Obesity & Cancer – let’s get this straight shall we?

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You might have been lead to believe by recent Cancer Research UK (CRUK) campaigns and from other equally reputable (and some probably less so) sources that we now have concrete evidence that being obese (in and of itself) is a cause of cancer; the way that we’re sure that smoking is. This though, is not a fact. Cancer is such an emotive topic and the causes, treatment and life-changing effects it can have are vastly complicated. But to link obesity and smoking together as equal causes of cancer is just wrong. Read more for why and what CRUK could have done better.

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Set-point weight, erm…what’s that?!

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Put simply set-point weight is the weight that your body will be at when you’re eating a wide variety of a balance of foods and taking part in enjoyable, life-enhancing exercise. It’s the weight that your body naturally wants to be at, without you even having to think about it. This is largely determined by our genetics and is the weight that our body really wants to be, no matter whether that looks like the socially accepted version of a body or not. When I think about my own body I don’t have the same shape as my mum, sister or grandma but I look exactly like my grandpa’s sister – genetics huh, kind of cool, can’t escape it! We’re a diverse population, for the most part we accept that but what we don’t accept is the diversity in our bodies.

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Intuitive eating – the basics

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Because I always like to start with a good definition, let’s get one for intuitive eating by one of the creators themselves:

“Intuitive Eating is an evidenced-based, mind-body health approach, comprised of 10 Principles and created by two dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in 1995. It is a weight-neutral model with a validated assessment scale and over 90 studies to date (Tribole 2017)… Intuitive Eating is a dynamic integration between mind and body.  The principles work by either cultivating or removing obstacles to body awareness, a process known as interoceptive awareness.  Essentially, Intuitive Eating is a personal process of honoring health by listening and responding to the direct messages of the body in order to meet your physical and psychological needs.”

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RE-POST: The Morality of Food

Angels and Devils

When deciding what to eat day to day do you choose the foods that you love, that give you the most enjoyment and satisfaction? Or do you see your favourite foods yet deprive yourself? Have foods become divided in your mind into go and stop, fake and real, right and wrong?

For many people foods have become just this; firmly placed into separate camps that either welcome and nourish or tempt and erode health. However, as I’ve touched upon in previous posts (see the dangers of dichotomising food) there is absolutely no need to draw these distinctions and place morality and emotions onto our food. So why is this something that we see every day?

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RE-POST: Diets don’t work. Deal with it.

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If you look up the word ‘diet’ in the Oxford English dictionary you get different definitions, two of which are below:

Noun: “the kinds of food that a person, or animal, habitually eat”

Verb: “to restrict oneself to small amounts or special kinds of food, in order to lose weight.”

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RE-POST: Why your moisturiser could be damaging your skin!

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Whenever I would say this to my clients they would always look at me shocked and tell me ‘I’ve been told to cleanse, tone & moisturise for my entire life!’ From an early age we’re constantly taught to moisturise our skin to stop it drying out, but this actually is doing more damage than good.

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Confessions of an Aesthetican

I have done countless consultations and treatments in my time as an Aesthetician, but not many people really understand what therapists do and see on a daily basis. This week I thought it would be fun to do something a little different and get some things off my chest as I confess shocking stories and gross fascinations, try not to judge me…

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Body size and shape doesn’t matter as much as you think… go figure.

Bodies of All Shapes and Sizes

Ever heard someone describe themselves as a pear, apple, spoon or diamond? These terms are commonly thrown about to describe the shape of our bodies and are often done so with a roll of our eyes at the inevitable misfortune that we don’t have the longed for female hourglass shape or male inverted pyramid. There’s a lot of talk about how diet and exercise can help to sculpt our body into the perfect shape which many of us fall for as we wage perpetual war on our bodies. We don’t try to fight our shoe size… our height… or our eye colour. So why do we fight so hard against our body shape and weight?

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7. Enjoyable eating culture – because food should be enjoyable!

Enjoyable eating culture

Food, diet and eating habits are part of a bigger picture that includes cultural contexts of eating that, in part, inform our behaviours. In order to have a sustainably healthy and enjoyable diet the context of eating should also be taken into consideration. Food should give us pleasure, it’s biological, we can’t (and shouldn’t) deny it, but how we eat our food and who with plays a role in this. In this finale of the 7 principles of sustainable eating I look at what, from my point of view, is one of the most important aspects of food – pleasure.

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Already regretting your choice in New Year’s resolution..? Try these anti-resolutions instead.

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Another year is here, which means the usual barrage of January promises to ‘be good’ this year and buckle down to your {insert here} diet regime or exercise plan. Sound familiar? It’s how New Year’s have tended to go for the majority of us… But this year I sense a slight paradigm shift, with the acknowledgement that resolutions half-heartedly made once a year DO NOT work. Particularly when they focus on how we look and the need to improve this to improve how we feel. So in this post we’ll be exploring some anti-typical resolutions that might just give you that warm, fuzzy feeling you were hoping for.

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