is very limited. I’m not talking about cold hard nutrition facts such as “Vitamin C helps in the production of collagen.”
Not that.
I’m talking about hypotheses that are studied. Hypotheses such as “a diet high in cholesterol leads to high blood cholesterol levels.”
Those studies are super limited. And the conclusions that are drawn from them are often debunked after several years. I mean, remember when they used to tell us that eggs were bad? Old, fake news!
When it comes to nutrition and human metabolism, there are so many factors to be adjusted for that are very difficult to adjust for. These include environmental factors, socioeconomic status, gender, age, and DNA.
Some are easier to adjust for than others but when we are talking about factors such as DNA, there are factors that we don’t even know to adjust for.
And this is why the “science” behind nutrition is constantly changing. This is why the information that’s put out on google and social media is so confusing.
No wonder we get pulled from the mind-body connection and feel chaos and disorder when it comes to making food choices.
In this episode I talk about your intuition being the guiding light and the most accurate truth for guiding your food choices. I also talk about how the USDA dietary guidelines are inherently oppressive and designed to rip you from your intuition and how you can start reconnecting to the energy today.
I even accidentally dabbled on the vaccine conversation. Whoops!
 
Follow me on Instagram: @embodied.nourishment
Work with me 1:1 - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-4HeEBh1eJ3ujUYt0QiIWEA3TsaLn0F98rwYcAngCK4/edit