I initially started this blog while I was still an undergraduate in Nutrition. I started it as an undergraduate, and I'm only just now thinking about paying attention to it as an almost graduating Graduate. However, I'm incredibly thankful for this. Everything has it's season, and I think it's "at the table's" time. So let's set the table, shall we?
Here's what you need to be caught up on. Since last September, I have been working as a nutrition assistant, so to speak, for the RD (Registered Dietitian) who works with Auburn University students- as well as adults from on campus and the community- at the Auburn University Medical Clinic. What do I do there? I call patients recommended by their physician and set up appointments, I answer patent's questions about their dietary recalls, research topics of interest for the RD, shadow appointments with patients, and in her absence, I meet with patients in follow-up appointments where I go through a list of their goals and see how they are progressing.
I'm at the clinic once a week, and it is always the very best part of my day, and the very best part of my week, and over all, it's been the calming, reassuring, and saving remedy of my tough academic year in Graduate school, and in my personal life.
I love seeing the patients. I love hearing the RD talk, not from dry biochemistry notes, but from real, heartfelt experience. I love coming at nutrition like it's in food sitting on a person's plate and not in the glycolytic pathway on it's way to the energy highway that is the electron transport chain, or ECT.
Don't get me wrong, I love glycogenolysis, lipolysis, glycolysis, and the TCA cycle, and that's why I'm in graduate school in the first place, but I love people more.
I go to the grocery store and read magazine titles like, "Get High School Skinny" just like the rest of you. I see food advertisements, "low fat" on everything at the grocery store, diet pills, diet books, ads on Facebook about the evil fruit that is the banana,and everything else under the sun that revolves around food, diet, and having the "perfect" body. I've seen it just like you, only I'd like to tell you that they have it all wrong.
Working primarily with college aged girls who struggle with eating disorders will open your eyes -not just to the world of an eating disorder or living with ED, as some people call it ( you know, that abusive, snotty, guy who keeps haggering you about your body and the food on your plate)- but it will open your eyes to the bubble that we're all living in. We say the girls and boys with eating disorders are in their own bubble, the "eating disorder bubble," while the rest of us are in the real world in the "normal eating bubble."
Unfortunately, that's not true.
Take away the terms "Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Binge Eating Disorder, and Body Dismorphic Disorder," and you get things like: people restrict what they eat because they're scared of being/getting fat, people who go all day without eating because they want to be skinny but then they get really hungry and overeat to the point of feeling sick, People who count calories to the decimal point, People who feel guilty for overeating and make themselves vomit or exercise for a long time to get rid of the food they ate and guilt, people who think they are fat because of a number on a scale, people who weigh themselves every day to see how much their weight has changed, people who have a list of "good" foods and "bad" foods, people who are embarrassed to eat seconds even when they are still hungry because of what the others will say, people who eat second when they aren't hungry because it will make them feel better, people who live on diets, people who look in a mirror and think their body is less than sufficient, people who look in the mirror and see someone who is "fat" or "unattractive" or "worthless" instead of someone who is beautiful....
We may not all be walking around with a diagnosis, but most of us are walking around with disordered thoughts and/or behaviors when it comes to food. We call that, disordered eating, and it's typical.
How do I know this?
There was a magazine at Kroger that said, "Get High School Skinny" which was advertised to grown, women, and the stack was getting thin because of all the grown and college aged women who were buying them. There are "likes" constantly on Facebook where the ad says something about having a "1 inch" waste, or dropping 30 pounds in a month. Women are embarrassed to walk around in their bikinis, or to write down their weight, or to tell a friend they had a cupcake after dinner last night. Everything in the grocery store is "fat free."
Research studies are saying that 80% of all 10 year old girls have dieted at least once, 53% of 13 year old girls don't like the way their bodies look, and 78% of 17 year old girls don't like the way their bodies look. More recently, more and more research is being done on eating disorders in older women because it is becoming apparent that they are just as affected as young girls. In all, about 20 million women and10 million men were reported to have an eating disorder in 2011. Realistically, the numbers are much higher as of now. None of this information may be terrifying or strange to you, because it's disturbingly "normal."
We all live in the same bubble of ads, and commercials, and diets, and ideas of what our bodies "should" look like. Day in and day out, we're exposed to that artificial bubble, and it looks so pretty, and healthy, and fun, but in reality, it's superficial, detrimental to your health, and your body image.
This isn't going to be a blog about dieting or a blog that is going to tell you how to be "skinny." This is going to be a blog about living with delicious, wonderful food (all food) and with that beautiful body God blessed you with, whatever it's shape or size. Healthy is beautiful, and I'll do my best to help get you there.
So let's set the table. Get out your plates, and forks, and knives, and spoons. Grab the wine, and pasta, and spinach, and cake. Grab your friends, and conversations, and turn up the music. Let's sit at the table and eat!
