Dr. Kerri Fullerton ND

Intuitive Eating. Health At Every Size Doctor

antidiet

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.

May 15th, 2023 in Barrie

June 2nd, 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

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!

“Don’t worry! It’s not a restrictive diet.”

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It seems that everyone understand that restrictive diets don’t work. So they tell me that it’s not a restrictive diet they’re just not eating xyz (insert long list of foods or ingredients that they’re not eating) 😔

They call it a “lifestyle”.

One of the (many) things that makes intuitive eating different from diets is the nuance, the exploration and the permission.

For example, I LOVE the taste and texture of cheese. Same for cream in my coffee or Alfredo sauce over pasta. AND dairy doesn’t sit so well in my guts 😕

When I lived in diet and wellness culture, I declared myself dairy-free! I sang the praises of dairy-free options and espoused the many health benefits of being dairy-free. At times I even went as far as demonizing dairy and blamed it for all kinds of health conditions. Btw, I’ve also done this with sugar, grains, fats, meats and soy at various times🤦‍♀️ I’m so sorry.

I felt guilty every time that I consumed dairy. I would berate myself for putting my body through that. And when I did eat dairy, I would eat ALL of the dairy. In for a penny in for a pound right?

Let me tell you about how it is now.

I’m MOSTLY dairy-free. By adding that one word it gives me permission to include dairy into my diet. The other night for instance, I had some lasagna. Not because it’s my favourite but because it was easy and accessible and that mattered at the time. The potential bloat was worth it for the ease of that meal. And since I had full permission there was so need to follow it up with a bowl of ice cream and block of cheese.

I acknowledge that dairy isn’t the devil. While it may CONTRIBUTE to SOME people’s health challenges it is not the cause nor the cure. And even if it does contribute to someone symptoms, they are not a lesser person for choosing to eat it anyway.

Absolute restriction, with the exception of anaphylaxis, is not necessary or healthy.

Food and health are not moral obligations. As such, guilt has NO place. If guilt starts to rise within me, I know that I need to take a closer look because it’s a sure fire way to know that it’s diet culture looming in my unconscious.

Let’s Chat

We Make Time for What’s Important

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Exactly!!

How many times was I told from diet culture guru’s (fitness trainers, ND’s, doctors, business coaches) that if I didn’t make time for my health then my ill-health would force me to take the time.

What none of them were referring to was my actual health. No, they were referring to my weight suppression through what I ate and how I moved.

On my journey to making peace with my body and my food, I learned that my health needed so much more than food and exercise and a ‘healthy weight’.

Thankfully, I’ve always had environmental safety. I live in Canada and I have always lived in safe neighbourhoods.

Finances were more precarious. While I’ve always lived well above the poverty line and had access to higher education, I have had times when I needed to choose between buying food or paying my bills. Because of my access and privilege, I’ve not been there for long. That kind of stress is debilitating. One cannot exercise or eat their way out of the impact of that stress.

My mental and emotional health HAD to take the front seat for years. I had traumas to unearth and process. I had to learn how to identify feelings and emotions and then I had to learn how to be with those feelings and emotions. While exercise and food choices can affect this part of things, they cannot fix this part of things.

But working on my financial health and mental wellbeing weren’t recognized as working on my health. The results of this kind of work didn’t show up on my body in a way that anyone celebrated.

There’s more to mental health than just being happy. There’s more to physical health that just body weight and shape. People who jog everyday can still have high blood pressure and cholesterol, while people who are overweight can be ‘normal’ for both. Don’t let someone tell you you’re not healthy because you are overweight. You can be health. You will be healthy.

Let’s Talk

A game that can’t be won isn’t a fun game at all

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Nobody wants to play a game that can’t be won.

Weight loss is one of those games.

Early on in our weight loss careers – and for many, it is a career – we did lose weight, and usually it was easy. That set the belief that weight loss is achievable, so we keep playing the game without realizing that we never get to play THAT game again.

That first weight loss attempt was unique. Our body wasn’t prepared for it. So while it sorted out how to protect you from starvation, the weight dropped off.

But your body is brilliant. It’s especially brilliant at taking care of you, and that means making sure that you don’t starve. And no, you don’t have to do anything extreme like drinking only shakes or fasting for this to happen. It will happen with ANY energy deficiency – even moderate ones.

Your body will ready for the next time. As soon as the energy starts to drop, it will pump out a bunch of hormones that will force you to think about food. You may be able to distract yourself a bit, but your body will keep pushing food as the priority – the same way that it would push air as a priority if your breathing were impaired.

Adrenaline will start to be pumped out more frequently, giving you a slight illusion that you’re kicking ass and taking names – feeling like a million bucks. Best. Diet. Ever! But that can’t be carried on long-term either. That system is meant to get you away from danger so that you can rest. It’s not designed as a permanent state of being. So the next time, that won’t last as long either. Your body will pump out cortisol that will leave you feeling more hungry, not less.

The weight loss game is rigged to fail. You cannot stop your body from protecting you – and you should not try. Instead of being mad at it, give it a quick thanks. It’s had your back this whole time.

So what then? Just give up?

The Game Is Rigged In The House’s Favour

Am I suggesting that you give up a game that rigged? Yes, yes I am.

I’m suggesting that you acknowledge that you’ve been tricked into playing this game for other people’s profit and agendas. Get mad! Take your ball and go home! Start playing a new game!!

In this game, you have your body’s back and it has yours. Together you can work as a team.

And the best part is that with this game … you can win on the regular. You become “the House.”

What makes this game so different?

You spend your time and energy focused on things that are within your control – your behaviours.

Ante Up for You!