Fulfilling Nutrition - Lisa Cristall, RD

01/01/2022

Happy New Year's Eve!
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How do you feel about new year's resolutions? Honestly, I haven't set any myself in several years. However, I know some people appreciate this time to reflect and set some intentions for the upcoming year.
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But you don't have to let the diet & weight loss industry dictate what that looks like for you! So today I thought I'd share a post with some thoughts & possible alternative approaches.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and the weight loss industry is in full force with its messaging about how our bodies are all wrong & life would be perfect if we could just fix them. And of course they have the “cure.” According to them, we need to shrink our bodies or cut out some ever-increasing ... ...

10/20/2021

👇 I so appreciate this message and highly recommend this page for helpful body image resources!

Our approach to body image work is different than a lot of “love your body” stuff out there because we are trying to separate peoples’ worth from their appearance completely. Not just expanding who gets to feel beautiful, but taking beauty OFF the pedestal we shouldn’t be required to stand on.

Straight from our TEDx talk and our book, “More Than a Body”:
✖️”Girls and women aren’t only suffering because of the unattainable ways beauty is being defined, they’re suffering because they are being *defined by beauty.* They are bodies first and people second. So, rather than working to make sure more women’s bodies are viewed as valuable, we are working to make sure women are valued as more than bodies to view. Our work is founded on the premise that positive body image isn’t believing your body looks good; it is believing your body is good, regardless of how it looks.”

✖️Please know the problem is NOT your body. The problem is believing you are just a body. It’s like our bodies aren’t part of us, but ALL of us. When we fight back by alleviating the shame surrounding certain body types, we’re only fighting a *symptom* of the problem, not the root cause. We’re here to remind you women are MORE than bodies, and it’s time to SEE more and BE more. It’s time to heal our relationships with our bodies so we can show up in a world that is desperate for us to lead, do, be & speak up.👊🏽

➕“More Than a Body” by Lexie & Lindsay Kite, PhD, is available anywhere books are sold (and get it on audiobook too so you can hear us read it to you ourselves!)

📚More Than a Body on Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/2bc6rdcs
🎧 More Than a Body on Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/More-Than-a-Body-Audiobook/035839385X
🗣TEDX talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/lindsay_kite_body_positivity_or_body_obsession_learning_to_see_more_and_be_more/up-next

01/29/2021

I've been enjoying leftovers of this recipe for the past few days so thought I'd share it here! I made mine in a pressure cooker, but the post also has instructions for stovetop or slow cooker :)

I used all frozen veggies so cut down the time to 4 mins, and also didn't add any salt (I find the curry paste I used has enough for my tastebuds).

Instant Pot Cauliflower Curry! Tender cauliflower, butternut squash, and red lentils cooked in a coconut-creamy red curry sauce. YUM.

12/05/2020

New blog post! Sometimes I feel there is a misconception that meal planning always goes hand-in-hand with restrictive diets. Today I'm sharing some thoughts & suggestions for an approach to meal planning that ISN'T rooted in deprivation & restriction. Instead, I explore how we can use meal planning as a tool for self-care, to help us consistently provide ourselves with nourishing & satisfying meals (while hopefully saving some time & money and reducing stress!)

I feel like there is a misconception that meal planning always goes hand-in-hand with restrictive diets. So today I’m going to talk about some methods for meal planning that can absolutely be aligned with and support a non-diet approach or intuitive eating. Having some sort of plan or structure is...

11/16/2020

In honour of Diabetes Awareness Month, I want to address another misconception around type 2 diabetes. There is so much stigma around the disease in general, and one specific area is around medications used to manage diabetes.
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Many people express guilt, shame, and feelings of failure around using medications to manage their blood sugar with type 2 diabetes. There is this narrative that the “right” way to manage type 2 diabetes is through “healthy lifestyle changes”, and if you end up needing medications, you have failed.
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Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not against lifestyle changes! I am a dietitian, after all, so obviously I believe nutrition can play a role and enjoy supporting people with making changes that work for them. Nor do I want to dismiss anyone’s very valid concerns about the potential risks & costs associated with medications.
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However, stigma, judgment & shame help no one. In fact, it can lead to delays in starting treatment - treatment that can provide immense benefit in management of blood sugar levels, which is key in preventing long term complications from diabetes. Stigma can also lead to stress, social isolation, and avoidance of healthcare - all things that hurt people’s health.
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Diabetes is a complicated and progressive disease, and appropriate & effective treatment needs to be individualized. Of course, a thorough exploration of risks & benefits of all the different options is necessary, but can we stop putting those different options in some sort of moral hierarchy?

11/11/2020

In honour of Diabetes Awareness Month, I thought I’d do some posts on this topic! Today I want to talk about a pretty pervasive and harmful myth. That is, the notion that type 2 diabetes is somehow “self-inflicted” or a moral failing of the individual. 
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This is simply not supported by the evidence. Although lifestyle factors like diet & physical activity do play a role, the development of type 2 diabetes is very complicated. Genetics & family history play a huge part, for one thing. And social determinants of health like income, racism, education, employment, access to healthy food & safe places for physical activity - these all factor in as well. 
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This is not to say that healthy lifestyle changes are pointless - for sure they can help in prevention of diseases such as diabetes. But there are other factors at play as well, from our genetics to the environment we live in. And the reality is, not everyone has equal access to the resources required to engage in health-promoting behaviours. Let’s take the blame and shame out of conversations about diabetes.
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11/08/2020

Exploring satisfaction is one of my favourite parts of working with people on their relationships with food. Getting in touch with hunger & fullness cues and honouring those cues is important, but satisfaction is also key, and it’s not the same thing as physical fullness.
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Oftentimes the messages we get around healthy eating make us feel like we need to find ways to fill ourselves up with as few calories as possible. If we are cutting out carbs, cutting out fat, or constantly trying to find lower-calorie “substitutes” for the foods we ACTUALLY want, this can leave us feeling unsatisfied. You might notice that you find yourself thinking about food a lot, or that you continue to eat past the point of comfortable fullness but still feel like something is missing.
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There is often some fear that allowing ourselves to pursue pleasure in eating will lead to overeating. In fact, feeling satisfied allows us to stop eating because we genuinely feel that we have had “enough.”
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Planning meals that include a balance of macronutrients (carbs, fat, & protein) helps us on a physiological level. Considering our preferences & what we really feel like eating helps with the mental piece - do you feel like something warm & savoury, cool & refreshing, etc?
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Now, this isn’t to say that every meal has to be perfect. There are lots of reasons that we may not have the resources to have exactly the meal we want at any given moment. But we can still try and identify if we are choosing foods from the perspective of trying to minimize calories/carbs/fat/etc, and then challenge those notions so we can invite enjoyment & pleasure into our eating experiences.

09/27/2020

This coming week (Sept 28 - Oct 2) is Weight Stigma Awareness Week. Weight stigma is a real threat to mental & physical health - please check out this article for more info.

Next week is Weight Stigma Awareness Week in the United States. To mark the occasion, read up on the stigma of weight and exercise — and why the COVID-19 pandemic is a more important time than ever to consider these...

09/06/2020

Rice bowls are one of my favourite meals to use up a bunch of veggies I have on hand. I love how you can experiment with different flavour and texture combinations! 😍
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This version included:
•lentils
•zucchini sauteed with onion & garlic
•roasted brussels sprouts
•diced bell peppers
•pickled cabbage (recipe from )
•sauce with miso, tahini, nutritional yeast & a bit of ACV (plus water to thin the consistency)

08/23/2020

This is a topic that comes up a lot. I put “success” in quotation marks for a reason though. For me, a big part of the process of intuitive eating is working through perfectionism and all-or-none thinking. A diet mentality forces us to think in terms of success/failure, good/bad, on the diet/off the diet. And it defines what “success” looks like in pretty rigid terms - following [insert food rules here], never eating [insert food here], eating x number of calories a day, losing x number of pounds, fitting into size x clothing…
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Even if we feel like the dieting approach just isn’t working, embracing a more intuitive way of eating can feel pretty scary too. In the image, I’ve listed a bunch of potential benefits of intuitive eating, based on scientific evidence, as well as my own personal & professional experience.
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But at the heart of it, intuitive eating is not something you can “fail” at. It’s not about becoming a “perfect” intuitive eater. The principles are not rules, and the whole thing is really about the process. And ultimately, just like how intuitive eating teaches you to tune in to your own wisdom around food - you also get to define what “success” looks like for you.

08/11/2020

Diet culture & healthism conflate these things all the time. What is healthism? A belief system that frames health as a moral obligation to be achieved through individual behaviour. In this way of thinking, health is a matter of individual responsibility, discipline, and willpower.
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Healthism ignores the bigger picture of social, cultural, and environmental factors that influence our health. And ultimately it leads to the judgment of a human’s value based on their perceived level of “health.” This is unjust and harmful. It leads to shame, which does not support health. We need to challenge these assumptions in order to foster true healing and well-being.