You do not have to shrink your body to take care of it.

Like most of us, I grew up in a culture that treats thinness as something to achieve and fatness as something to fear.

And existing in a thin body didn't make me immune to that message. If anything, I became preoccupied with staying that way.

We're taught this stuff so early and so often that most of us don't even realize we're allowed to question it.

It is the air we breathe.

We're taught that thinner means healthier. That gaining weight means we've done something wrong. That if we could just find enough discipline, the right diet, the right exercise plan, the right medication, the right macros, etc, we'd finally get our bodies “under control”.

And that preoccupation can take so much from us.

It can make it hard to be present in our lives. To go out to dinner without doing mental math. To enjoy a bowl of salted caramel ice cream without wondering how we'll make up for it tomorrow. To take the picture, go on the date, apply for the job, or trust ourselves around food.

It takes so much, and gives so little in return.

Becoming a dietitian changed what I believed.

When I first started working with patients, the simple story I'd been taught about weight and health didn't hold up in real life.

I met thin people with significant health concerns. I met people in larger bodies who were metabolically healthy. And I met plenty of people everywhere in between.

The more people I worked with, the more obvious it became that I couldn't look at someone's body and know the state of their health, even though this is exactly what I was taught in school.

So I started asking more questions.

And then I started digging into the research.

What I found was far more complicated than the thin = healthy, fat = unhealthy equation I'd been told for most of my life.

Body size can be associated with health, but it isn't a diagnosis, and it isn’t nearly as important as we’ve been led to believe it is. Health is influenced far more by genetics, nutrition, movement, sleep, stress, medications, socioeconomic circumstances, access to healthcare, discrimination, environment, and a whole lot more.

The size of your body has very, very little to do with your actual health, but the focus and emphasis we place on it makes us believe it’s the most important thing. Weight loss sells, and there is lots, and lots, of money to be made.

In addition, intentional weight loss simply doesn’t work for most people, no matter how much motivation, dedication, persistence and nutrition knowledge they might have. We can only fight biology so hard, which is one of the main determinants of our weight in the first place. For many people, it’s like trying to fit their size 8 foot into a size 6 shoe. It doesn’t work, and it’s going to cause pain and suffering now and into the future.

I started seeing the cost.

As I continued practicing in the real world and gaining more experience, I began to see what can happen when the pursuit of weight loss becomes the center of someone's healthcare—or their life.

I've worked with people who can remember feeling ashamed of their bodies as early as kindergarten. Whose mothers have brought them to Weight Watchers meetings at ten (more common than you’d ever imagine).

I’ve watched people avoid going to the doctor for years because they couldn’t face having their pain dismissed as “just because of their weight—have you tried eating less and moving more?” one more time.

I've listened to people describe years—sometimes decades—sometimes lifetimes—of dieting, restricting, overeating, starting over on Monday, avoiding foods they love, fearing weight gain, and believing that if they could just get their body right, everything else would finally fall into place.

I’ve sat at the bedside of a dying 95 year old woman who told me she “couldn’t eat the jello because there were too many calories in it”.

I've seen people become afraid of food in the name of health.

I've seen people ignore or fear hunger because they didn't trust it.

I've seen people postpone living until they reached a certain weight.

And then I’ve seen people lose weight. And I watch, time and time again, how the shame and obsession don't disappear when a body becomes smaller. The bar simply moves. The fear simply changes. The shame simply remains.

Eventually, I realized I couldn't practice nutrition in a way that reinforced the very things I was watching hurt people.

So now I practice differently.

Today, I'm a weight-inclusive and fat-positive registered dietitian.

That doesn't mean I don't care about health, it actually means the opposite.

It means I want to address the things you're actually coming to me for rather than assuming changing your body size is the solution.

We can talk about blood sugar.

We can talk about cholesterol, GI symptoms, protein, meal structure, medications, labs, energy, hunger and fullness, or whether you've eaten anything besides coffee by 2 p.m..

We can care about nutrition without making weight loss the measure of whether you're doing it right.

And we can also talk about what happens when food itself has become complicated, when it’s become all you think about day and night, when the food noise has gotten so loud you can barely hear yourself think.

The work I do now.

I specialize in working with people whose nutrition has started feeling really hard.

That includes people navigating:

• Eating disorders and disordered eating — restriction, chronic dieting, food rules, fear foods, guilt, bingeing, and rebuilding trust with food

• Body image and weight concerns — body dissatisfaction, fear of weight gain, weight stigma, and learning to live more peacefully in your body

• ADHD and neurodivergence — executive-function challenges, sensory needs, decision fatigue, forgetting to eat, and figuring out how to feed yourself when traditional nutrition advice just doesn't work for your brain

• Intuitive eating and complicated relationships with food — getting out of the restrict/overeat cycle and making food take up a whole lot less space in your head

• Changing health needs — navigating health conditions, GI concerns, changing labs, perimenopause, medications such as GLP-1’s, and other situations where nutrition matters but another diet isn't the answer

Sometimes our work is about healing a relationship with food and body that's been painful for a very long time.

Sometimes it's figuring out how the heck to consistently feed yourself when planning, shopping, cooking, and cleaning up feel like four separate executive-function nightmares.

And sometimes it's, My doctor told me I need to change the way I eat. What am I actually supposed to do with that information?

Often, it's some combination of all three.

You are the expert on you.

I bring expertise in nutrition. But I don't believe that makes me the expert on your body, your experiences, or your life.

That's you.

My job isn't to hand you another set of rules and send you home to follow them perfectly. It's to help you understand what's happening, sort through all the nutrition noise, and figure out what actually supports your health and works in your life.

There is no passing or failing here.

You don't have to make yourself smaller to deserve good healthcare.

You don't have to eat perfectly to care about your health.

And you don't have to spend the rest of your life at war with food or your body.

You get to take care of the body you're in.

And maybe, eventually, come home to it.