A non-diet dietician on tuning into your body and out of diet culture

I speak to Dietician Jasmine Hormati for some advice on how to start nurturing your body.

As we get older and start taking more of an independent interest in looking after our health, it can be tricky to know whether we are doing the right things. Social media feeds us a constant stream of contradictory advice about the ‘ideal diet’ and common misconceptions that promote unhealthy relationships with food. So, we reached out to Jasmine Hormati, a non-diet dietician who believes in intuitive eating, to give us some guidance.

Jasmine explains intuitive eating is simply “listening to your body’s ‘cues’ to determine when, how much and what to eat”. This approach helps combat the countless amounts of mixed messaging is circulating on the internet about how you should be nurturing your body. In other words, it totally rejects mainstream diet culture. Jasmine says: “Not only is the constant ‘healthy diet’ messaging confusing, but the weight stigma it perpetuates is actually far worse for our health.” She explains how the stress it causes can lead to inflammation in our bodies, leaving us at a greater risk of diabetes and heart disease. “When people are so focused on weight and following fad diets they may actually be doing themselves more damage,” she adds. Jasmine emphasises the importance of understanding that “weight isn’t a good indicator of health”.

For her, it’s far more important to focus on getting enough sleep, eating adequately, reducing stress and doing physical exercises that you enjoy. Jasmine encourages that you check in with your “physical and emotional needs” every so often throughout the day and respond to them accordingly.

Here are some good signals that your body might be trying to tell you something:

• Hunger pains - Eat
  

• Feelings of fullness - Stop eating
  

• Cravings for a type of food - Eat the chocolate!
  

• Feelings of tiredness - Sleep
  

• Irritability - Eat
  

• Difficulty concentrating - Water
  

• Bursts of energy - Exercise

With all this said, the bottom line is that “you are worthy as you are in your current body. You do not need to change your body or change what you're doing based on what someone else is telling you,” says Jasmine. “Try to tune into your intuition of knowing what works for you, what feels right for you and importantly - ask questions.”