6 Big Sister Messages a Nutritionist Wants You to Know

These six tips from a dietician can help drown out the noise and make food a positive, beneficial part of your life. 

How often are we bombarded with nutrition information? There are messages all around us, and perhaps even within our more intimate circles, there is chatter related to food and what to eat. There are countless approaches and products that have various promises and oftentimes contradict each other. It can be overwhelming and quite confusing. 

Ultimately, we – the consumers – are just trying to do our best to navigate this confusing world. 

As a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist with a sensitive soul and big-sister vibes, I am sending you each a big hug and 6 nutrition messages that I would love every girl and woman to know.

1. Food is fuel. First and foremost, we have to put nutrition (and the way that we eat) in the context of something that is positive and helpful to us (as opposed to restrictive and bad), and an opportunity to help us reach our potential and live the best lives that we can. Despite different messages we may have heard or absorbed, food is good and here to help us. Hashem provides us with food in this world in order for us to fuel our body, and what kindness it is that this food is also delicious and beautiful to look at with so much variety to choose from. With the context of “food as fuel” and helpful to us, we can then learn and recognize how food affects our body and quality of life, and ultimately utilize that information and strategize to have the food further help us meet our goals.

2. Keep it positive. Focus on and emphasize the foods that you want to increase, as opposed to what you want to limit. Hashem gave us tastebuds for a reason – let’s do our best to make eating a positive and beneficial experience. 

3. Shift your inner critic to an inner cheerleader. We all know what it can feel like to have a negative voice in our head, pointing out things that we are doing “wrong.” Try to shift that inner critic to an inner cheerleader. An example of what this may sound like is as follows: I usually go a whole day with barely drinking any water, and today I drank one cup! Keep it up! Maybe tomorrow I can reach two! While it may take some time to incorporate this shift, your “inner cheerleader” voice is both more pleasant and more productive!

4. Zoom out and focus on your “why.” There are so many reasons why we want to eat in a way that best benefits our body and lifestyle. Some examples may include: to have more energy for our children/grandchildren, to keep up with daily tasks more efficiently, to improve lab values and/or reduce the risk for certain medical conditions, to minimize the “food noise” and go through our day (including simchas and holidays) more smoothly and empowered without focusing too much on food, etc. When we zoom out and focus on our “why,” we provide ourselves with the positive perspective and bigger picture of how balanced eating benefits us and why it is important. This helps us keep perspective on what is really important to us, and also helps us maintain motivation and focus.

5. Success is measured in many ways. One of the big messages that I imbue within my clients is that there are many ways to measure success. While we may initially think about specific benchmarks or objective measures used to track progress and measure success, I love widening the lens of how we measure success. For example, serving as a positive role model for our children, being flexible and listening to what our body actually wants/needs even if it isn’t what we initially planned, eating in a way where you feel more energetic and capable of tasks in comparison to the past, persevering and staying focused even with a hiccup in your schedule or emotions, etc. The more we recognize that there are many ways to recognize success, the more often we can celebrate those successes, and be’ezras Hashem, the closer we will be to reaching our ultimate potential.

6. Trust your gut. In this context, we will define “gut” as your intuition. As was mentioned in the intro of this post, there is so much nutrition information out there. If something does not sound balanced and healthy to follow (regardless of how popular it may be), please listen to that intuition and ask questions/look further into the guidelines, or just do not follow at all.