What Does the Non Diet Approach to Health Mean? And Why Does it Matter in Menopause?
Maybe you’re unsure about mindful eating, and non diet health, but you’re here anyways.
You’ve watched the last episode of Yellowstone, while polishing off an entire bag of chips.
#beenthere
If you googling all things menopause nutrition, please stay.
We’ve got lots to chat about!
If you‘re in your fifties, learning about the Non Diet Approach might seem weird.
That’s because you’re used to diets, like I was. Maybe you heard of the Non Diet approach through the practice of Intuitive Eating, or Mindful Eating.
Or you might be looking to stop dieting, once and for all.
If you’re of menopausal age …
… you might love Mr. Costner, AND probably grew up in the era of the 20 minute workout. That show IS the 80’s!
You’re also familiar with cottage cheese plates and the cabbage soup diet.
Cabbage is a great food for your gut, and your liver, but not ALL DAY LONG.
Not every day.
NOT as a replacement for other foods. Which is ONE of the things diets do to us. Replace foods, with “acceptable” swaps.
These are just some of the things I have used in an effort to shrink my body. The 20 minute workout obsession, for me, started in high school.
When we JUST focus on weight, we miss so many opportunities to work on other areas of health.
Thankfully, we’ve evolved from the 80’s. This era also contained many diet pills.
The Non Diet Approach is a FAR cry from those days.
At least it should be, if it’s being used correctly.
Every Era has its diet talk. It doesn’t always look like diet talk. There are many people who say they use the Non Diet approach, but are still using ineffective diets in disguise.
Please, don’t misunderstand me. I don't think weight loss is a terrible thing. Non Diet people are not against weight loss. I’m against the promises of weight loss, including better health, and a better life. If you really look at the marketing of weight loss, which is diet culture, you’ll start to see what I mean.
Weight loss can happen when we are taking care of ourselves. And, conversely, your body may stay the same. Either way, you’re taking care of yourself in a HOLISTIC way, paPaying attention to all areas of our lives, not just the food part, can result in BETTER health.
Weight just isn’t under our complete control, like diets want us to think.
This is why I don’t work in the weight loss area.
It feels inauthentic.
So, what IS this Non Diet Approach to health?
The Non Diet approach looks BEYOND calorie counting and dieting behaviour. Yes it’s behaviour. And it’s a club.
Science is showing us that:
“The weight-normative approach (making weight loss the focus) is not improving health for the majority of individuals across the entire weight continuum. Weight is overemphasized for higher-weight individuals (i.e., assumptions are made that they are unhealthy) and underemphasized for lower- or “average-” weight individuals (i.e., assumptions are made that they are healthy).” (1)
In short, dieting, and the BMI, is an ineffective measure of health.
The Non Diet Approach encompasses broader, more accessible, more GENTLE, life enhancing practices that work towards personal health.
I don’t know about you, but at 55, I want to ENHANCE my life.
Most importantly, the Non Diet Approach is informed
by Health at Every Size™.
The Non Diet Approach understands that health means something different to everybody, hence the phrase personal health. This also takes into account other factors, like the Social Determinants of Health, that make big differences in health outcomes, that have nothing to do with the choice of your smoothie bowl.
The three basic components of HAES™ are Respect, Critical Awareness and Compassionate Self Care. (2)
Respect:
In a Non Diet Approach, informed by HAES, body diversity is respected and celebrated. This includes race, size, ethnicity, and gender, among other principles.
Critical Awareness:
Values your body knowledge, and all of your lived experiences. This also challenges scientific and cultural assumptions about weight and health.
Compassionate Self Care:
“Finding the joy in moving one’s body and being physically active; 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.” (2)
Diets don’t take in the environment in which we live, and our emotions.
What other measures of health are there?
LOTS!!!
What happens when you get to the doctors office?
We get certain things checked:
blood pressure
blood sugar
urine
cholesterol levels
We also get our weight checked, don’t we? And if we don’t meet the BMI standard, there might be some discussion about weight loss.
And many times that discussion results in feelings of shame.
The doctors office can be a source of weight shaming.
Plus, the BMI is not an accurate metric, and you can read about that here.
There are other ways to measure health.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has a definition for health:
Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Hmmm.
The term well-being is in there.
I don’t see a mention about body size.
Could this be because body size is a construct of diet culture?
And somehow diet culture wound up in the health realm?
Objective metrics
Things like blood pressure, and blood sugar are objective metrics.
They are data, and data is useful. We do know that high blood pressure, and high blood sugar may have impacts on health.
Many times though, there are other influences on someone’s personal health picture. We all know someone like my grandfather who lived to be 92, smoked, drank and rarely got sick.
The Non Diet Approach doesn’t argue with the fact that smoking, alcohol use, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high blood sugar might affect your long term health outcomes. It just doesn’t tell us to live on a steady stream of brownies, and burgers.
IT doesn’t tell us WHAT to eat like diets do. It DOES help us see HOW we eat. There’s a big difference there.
I don’t offer dieting as THE SOLUTION to a health problem, because of the HAES™ framework, and because of the lack of long term evidence linking weight loss to sustained health metric, for most people. If diets worked so well, why are there so many new ones, and why do people need to go back to them? NO, it isn’t because of the persons ability or will power.
The Non Diet Approach also stays away from weight shaming.
Subjective metrics
How do you FEEL? How you FEEL, and ultimately your quality of life, is affected by these gauges of health and well being:
Relationships and social networks
Sleep quality
Body Image and Self Esteem
Relationship to food
Happiness
A Sense of Belonging (diet culture knows that)
Energy
Mobility
Mental outlook
FUN
Why does a Non Diet Approach Matter in Menopause?
The moment of truth —> Our bodies change.
They just do. There may be days we don’t like that. Accepting this fact of life came much easier to me, because of two things:
I embraced the privilege of aging, with all the body quirks. I’m lucky to be here. I’ve already lost friends, and the father of my child, in their 30’s.
I learned that the Non Diet Approach could help me stay VITAL at 55. I want to feel LIMITLESS, most days. Dieting made me feel LIMITED. In how I looked, and how I felt as a woman.
I want to lead a FULL life, free from the control model of restrictive eating. It made me feel awful about my body.
I know now, that I can STILL be healthy doing so.
To stay vital, we need to:
Nourish ourselves in menopause. Things like bone health, and cardiovascular health, DO matter.
Move, in fun ways, so we can be mobile and balanced on our feet as long as possible. This affects BOTH bone health and cardiovascular health, positively! One day I’ll tell you about my client (anonymously of course), that was still dieting at 80, and had severe osteoporosis.
EAT! Connection happens when we break bread TOGETHER. Connection and social networks are predictors of health and vitality. And our bodies need nutrition at this life stage, now, more than ever.
🧁The Non Diet approach does not mean that we move through our 60’s eating cupcakes and nachos.
It does mean that we step back from the programming we have inside of ourselves, even just a little bit, to help us embody the fact that we are worthy, as women, when we do human things.
Like eat nachos, age, and decide that we will never count another calorie again.
Because one plate of nachos, or one green smoothie doesn’t push your health meter one way or another. I’m telling you the truth.
You, and your body, is so much more than WHAT you eat.
How does this approach make you feel, AFTER reading this? I’d love to read your comments :)
Be LIMITLESS today,
Tanya
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jobe/2014/983495/
https://haescommunity.com/