Christine Byrne, MPH, RD, LDN’s Tweets

Feb 15, 2021

National Eating Disorders Awareness (NEDA) week is coming. While education and awareness of EDs is important, I beg (I BEG!) every writer, editor, and influencer out there to think twice before publishing an ED recovery story. A thread on why these can be VERY counterproductive.

409

1,217

Rebecca Subbiah RDN (UK + US) (@anchorednutritiontherapy) • Instagram photos and videos

RebeccaSubbiah RDN

@chowandchatter

Nov 21

Awesome tips on gentle nutrition from

@christinejbyrne

and @lutzandalexander_rds wellandgood.com/gentle-nutriti

instagram.com

4. (And I can't stress this enough...) If you're known as 'the one who always comments on bodies/weight,' plenty of people (even family members who love you) will literally fear seeing you, and will feel uneasy around you, maybe forever.

3. Talking about weight ― instead of connecting on something deeper ― can kind of ruin the holiday. What a waste of an opportunity to talk about something that's joyful and/or makes you feel closer to someone.

2. Many people suffer from eating disorders in silence; comments about weight and dieting can be damaging. You never know if you're reinforcing disordered behavior, making someone feel ashamed, or sending the message that you're always paying attention to changes in their body.

1. You can't tell what's going on with someone's health just by looking at their body. Lots people justify weight/body comments with "I'm just worried about your health" or "I'm just congratulating someone on getting healthy!" Except that just isn't scientifically backed.

Stop Commenting On Someone's Weight Or Eating Habits At Thanksgiving

I wrote a story for

@HuffPostLife

four years ago about why you shouldn't comment on other people's bodies at Thanksgiving. (True all the time, but v relevant during gatherings w family you don't see often.) It's all still true — here are the highlights:

huffpost.com

Remarks about a person's appearance and health can be extremely damaging — and flat out wrong.

3. Remember that you ALWAYS get to decide whether to eat something or not. It's OK to eat the thing, and it's also OK to pass if you don't want it. The belief that food controls you and that you have no agency just amplifies food stress and makes you feel poweless.

2. When you're fretting about whether or not a food is bad, know that all food is just some combination of protein, carbs, and fat. (Sure, some foods have more vitamins and minerals, but there's no such thing as an "empty" calorie.)

1. When your brain starts to view food as the enemy (by scheming ways to avoid it, control it, resist it, eat this but not that, etc), remind yourself that food is *literally* essential to life.

To everyone who's stressing about being surrounded by delicious food this holiday season, here's a reframe: Being excited about food is a GOOD thing! Some tips for shifting your thinking from "food must be controlled" to "food is part of life, I'm allowed to enjoy it."

What do you think of

labeling food as "healthy"? See

quoting dietitians

(I'm baffled at why Dietary Guidelines are supposed to focus on way of eating yet we're back to "good v bad" food?)

The FDA’s New Plan to Label Some Foods as ‘Healthy’ Is a Bad Idea

It probably won’t improve public health—and it may do the opposite.

Oct 10

Any fellow RDs want to comment on the FDA's proposed "healthy" food definition/label rule for a story I'm writing?

Oct 7

A haunted house but it’s the cover of every women’s “health” magazine from the 90s and 2000s.

Sabrina Strings

@SaStrings

Sep 27

My recent interview for #SELFmagazine with

. We discussed whether diet culture only affects people who hope to lose weight. The answer? Nope.

‘Diet Culture’ Isn’t Just About Smoothies and Food-Tracking Apps

And it doesn’t only harm people who diet.

Cait is at NCSS!

@JustTeachingELA

Sep 26

Please stop assigning food diaries to students. Please.

445

4,153

48.6K

Cara Harbstreet, RD

@StreetSmartRD

Sep 22

“#DietCulture Isn’t Just About Smoothies and Food-Tracking Apps” in ⁦

@SELFmagazine

⁩ by ⁦

⁩

‘Diet Culture’ Isn’t Just About Smoothies and Food-Tracking Apps

And it doesn’t only harm people who diet.

Replying to

Abundance + permission are the two words that have helped me the most in my ED recovery.

It’s OK if this idea scares you. It probably does! Because you’ve been conditioned to believe you can’t trust yourself around food, especially food that tastes really good. This is a way to build back that self-trust. It might take time, but it works.

Another time, someone bought 5 pints of ice cream. They ate an entire pint the first night and didn’t feel great. But subsequent nights, they are just part of the pint, or no ice cream at all, because they knew there was plenty of ice cream available when they wanted.

I had a client once who always finished a large order of fries even when she was stuffed. So she tried ordering two large fries and putting them in a bag. And because there were way too many to finish, she didn’t have the ‘get rid of them!’ feeling. She ate less than half.

But if you have several more bags/cartons/boxes of it, that same thinking doesn’t apply. It’s much, much harder to “just get rid of it,” and you’ll eventually find that you’re able to stop sooner. It probably sounds scary, but it does work.

If there’s a food you “just can’t keep in the house because I won’t be able to stop eating them!” — here’s something to try: DO keep it in the house. AND buy a LOT of it. Why? Often when you feel guilty about eating something, you eat the whole bag/box/carton to GET RID of it.

Kourtney Kardashian French Fry Rule Is Flawed, Anti-Diet Activists Say

Sep 13

Delighted to be quoted in this

@carlasosenko

@Newsweek

piece alongside

@chr1styharrison

about why parents shouldn't restrict kids' food. It makes kids feel like they can't be trusted around food and leads to problems down the road.

newsweek.com

She recently revealed that her 12-year-old hasn't had a fry in a year. Activists say food restriction in kids could lead to disordered eating.

Sep 12

A quick reminder to no wellness influencers in particular that swapping extreme food restriction for an extreme workout routine and macro tracking isn’t eating disorder recovery, it’s input substitution.

Sep 12

I work with lots of college students, and I see firsthand how tough it can be to maintain a healthy body image in that phase of life. Thanks

@SELFmagazine

for letting me write about such an important topic!

How to Maintain a Healthy Body Image in College

First, know that weight gain is completely normal (and totally OK).

Abbie Attwood Wellness

@abbie_attwood

Sep 12

The elimination of a food from a person’s diet is a major risk factor for disordered eating. This is true with and without medical necessity. A thread👉🏼

Think about yourself five or ten years from now. Do you really want that future you to STILL be obsessing about food and hopping from diet to diet? No you don’t. You want to be someone who cares LESS about food and body and ha plenty of space in their life for other things.

Yes, healing your relationship with food and your body is freaking hard, and at first it might feel like continuing to diet or live with an ED is easier than learning an entirely new way to nourish and live in your body. BUT THE YEARS WILL PASS ANYWAY.

Honestly, you might spend that entire first year just figuring out how disordered behaviors came to be and what purpose they’re serving for you. You might spend another year just getting used to the idea of being allowed to eat what you want.

But ten years down the road, the person who committed to recovery/ditched dieting and weight loss attempts is almost definitely going to be better off than the person who just kept on dieting/acquiescing to their ED. It takes A LONG TIME to shift away from diet culture.

On the other hand, recovering from an eating disorder/healing your relationship with food sometimes has NO obvious payoff at first. It can feel frantic and like you’re “letting yourself go,” and progress isn’t linear. It’s also hard to measure.

Most folks are so used to diets and “wellness” programs that promise fairly quick, visible results. Of course, they don’t actually last. So the immediate payoff might be there, but the 10-year forecast for that diet is that you’ll regain weight and feel even worse about food.

It’s Bill Gates that said, “most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” Ofc he was talking about business but it’s absolutely true for healing your relationship with food, too. Hear me out:

We in this space often say that we’re “anti-diet, not anti-dieter.” In order for that to be true, we MUST make space for all the reasons someone chooses to diet or seems ambivalent to eating disorder recovery. It’s not as simple as just eating what you want and loving your body.

Diets (and eating disorders) can be a way to deal with trauma or feel in control of other issues. They can also provide the kind of structure that people crave at certain points of life, before they get out of control and start overtaking a person’s life/ruining their health.

It’s important for me as someone’s dietitian to know what parts of dieting/disordered eating/weight “controlling” served them, and how, and why. If you’re trying to heal your relationship with food, it’s important for you to know that, too.

In my initial appointments with clients, we go through their dieting/disordered eating history. And they’re often surprised when I ask, “what did you like about the diet?” The thing is, diets are a net negative but there are certainly things about them that feel good for people.