The Freedom Dietitian

09/09/2023

Great day yesterday spent with CEO and talking about ending pathologising of women and girls and moving towards Anti pathologising and trauma- informed health and criminal justice services. So relevant to the Eating disorder space also.! Thank you! This show is heading to Byron Bay, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

03/04/2022

Health at Every Size (HAES(R)) as a movement might have taken some missteps, but SJ IS the name of the game. Read this post from Kerry Beake.

It's fantastic to know that more and more health professionals and others are recognising that a focus on weight is unethical, diets do not work for the vast majority and even fewer long term and that health can improve independent of weight. Most of these folks work from a Health at Every Size or HAES approach.

However what few folks working from a HAES perspective seem to fully understand or prioritise is that HAES is a social justice movement. It has existed in it's current form for many years but evolved out the fat liberation movement going back to the late 60's.

If you have privilege stop expecting to work in a social justice space but with rules and social niceties that are familiar to you. If you truly believe in HAES then recognise it's a social justice movement, not a career choice, it's not about what we think needs changing or what we think marginalised folk need from us, or that our good intentions should be rewarded it's about what they want and working our arses off until that happens even if we aren't getting the kudos and thankyou's society has socialised us to expect. And we should expect to be called out when we screw up, but we keep doing this work anyway because we are committed to the social justice and civil rights importance of this work.

04/06/2021

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Ever wonder why you say things like- “I wish I just accepted myself when I had the body I had 10 years ago.” 10 years ago you most likely remember not accepting that body and 10 years later you don’t accept this body (no matter what size it is).
This is because we are constantly living in a state of needing/ wanting to control and change our bodies. Diet culture / wellness culture puts so much pressure on us to feel this way that it almost feels impossible to actually say, “I’m done manipulating my body and forcing it to be a size it just doesn’t want to naturally be, I’m going to accept this body I have today and serve it the best I know how.”
Body image is a mindset. Reflect on the thoughts and beliefs inside your head when you are having a “good/bad” body image day. You’ll notice the thoughts feel much different. Instead of scapegoating your body, maybe giving it a break and being gentle with it (while having compassion), can help with powerful mindset shifts to truly set you free?
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27/05/2021

A good short read. Highlights the real sticky dilemma between awareness and unlearning.Unlearning is difficult without strong support. You need a therapist and/or dietitian who is deeply committed to your journey, committed to non diet principles, and able to meet you where you are at. It might take a while, but it will be worth the investment.

A lot of talk around body image is just about awareness, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith, and awareness and unlearning are very different steps

04/04/2021

Lazy medicine tells us that weight loss solves most problems. Most doctors still operate in a weight-normative approach to health. It is time to change the paradigm to a weight-inclusive approach to health that offers weight stigma free health care to all.

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Fat bodies are capable of having healthy pregnancies.
No ifs or buts, being fat does not mean that something will automatically go wrong with your pregnancy AND if there is a complication, it doesn’t mean that it’s your fault.

04/04/2021

We live in a society which places so much emphasis on our ability to control our weight, and the pursuit of weight loss. So much energy and $ go into this endeavour, and very often to the detriment to our relationship with food and our bodies.

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“As we come out of this challenging year, practice moving ahead without succumbing to the pressure to focus on any weight gain.

Sweeney notes, “Bodies change. This is a fact. If they changed in the last 12 months, they may well have changed, pandemic or not. Your body is not a problem. Please don’t let wellness culture suggest that a changing body is a reflection of your humanity, your goodness, and your belonging.”

➡️ https://www.verywellmind.com/so-you-ve-gained-weight-during-the-pandemic-now-what-5119227


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04/04/2021

Looking forward to the day when weight bias in health care has been eliminated. Weight bias causes real suffering, and creates a barrier to people seeking health professional services.

This class looks at social norms and scientific evidence used to justify weight bias in health care, examines who is missing out on the best possible care, and what we can do to work towards ending weight stigma in our practices and personal lives.

24/07/2020

And freedom from diet culture.

I love this😁 Thanks (Instagram)

08/07/2020

Have you heard about HAES(R)?⁠
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⁠Health at Every Size ⁠is a weight neutral approach to health. It supports people of all sizes in finding compassionate ways of taking care of themselves. Proponents of HAES believe that restrictive dieting is harmful, and that weight stigma is an important public health issue that needs to be addressed. ⁠
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Basic components of the HAES(R) approach include: ⁠
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Celebrating body diversity;⁠
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Honouring differences in size, age, race, ethnicity, gender, dis/ability, sexual orientation, religion, class, and other human attributes.⁠
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Challenging scientific and cultural assumptions;⁠
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Values body knowledge and lived experiences.⁠
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Finding the joy in moving one’s body and being physically active;⁠
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Eating in a flexible and attuned manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite, while respecting the social conditions that frame eating options⁠
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There is a growing body of academic literature showing that a HAES approach to health is more beneficial to overall health, and more protective of mental health than weight normative approaches to health .⁠
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If this sounds appealing and aligned with your values, you might want to seek out HAES aligned health practitioners and fitness studios/gyms, because it makes sense to surround yourself with people with similar values to your own. ⁠
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18/06/2020

Colonisation and decolonisation are common concepts used within Indigenous Studies, yet these words and the meaning they convey uncommonly appear in papers by nutrition and dietetic professionals. Decolonising Dietetics as a project focusses on how nutrition and dietetic research, services and client work can better serve populations who sit outside the mainstream, especially BIPOC. ⁠
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Colonisation, as a historical and contemporary process, has been seen to be at the root of health and other inequities experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (and other First Nation peoples) and other minority populations. ⁠ The legacy of colonisation lives on. We see time and time again that BIPOC are MADE vulnerable by public policy, social inequity, bias and stereotype.⁠
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Around 50% of adult First Nations people live with one of the major chronic diseases such as cardiovascular (heart) disease, kidney disease or cancer. Almost one-quarter have two or more of these chronic conditions.⁠
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Traditionally, dietetic research and clinical practice has largely served the white, dominant culture. Western cultural perspectives have been privileged. Western health and illness paradigms are, more often than not, the default paradigms rolled out, even when there is plenty of evidence that they are largely ineffective in BIPOC communities. ⁠
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This cannot be surprising when nutrition and dietetic faculty are largely white. When the vast majority of students recruited to dietetics programs have been historically white. This needs to change.⁠
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Things are changing slowly. We have seen this past week space made on instagram for BIPOC voices in dietetics, as part of the campaign. Strategies are needed to continue listening, to have meaningful dialogue, to rewrite curriculum, to change the profession so that we reflect diversity at all levels, and so that racism is denied the oxygen it needs to survive and thrive.⁠
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09/06/2020

Trauma-informed care means that as a practitioner I am alert to the possibility that clients may have had experience of childhood or other past or current traumas, which could be affecting their health, wellbeing, daily interactions and functioning .⁠
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As an Accredited Practising Dietitian this is important to me in 3 key areas:⁠
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First, understanding the neurobiology and impacts of trauma, gives me another way to view and interpret disordered eating practices, body dysmorphia and functional gut disorders. (it might not always be relevant, but it doesn't hurt to use this knowledge as a starting point when dealing with long term difficult-to-treat problems ) ⁠
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Second, reframe challenging emotions and behaviours as adaptive responses to trauma⁠ (labelling anybody as non complient is never ok or helpful) ⁠
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⁠Third develop strategies which enhance client safety, trustworthiness and transparency, sourcing peer support, collaboration and mutuality, empowerment and choice, and addressing cultural, historical and gender issues.⁠
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Many people (myself included) have had ⁠interactions with health care providers that have not lived up to standards for trauma-informed care. At worst these interactions can lead to re-traumatisation and at best the experience can be uncomfortable, disempowering, and leave the client questioning their own truths.⁠
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So my message is to trust yourself, and value your gut instinct. There are health professionals that understand, and that know this stuff. Please persevere for your own sake.⁠
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27/05/2020

More from Jes Baker , author of Landwhale:⁠
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"⁠Liberation is slowly learning how to become the best version of our whole selves—body included, yes. But it is no longer a requirement on our checklist of self-improvement to learn to love it.⁠
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In the end, I have found that the less I try to force myself to love my body, the less I hate it."⁠
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For me, on my own journey with my body, this message feels truer than the body positivity message and BoPo movement where everyone is beautiful, and we are enlisted to LOVE every part of our bodies.⁠
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⁠Either way, working with people to find a place where they can quieten the critical, judgemental and fat phobic voices (internal and external), obtain weight inclusive support, and health services, is my jam.⁠
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