The Education Effect
Hey guys! Tomorrow I have the wonderful opportunity to present one of my papers at an academic conference. Among many things, there are three wonderful things that stand out about this opportunity:
1. I get to talk about a nutritional topic (my paper is about restrictive eating) for 8 whole minutes
2. The people at the conference are either paid or graded on their attentiveness to my presentation.
3. I get to talk about nutrition for 8 WHOLE MINUTES. And nobody can interrupt me.
Anyways, I just thought I would share that bit of exciting news with you before I discuss the content of my paper. Restrictive eating and its consequences have been on my mind a lot, especially since I hope to be a disordered eating counselor and preventivist (I don't think that is a word, but I'm pretty sure y'all know what I'm trying to say).
Due to my nutritional background, this topic is a great passion and concern of mine. Like I mentioned in my first blog post, my relationship with food has been all over the spectrum. I was obese for much of my life before I decided it was time to lose weight. And this is true--I did need to lose weight and alter my diet. I was eating as much as my older brothers, who are five and eight years older than me.
What happened, though, was unexpected both by me and my family.
As I started altering my diet, I became increasingly obsessed with my weight. What started out as a healthy restriction (eating less junk food and paying attention to fullness cues) turned into a preoccupation with what I weighed. I began to define myself as a number, and my self worth depended on the number I saw on the scale on any given day. If I didn't lose weight every single day I considered myself a failure on all levels. I was a thirteen year old girl who had no idea what she was doing and what she was getting herself into.
Unhappy with my weight loss (which was approaching 15-20 pounds by this point), I started to seriously restrict my diet. What innocently started out as a desire to be healthier turned into an eating disorder. I dropped from a size thirteen to a size zero, my hip and rib bones poked through my clothing, and my stomach began to cave inwards.
And yet, I was not thin enough.
I looked at friends, peers, actresses, fashion models, and decided that if I didn't look like them, then I would never be beautiful. A boy would never like me. I would never be successful.
I continued to restrict my diet, only eating foods that had a limited number of ingredients (5-10), didn't contain sugar, and had no meat or grease whatsoever.
The problem with this is that when I did cave--when I really wanted that bowl of ice cream--I regretted it for days. I would become more strict, looking at food like it was an evil substance out to get me. But food was not my enemy. I was my enemy.
Eventually I was able to pull myself out of the anorexic trap and once again reevaluate and change my relationship with food. I have often reflected on my experiences and have recently realized something--I received no nutritional or self-image coaching my entire K-12 education.
Sure, I had that one nutritional unit in 8th grade where we kept a food diary for a couple of days. Sure, there was the sexual education video I watched in 5th grade about what changes my body would go through. But nothing to motivate me. Nothing that left a lasting impression on my life and inspired me to change.
I am in no way blaming educators for leaving these two aspects out of most curricula; I obviously did not see the importance of them until I was living the negative consequences of them every day. Until I was miserable being me. Until I was hungry beyond belief, but wouldn't budge in my convictions.
So what I want to do, what I just really, really, really, want to do...is change nutritional education (or add it in). My absolute dream is to start nutritional education in first grade and teach that through elementary school at the very least. A seven year old can understand the ratios of the foods they should be eating if presented with a visual, like the MyPlate program the government recently put out. They can see that half of it
should be fruits and vegetables, a third should be whole grains, and a quarter should be protein. They can visualize that little glass of milk at the top of their plate, ready to be drunk.
As children progress through elementary school, the nutritional education gets more complex and scientific, teaching what happens in the body when specific foods are eaten. I often reflect on how my life could have been different if I had received that education. Who knows if I would've listened to it. Who knows if it would've changed my habits. But at least I would've known that my severe restriction was unhealthy, and perhaps that would've been the influence I needed to stop my self-starvation.
But the thing is, it's not just nutritional education that needs to happen--eating disorders are just as psychological as they are nutritional, if not more so. Body-image is extremely important to adolescents, especially as they start puberty and enter middle school where self-confidence is challenged every day. We need to teach children how to combat this. We need to teach them that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes, that self-worth is not defined by a number, and that being ultra-thin does not make you more attractive.
I work with a disordered eating dietitian at my university that does this exact thing; she enters middle schools and teaches 7th graders how to respond to situations such as this. Her idea is very similar to mine--restrictive eating needs to be stopped through prevention, not intervention. If we reach kids early enough, they will be armed with not only the nutritional knowledge to live a long and healthy life, but the self-image to help through challenging and self-destructive situations.
Oftentimes, when self-confidence is destroyed, the first thing to go is a healthy diet--a diet is something kids can control, something they have seen parents do, but have never tried themselves. Without that two-pronged approach of both nutritional and self-image coaching, kids will only focus on the negative and not remember how good they feel about themselves and how good healthy food makes them feel.
Is my proposition a challenging one? Yes. But is it needed? Most definitely. The last thing I want is for a thirteen year old girl show up in my office, telling me the exact things I used to say to myself in the mirror: "you're too fat today," "you don't deserve dinner," "you only lost one pound yesterday," "your stomach isn't flat enough." Though I will help them because that is my passion, my calling, and what I want to dedicate my future career to, the idea of one more adolescent going through what I did pains me.
So please. Educate your children. Make sure they know they are loved, are beautiful, and set a nutritional and confident example for them. Little changes. That's all it takes.
Little changes is what got me to where I am today: preachy, yes, but confident and passionate about something that used to be my ruin. I weight 140 pounds, and I am beautiful. And that is something I never thought I would be able to say.
1. I get to talk about a nutritional topic (my paper is about restrictive eating) for 8 whole minutes
2. The people at the conference are either paid or graded on their attentiveness to my presentation.
3. I get to talk about nutrition for 8 WHOLE MINUTES. And nobody can interrupt me.
Anyways, I just thought I would share that bit of exciting news with you before I discuss the content of my paper. Restrictive eating and its consequences have been on my mind a lot, especially since I hope to be a disordered eating counselor and preventivist (I don't think that is a word, but I'm pretty sure y'all know what I'm trying to say).
Due to my nutritional background, this topic is a great passion and concern of mine. Like I mentioned in my first blog post, my relationship with food has been all over the spectrum. I was obese for much of my life before I decided it was time to lose weight. And this is true--I did need to lose weight and alter my diet. I was eating as much as my older brothers, who are five and eight years older than me.
What happened, though, was unexpected both by me and my family.As I started altering my diet, I became increasingly obsessed with my weight. What started out as a healthy restriction (eating less junk food and paying attention to fullness cues) turned into a preoccupation with what I weighed. I began to define myself as a number, and my self worth depended on the number I saw on the scale on any given day. If I didn't lose weight every single day I considered myself a failure on all levels. I was a thirteen year old girl who had no idea what she was doing and what she was getting herself into.
Unhappy with my weight loss (which was approaching 15-20 pounds by this point), I started to seriously restrict my diet. What innocently started out as a desire to be healthier turned into an eating disorder. I dropped from a size thirteen to a size zero, my hip and rib bones poked through my clothing, and my stomach began to cave inwards. And yet, I was not thin enough.
I looked at friends, peers, actresses, fashion models, and decided that if I didn't look like them, then I would never be beautiful. A boy would never like me. I would never be successful.
I continued to restrict my diet, only eating foods that had a limited number of ingredients (5-10), didn't contain sugar, and had no meat or grease whatsoever.
The problem with this is that when I did cave--when I really wanted that bowl of ice cream--I regretted it for days. I would become more strict, looking at food like it was an evil substance out to get me. But food was not my enemy. I was my enemy.
Eventually I was able to pull myself out of the anorexic trap and once again reevaluate and change my relationship with food. I have often reflected on my experiences and have recently realized something--I received no nutritional or self-image coaching my entire K-12 education.
Sure, I had that one nutritional unit in 8th grade where we kept a food diary for a couple of days. Sure, there was the sexual education video I watched in 5th grade about what changes my body would go through. But nothing to motivate me. Nothing that left a lasting impression on my life and inspired me to change.
I am in no way blaming educators for leaving these two aspects out of most curricula; I obviously did not see the importance of them until I was living the negative consequences of them every day. Until I was miserable being me. Until I was hungry beyond belief, but wouldn't budge in my convictions.
So what I want to do, what I just really, really, really, want to do...is change nutritional education (or add it in). My absolute dream is to start nutritional education in first grade and teach that through elementary school at the very least. A seven year old can understand the ratios of the foods they should be eating if presented with a visual, like the MyPlate program the government recently put out. They can see that half of it should be fruits and vegetables, a third should be whole grains, and a quarter should be protein. They can visualize that little glass of milk at the top of their plate, ready to be drunk.
As children progress through elementary school, the nutritional education gets more complex and scientific, teaching what happens in the body when specific foods are eaten. I often reflect on how my life could have been different if I had received that education. Who knows if I would've listened to it. Who knows if it would've changed my habits. But at least I would've known that my severe restriction was unhealthy, and perhaps that would've been the influence I needed to stop my self-starvation.
But the thing is, it's not just nutritional education that needs to happen--eating disorders are just as psychological as they are nutritional, if not more so. Body-image is extremely important to adolescents, especially as they start puberty and enter middle school where self-confidence is challenged every day. We need to teach children how to combat this. We need to teach them that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes, that self-worth is not defined by a number, and that being ultra-thin does not make you more attractive.
I work with a disordered eating dietitian at my university that does this exact thing; she enters middle schools and teaches 7th graders how to respond to situations such as this. Her idea is very similar to mine--restrictive eating needs to be stopped through prevention, not intervention. If we reach kids early enough, they will be armed with not only the nutritional knowledge to live a long and healthy life, but the self-image to help through challenging and self-destructive situations.
Oftentimes, when self-confidence is destroyed, the first thing to go is a healthy diet--a diet is something kids can control, something they have seen parents do, but have never tried themselves. Without that two-pronged approach of both nutritional and self-image coaching, kids will only focus on the negative and not remember how good they feel about themselves and how good healthy food makes them feel.
Is my proposition a challenging one? Yes. But is it needed? Most definitely. The last thing I want is for a thirteen year old girl show up in my office, telling me the exact things I used to say to myself in the mirror: "you're too fat today," "you don't deserve dinner," "you only lost one pound yesterday," "your stomach isn't flat enough." Though I will help them because that is my passion, my calling, and what I want to dedicate my future career to, the idea of one more adolescent going through what I did pains me.
So please. Educate your children. Make sure they know they are loved, are beautiful, and set a nutritional and confident example for them. Little changes. That's all it takes.
Little changes is what got me to where I am today: preachy, yes, but confident and passionate about something that used to be my ruin. I weight 140 pounds, and I am beautiful. And that is something I never thought I would be able to say.
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