The Full Life

Here we go.

Welcome, welcome!

Thank you so much for being here - please know I am feeling very excited to have you reading this. I want to use this post to explain what led me here. I’m going to try not to get too into the weeds quite yet - this is still very new. But let’s jump right in!

The Full Life is a concept that has been growing in my mind for my entire life. The first time I remember being conscious of my looks and how other people perceived my appearance was when I was about 4 years old. My friend at daycare took one look at my pigtails and called me names. I pulled her hair. We both got in trouble. And I didn’t wear pigtails again until my friends thought it would be a funny “theme” (??) for Fridays in Junior High. And the craziest part about all this was that I really felt conflicted about participating even by the time I was in junior high because I was still so insecure about the insult thrown at me as a little kid. Yes, as I write this now, I am well aware that I didn’t need to take life quite so seriously in my younger years.

But what I’m really trying to point out is that we are programmed from a very young age to attach our worth to our looks. It’s wild to think that even at 4 years old I knew I was supposed to feel bad when people make negative (or at least what we perceive to be negative) comments about our looks/beauty/body. I also know I’m not alone in this. They’ve done studies that have shown that young girls whose mothers diet are highly likely to develop their own fear of being fat. The APA guidelines now recommend starting weight management interventions in 2-year-olds (read why that’s bs here). Diet culture is set up to take away our trust in our bodies and our sense of worth outside of our bodies as soon as humanly possible. And guess what - that ends up taking away a lot of joy for a lot of people. Our existence becomes about smallness instead of fullness the second we start to equate our sense of self and self-worth with the size and appearance of our body. It leads to spending more time, more energy, and more money on the pursuit of thinness and beauty instead of on… literally anything else.

So here we are again:

Welcome, welcome! Let’s disrupt some cultural norms! Let’s challenge some disordered beliefs about food! Let’s show ourselves a little love and compassion!

We all deserve more - we deserve full lives. Full of relationship. Full of joy. Full of love. Full of really delicious food.

Want to know what you can expect when you subscribe to The Full Life?

1. Semi-regular rantings from me about diet culture, fatphobia, the normalization of disordered eating habits, the pressure we put on girls and women to look perfect all the time, and probably a lot more.

2. Semi-regular education about all things nutrition - I have a master’s degree in Medical Dietetics and a passion for busting nutrition myths.

3. Basically, just semi-regular thoughts, feelings, insights, and resources from a registered dietitian. Maybe this will develop into something more structured. Maybe it won’t. Thanks for being here anyway!