Creativity and Eating Disorder Recovery
What is creative recovery and do you need it? What is the relationship between being creative, making art and recovering from an eating disorder and chronic dieting? How does this relate to Diet Culture and Hustle Culture?
Do you need Creative Recovery?
Often times when we hear the word 'creativity' we put our defenses up or we run for the hills.
"I'm not a creative person."
"I'm not an artist or anything but I did enjoy my coloring pages as a kid."
"Oh wow, I could never do what you do, you're so artsy."
And I'm going to be that annoying person and say that I truly believe that every person is creative. You just have to find your brand of what that looks like. I don't think everyone is going to be creative in a 'traditional' way or the ways that are usually thought of, but I think everyone has passions or that "thing I've always wanted to try."
Part of reclaiming our creativity is a mindset shift that starts with knowing where these ideas come from.
• How do you feel about your creativity?
• What did you hear about artists growing up?
• What is something that you enjoy but you think it's a little silly?
I think Diet Culture is tied to Hustle Culture which is fed via Perfectionism. All of these things are killers for your creativity.
To do creative things is to feed your soul. It's to get caught up in the moment. It's the transportation into another state of being that is hard to explain.
That is the reason why I think that Creative Recovery is very much tied to Eating Disorder/Disordered Eating Recovery. When we are tying our worth into external markers, we get lost. We think our creativity needs to be the same way. If we don't produce perfect art, there's no point. If we don't produce something of value in the eyes of others, there's no point. If we don't keep up the wears of production at all times, there's no point.
To recover our creativity is to recover a piece of ourselves. A piece of ourselves that calls to us, but we think it's not worthy of the time or energy.
To recover your life from Diet Culture, but from Hustle Culture too. To really tap into our intuitive selves through art, food and body.
Katy Gaston Nutrition
Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA. Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body. If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below. If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!
Pros and Cons of Dieting
An eating disorder dietitian’s take on the pros and cons of dieting. Yes, I will be biased but also open-minded to what we seek when we seek diets.
Defining dieting…
Ah, dieting. To clarify right off the bat that when I say dieting I mean fad diets and trends as a whole.
First I want to say that in the non-diet/anti-diet/screw-diet-culture space I know there can be just as many extremes as the weight loss/dieting side. A lot of what I have been thinking about is bringing the grey into this. That there are not opposing sides, but different approaches. Personally, recovering from my eating disorder saved my life in a multitude of ways and so I am strongly in the camp of f*ck diet culture. At the same time, I try to hold lots of space for those that aren’t as strongly in that camp. My mission is to help repair people’s relationships to their bodies and the foods they eat. I want to help people to see what is going on biologically when it comes to binging, weight gain and other situations that chronic dieting and having and eating disorder can lead you to. So I want to talk today on the pros and cons of dieting from my perspective.
(Side note: I am obviously going to be biased which I feel like was the point of what I was writing above. But in that bias, I want to be realistic and open-minded where I want to approach it from a less harsh place than the messaging can sometimes come across. Because first and foremost I want to say that I employ the non-diet approach because I am against diet culture but I am NOT against those who diet. If I was against dieters, I would be actively shutting out the very people that I want to be available to if they want to try something new.)
Pros and Cons of Dieting
Dieting Pro: You feel a sense of connectedness. This could be with fellow people that are also on the same diet, or with just people in general. Since dieting and weight loss are so common if you throw out the phrase “I’m trying to be good, I just started a diet.” you will likely be overwhelmed with camaraderie by people who are also trying to diet. Words of encouragement and empathy are common. Also the pursuit of weight loss is seen as the “healthiest” thing you can do for yourself, so if you say you are trying to lose weight, you will likely be met with praise. (I just want it noted that I do not agree that weight loss is the golden goose of health.)
Dieting Con: You think that if it doesn’t “work” for you, that you are broken. There is no proven effective method for weight loss in the long term. This is because our bodies are still primal, weight loss could mean death. Also, our bodies don’t keep up on the latest beauty standards so it is not going to be on board with altering the shape of your body in ways that are unnatural to you just because you want it to. It’s trying to protect you from dying. You are not broken, dieting is just not natural.
Dieting Pro: You pay more attention to food. As a dietitian I’m going to think this is cool. Being interested in what we are eating, what foods we are purchasing, holding companies accountable for their ingredients, preparing meals for ourselves and others can all be positive things.
Dieting Con: To follow up to the point above, the problem is it can go too far very quickly. There is a point with food where I think too much knowledge hiders us rather than helps us. I see it all the time where people cross the line into being so stressed about eating the “right” thing that I have to stop them and say “when did stressing about food become okay when we know that stress in general does not do ourselves any good?” Marketing is always going to want to give you a solution to a problem. In my opinion, diet culture created the problem where they made us think we don’t know what to eat. So then they can come in with names like “perfect bar”, “smart pop”, “enlightened ice cream” and create commercials where perfect looking individuals are eating their products and you think “oh, if I eat that, I will be perfect too!”
Dieting Pro: Sometimes the starting intentions are good. You want to be healthier. You want to be able to run around with your dog. You want to set a good example for your kids of a balanced diet. You want to do right by yourself and your body.
Dieting Con: Dieting further disconnects us from listening to our body’s internal cues and needs rather than brings us closer. Even the diets that try to use their marketing to say otherwise (cough Whole30 cough), I often see having the opposite effect because at the end of the day, if you are restricting, it will lead to adverse effects. Sometimes the health goals that we start off with become less and less about true health and what that means to us as individuals.
Dieting Pro: The answer is simple, and it is weight loss. Go to the doctor for knee pain - weight loss. Tired? Weight loss. Sad? Weight loss. Lonely? Weight loss. Poor body image? Weight loss. Inflammation? Weight loss. Asthma? Weight loss. The answer is simple so it feels like you *know* exactly what you need to do to have your wildest dreams come true. In a life full of uncertainty, this level of “knowing” is very intoxicating.
Dieting Con: Again, to address the pro above - unfortunately this idea that weight loss can be the answer to everything is too, a lie. Happiness, health, overall well-being, positive body image, confidence - these are actually all very complicated that will not be something you will ever “arrive” at. They will be daily practices that will not have simple solutions. I want to recognize that thin-privilege is very real and I am not trying to say that it isn’t. But the answer is so much more complicated than ‘anyone that does not have that privilege should lose weight and all will be okay’. Think of all the other ways that one might have privilege and think what the “simple” solutions others would have to do in order to have those privileges. That’s the point, that’s why is is called a privilege. Thin-privilege should be thought of in the same way because we have a generic blue print of what size our body is going to naturally be. Sure we can go to extremeness to alter it, but if weight loss is one of those extremes, it might not actually be possible because of the ways our bodies are designed. So holding space to accept all body shapes and sizes allows people to exist just as they are, without having to kill themselves over pursuing weight loss.
Katy Gaston Nutrition
Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA. Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body. If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below. If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!
When You Want to Stop Dieting, For Good
You’re fed up with dieting. You want to break the cycle of diet after diet after diet. Some of them “work” for awhile and then stop. What is the alternative to this?
I have been thinking lately how so much of our lives are leaps of faith and really it is more the norm than we think. We really have much less control than we want to believe, something that can be both scary and exhilarating.
Where does this concept come into play with healing from disordered eating, eating disorders or just repairing your relationship with food and body? I say it all the time, society and its constructions as we know it are very anti-recovery. We have normalized disordered eating patterns, disliking and disconnecting from our bodies and the never-ending quest for weight loss. So when people come to me and say “I can’t do this anymore, I want to stop dieting.” They are taking a huge, brave, leap of faith. They want new, positive patterns with the way that they eat. They want to be able to exist in their bodies without constantly feeling ashamed. They want to stop this toxic cycle of pursuing weight loss that is only causing them to misunderstand and hate the way their body functions.
So much of the work I do with clients is to show another side, another idea. Another way to both pursue health and accept yourself just as you are. To have compassion for yourself and create sustainable routines. But this all takes lots of leaps of faith, both large and small.
When we are in the midst of an eating disorder or disordered eating our relationship and connection with our bodies is either severed or misunderstood. To learn to trust our bodies again is to learn to trust ourselves. This trust looks like being able to tune into hunger and fullness cues with neutral curiosity. It looks like allowing ourselves to enjoy the foods that taste good without guilt. To be able to have routines with less rigidity and more adaptability. But to get there takes a leap of faith because everything around you will tell you to not trust yourself. To use external factors like Calories, portion sizes and timing to control your intake. A scale to determine if you give a gold star or punish yourself depending on what it says in that moment in time. The camaraderie that dieting with your friends and family provides. The familiarity of this cycle of “failing” a diet, starting a new one with pronounced gusto to have it “work” for awhile and then “fail” again.
What I ask of my clients is something I have had to experience myself. To wade into unknown waters of unconditional permission to eat food and re-learn how to approach helpful things like eating vegetables and exercise but not from a disordered place. A leap of faith to give up this pursuit of weight loss and the fallacy of perfection, guaranteed love and ultimate happiness that it provides.
It feels like the world will crumble at your feet. It feels like you are clinging to a life raft in the ocean with people standing on the shore yelling “Let go! You’re safe now, you can swim to shore!” but that feels terrifying. I get it, it is really really hard. But when you do, when you take those first little mini leaps of faith that probably feel more like teeny baby steps, it will grow. The fire inside your soul. Who you are outside of this need to control the world around you. Your creativity, passion and joy. That is what I see happen before my eyes when I work with my clients, and it is incredibly powerful and beautiful. Because you are incredibly powerful, beautiful and brave to take that vulnerable leap into something new.
Katy Gaston Nutrition
Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA. Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body. If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below. If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!
How To Be Healthy, From a Dietitian Nutritionist
Health is complex and the pursuit of health can leave you with more questions than answers. What are the benefits of seeing a dietitian nutritionist for health?
“Help me be healthy!”
Whether from clients, co-workers or any stranger that hears what I do for a living, this is one of the most common requests I get after “how can I lose weight?”
This question is always interesting to be because it is so complex, yet we throw around the word “healthy” like we are all supposed to know what it means. So what does it mean?
The definition of health used to be simply the “absence of illness” but now has rightly been corrected to mean so much more. Health involves so many things including your social and physical environment, your access to food and healthcare, the oppressions you face. It is a mental, physical and emotional embodiment. Health is both individual and involves the environment around you.
So why do people constantly ask dietitian nutritionists to make them healthy?
With so much media messaging and marketing around food, bodies and health it makes sense to me why this is everyone’s goal. However, this can be a very dangerous way to try and create a positive outcome for yourself because it often involves a perfectionistic idea of what health means. Because like perfection, if we think of health as a goal to seek, we will never get there. We will never be perfectly healthy. NEVER. Because we are human. Perfection is not in our nature or DNA, sorry not sorry. So why do I say it’s dangerous? This idea of perfect health can lead us to disordered patterns with food and our body because perfection cannot be obtained yet we shame, chastise and berate ourselves when it isn’t.
I believe that our western society definition of what is healthy is warped. We think low weight, clean eating and constantly going to the gym is our ticket. Where is reality, our bodies can determine what the best weight for us is. Eating routinely and happily might be our key. Enjoying the movement that feels best and right for our bodies is where we shine. We understand that chronic stress wears down our bodies, but what about the chronic stress of trying to control our weight, eat the exact right thing and workout even when our bodies are begging us to stop?
Where is health that includes the pleasure and joy we can get from food. The hug from a loved one. The walk through the park to hear the birds sing. The security of knowing where your next meal is. The nurse listening to your when you say you don’t want to know what your weight is. Taking time from work when need rest.
Health is complex.
I understand why we want to pursue it and I also know that not everyone has the same privileges. When we have this narrow view (AKA perfection) of what health can be we cause harm to ourselves and others. We judge ourselves and others for their choices where they might not be choices at all. It becomes right and wrong instead of nuances and individual.
There are no set parameters, no target to reach or gold medal to obtain. You can expand what your definition of health is for you.
Katy Gaston Nutrition
Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA. Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body. If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below. If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!
Can Dieting Cause Eating Disorders?
My experience with dieting and an eating disorder.
Dieting, an eating disorder gateway?
TW: dieting thoughts/patterns, weight loss, eating disorders
I have been thinking lately about my own healing journey from an eating disorder and what the start of that really looked like. As anyone knows who has or had an eating disorder, it doesn’t start in one day. You don’t just suddenly think to yourself, “Oh, I would like to have an eating disorder!” It is more of a gradual, slippery slope into eating disorder thoughts and patterns, so much so that you might not even realize it. Today I want to talk about what the start of that slope looked like for me and likely many others.
If I think back, I believe the desire to change my body, lose weight and therefore begin dieting started around 6th grade (12 years old). I was just starting puberty around that time which for me looked like widening hips and butt which was then commented on by family members in ways that made me think this was not okay. To illustrate this point more specifically we live in a society that values thinness and especially during this time the very straight-shaped, very thin model type was “in.” Before puberty my body looked more like that, I had a very straight frame and not many curves as is often the case in girl’s of that age. Therefore when my body was changing this translated in my head that this change was bad, a failing on my part, to control my body. I was eating more (because I was growing) and when this was commented on I made the connection that eating more = growing = bad.
Again, I cannot pinpoint the day where these dieting patterns started coming in, but I can start to see it when I first wanted to become a vegetarian. I know this really was rooted in my desire for better animal treatment, but I also know it was a way for me to start having control over my food intake while still living under my parents’ roof.
I remember my mom would causally diet and around this time I started joining her, it felt like a bonding experience and I can still remember the excitement of new diet and the feeling of sacrifice when we were “good” and only ate the foods that were on the list of approval. This would last for a few weeks, slowly drop off and we would go back to our normal routine, only to start again in many 6 months of so.
I then remember I took these dieting patterns more under the radar, I wanted to lose lots of weight to the point when even then I knew it wasn’t going to be seen as healthy. Bringing in how my body image was at the time I knew it was tied to feelings of wanting to be as small as possible. I very much wanted to be the Manic Pixie Dream Girl that needed to be saved from herself. I wanted to be so broken that people noticed my broken-ness.
In early high school I started on the covert diets like the Special K one (where you eat two bowls of cereal or bars a day instead of meals) and skipping meals. I then tried fasts all while convincing myself that I was “cleansing my body” to the point where my GI tract was so messed up I had to be rushed to the doctor for severe stomach pains only to show that I was so constipated that almost my entire GI tract was full. (At the time I was so happy the doctor didn’t “catch me” but now it makes me so sad to see that this prominent red flag was not addressed.) There were many other “dieting” things that I did around this time but I want to not overload this newsletter with potentially triggering things.
This continued throughout high school and into early college. My primary eating disorder behaviors had started in 8th grade and these common dieting behaviors were just adding fuel to the fire. I then went on to study to become a dietitian and in the course of healing one eating disorder I started to develop new patterns. Finally towards the middle-end of college I was on a course of healing and true recovery.
So, what about others?
According to Intuitive Eating by Tribole and Resch, “35% of so-called “normal” dieters progress to pathological dieting. Of those, 20-25% will progress to partial or full-blown eating disorders.” This prevalence is only increasing and I personally have never worked with a patient or client with eating disorders that didn’t start with some kind of dieting thoughts about food, even if they were not weight-related.
Recovery is so difficult not only because it takes so much devotion to heal yourself but also because we live in a society where dieting is so normalized. I see a lot of shame and guilt in my clients coming for help with that healing because it was a slippery slope that they feel got away from them. A lot of times it is this sense that dieting is okay but then they took it too far. I give so much compassion to clients because dieting it not normal, dieting is disordered eating that society has normalized. You are not broken because you have “failed” at dieting and you are not broken if things have “gotten away from you”.
That is why I like to say that I work with people with eating disorders and disordered eating because I see that line as so blurred. In fact I don’t even see it as a line, but more of a spectrum where people can be going from one end to the other or progressing along it. I see dieting as harmful patterns that can be taken as seriously as those who have then taken those patterns into eating disorder territory. The harm might be there, but then so is the healing.
Sending so much virtual love to everyone because I know what that feels like, I have been there. I have free 15 minute consults if you’re or anyone you know is confused or a little lost on how to get help or who to get it from. Here is the link to my services page and there is also a FAQs page with some more information on these subjects.
Don’t be afraid to take disordered eating and dieting patterns seriously and seek help if you want to break free from them!
Katy Gaston Nutrition
Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA. Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body. If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below. If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!