Beyond the Headlines: Unpacking the CSIRO Healthy Diet Score Report 🙄
Recently, the CSIRO (Australia's national science agency) unveiled its Healthy Diet Score report, shedding light on the eating habits of Aussies over an eight-year period, from May 2015 to July 2023. The survey, designed to assess nine facets of diet quality and compliance with the Australian Dietary Guidelines, assigned each participant a score out of 100.
The Authentic Eating Matrix 🎉
“Life is too short to put up with a crappy relationship with food or be unhappy with how we’re nourishing ourselves.”
Eating and the Nervous System 🧠
The nervous system and our eating are intricately linked in SO MANY ways. Many of which we aren’t even aware of. But in order to understand the connection, it helps to first understand nervous system basics. I'll leave that one up to the experts, so here's a great little post outlining the basics here:
Food is a vessel through which love flows 🥣
Human infants are the most vulnerable and require the longest duration of care of all mammals.
Babies requires regular feeding, and when caregivers do so, they support attachment, bonding and love.
Babies get energy from food, turning that energy into love in return.
As we get older, feeding ourselves becomes a form of self-love.
Let's talk about periods and body shame 🪞
Unfortunately we always jump to blaming the female body (thanks patriarchy). We jump to content about “beat the bloat” or “cure your PMS” or “heal your hormones”. And don’t get me wrong, I get it. Finding relief from symptoms is justified.
Why is nutrition like a row boat? 🛶
Picture yourself sitting in a row boat. You’ve got a paddle in each hand. One paddle represents your nutrition and self-care knowledge. The other paddle represents your intuition and connection to your body sensations and cues. So nutrition and intuition.
Why doing body image work is like cleaning out the fridge 🧼
Picture your fridge. On the bottom shelf, pushed right to the back, lies your favourite Tupperware. Inside is that leftover curry that you had two weeks ago. Or could it have been four weeks ago?
You know it’s there. You get a glimpse of it every time you open the fridge door. Every time you unload the groceries, you think “I should really clean that out. I need the space. But I reaaaally don’t want to.” And so you just avoid it. You pretend it doesn’t exist.
Why I don’t say “beat the bloat” 🙊
Beat means to defeat. It insinuates power over or superior to your body. When I talk about soothing your bloating, I want to insinuate working with and caring for your body.
Can endometriosis impact your relationship with food and body? 🤷🏻♀️
Endometriosis is a condition that can result in you feeling like your body is out to get you. That even simple bodily functions feel out of control. “What’s my experience of pain going to be like today?” “Will I be bloated?” “Will I have diarrhoea or not go to the bathroom for the next five days?”
Surely that has a profound impact on how you feel about your body.
How is the menstrual cycle like a wave? 🌊
One of my favourite things to do when demystifying the menstrual cycle is comparing the menstrual cycle to a wave. Comparing our menstrual cycle to a wave helps to simplify our understanding of the menstrual cycle down to two phases, just like the ebb and flow of a wave. What I also love about the wave analogy is that it captures the subtle differences in energy in each phase beautifully. There’s a bit for prior knowledge required, so bear with me.
How do intuitive eating and periods go together? 🍫
Intuitive Eating and menstrual cycle awareness can absolutely go hand in hand. In fact, learning to understand our cyclic nature can support our journey to becoming an Intuitive Eater!