Dr. Kerri Fullerton ND

Intuitive Eating. Health At Every Size (HAES) Doctor

Blog

Anti-diet Pop-up Clinics

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Finding an anti-diet doctor near me when I first rebelled against diet culture was virtually impossible. Finding any anti-diet, HAES-aligned, weight-neutral professionals hasn’t been easy for my patients either.

Anti-diet ND listens to the patient's chest

So, when I read the statistics about 40-60% of patients reporting medical weight stigma (Puhl et al 2022), it didn’t surprise me, but it still broke my heart. My patients have been telling me about their stigmatizing and dismissive experiences with medical and wellness professionals for years. After all, it’s part of the reason that I became an anti-diet doctor in the first place.

Too Many Patients Are Avoiding Medical Attention Due To Fear of Weight Stigma

Medical weight stigma is leading patients to avoid seeing a doctor at all. Patients have experienced outright refusal of testing until weight loss is achieved, misdiagnosis (all things are blamed on weight), and flippant recommendations for weight-loss surgery when they went in for a sore throat (sadly, an actual patient story).

Additionally, about 10% of Ontarians don’t have a family doctor. As a result, many chronic health issues aren’t managed. Diabetes and hypertension are left unchecked. Routine screening for cardiovascular disease (like cholesterol checks) and cancer (vaginal exams and pap tests) are left undone.

As a Naturopathic Doctor (ND) in Ontario, I’m uniquely positioned to offer weight-neutral care, free from weight stigma and shame. NDs in Ontario can offer the following:

  • bloodwork to monitor blood sugars, cholesterol, hormones, and more (judgment-free)
  • Test thyroid function and other hormones (without the recommendation of weight loss first)
  • physical exams (without being weighed)
  • prescription for certain medications, including thyroid and bio-identical hormones
  • provide vaginal exams including Pap tests

Want an anti-diet Pop-up Clinic in your city?

If you’d like to vote for a city near you, fill out the Pop-Up Clinic Survey here.

  • Vaginal exams and Pap tests will be offered in future clinics with enough interest
  • Table has weight limit of 1500 lbs
  • BP cuff fits up to 17″ or 42 cm

Upcoming Dates and Cities: To book, click on the date.

Certain Mondays in Barrie Sept-Dec

Sept 29th, 2023 in Ottawa

Directories to other anti-diet professionals

Counselor Directory

https://blossomcounsellingcentre.com/find-a-haes-provider

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-uu8nSoip1et80P6HHTOVKYB5aJI_PT0lX_AxQsBbJw/edit#gid=0

The Three D’s of Self-Care

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Reality Checks and Lessons from Self-Isolation

There was an email. Then a phone call urgently reminding me to check out email. A child in my son’s class tested positive for Covid-19. Now my son has to self-isolate for the next two weeks and get a Covid test done. My first thought – what about my self-care? Women are the most deeply affected by this pandemic, especially where child care is concerned. This is true in my house too. When my son isn’t in school, it’s my life that gets jarred the most. Even though I work, I still carry the heavier load where child rearing and the household are concerned[i].

Before I get too far into my story there’s something I want to be made clear right now: I have a wonderful partner who’s actively engaged in our child’s life. He contributes around the house and is super handy. I do not experience abuse at his hands or words. I am very privileged. What I’m about to share is not a knock at my husband or men individually, it’s about a cultural bias that we’ve all bought into and how I’ve learned to not break underneath it.

When the pandemic secured it’s spot in Canada back in March, children in Ontario were told to stay home from school. Through virtual appointments I was able to continue to provide care to my patients and pivot so that we were not affected financially (another privilege of mine that doesn’t go unnoticed or unappreciated).

Only now I had to run my business WHILE having my child home. A child with many questions about Covid, who missed his social interactions deeply, and needed more of me than usual (physically and emotionally). Many of my friends were doing this with two, three, and four children vying for their attention.

Simple things like my own lunch time turned into something completely different – it took more time, more thought, and more clean up. Suddenly I was in jeopardy of losing my alone time, rest time, and self-care time.

Women cary the heaviest burden at home

That’s not to mention my own mental health strains – my granny is ninety, my parents are in their seventies; how will my business be impacted by the economy when all of this is said and done…

Slowly we found a new groove. Summer brought opportunity for safe connections and social interactions. The numbers started to decline and the new normal stopped being such a drain on me mentally and physically.

Part of the new groove was shuffling my priorities and my schedule. Some of the planned projects got put on hold, or were removed from the queue altogether. My mental health and self-care took a higher rung on the ladder along with playing with my child, watching movies and taking naps.

I learned how to Delegate, Delay, and Delete.

These three D’s aren’t new to me per se. When my patients and clients are overwhelmed, I encourage them to look at their schedule with these three D’s in mind regularly.

When we take on more, either voluntarily or forcefully, we must remember to put other things down. Otherwise, the weight of it all will bury us.

Thankfully, this time I was faster at implementation than I was back in March.

Delegate

To delegate some tasks means that we have to admit that we’re at capacity. That can be hard for some people. Showing vulnerability isn’t always well practiced. To say to their partner “I need your help right now” can be very uncomfortable. It also means that we have to give up control – eek. Yep, the dishwasher will likely get loaded all wrong and it may need to be run twice (either to finish the dishes because they don’t fit as many in a load as we do or because they put so many in without rinsing them that twice is what’ll make em clean). The laundry may stay in baskets for the week until they’re dug out, worn, and need to be washed again; everyone will wear wrinkled clothes for a bit. If that thought makes you want to puke, then read on.

Delay

Delaying some responsibilities or commitments is another great strategy to temporarily redistribute the load. Sure it would be nice to keep up with all of the things. But you committed to those things under different circumstances that you’re in now. Give yourself some grace and reschedule some projects, meetings, or committees to later.

A quick note here about other people’s reaction to your making room for yourself. Someone is sure to say “Kerri, we’re all struggling right now, you don’t’ see me shirking responsibilities do you?” and that can leave you questioning this strategy. Look, the only people that get wound up about me setting boundaries, are those who benefit from my lack of boundaries.

I will not longer be shamed into thinking that my basic needs are not important. They are THE most important thing in my schedule. Without them, I cannot show up for my child, my partner, my family, my friends, or my patients at my best. Since serving others is a deep value of mine, I need to take care of me in order to take care of them. Simple as that. Sometimes my setting boundaries forces them to briefly see that they don’t do it for themselves, and instead of setting their own boundaries, they challenge mine. That’s okay. It’s their process. My job is to manage my own boundaries, not theirs. I can feel compassion for them because I’ve been there. I wish them well from my side of my boundary.

Delete

To Delete some things altogether can be very empowering. I realized that I was doing many of the items on my schedule because I thought that I ‘should’. It’s like when I was still stuck in diet culture and I ate certain foods because they were ‘good’ for me, not because I actually enjoyed them. It was so freeing to just say “I don’t like kale or quinoa” and to stop trying to find a way to choke them down. There are plenty of other wonderful foods that give me great nutrition and taste amazing. I’ll stick to those thank you very much. Same thing with the rest of my life.

How many things do you do around your house because that’s how it was done when you were a kid? I encourage you to ask yourself “Is this really important to ME? Or am I on auto-pilot here?”. Maybe you do certain things for fear that others will think badly of you if you don’t. At least become aware of your real motivation behind your actions. That in and of itself can free you up to choose for yourself.

One of the major obstacles to implementing the three D’s is knowing what you value in order to prioritize. In my Living Life As A Rebel course the very first thing that we do is figure out our values. Very few of us have ever really considered what ACTUALLY matters to US. Values are often adopted from others telling us what SHOULD matter to us and then we’re left overwhelmed, unfulfilled and unmotivated.

If I had to put this into steps it would look like this:

  1. Uncover your values. Do some heavy lifting and get clear on what you value most.
  2. Prioritize your schedule to reflect those values. Put those important things first and then fill in the blanks with other stuff.
  3. Be sensible and realistic with your expectations. I always hated scheduling because it forced me to see that I had too much on my plate. Instead of facing the reality that I had to delegate, delay or delete, I would avoid scheduling. That let me live the fantasy that I could do it all (work, parent, self-care, date my hubby, look after the house, see my friends, take up a hobby, work out, cook everything from scratch…). It also left me feeling like I wasn’t good enough in any area of my life.
  4. Protect your value actions. If family time is important, then protect.
  5. Understand that every time that you say yes, you’re saying no to something else. Very often that no is to yourself. Your basic needs are important and need to be met. Sleep is a basic need. Food is a basic need. Rest, intimacy, connection…all basic needs. Say yes to those more often.

Wow, that turned into a much longer essay than I had intended. This is just so important right now.

The world is talking about quarantine weight gain, stress eating and the health impacts of that. New Year’s weight loss ads are starting to flood our media and inboxes.

It would be easy to add a new plan in place and call it a ‘healthy lifestyle change’ forgetting that it’s simply adding to an already stressed system. The plan is doomed because it doesn’t start with your values. It doesn’t consider your time constraints, your emotional bandwidth or your mental well-being.

Isn’t it time to do things differently?  

[i] PMID: 32836987

Do I Trick or Do I Treat?

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Halloween can be a tricky dilemma for families, especially now when sugar and carbs are vilified by diet and wellness culture. Some believe we’re teaching our children to binge eat and that Halloween is unhealthy. At the same time, others believe that it is a childhood rite of passage.

Can you create healthy eating patterns for your children and participate in Halloween? I’ve heard of a few different strategies.

• Let your kids go collecting and limit how much they eat each day.
• Not restrict. Just let them have at it.
• Let them experience collecting candy but not let them eat it. Allow them to trade it for toys or cash.
• Not let them go. Take them to a movie instead.

My experience with Halloween was troubling as a child. I loved it! Up until we had to hand over our candy, and it was doled out in rations. It was stressful picking the one or two pieces I was allowed each day.

The best way to add value to anything is to restrict it. This is true in all areas of life. If everyone and anyone can get something, it’s not valued. If it’s rare, it’s revered, and its value increases. We want what we can’t have. And we know now from research that food restriction leads to disordered eating and secret eating. That is precisely what happened to me.

We are teaching our kids that candy is so special and rare. For some kids like me, this turns into a habit of secret eating and food hoarding. These children feel ashamed because they know they “shouldn’t,” but they can’t help themselves. They will ‘steal’ food and scarf it back as fast as they can before anyone catches them. This often leads to intrusive and obsessive food thoughts.

Perhaps it would be easier if you did not allow your kids to go trick-or-treating. Could that be a solution? Then there would be no candy to worry about. Unfortunately, being left out is hard on a kid’s self-esteem. Halloween is discussed on TV shows, at school, and with friends. It’s a big conversation – What will you go out dressed up as? What candy did you get? So as a parent, this wasn’t a solution for our household.

We’ve allowed my son to go out and get his loot. Of course, we go through it to ensure it’s safe to eat. Then when he is going to eat his candy, he eats with attention paid to the candy itself. At first, he wasn’t allowed to eat the candy mindlessly while watching TV or playing video games. He could eat at the table or sit on the floor with his candy spread out. Now, we don’t enforce the mindful bit as much. He’s learned to eat until he’s done.

What’s happened in my house using this approach is that candy is never gone. Every year there is always leftover candy getting tossed out the following September. Only the candy that is tasty and satisfying gets eaten. Over the years, there has only been one big tummy ache from overeating candy. That stomach-ache wasn’t enjoyable, so he hasn’t done it again.

If this is too scary, consider putting some candy out at a few different snacks and mealtimes throughout the weeks. Put it out with the rest of the foods that you’re serving. Let them decide what order they will eat their food in. If they know it’s regularly coming and can eat it without judgement, it’s much easier for them to listen to their bodies.

Remember, they’re going to be exposed to sugar in life. I see our job as parents to help them feel confident and competent in managing whatever food is in front of them. Trust is built through experience, so I believe that they need to experience a lot of different foods in different ways to see what feels good for them.

How do YOU Measure Success?

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Measuring success is deeply engrained in both business and personal development. Sadly, we are often encouraged to measure something that is actually irrelevant to our real goals.

For instance, measuring the number of followers that I have doesn’t reflect how I’m doing financially. Just like measuring my weight or inches doesn’t actually reflect my health or my worth.

When my patients choose to work with me they are often perplexed on how to measure their progress. “How will I know if it’s working?” is a common question.

Since September is the unofficial new year and therefore wrought with weight-loss ads promoting themselves as get healthy schemes, I figure that now’s a good time to review some non-scale related measurements of success.

It’s important for me to take a moment here and speak to context. Any of these can become a substitute for the scale if we give it veto over how we’re allowed to feel about ourselves. For instance, if I use the fact that I ate outside of biological hunger cues as evidence that I’m failing, then that’s really no different than using the scale.

Measurements are data. And data doesn’t have a moral value. It’s not good or bad, it just is. If you’re not yet at a place where you can’t separate data and morality, then measurements are not likely a healthy part of your progress at the moment.

All of that to say, stay curious. Start your sentences and ponderances with ‘isn’t it interesting…’.

Here are some of the measurements that my patients have come up with over the years:

  • How peaceful are they with food and body
  • How often did they honour their hunger/fullness cues
  • How far past comfortable fullness did they go? Did they let themselves get as hungry as they use to?
  • How much time are they spending thinking about food or their body
  • How many times did they say no to issue or guard a boundary
  • How quickly did they pivot out of food police voices and into IE voices
  • How many did they choose calm over chaos
  • How many times did they check in with their body for direction? (Even if they weren’t able to fulfill the request)
  • How long did they feel the feels before using a coping strategy
  • How is their energy
  • What about strength or endurance? Have they changed?

In the September MLR we are going to walk through all of this in greater detail. If you’re looking to make some diet free goals, then here’s your group support.

Join the MLR today!

Creating Weight Neutral Goals

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As September rolls around again, we enter the next weight loss season. It’s the unofficial New Year and it’s just as full as ‘time to get healthy’ schemes as January is.

Let’s get one thing clear. Health is not weight loss. Losing weight isn’t the same thing as improving your health. Neither health nor weight loss are behaviours.

If health is important to you (and it’s not a moral obligation for it to be) – but pursuing weight loss hasn’t produced long-term results – then maybe it’s time to take a different approach?

Welcome to Weight Neutral Healthcare. It’s the kind of health care that bodies of all sizes can participate in. The focus is on health and healthy behaviours vs weight and weight loss.

Let’s say that you’d like to become more active this fall. That behaviour is linked to improved blood sugar regulation, lower blood pressure, and improved cardiovascular function. Awesome!

In order for you to receive those health benefits*, being more active is something that has to last. It needs to be part of your life in a sustainable way. And it DOES NOT need to lead to weight loss in order for those health benefits to be bestowed upon you.

(*The exception may be blood sugar control as this side effect of movement can have an immediate effect that can last upwards of 24 hours.)

So Jillian Micheals style bootcamps that kick your ass and cause you pain, may not be the way to go.

Measuring your weight or inches for signs of success aren’t going to keep you moving for long. Measuring something that’s entirely outside of your control isn’t setting yourself up for success.

“Enough on the ‘what not to do’ Kerri. What do I do instead?”

I’m so glad that you asked! 🥰

1. Get clear on what really matters to you.
I’ll tell you a little secret. I don’t exercise because it’s good for me. I don’t care enough on the hard days for that to get me moving. I move because I love being outside. Bonus points if it’s social. It’s good for my mood and my energy. It influences how I show up in my life. That matters to me.

2. Create goals that are within your control.
‘Lose xyz pounds by Thanksgiving’ is a crappy goal because it’s not within your control. ‘Move my body everyday’ is a better goal because it is within your control.

3. Set yourself up to win.
Lower the bar. Instead of ‘do yoga for 45 minutes everyday’ try ‘do yoga everyday’. That way you can do any amount of yoga from one deep breath in mountain pose to 100 sun salutations and everything in between.

Consistency trumps intensity where most things are concerned. Showing up to a healthy behaviour regularly will have a lasting effect on your health. Health kicks and bootcamps won’t.

If you’re looking for some support this fall, check out my program Mastering Life As a Rebel. Each of these steps has its own video and worksheet.

My size doesn’t limit my participation

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I love being on the water. I love being near water. It just soothes me in a way that nothing else can.

But being in the water typically means wearing a bathing suit. And for most of my life that was hard. Having other people see my body, my fear of their judgement about my body – it was distracting from the activity that I was participating in.

Let me call out my privilege right now. I’ve never been in a really big body. The body that I have now is the biggest one I’ve had. I didn’t have to worry about finding a kayak that would support my weight or accommodate my size. That is a privilege.

But I didn’t understand the concept of privilege back then, and honestly, I don’t think that knowing it would’ve changed how hard it was to be seen. Because my body image challenges have never been about my body.

Let me say that again: my body image issues weren’t about my body.

My lack of body confidence came from growing up around women that were always at war with their own bodies. Always on a diet or about to start a diet after falling off the wagon. They spoke harshly about their own bodies and those of others.

My fear of judgement was part of undiagnosed anxiety.

My body dissatisfaction was from girls calling other girls (that were my size or smaller) fat. And hearing things like “if I ever get like that just shoot me”.

I believed with all of my being that I was too big and that if I could just have the body that I wanted then….then I’d be happy and confident.

Being able to enjoy being on the water without all of that chatter is one of the best results of my #foodfreedom #bodyacceptance journey.

🏝 traveling to Hawaii and actually being there (vs in my head)
🌺 paddle boarding with my friends in San Diego without comparing myself
☀️ saying yes to an impromptu kayak adventure with friends

I really didn’t realize how much life I was missing because of my focus on how I looked. By either opting out because of a bad-body-image-day or missing out while I was there because of the chatter in my head.

My size doesn’t limit my participation in life unless I let it. This is where understanding my privilege has helped so much because that statement isn’t actually true for a lot of people. A lot of people can’t participate because our world isn’t set up for large and very large bodies.

While I do my part to create a world of inclusion, I will no longer miss out on the opportunities life has on offer.

What would you do if you weren’t thinking about how you looked? Or worried about what other people thought about how you looked?

Let’s find out!

Intuitive Eating and Food Sensitivities

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Cheese is delicious. And my body isn’t such a big fan. My mouth and brain are all in. My guts…not so much.

Making peace with food can be tricky and more nuanced when there are food sensitivities. How can I have unconditional permission to eat if I know that some foods will cause unpleasant symptoms?

I have to remember that I am allowed to eat anything that I want, including cheese. I’m a grown woman with full autonomy over my food choices. So if I want to eat cheese, I can. And if I choose to eat cheese I will also experience some uncomfortable gut stuff.

How does that saying go? You are free to choose, but you are not free from the consequences of that choice.

So I ask myself, which experience would I prefer? I can enjoy the experience of the cheese and suffer the experience the gut stuff. Or I can experience the sense of loss by not eating the cheese and have no gut stuff.

As long as I don’t judge one choice as right and one as wrong, I just get to choose. Sometimes the cheese is the right choice. Pizza for instance can sometimes be an experience worthy of some gut stuff. Often it’s not.

Here’s another example of choose the experience.

I’m prone to under-eating during the day. I get into whatever I’m working on and don’t notice my hunger cues until I’m REALLY hungry. A really hungry body makes difference choices than a comfortably hungry body does. From what it craves to how much food is needed to satisfy. I prefer the comfortably hungry choices to the over hungry choices. So, I set reminders to check in with my hunger levels throughout the day. If I’m hungry but find myself wanting to “just do one more thing,” I ask myself which experience I would prefer. Again, without judgement.

And if I choose to work instead of eat, and I find myself into old food patterns later in the day, I remind myself with compassion that that was the experience that I chose for the day.

We get to make these choices so many times during the day. As long as judgement is left out, it can be an empowering experience.

If you’re looking for help in designing a strategy to allow you food freedom, book a call to see if we’re a good fit.

Let’s Connect!