My journey into the field of nutrition was focused on empowerment, often at the expense of self-compassion. I wanted to eat healthfully and treat my body well. One can say that is an act of compassion toward myself. But I also had high standards. I remember in fifth grade regularly forgoing the bag of chips when it was offered at lunch, thinking they were unhealthy. And how I always wanted to make sure I was eating enough broccoli at our Friday night family dinners.
There was this sense within me that if I didn’t eat perfectly all the time, the world might implode. And it only got worse when I went away from home during my gap year. I could tolerate below par school lunches, since I was going back to my health-conscious home. But the meals at the cafeteria of my Israeli seminary left much to be desired. Being away from home was already a jarring experience. I had always found comfort and meaning in healthy eating habits. So I stuck to them even more.
These more rigid eating habits followed me through the first year of college. To the point that in the middle of the year, I went to a nutritionist to be counseled on how to eat more protein. I could no longer pass up foods that were high in saturated fat or lacked an inkling of whole grain. It was time to chill out.
It was at that point, I shifted my mindset from eating a perfect healthy plate at every meal to nourishing my body and feeling energized.
I remember how mentally liberating it was to no longer be counting calories in my head, or adding tomatoes to my plate to get more vitamin C or lycopene. Sure, tomatoes, are great! But my preoccupation with the nutrients in food impeded me from enjoying my eating experience, and really, my life.
In my last year of college, I took an intro to nutrition course, and the professor reinforced my more holistic view on nutrition. We learned that we can get our necessary nutrition over a period of a few days, that it balances out in this way. This further took the pressure off of my “healthy plate” obsession. Later in nutrition grad school, we learned this concept again, in relation to how toddlers will intuitively eat the nutrients they need over a period of a few days.
What it boils down to is, our body has an innate knowledge of what it needs. And it will tell us. And we don’t have to subjugate our body to our will. Rather, we can have a more gentle approach, engender a bit more self-trust, and live with our whole being in mind instead of a sole focus on our precise daily food choices.
This is not to say that meal planning and healthy recipes are not essential to eating well. Of course, they are! If we don’t plan ahead and are not strategic in our supermarket shopping, we can surely end up eating loads of processed crap—and I’m not advocating for that!
But to allow my food choices to take priority over my overall sense of self-worth and self-love?—I’d really rather not!
When I decided to go into the field of nutrition it was because I liked educating my friends on healthy eating my whole life and decided to turn my passion/hobby into a career.
Little did I know that in my advanced education in nutrition, combined with my own wellness journey, I was to become a very different type of nutritionist than the one I set out to be.
I’m eternally grateful for arriving at this more compassionate approach to nutrition and exercise (I will delve more into the exercise piece in a future post!).
And to be able to help others make healthier choices through a lens of self-compassion and self-love, rather than coming from a place of inner criticism and/or shame, is truly a gift.
"We learned that we can get our necessary nutrition over a period of a few days, that it balances out in this way." Love that notion, important to keep in mind😁