Written by: Natalie Faella MS, RDN, LDN | July 7, 2021
For an embarrassingly non-tech savvy person, creating a website has sure been something! Luckily, Wix as made it a lot easier so that I can just kind of fill in the boxes they provide and recommend. And as a rule follower, I’ve naturally filled in the all parts of the outline they’ve provided. One of these boxes was “Tagline” on the homepage. Like with most things in my life, I overthought this for sometime, and then it came to me: “All Natural, Nonsense-Free Nutrition.” That is what I believe feeding ourselves (and the thoughts about what to feed ourselves) should feel like and the advice I pride myself on providing.
When I say “All Natural” I am not thinking along the lines of a raw vegan diet or only eating food you grow yourself. (I’d be doomed - you should have seen my first attempt at gardening!). I mean more so natural instinct or, how it is more popularly referred to: intuitive eating. We are all born with the innate sense of feeding ourselves the right quantities and types of foods to meet 100% of our nutrient needs. This includes needs like satisfaction and eating what will make us feel good. We lose this ability over time the more we are bombarded with diet tips and food beliefs of those around us. But what’s great is, this is not lost forever. We can get back in touch with our hunger and fullness cues and in tune with our true preferences and ability to choose just what it is we want and need, so that we can trust our body’s natural ability to nourish itself again.
To get on this path, one thing we have to do is let go of any of the non-sensical dieting tips we’ve picked up along the way; like what foods are “bad” for us and what foods we “should” be eating even when we aren’t hungry for them or don’t even truly like them that much. I’ll talk more in other blogs about why dieting in general sets us up to fail, but one of the main reasons it's not helpful is because it gets us more out of touch with these natural cues our body provides. And while a lot of nutrition tips out there are total nonsense, I want to be clear that I don’t think we’ve been nonsensical by having followed or believed them in the past. Who wouldn’t follow advice that comes with such great promise? “Really? I can lose weight that fast by just not eating X, Y and Z?” The diet industry makes money by first making us feel badly about ourselves or feel that we need to change parts of ourself to feel better. Then, they provide a solution with their latest fad diet, which is ultimately designed to fail. The nonsensical one here is them - not us.
As a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN), I am constantly hearing about people's diets and dieting attempts. I'm not even talking about clients - people I've just met on the street love to tell me, without any prompting (literally, zero prompting), how they don't eat X, Y, and Z. And I've been in that place where I thought there were a bunch of foods I "shouldn't" eat and wouldn't I be happier if I only weighed... etc. It's exhausting. And it's one of the reasons I hope to promote a more balanced view of nutrition and help people be free of this toxic relationship with food.
So I promise, I won’t promote any nutrition BS on this blog ("Bulls***-Free" was actually my original tagline idea but I felt that it may be inappropriate). I will only provide truthful, thoughtful, science-based advice to hopefully help make nourishing yourself feel less confusing, conflicting, or restricting, and more natural.
I hope that you will enjoy reading and subscribe to stay tuned for more. And please let me know if questions come up or if there's a topic you'd like for me to write about along the way!