A look back at my learning and unlearning in the 2010’s

Breath….It is amazing how often I find I need to remind myself of that. How often I find myself taking tiny sips of air. Breath… That is what I will keep reminding myself this week and the next..into the new year and new decade…Breath.

There have been many social media posts and articles about the end of the decade as we move into 2020. Top 10 this…Top 100 that. I mean you can pretty much find a list for anything. For a couple of moments I actually thought about writing a list, but if you know me personally you know that I am not a list person. “To do or not to do, there is no list.” So instead I started reflecting on the last 10 years of unlearning and growth for myself. Both personally and professionally. I want to share this with you as sometimes I think that we look at people and think that they just arrived at their place without all the stumbles. And wow, have I stumbled, and gotten back up to try again.

I started 2010 thinking I knew a lot about dietetics, not necessarily life ,as I had an 18 month old at the start of this decade and I was quickly learning that I knew nothing about that. I thought I understood Health At Every Size®, I thought I knew what worked with clients, let’s be honest, I thought I knew best. However, I did not. (nor do I now or will I ever) I was learning about HAES® but not to the depth I know now. I am not even sure if I understood what Social Justice had to do with it 10 years ago. To use a term that my good fried Fiona Sutherland says (and should trademark) I was “splinter assing” . I thought I could talk about body image and accepting that bodies come in all shapes and sizes and still work with clients to change their body. Looking back I cringe at this. I feel a lot of shame for having done this. I know that many of us who work in this space have a similar story but it still hurts my heart to think that I did harm. I am sorry. To anyone who is reading this who had me or another human help you to change your body by restriction I am sorry. Truly. We can’t go back but we can go forward and forward is the direction I felt I moved in this decade.

Over the course of these 10 years I moved slowly away from working on weight loss with clients, to be honest it was never a huge part of my work but this also helped in my language with eating disorder clients. In my work as a clinical RD in Type 1 diabetes I was often asked to by doctors, clients and other practitioners to “help so and so” with their weight . So that is what I started doing. Not to lose weight but to start having discussions about their bodies, their own lived experiences with their bodies and the “why” behind them wanting to change. I took the definition of “help” to mean what I thought it should mean. I do think this was confusing for some as my profession is viewed as the one that will help others lose weight and I was not “successful” at that. Clients “fired” me, others stayed and cried at being given permission to eat foods such as pineapple. It was during this time that I really learned to listen. Listening is what made me decide to get off the fence and go all in with HAES® and the non-diet approach. I picked up Intuitive Eating (again as I read it first in the early 2000’s but needed to review) and Body Respect (reread as well…realizing I wasn’t fully ready the first time to be counter cultural). I was taking courses, reading books, and trying to sink into this way of working but what I kept finding was that the world was so enmeshed in diet culture that I was no where near to being on the same page as others around me. And that was hard. Very very hard. This was another big turning point for me this decade. Do I go back to the easy comfortable place or do I blast forwards and try to change the world. So I know that I alone will not change the world, but I can help plant the seeds to grow a field that can. Through all this I think my greatest “win” is learning to listen, not to just answer but to hear what someone is truly saying. I only have my own lived experience, and that is unique to me. I do not have the lived experience of someone who lives in a more marginalized body than myself so I need to listen. I need to elevate those voices so that others can feel elevated.

This brings me to today. The end of the 2010’s. A decade where we tried to elevate voices and stories by co-hosting the Nourished Circle Podcast with Kori Kostka (all episodes are on Apple Podcast). Have tried to be vulnerable and share my learning and unlearning by writing this blog. Have pivoted to teaching at the college level to try to break down diet culture in our nutrition programs. Not one of these things would have been a predication of mine 10 years ago if you asked me what I would be doing at the end of the decade. I am looking forward thinking of all the possible opportunities that lay ahead to continue on this path- or whatever variation I end up on. Right now on the dawn of a new decade I feel less certain than I did 10 years ago with regards to what I know but I do feel more grounded with what I am trying to do. I do hope you will continue on your life safari with me..and remember to Breath…

Until next be unapologetically you while I be unapologetically me…