Health at every size and intuitive eating

What is the perfect diet for a person? How to maintain the ideal weight? These are questions that many people may ask themselves more than once in their lifetime. To answer them, we invited Kiwi Te Cuida discussions with Raquel Lobatón, a nutritionist who created the concept of inclusive nutrition, diabetes educator, and body trust provider, who shared a different perspective on diets and food. Here’s a bit more about these concepts:What is inclusive nutrition and intuitive eating? It is a concept that associates various existing approaches, mainly from other countries, promoting health at every size, known as HAES (Health At Every Size). These are health approaches that aim to separate weight from health management, as well as a social justice movement fighting against systems of oppression and discrimination such as fatphobia that equate health with being thin. It acknowledges the existence of body diversity and invites people to forget about diets and restrictions and to engage in a healing process regarding their relationship with food and their bodies. In summary, it is a movement that promotes food freedom and body liberation.What are the main food myths? Raquel Lobatón points out that incorporating better health habits, such as sleeping well, eating, or getting medical check-ups continuously, improves health even if weight is not lost. She believes that the seven most ingrained food myths are the following:There is no single right way to eat. Humans are designed to eat flexibly, and eating is one of the most intuitive acts of human beings.We are not what we eat. A person's health is determined by countless variables, such as social conditions, access to health services, having time to cook, education level, genetic factors, among many others.You cannot guess a person's habits or health just by looking at them. Thinness is not synonymous with health, just as fatness is not synonymous with illness or bad habits.Diets do not work. If they did, people would only do one in their lifetime. They work only short-term, and it is scientifically proven that weight loss is not sustainable long-term for 95% of people, and those who diet regain it within 2 to 5 years. Moreover, when people regain weight, they often return with a more deteriorated relationship with their health and their bodies because the cycle of losing and gaining creates inflammatory processes.Not everyone can be thin. Body diversity exists, and it must be accepted, celebrated, and fought for equal treatment for all sizes, without body hierarchies.Fatphobia, this systematic discrimination validated by society against fat people, is a system of oppression and rejection as violent as racism, sexism, or homophobia. More can be researched on the topic under the concept of Weight stigma, where it reveals that even within health professionals, there is discrimination against fat individuals. The HAES movement promotes the elimination of terms like obesity and overweight because the former pathologizes size as a disease, and the latter would be comparable to talking about being tall.There is no good or bad food. There is food with different nutritional content.Let's take the weight off weight! For a world without prejudices or diets This movement, supported by numerous studies, fights for food freedom and body liberation, which can allow us to return to intuitive eating. In Raquel's words: “We are designed to eat everything; our bodies ask for what we need since we are born. Look at children; they have clear signals of need and satiety. It is diet culture that has ruined our relationship with food and bodies due to its value judgments.”Just think about the income generated by the diet industry each year: 72 billion dollars in the United States and 250 billion dollars worldwide. The premise is clear: “hate our bodies, present the before and after, which we must aspire to, and buy the current diet.” Intuitive and inclusive eating is an interdisciplinary approach that does not exclude medical nutritional therapy; its distinction is that it does not operate from restriction or weight-centered perspectives.Learn more about Raquel, the certifications she offers with other health professionals, and workshops on her official page. And don’t miss #KiwiTeCuida Mondays on our official Instagram.