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Blog: Food should not be a four-letter word
PHILADELPHIA — In this blog post from the American Association of Diabetes Educators Annual Meeting and Exhibition, Linda E. Sartor, RD, MA, CDE, LDN, RYT, discusses a presentation on the need to change the way we view eating so patients can achieve success.
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Thursday, Aug. 8, 4:30 p.m.
Instead of eating instinctively — eating when we're hungry and stopping when we’re full — our culture has taught us to eat in response to triggers, be it stress, boredom, guilt, etc. Instead of tuning into hunger, we've zoned out. We multi-task and then wonder, "How did I manage to eat that whole bag of chips?"
Linda E. Sartor
Can we shift our personal and professional paradigm to a more mindful approach? We're not talking about New Age stuff here. We're talking about getting back to basics: teaching people to be experts of their own bodies and finding a sustainable plan to control diabetes. Food should not be a four-letter word, nor should exercise be considered penance, one of the presenters, Michelle May, MD, founder of the “Am I Hungry? Mindful Eating Program, said.
Also during the presentation, Megrette Fletcher, MEd, RD,CDE, co-founder of The Center for Mindful Eating, encouraged us to use nutrition information as a tool, not as a punishment. Let's help our patients no longer fear hunger, stop the cycles of deprivation followed by binging and get them back to tuning into their physiology.
Our collective health depends on it!