Maybe it’s because I’m getting older or maybe it’s because I’ve been a dietitian for nearly 20 years now, but I have some opinions. Some come from working in the field I work in, some come from living in LA and seeing how diet culture shows up daily. Some are just Aaron’s thoughts.

So, in no particular order, here are some hot takes about food, bodies, diet culture, and apparently a few things that have absolutely nothing to do with any of those.

• You probably don’t need more protein. Coffee definitely does not need protein infused into it. It’s coffee. Let it be coffee.

• Ketchup does not belong on eggs. I’m not yucking your yum, but for me, it’s a pass.

• Walking counts as movement. So does dancing around your house. We have made movement far too complicated.

• Cauliflower is cauliflower. It’s not rice. Let rice be rice and let cauliflower be cauliflower. The same goes for zucchini and noodles for that matter.

• Frozen meals are good and extremely useful. That’s it. That’s the take.

• I don’t care what you eat. Unless you’re paying me to care, I really don’t want to talk about what your diet consists of. You don’t have to explain what you ordered to me because I’m a dietitian. I’m off the clock. Eat your food.

• Costco has good food! Rotisserie chicken? Yes. Pizza? Yes. Soft serve? YES.

• It’s okay if you don’t like vegetables. Seriously. You’re an adult. You don’t have to pretend you love roasted Brussels sprouts to prove something about yourself.

• Dinner has to have sides. This one is just for me and my plate! Does this make any logical sense? No. But I don’t want just one thing on my plate. Give me an entrée and some sides, please.

• Enough with the supplements, people. Enough.

• No, Halo Top is not nearly as good as ice cream. Don’t try to convince me it is. And guess what? The same thing goes for froyo. Don’t @ me, bruh.

• Men struggle with eating disorders and body image. This shouldn’t be a hot take. Somehow, it still needs to be said.

• That 26.2 sticker on your car is annoying. I don’t need to know that you ran a marathon. Just pay attention to the road and drive.

• Salt Fat Acid Heat should be mandatory reading for anyone recovering from an eating disorder. Learning about food isn’t only about nutrition. Learning how salt, fat, acid and heat make food taste good matters. Pleasure matters. Knowing how to make food you actually want to eat matters.

• If I start shopping at Erewhon, assume I’m being held against my will and come save me.

• I hate picking where to eat. It’s overwhelming. There are too many choices. I would much rather someone else pick the restaurant and tell me where we’re going.

• Street tacos are the best. If you come to LA, don’t leave without having at least three or four. This is important.

• Diet culture isn’t going away. I wish it were. But I don’t think the goal can be to completely shield ourselves from it. We’re going to encounter diets, weight-loss talk, before-and-after pictures, wellness bullshit and people telling us what we should and shouldn’t eat. Part of the work is learning how to live in that world without letting it run our lives.

• Star Wars is better than Star Trek. This is not technically related to food or body image, but I’m including it anyway.

• Pizza is good at any time of day. Deep dish? Great. New York style? Great. Leftover pizza straight from the refrigerator for breakfast? Absolutely. Just give me some pizza.

• I dream of eating at The French Laundry one day. Tommy (as in Thomas Keller), if you’re reading this, hook me up.

• Food is emotional. Of course it is. Food is connected to family, culture, celebration, grief, comfort, memory, pleasure, connection and about a million other things. I don’t understand why we’ve decided the ideal relationship with food is somehow an emotionless one.

• Food is hard. And it’s okay that it is. Feeding ourselves requires a surprising amount of work, and struggling with it doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong.

That’s it. Those are my hot takes, at least for today. I’m sure I have more. I’m also sure you disagree with at least a few of these, which is kind of the point. We don’t have to agree about ketchup, cauliflower, protein, pizza, or Star Wars. Although, obviously, I’m right about Star Wars.

Mostly, I think we could all stand to take food a little less seriously sometimes. Food matters. Our relationships with our bodies matter. And sometimes it’s also okay to just have an opinion about froyo.

Share

Leave a comment

There’s a phrase I hear all the time in my work: “I don’t know why feeding myself is so hard.” And when someone says this to me, I have two responses. There’s probably the more professional dietitian response, and then there’s what I’m actually thinking: Fuck yeah, it’s hard. I know. It’s hard for me too.

We expect eating to be easy. It’s something we have to do every day, multiple times a day, so you’d think by now we would have figured it out. And when we haven’t, when we’re standing in front of the refrigerator with no idea what to eat or realizing it’s 3:00pm and we haven’t had lunch, it’s easy to assume we’re the problem. But sometimes food is just hard.

I wish it wasn’t. I wish I had some great dietitian secret that made feeding yourself simple, but the fact of the matter is that food is complicated. And I think we’ve actually made it more complicated by spending decades pretending it isn’t.

Diet culture has always tried to simplify food. This is good. This is bad. Eat this. Don’t eat that. Follow these rules and everything will work out. Wellness culture hasn’t exactly helped. Now we have even more people telling us how we’re supposed to eat. Get enough protein. Eat more fiber. Balance your blood sugar. Avoid ultra-processed foods. Make sure you’re eating enough plants. Don’t eat too late. Don’t eat too early. Meal prep. Cook at home. Read the ingredients. Blah blah blah blah.

The individual messages can sound incredibly simple. Collectively, they’re exhausting. And they teach us that somewhere out there is the person who knows how we’re supposed to eat. We just need to find them. We haven’t been taught to trust ourselves around food. We’ve been taught to search for the expert who can give us the answer.

And that’s just figuring out what to eat. Then we actually have to feed ourselves. We have to have food in the house. We have to remember to eat. We have to stop whatever we’re doing long enough to eat it. Maybe we have to cook. Maybe we have to clean up afterward. I hear people say things like, “I don’t have time to eat,” or, “I’m in the zone right now. Food is a distraction.”

Then there’s the idea that we should be cooking. Except maybe you don’t want to cook. Maybe you don’t know how to cook. Maybe you normally enjoy cooking but today you absolutely do not. All of that counts. I’m not sure where we got the idea that any of this was supposed to be easy. Actually, maybe I am.

Diet culture makes it look easy. Wellness influencers make it look easy. Social media makes it look really easy. Even cooking shows have been doing this forever. Julia Child could make beef bourguignon look simple. But real life isn’t an edited cooking show. Things don’t go as planned. We’re missing an ingredient. Something burns. We get home later than expected. The thing we bought three days ago suddenly sounds terrible. Someone else in the house doesn’t want what we want. We’re tired. We’re overwhelmed. We don’t want to make another decision.

And yet when feeding ourselves becomes difficult, we rarely stop and think, “Wow, this is actually asking a lot of me today.” Instead, we tend to think, “Why can’t I do this?” That’s where shame shows up.

Of course, shame isn’t new to diet culture. Shame is central to diet culture’s success. We’ve been taught to feel ashamed for eating the “wrong” foods, for eating too much, for not having enough control, for not planning ahead, for ordering takeout again. Shame around food is familiar. The meal isn’t the problem. I’m the problem. I should have planned better. I should cook more. I shouldn’t be eating this again. This doesn’t have enough protein. I should be better at this.

And for what it’s worth, I’m a dietitian and I still find food hard. One of my least favorite things is choosing a restaurant when I’m meeting friends or family. It’s not because nothing sounds good. It’s almost the opposite. There are too many options. I can get stuck trying to find the “best” place instead of just picking somewhere that’s going to be perfectly fine.

I do the same thing at home. I’ll open the refrigerator and stare at all the food and think, “There’s nothing in here I want to eat.” My overwhelm around food used to be much more connected to what I thought I should or shouldn’t eat. I’ve done a lot of work around that. Now sometimes I’m just overwhelmed by options. I’ve traded one for the other. So no, I haven’t figured all of this out because I have RD after my name.

What I have gotten better at is allowing food to be good enough. Good enough can look like a lot of different things. Sometimes it’s a PB&J. Maybe it isn’t exciting. Maybe it isn’t going to tantalize every one of your taste buds. But maybe the creamy peanut butter tastes good. Maybe you get the sweetness from the jelly. Maybe you really like the bread. Simple can still be enjoyable.

Or maybe dinner is a frozen pasta dish from Trader Joe’s. You look at it and think, “I should probably have some protein with this.” Maybe you should, but you don’t have any. Or you don’t want to cook any. Or adding another thing to this meal is the difference between eating dinner and continuing to stand in the kitchen trying to construct the perfect meal. Eat the pasta, enjoy it, and give up the need for every meal to be perfectly “balanced.” Sometimes the job of dinner is dinner.

And I think there’s something else that happens when we give ourselves that permission. Food has the opportunity to become interesting again. When we’re constantly worried about doing food correctly, we lose some of the joy of eating. We also lose our creativity and curiosity.

What happens if you try something new? Maybe you cook something you’ve never made before. Maybe you order something you’ve never eaten. Maybe you try a food you decided years ago that you didn’t like. And maybe it sucks. That’s okay too. A meal that doesn’t work isn’t a failure. You didn’t fail because the recipe didn’t turn out. You might need to make something several times before you figure out how you like it. You might need to try a food several times before you decide what you think about it. There’s purpose in exploring food without needing every experience to be a success.

I think that’s what I want us to get back to. Not perfect eating or effortless eating, but eating with a little less judgment and a little more curiosity. I want us to be kinder to ourselves when feeding ourselves feels much harder than we think it should.

Because it is hard. It can be hard for someone who thinks about food for a living. It can be hard for me. And if it’s hard for you too, you’re not doing something wrong.

Keep it simple when you need to. Choose something convenient. Eat something that’s just okay. Make something new and screw it up. Have the PB&J. Eat the pasta. You don’t have to ace every meal. Sometimes eating, no matter what it is, is enough.

I’m Trying Something New

Before you go, I want to share something new I’m trying here.

I’ve really come to value this space and the opportunity to think, write, and have conversations about food, bodies, and the things that make all of this so complicated. I want the regular essays I publish here to remain free and accessible. That isn’t changing.

I’m also opening an optional paid subscriber tier for people who want a little more and who would like to support this work. For $5 a month, paid subscribers will receive one or two additional posts each month. Sometimes that might be a written companion to a free essay. Other times it might be an audio or video where I explore an idea more practically or personally. Paid subscribers will also have access to subscriber chat and occasional conversations or Q&As.

I don’t know exactly what this will become yet. I’m going to experiment, listen to what subscribers find useful, and see what I enjoy creating.

To begin, I recorded a subscriber-only audio companion to this post called “How I Make Food a Little Easier at Our House.” I share the structure my family uses to plan weekday dinners, divide some of the responsibility, turn leftovers into lunch, and reduce the number of food decisions we have to make during the week.

A paid subscription is one way to support my writing and help me continue making space for this work. But if paying isn’t something you want or are able to do, you will still receive the regular essays you’ve been getting. Those are staying free.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Read more

Last Saturday, I drove home from camp after spending three weeks there. It’s a long drive from Hyampom to Los Angeles. About 600 miles. Windy roads, long stretches of interstate, and a lot of time to think. You leave one world and slowly arrive in a very different one. It’s 10 to 12 hours to reflect on where you’ve been before life starts asking things of you again.

Somewhere during that drive, I realized I wasn’t just driving home. I was carrying pieces of camp home with me too.

Three Weeks Ago

When I arrived at camp three weeks earlier, I was full of emotions. I cried as I started the final leg from Redding to Hyampom. I had been looking forward to these three weeks for a long time. It had been a year in the planning, and here it was. I hadn’t been at camp for any meaningful stretch of time since 1997.

As soon as I parked in the dirt and gravel parking lot, I opened the car door and the smell reminded me that I was home.

The smell of camp is almost impossible to describe, but it’s instantly familiar. I stepped out of the car and into a place that has been part of my life for years and years. I was so excited to be there, but also anxious. Would it be the same? Would my memories live up to what camp is now?

I took the familiar walk from the parking lot to the office to check in. There were familiar faces, welcoming me with hugs and excitement. Then I got an unexpected surprise. A friend from my camper and counselor days was there. He had been my best friend when we were teenagers, and we hadn’t talked in years. He doesn’t have social media, so I never really knew how to find him.

We found a bench and sat and talked for hours.

He looked older, of course, but I could still see the face of the friend I remembered from when I was sixteen. One of the first things I said to him was, “I’ve been trying to find you for years.”

I told him about a family trip to Hawaii. I knew he had been living on the other side of the island and selling produce at farmers markets. So I convinced my family to drive way out of our way to a farmers market just so I could ask around and see if anyone knew him. I never found him then, but somehow camp brought us back together.

As we talked, we shared old memories, but we also found new connections. Our kids are both starting at the same college this fall, and we’ll even be at the same orientation. It reminded me that some friendships don’t disappear. They just wait for the right moment to pick back up.

The first few nights were harder than I expected. I missed home. Camp is so much quieter than my everyday life. Nighttime is when everyone gets a little homesick.

My wife, who loves sleep-away camp just as much as I do, reminded me that it takes three nights, or as camp people say, three sleeps, to settle in.

She was right.

Each night got a little easier. It wasn’t about getting settled, it was more like it just took a bit of time to come back to something familiar.

Empty Pockets

One of my favorite feelings was walking out of my cabin each morning with empty pockets. No phone. No wallet. No keys.

Those things aren’t bad. They’re necessary tools for my life in Los Angeles. But at camp, I didn’t need them.

Without my phone in my pocket, I found myself open to conversations. I wasn’t checking notifications or wondering if I had missed something. My head was up. I noticed the smell of the trees, the sound of the bell, the grass under my feet, and the people around me.

Empty pockets made me feel connected to camp.

Many Hands Make Light Work

My role while I was there was simple. Help wherever I could.

Every day I would ask, “Is there anything I can do?”

If someone needed help, I just said, “OK,” and went.

That meant washing dishes, helping in the kitchen, driving groups to and from trailheads for their backpacking trips, or making more than 700 cookies one morning.

One day I spent hours buttering bread and making grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. Probably more than 300 of them. It was repetitive work, but I loved it. No task felt beneath me. I knew I was making the cook’s day easier, and I knew the campers were going to love those sandwiches.

The founder of camp had a saying: “Many hands make light work.”

That’s exactly what it felt like.

Another memory sticks with me. I kept walking past the sink behind the kitchen after campers returned from their overnight trips. It was a mess. I passed it several times over a couple of days. Finally, I had some time, and I knew cleaning it would help someone.

So I cleaned the sink.

I didn’t tell anyone.

Then I walked away.

It felt good to contribute in some small way to the camp community. It felt good to be a part of something bigger than me and also knowing that each action I had, no matter how small, helped camp, the staff or campers in some way.

Work and Camp Life Balance

There was another transition that happened a couple afternoons each week when I saw clients while I was at camp.

I’d walk into my room, open my laptop, and step into another part of my life that I love. The part that gets to sit with people, listen, and help them make sense of hard things.

When the sessions were over, I’d close the laptop, walk out the door, and thirty seconds later I’d be standing on the grass again.

It surprised me how natural that felt.

I didn’t have to choose between camp and my work.

Both parts of me felt fulfilled.

I was there as one camp session ended and another began. The final night always ends with a campfire. I sat there singing songs while I watched campers cry because they didn’t want to go home. Some of them were finishing their very last summer at camp, and that sadness was easy to see.

I loved that I was there.

I remembered all the tears I shed leaving camp when I was younger. Leaving a place that held such an important place in my heart.

Years later, it felt good to see those same tears still being shed. Camp still matters. It still changes people.

That made me happier than I expected.

And Back Home

Then it was time to head home.

The drive starts high in the mountains. Windy roads where you can go miles without seeing another car. Eventually you leave the mountains and reach a town. Not a big city, but big enough to remind you that civilization is back.

Then there’s that moment.

The moment your phone suddenly gets cell service again.

Without realizing it, “real life” quietly steps back in.

The farther south I drove, the more traffic there was. The sounds changed. The smells changed. The pace changed. Camp slowly became farther away.

Not gone. Just farther away.

When I pulled into my driveway, my house looked exactly as I had left it. It was clean. Comfortable. Familiar. It felt good to be home.

The next day I unpacked, watched sports, and didn’t rush back into everything waiting for me. I just let myself be home.

As I thought about those three weeks, I realized camp hadn’t taught me something new.

It had reminded me of something I had forgotten. For a long time, camp had become a place from my past. A place I used to love. Three weeks there reminded me that it isn’t just part of my past. It’s still part of me.

The drive home wasn’t about leaving one life for another. It was about remembering that both of those lives belong to me.

And one day, when I make that 600-mile drive north again, I’ll smile when I open the car door and that familiar smell reminds me that I’m home once again.

All My Bags Are Packed

In a few weeks, I’ll be doing something I haven’t done in over 20 years. It’s something that I’m excited about, but also scared of.

In a few weeks, I’m going to be away from home for three weeks, heading to summer camp. Three weeks away from home, but also three weeks away from work. I’ll be doing some work while I’m gone, but mostly, I’ll be out of the office. I’ve written about camp before. You can go back and read that post below. To put it simply, it’s a special place for my family and me.

The Discomfort of Stepping Away

These three weeks are quickly approaching. I leave the first week of July, and it feels like that date is right around the corner. As on brand for me as possible, I’m excited, but I’m also anxious. What is coming up most is how hard it is to take time away from work. It feels wrong to take a few weeks off.

For some reason, it feels wrong not to see clients, not to write, and not to do all the things I’m supposed to do.

The fear is that any momentum I’ve built will disappear. That all the things I’ve worked so hard to create over the past few years will somehow slip away. The more I think about it, the more I realize this isn’t really about camp. It’s about how hard it is to believe that things will be okay if I stop pushing for a little while.

Like so many of us, I’ve been taught to work hard. To constantly be striving for more. The goal is always to achieve, produce, improve, and optimize. If that drive isn’t naturally there, our culture does a pretty good job of teaching it anyway. We celebrate productivity. We praise busyness. We glorify success. We rarely talk about pausing.

I can see how much of that has worked its way into me. It’s what makes taking time away feel uncomfortable. It’s what makes me question whether I should go at all.

I talk with clients all the time about sitting with discomfort. I talk about self-care. I talk about listening to what you need, even when it feels hard. And here I am, sitting in discomfort and struggling with self-care.

And yet, I know these three weeks are something I need.

Trusting What I Need

I need some time away from the world. I need to be at camp, where the world feels a little farther away, and life slows down. There’s no cell service there. Like none. There are more opportunities to sit under the apple trees and take a nap than there are to learn a new productivity hack. There are campfires, singing camp songs, stars, long conversations, and a pace of life that feels very different from the one I live for the rest of the year.

Maybe that’s part of why I need it.

So camp is coming. I’m excited to be there. I’m nervous, as one should be when doing something they haven’t done in over twenty years.

Work will be here when I come back. My clients will be okay. I have a feeling you’ll still be here too when I return and start writing more regularly again.

I’m doing the uncomfortable thing and slowing down because I think that’s what I need and what I want. I know that when I listen to what I need and want, that’s how I build trust in myself.

Maybe that’s what these three weeks are really about. Not getting away. Not camp. Not even rest.

Maybe they’re about trusting that everything I care about will still be here when I get back.

I look forward to sharing my experience with all of you when I return. I think I’ll have a lot to say.

Share

Leave a comment

There is a phrase that keeps coming up for me and this work over the past years: C-level work.

Most people hear it and think it means “Sea level,” like altitude, but no, I mean C, as in a grade on a report card. Once people get the context, they pause and I understand why. It sounds so antithetical to everything we’ve been taught.

Most of us grew up, especially in school, thinking a C was something to avoid. A C meant you could have done better. A C meant you didn’t try hard enough or that something went wrong. It was the goal.

Side note: I was a C-level student all throughout high school, and I think I turned out ok.

As I’ve gotten older and done this work more, I’ve come to appreciate this ideal of C-level work. When I think about it, I’m not talking about doing things poorly. I’m talking about recognizing that not everything in life requires an A. That it’s ok to just get a C and be happy with that.

C-level work is something I learned during my Body Trust certification. Understanding how we often walk around with very rigid expectations for ourselves. We set goals, we achieve them. It’s not only present in diet culture but also in so many other parts of our lives. When Hilary and Dana (co-founders of the Center for Body Trust) presented this idea to us, it was framed not only for our clients but for us, too. We had permission to complete the certification with C-effort. It didn’t have to be perfect. It just had to be.

The more I think about it, the more I see C-level work everywhere. We decide in advance how something should go, and then we judge ourselves when reality looks different.

Maybe, at the start of the week, you tell yourself you’re going to get to the gym a certain number of times this week. That’s the plan. That’s the A. That’s the goal. But then life happens. You’re tired. Work runs late. The kids need something. Your body is asking for something different.

Instead of going to the gym, maybe you go for a walk. Not a long one either. Just a walk to get outside and take a breath of fresh air. Not to sweat, but just to be.

For a lot of us, that immediately feels like failure. We start grading ourselves. We didn’t meet our goal then. We failed. The walk becomes a C. The gym was the A.

But what if that’s not actually true?

What if:

• We didn’t expect perfection?

• The walk was exactly what fit your life in that moment?

• The goal was to respond to the reality of your day instead of forcing yourself to live up to a standard you created when circumstances were different?

That’s what I like about C-level work. It’s the permission to stop treating every decision like a final exam, win-lose, or life and death.

It’s recognizing that sometimes the thing you can do is better than the thing you planned to do.

It’s understanding that not every meal has to be perfect, not every workout has to be optimal, not every project has to be your best work, and not every day has to look the way you imagined it would.

We live in a world that is constantly pushing us toward more. Be better. Work harder. Optimize. Improve. Fix. Perfect. We get pressure from all angles that if you compromise, you’re weak or lazy. You’re giving in.

And honestly, it’s exhausting.

What I’ve found is that there's enormous relief in realizing I don’t have to be perfect right now. I don’t have to get an A on everything. I don’t have to execute every plan exactly as I imagined it.

Sometimes:

• I just need something that works.

• I just need something that’s good enough for today.

• The walk is enough.

• The email (with typos) is enough.

• Showing up is enough.

Maybe that’s the real lesson of C-level work. Not lowering the bar on everything, but understanding that life is too complicated and too unpredictable to expect A-level performance from ourselves all the time.

And when we stop demanding perfection, there’s often a surprising amount of freedom.

That’s the real gift of C-level work.

Share

Leave a comment

I have a few rants I need to share; buckle up.

Rant 1 - Concert T-Shirts

I’ve started going to more concerts again. I used to go to a lot of shows when I was younger, but I took a break while my kids were growing up. Now it’s something I’m getting back into, and honestly, I’ve missed it.

Ever since I started going to concerts, buying a t-shirt has been obligatory. I love concert shirts. I always have. Yes, I wear a band’s shirt when I go see them. I’m that guy. I also love representing who I’ve seen and when. Every shirt has a story attached to it.

Recently, though, at almost every show I go to, I find myself asking the same question.

“What’s your largest size?”

Rarely do they have a 4XL, which is what I need. Sometimes I’ll try to squeeze into a smaller size, but mostly I leave without a shirt, which I low-key hate.

And I know this probably sounds trivial. It’s just a shirt, right?

Except it isn’t.

Concerts, especially the kind of music I listen to, feel like belonging. I like loud, heavy music. I like a distorted guitar. I love a screaming guitar solo. I love a strong driving beat that you can feel in your chest.

When I’m at a show, I’m surrounded by thousands of people who get it. People who understand why hearing that opening riff matters. People who know every word. People who are there for the same reason I am.

For a few hours, you’re all part of the same thing.

The shirt becomes a reminder of that experience. It’s proof that you were there. It’s a story. It’s also a signal.

When I wear a Metallica shirt out in public, every once in a while, somebody notices. Maybe they were at the same show. Maybe they’ve been a fan for thirty years. Maybe they just want to talk about their favorite album.

For a brief moment, you find your people.

So yes, it bothers me when I walk up to the merch table and discover there isn’t a shirt for me.

Fat dudes like concert shirts. Fat dudes listen to Metallica and Iron Maiden and Disturbed and Kendrick Lamar and The Hu and The Sword.

We want the official shirt too.

Rant 2 - Your Dietitian Said What?

Recently after I gave a talk to a group of young people about weight stigma and body image.

After the talk, a young woman came up to me and said that I had restored some of her faith in dietitians. I asked why. She told me her last dietitian called her fat.

My jaw dropped.

“Are you fucking serious?” were my exact words.

She explained that she’s recovering from an eating disorder. She’s been exercising more and gaining weight as she builds muscle. She’s no longer using behaviors like she used to. She’s doing better. She also told me she wasn’t following the meal plan her dietitian had given her.

Honestly? Good.

Meal plans are tools. They are not commandments.

According to her, when she told the dietitian she wasn’t following the plan, the response was, “Well, that’s why you’re fat.”

I couldn’t believe it.

I apologized to this young woman because nobody should have to hear that, especially from someone who is supposed to be helping. Recovery is hard enough without having shame thrown at you by a healthcare professional.

Come on, unknown dietitian. Do better.

Actually, no. Why would you say that? Oh wait. I know why.

Because you think shame is an effective tool. You think that if people feel bad enough about themselves, they’ll finally change. You think you know better than all your clients.

The problem is that shame has never been a particularly effective long-term strategy. What it does do is make people feel broken. It makes people question themselves. It makes them wonder whether they belong in the room at all. It makes them feel like this young woman felt.

I couldn’t apologize enough to this young woman.

She told me her therapist says she needs a dietitian. I told her that if she needs one, I’m happy to be her dietitian.

As a profession, we need to do better.

And to that other dietitian, if that’s how you practice, maybe it’s time to find a different line of work.

Rant 3 - Enough with the Protein

Why do we have to add protein to everything?

Protein Pop-Tarts. Protein cereal. Protein coffee. Protein water.

Protein is added to everything.

I get it. You think carbs are bad. Protein is good. We’ve all gotten the message. (Your message is wrong btw).

But do we really need this much protein added to everything we eat?

We’re adding protein to foods that already contain protein. We’re adding protein to drinks. We’re adding protein to snacks. It’s like we’ve collectively decided that food can no longer just be food.

Everything has to be optimized.

Everything has to be improved.

Everything has to be upgraded.

A snack can’t just be a snack anymore. Coffee can’t just be coffee. A bowl of cereal can’t just be cereal.

No, now it has to help you build muscle, burn fat, curb cravings, maximize recovery, or unlock some secret level of nutritional enlightenment.

It’s exhausting.

Not because protein is bad. Protein is great. But because the message beneath it all feels familiar.

Your food isn’t good enough. Your body isn’t good enough. You could be doing better.

Final Thoughts

The more I think about these three rants, the more I think they’re all connected.

The concert shirt says some bodies weren’t considered.

The dietitian says some bodies are the problem.

The protein obsession says some bodies always need improving.

Different messages. Same idea.

Over and over again, people are told that their bodies take up too much space, need too much accommodation, require too much fixing, or simply aren’t right as they are.

And frankly, I’m tired of it.

Fat people should be able to buy concert shirts.

Healthcare professionals should stop using shame as a treatment strategy.

A cookie can just be a cookie.

That doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

Share

Leave a comment

Partly because, if I’m being honest, I hate marketing.

I’m good at sitting with people in hard moments. I’m good at conversations. Groups. Sessions. Writing. Podcast interviews. The actual work. But the moment I have to promote myself, something in me immediately starts cringing. It feels vulnerable and awkward.

But this is also my job. This is my business. And I do, in fact, need people to know I exist if I want to keep doing this work.

I was talking with my family about all of this, and my daughter finally looked at me and said:

“You like money, don’t you?”

Which honestly felt both ruthless and completely fair.

So yes. I need to market my work. I’m continually trying to grow my practice, my groups, my writing, my podcast, and the work I care deeply about. It’s a non-stop effort trying to reach more men who feel stuck in shame, disconnection, body hatred, perfectionism, or the exhausting feeling that they always need to fix themselves before they can fully live their lives.

I’m always looking for new ideas and professionals out there to help me with this effort. I know what I don’t know.

I asked Elizabeth Ayiku to help me with marketing, and the video you see is what she made. And I couldn’t love it more. honestly stunned me. Somehow, she captured the feeling of my work better than I probably could have explained it. The tone, the humanity, the tension, the humor, all of it feels incredibly true to who I am and how I approach this work.

So I’m posting it. Somewhat reluctantly. Slightly uncomfortable. But also genuinely proud of it.

If you’ve ever wondered what my work is about, this is probably the clearest representation of it I’ve put into the world.

And if it resonates with you, I’d love for you to watch it. Maybe even share it with someone else who might need it too.

Also, huge credit to Elizabeth for bringing this to life. Her work is incredible, and you can find it here: https://www.elizabethayiku.com/

Share

Leave a comment

One of the more common questions I get doing this work is:

“But does this count?” The question comes up in so many different contexts.

• Does walking the dog count as exercise?

• Does stretching count?

• Does it count if I didn’t sweat?

• Does this count as a snack or a meal?

• Does this count as a carb?

• Should I count calories?

• What macros should I be counting?

• Does this count as a protein or a fat?

On and on and on. Because it comes up so often, I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about the question “does it count?” Not just because I’m a dietitian, but because of how exhausting all the counting starts to become.

In treatment settings, I’ve had countless conversations during meals or while preparing them. “Aaron, what does this count as?” or “Aaron, is this enough (insert food here) to count?” All because their meal plan was built around specific exchanges each meal had to meet. (For those not in the business, exchanges or diabetic exchanges were how meal plans used to be created to make sure those working on recovery were eating enough each meal/day) I’ve worked with people who genuinely believe a walk “doesn’t count” unless it’s intense enough. Like movement only matters if it hurts enough, lasts long enough, burns enough, and tracks enough.

And honestly, I get it.

Counting gives us structure. It gives us certainty. It gives us rules to follow in a world that often feels messy and ambiguous. Of course, people want guides. Of course, we want to know we’re doing it “right.” It’s a lot easier to trust a number than it is to trust ourselves.

But somewhere along the way, counting can quietly shift from supportive to rigid.

The calorie goal becomes the thing that determines whether the day was “good.” The workout only counts if it hits some invisible threshold. The meal only counts if the macros line up perfectly. We start keeping score all day long.

• Did I eat too much?

• Did I eat enough?

• Did I hit my protein?

• Did I move enough today?

• Did I get enough steps?

• Was this a win or not?

Sometimes it feels like there’s this invisible scoreboard hanging over all of us, and we’re constantly checking to see if we’re ahead or behind.

The more I zoom out, the more I notice this happening outside of food and exercise, too. I see it everywhere.

We optimize our sleep. Our routines. Our productivity. Our hobbies. Our friendships. Our free time. Even rest has somehow become something we try to “do correctly.”

I notice it in myself too.

Lately, I’ve caught myself thinking about writing this Substack the same way. If I tell myself I want to post weekly, does this post count? Does it count if it’s more reflective and less educational? Does it count if it’s shorter? Less polished? Am I writing something meaningful, or am I just trying to check the box so I can say I stayed consistent?

And as my kids get older, I notice another version of this showing up, too. I find myself looking back, wondering: did I do enough? Did these moments count in ways they’ll remember someday? Did I get enough time right before it all moved so quickly?

That’s probably the part that hits me the hardest.

Because I don’t think this is really about counting calories anymore. I think it’s about trying to feel safe. Safe around food. Safe in our bodies. Safe knowing we’re doing the “right thing.” Safe believing we’re taking good enough care of ourselves and the people around us.

And honestly, I think counting sometimes becomes a way to avoid the discomfort of uncertainty. Numbers feel concrete. Listening to ourselves doesn’t. Literally and metaphorically.

Especially for a lot of dudes, who are often taught to tune out anything that feels uncertain, vulnerable, emotional, soft, or hard to define. Hunger cues become easy to ignore. Fatigue becomes weakness. Feelings become something to push through rather than listen to.

Counting gives us something measurable. Something provable.

But I also wonder what happens when we get so lost in counting that we forget what we were measuring in the first place.

Or maybe more importantly, what we were hoping the counting would finally help us feel.

Share

Leave a comment

I see it all the time; people trying to figure out the right way to eat. What to include, what to cut out, how much is too much, how little is still “okay.” It starts to feel like there’s a perfect formula out there, and if you could just find it, everything would settle down. The pressure to get it right builds quickly.

But there is no version of eating where you finally crack the code and never have to think about it again. The idea of a perfect diet is a myth. It sounds convincing, but it doesn’t hold up in real life. And even if it did, there’s no guarantee you could follow it for long.

Because this isn’t really about perfection.

It’s about certainty.

People want to know they’re doing the right thing. That they’re taking care of their health. That they’re not missing something. That they’ll be okay long term. Underneath all of it is a quieter question: “Can I trust that this is enough?”

Certainty feels good because it quiets something. The anxiety of doing something wrong. The anxiety about your health. The anxiety about what happens if you don’t get this right. And if we’re being honest, sometimes it’s the anxiety of not being in control at all. Of course, we want something that feels solid. Of course, we want something that feels guaranteed. I get that. I feel that too.

But certainty doesn’t last.

Life shifts. Stress changes. Your schedule changes. Your body responds differently than you expected. And suddenly that certainty starts to crack, and you’re right back to questioning everything.

I hear it in sessions all the time. “I was doing so well and then I messed it up.” “I know what I’m supposed to do, so why can’t I just do it?” “I’m so bad with food.” The exact words change, but the tone doesn’t. There’s frustration. Shame. Anger. Grief. All tied to the belief that they’re not being “good” with food.

It sounds like a discipline problem.

It’s not.

It’s what happens when you’re trying to live up to something that doesn’t exist.

We don’t live in a lab. There’s no way to control every variable that affects how we eat or how our body responds. Even if there were a perfect plan on paper, it wouldn’t account for your life. Your access to food, your stress, your preferences, your energy. Real life doesn’t match something rigid and controlled.

So what happens instead is a cycle. You find a plan. You follow it. It works for a bit. Something shifts. You fall off. Then comes the shame. Then the belief that you need a better plan. And the search starts again.

Over time, it starts to feel like you are the problem.

But what if you’re not.

What if the problem isn’t that you haven’t found the right way to eat.

What if the problem is that you’ve been told there is one.

That belief turns into a lifelong search. Always thinking the next approach will be the one that finally sticks. Always believing you’re one step away from getting it right. It becomes your own version of a white whale. And it keeps you stuck.

Even as providers, we’re not outside of this. We’re trained to find answers and offer solutions. There’s comfort in being able to say, “Here’s what to do.” It helps people feel better. It helps us feel better too. But there’s a limit to what can be solved that way. The more we try to remove uncertainty, the more pressure we create for people to live up to something that isn’t realistic.

Uncertainty is uncomfortable. It doesn’t give you clear instructions. It doesn’t tell you that you’re doing it right. It can feel like a pit in your stomach when you don’t have something solid to hold onto.

But it’s also honest.

It reflects what real life is actually like. Things change. Needs shift. There isn’t one way to do this that works all the time.

And when people start to understand that, something else becomes possible. Instead of trying to follow a set of rules perfectly, they start to pay attention. They notice what feels sustainable. They make choices based on what’s in front of them, not based on what they think they should be doing.

Not a perfect choice. Not the “right” choice.

A workable choice.

That’s a very different way of approaching food. It’s less about fixing and more about being. Less about eliminating every mistake and more about staying in it, even when it’s uncomfortable. Less about shame and more about acceptance of the fact that this isn’t something you solve once and move on from.

There is no perfect diet. There is no finish line where you finally get it all right.

So maybe the question isn’t what you should be eating.

Maybe the question is what happens when you stop trying to be certain about it.

Share

Leave a comment

This feels a little personal, but also really common. The tension between discomfort, perfectionism, and the urge to fix things shows up for me just like it does for the people I work with.

It’s Sunday. I have no plans. And for some reason, that’s not as relaxing as it sounds.

In theory, this is exactly what I want. Especially after a busy week doing the kind of work I do, which can be emotionally taxing. A day with nothing on the calendar is supposed to feel like a relief. It’s 9am and I’m sitting here writing this, which is one of the few things I know I’m going to do today. Sure, I have some things to take care of. Chores, a trip to the market. There are games on, and there’s always something to watch on a weekend.

But I also know how this day can go. Three or four in the afternoon rolls around and I’m on the couch, another game on in the background, not really doing anything. Not really resting either. Just kind of there.

Los Angeles is huge. I could do anything. And somehow that’s part of the problem. The question of what to do starts to feel overwhelming. I can feel it in my body, this low-level anxiety about how the day is going to end. Did I use it well? Did I waste it? Should I have done more?

I notice how quickly my brain goes into productivity mode. Not work productivity, but something more vague and harder to define. Be productive as a person. Go experience something. Live your life. Don’t just sit here while the day passes. And somehow I can feel behind in a day that hasn’t even happened yet.

It’s funny, because I spend so much time talking with clients about not fixing. About sitting with feelings instead of immediately trying to solve them. And here I am wanting to fix my Sunday. Plan it out, optimize it, make it count. Carpe diem the hell out of it so I don’t end the day feeling like I missed something.

So today I’m thinking about what it would look like to not fix this. To stay somewhere in the middle. I need rest. I can’t schedule every hour of my life. My life is not Instagram, and I don’t need to have the perfect LA day. But I also don’t need to swing all the way to doing nothing and then beating myself up for it later.

Maybe it’s enough to just finish this post. Maybe it’s going for a drive or running an errand. Maybe it’s watching F1 and seeing what I feel like after that. Nothing groundbreaking, nothing optimized. Just something.

I think a lot of us are always looking for the big fix. The perfect plan. The fully dialed, color-coded version of how a day should go. But maybe the harder thing is just admitting that this kind of time is actually difficult to navigate. Maybe today is just noticing that. Not fixing it. Not doing it perfectly. Just noticing.

If you’re anything like me, I’m curious what your version of this looks like.

PS: I’ve also been thinking about what I’ll do with even more free time once my kids go to college. Right now, I keep coming back to getting into a flight simulator on a PS5. It feels very on brand for my nerdy brain. Complicated enough to keep me engaged, but something I can ease into. Honestly, maybe today is the day I go get one. Or maybe it’s not. We’ll see.

Share

Leave a comment

I watched Noah Kahan: Out of Body this weekend with my daughter.

My daughter is a huge fan of Noah Kahan. She already got us tickets to see him in August, and a few nights ago, she asked if I wanted to watch the documentary with her. Both felt like easy answers, a grateful and resounding “yes.”

My kids are 18. They’re both getting ready to leave for college. I can feel that shift happening in real time. The way moments start to feel a little more finite. The way something as simple as sitting on the couch together carries a little more weight than it used to.

I’ve always tried to connect with my kids through music. Music says a lot about us, so it feels important to ask what they’re listening to. It’s a way for us to bond, connect, and share common ground. With my son, it was Kendrick Lamar. We went to a concert together, and it’s a moment I still think about today. It brought us closer together. Now it’s my daughter and Noah Kahan, and I’m loving it.

So we watched the documentary together.

What stood out to me wasn’t just the music (which is really good). It was what he was willing to say. He talks openly about body dysmorphia, about struggling with his relationship with food, and about using food as a way to cope. He talks about anxiety and depression in a way that doesn’t feel cleaned up or resolved. It feels ongoing. It feels honest and vulnerable.

And I kept coming back to the same thought. What stood out wasn’t that he struggled. It’s that he said it out loud. Saying things publicly that usually stay unspoken. Not just once, but throughout the film.

There’s something very real about how he talks about these things, and it resonated with me. Because this doesn’t always look the way people expect it to. When men talk about their bodies, it often gets reframed as discipline or effort, as doing what you’re supposed to do. And when it doesn’t fit that narrative, it gets minimized or ignored.

I hear versions of this every day in my work. The constant thoughts and anxiety about food. The way eating becomes something to control or something to escape through. The way your body becomes something to manage instead of something to live in. The shame. The fear. But in real life, most of this stays quiet.

That’s why it stood out. He said it out loud.

There was another part that stuck with me. He talks about how, as he got more successful, he started to lose touch with himself. Everything became about the next album, the next level of success. And the more things worked on the outside, the more lost he felt on the inside.

I see that version of it a lot too. Chasing something that’s supposed to make you feel better, more in control, more settled, and instead feeling further away from yourself.

Toward the end, he talks about going home. He moves back to Vermont after living in Nashville. The decision feels like something that’s been building in him. A realization that it’s just where he feels more like himself, no matter what that looks like.

Not fixed. Not better. Just more like himself.

I kept thinking about that. How different that is from the way we usually talk about change. We’re so used to the idea that things should get better, clearer, more resolved. But this felt more like a return than a solution.

And I kept coming back to the people I work with. How many of them don’t feel that way in their own bodies? How often does the goal become fixing, changing, controlling, instead of asking what it would mean to feel a little more like yourself there? Not perfect, not resolved. Just a little more like you.

Sitting there next to my daughter, I wasn’t thinking about how to explain any of this. I wasn’t trying to turn it into a lesson or a conversation. I was just paying attention. To what she connects with. To what she hears in his music. To the fact that this is the kind of honesty she’s choosing to listen to. That part made me proud.

My kids are leaving for college soon. I don’t know how many moments like this we have left where they ask me to sit down and watch something with them. Where I get a small window into what matters to them right now.

Maybe that’s part of this too. Not fixing anything. Not trying to turn it into something bigger than it is. Just being there for it. The mix of joy, pride, and sadness.

We watched it together. She asked. I said yes. And for a couple of hours, we sat on the couch listening to someone say things that usually stay quiet.

That feels like something I want to remember. And I’m really looking forward to the concert.

Leave a comment

Share

Quick heads up, this one opens with UCLA basketball. Go Bruins and all that. But stick with me, because what I’m noticing here goes way beyond what happens on a court.

I’ve been a Bruin fan for as long as I can remember. My grandparents went to the University of California, Los Angeles, my grandmother worked there, and some of my earliest memories are going to football and basketball games with my family. It’s just always been there, part of how I grew up. So when I say I’ve been following UCLA sports teams, it’s not casual. I’m through and through a Bruin fan, the kind of person who can still get a little emotional doing an eight clap at the right moment.

And this season gave Bruins fans plenty to celebrate. The women’s basketball team won the national championship. They finished 37–1. They ripped off 31 straight wins. Seniors accounted for all 130 points they scored in the Final Four. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, six Bruins were selected in the WNBA Draft, the most ever by one program in a single draft.

Those are remarkable accomplishments on their own, and they deserve to be celebrated. But what kept pulling me back in was not just how dominant they were. It was who they were while doing it.

A team full of seniors is something you don’t see very often anymore. In a landscape where transfers, NIL, and optimization are the norm, staying with one school for multiple years feels almost radical. Staying with a program, staying with a mission, staying with teammates, staying with a coach. It made me realize that what I was drawn to wasn’t just how they played, but what it means to build something over time and actually see it through.

A team like this doesn’t happen by accident. It reflects how a coach leads. UCLA’s head coach is Cori Close, and there are two quotes that keep coming back to me when I think about her. The first is,

“Your talent is the floor, and your character is the ceiling.”

The second one has stuck with me even more:

“Banners hang in gyms and rings collect dust, but who you become and who you impact, you get to keep forever.”

It’s easy to hear those and treat them like any other piece of inspiration. Something that sounds good, maybe even true, but doesn’t really interrupt how we think about performance or success. The more I’ve sat with them, though, the more they’ve started to feel like a quiet challenge to the way most of us have been taught to approach growth.

In most environments I see, whether it’s in sports or in the work I do with clients, the message is pretty consistent. Performance is what matters. Discipline often means being hard on yourself. If you want to improve, you push harder, tighten things up, and fix what’s wrong.

There’s a tone to that voice most people recognize immediately. It’s urgent, critical, and rarely satisfied. I hear it from my clients all the time, and, if I’m honest, I hear it in myself, too. For a lot of people, it’s been normalized to the point where it just feels like the cost of getting better.

What stood out to me watching this team is how different that tone felt. This isn’t a coach who relies on fear or uses shame to motivate. There are still high expectations and accountability, but they don’t seem to come at the expense of the person. It feels grounded in something else. There’s a steadiness to it. A belief that who you are becoming matters just as much as what you produce.

And what I can’t stop thinking about is that it works. Not in a vague or theoretical sense, but in the very real way that a group of athletes committed to each other, pushed each other, and stayed long enough to build something meaningful together.

It’s hard not to connect that back to the conversations I have every day, especially with men who are trying to figure out how to be better. More disciplined. More consistent. More in control. The strategies they reach for are almost always the same. Push harder. Be stricter. Stop making excuses.

There’s not a lot of room in those conversations for character being the ceiling, or for the idea that how you treat yourself and others might actually shape how far you go. And I find myself wondering how often examples like this even enter the picture.

I don’t know how many men who are trying to figure out discipline or performance are spending time watching women’s basketball. I don’t know how many would be open to learning from a coach like Cori Close, or even take a quote like that seriously if they heard it. Not because it lacks value, but because of where it’s coming from.

That feels like something worth paying attention to. Not in a preachy way, just as an observation about what we tend to listen to and what we might be missing because of it.

I keep coming back to that line about what lasts. Banners hang in gyms. Rings collect dust. That doesn’t mean they don’t matter, but it does put them in perspective. They’re not what you carry with you when it’s over.

What stays is who you became in the process, how you showed up for the people around you, and what kind of impact you had along the way. That feels just as true outside of basketball as it does inside of it.

4s up. Go Bruins!

Share

Leave a comment

But for a lot of people, it doesn’t actually feel that simple.

Recently, I collaborated with another dietitian, Lynn Eaton, on a visual that tried to map out what deciding to eat can actually feel like. It starts with that same question, but instead of leading to a clear answer, it quickly branches off into something much more layered. The process becomes less a straight line and more a loop, with different thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations all competing for attention.

You might notice hunger, but then question whether it’s “real” hunger. You might want to eat, but feel unsure if you’re allowed to. You might think about what you ate earlier, what you plan to eat later, or how this decision might affect you afterward. At the same time, there are emotions moving through the background. Stress, boredom, anxiety, or even excitement can all start to blur the signal. Somewhere in the middle of all of that, the original question starts to feel harder to answer, not easier.

This is the part that often gets overlooked. When eating is framed as a simple decision, it can leave people feeling like they’re doing something wrong when it doesn’t feel that way internally. The assumption becomes that if you can’t figure it out, you must not be listening well enough or trying hard enough. But in my experience, that’s rarely the issue.

For many people, eating feels overwhelming, not because they don’t care, but because they’re trying to navigate a system that has become incredibly noisy. There are internal cues, external rules, past experiences, and present emotions, all layered on top of one another. Trying to sort through that in real time is exhausting, and in those moments, avoiding the decision altogether can start to feel like the easier option.

That doesn’t mean it’s the best option, but it makes sense why it happens.

When I think about helping folks change this pattern, the goal is not to simplify eating down to a single question, but to help people understand everything that’s showing up in that moment. Sometimes that includes hunger cues. Other times, it includes fear, doubt, or a sense of pressure to make the right decision. The goal isn’t to eliminate that complexity overnight, but to relate to it differently so it doesn’t feel as overwhelming. The goal is to find more self-compassion and realize that making food choices can be really hard at times.

Over time, eating can start to feel more manageable. Not because every decision becomes obvious, but because there’s less urgency to solve it perfectly. There’s more room to pause, notice what’s there, and make a choice without needing complete certainty.

If you were to draw out what it feels like for you to decide to eat, what would it look like?

Share

Leave a comment

My family has been hosting Passover for somewhere between fifteen and twenty years now. We love it, and to be totally honest, we also sort of hate it.

Every year, it’s the same things. Arguing about setup. Stressing about seating. Trying to figure out how to fit fifteen to twenty-five people into a house that never quite feels big enough. If we eat outside, will it be too cold? Will it rain? The Seder never really goes the way we imagine it, either. That’s partly because it’s not just ours. It belongs to everyone at the table, and each person comes to the meal hoping to get something different from the meal.

And then there’s the cooking.

It feels like, for one night out of the year, we turn our house into a restaurant, opening for one seating and that’s it. I make the mains, and everyone else brings sides, which sounds simple until you realize what that actually means. So there are some logistical things that need to be coordinated. I don’t just make one main either. I usually make two or three, depending on who's attending. Part of that is practical. You need enough food for sure. But part of it is something else. I want everyone to feel taken care of. I want there to be something for everyone, no matter their dietary restrictions or preferences. In past years, that’s where the pressure really kicks in. Trying to get it right. Trying to make it all come together. Trying not to mess anything up.

For those really curious, I made brisket, gefilte fish (or a version of it), roasted chicken and baked salmon. (NOTE: If you wanna hear more about these recipes, let me know. I’ll be happy to write a new post about them if there’s interest.)

This year felt different, not because it was easier. It wasn’t.

I still hated shopping. Walking through the store, trying to track down every ingredient, realizing I'd forgotten something, then doubling back. I hate doubling back in the market. It still sucked. But instead of fighting it, I just kind of accepted it. This sucks, and I’m going to do it anyway.

At some point, I decided I wasn’t going to edit myself. I wasn’t going to scale things down or try to make it more manageable. I wanted there to be plenty of food, so I leaned into it. Fine. I’ll make all of it.

The recipes I keep coming back to all have something in common. Not just that they taste good, but that I understand them. A few years ago, I read Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. It’s technically a cookbook, but it doesn’t really feel like one. It’s more about how food works than what to make. Salt for flavor. Fat for richness. Acid for balance. Heat for transformation. Once you understand those, you don’t have to follow a recipe perfectly. You can adjust. You can trust your instincts. You can recover when something goes sideways.

That’s why I like the brisket and the gefilte fish recipes I use. I’ve made them enough times that I know what they’re supposed to taste like. I know when something’s off. I know how to adjust if I need to. Even the new recipes this year didn’t feel as intimidating as they used to. Not because I knew them, but because I trusted that I could figure them out.

Of course, something went wrong. We couldn’t find one of the ingredients for the chicken. Last-minute scramble. Someone had to run back to the store. That familiar spike of anxiety showed up right on time. “The dish is ruined. It won’t be ready on time.”

And then the final few hours before everyone arrives. That part is always the worst. The clock speeds up, everything feels unfinished, and you start doing that mental math of what’s left, how long things take, what you might have missed. That didn’t go away either, but it felt different.

I think what changed is that I stopped trying to get rid of the anxiety. It was there while I was shopping, while I was cooking, and definitely there in those last couple of hours. Instead of treating that like a problem to solve, I just let it be part of the day. This is what this is. I even found myself saying that out loud. If you see me anxious, it’s ok. This is just who I am.

There was also something else I noticed. The kitchen felt safe.

When people started arriving, I stayed there. Part of me wondered if I was being too antisocial, if I should be out there mingling more. But that’s always felt hard for me, being “on” like that. In the kitchen, I knew what I was doing. I could focus. I could move. I could just be in it. So I stayed.

Dinner eventually started. People ate. There was plenty of food, maybe too much. And people said they liked it. I still don’t really believe that part. I never do. I trust maybe one or two people to tell me the truth. Everyone else, it’s nice to hear, but I’m not sure I buy it.

But even that felt a little different this time. Not because I suddenly believed them, but because I didn’t need to. I wasn’t cooking for their approval or to hear their praise. I was cooking to nourish their bellies and maybe something else, too. I wasn’t cooking to prove anything.

I wasn’t cooking to prove anything or for their approval. I was cooking to nourish their bellies and souls. I made the food I wanted to make. I showed up the way I could show up. Anxious, a little overwhelmed, probably hiding in the kitchen more than I needed to.

And it was still enough.

I think that’s what I’m taking from this year. Nothing really changed. The stress was still there. The anxiety was still there. The things that went wrong still went wrong. But I stopped trying to fix all of it. I just let it be what it was.

And for this year’s Sedar, that felt like enough.

Share

Leave a comment

Recently, I had two very different opportunities. One where the goal was to debate. And one where the goal was to teach. They could not have felt more different.

When I imagine being in a debate setting, I can feel it in my body almost immediately. Tense. Worried. A little angry. There is pressure to say the right thing, quickly. To sound polished. To make your point in one or two minutes in a way that lands immediately. There is not much room for anything else.

Standing in a room in Birmingham, Alabama, felt different. I was invited by the Alabama Dietetic Association to present to a group of dietitians about weight stigma and eating disorders. Walking into a room like that, I never really know what it is going to be like. Especially when the topic might be something people are hearing for the first time.

I am always nervous before I start. I worry about how the message is going to land. I worry about being questioned or challenged. I can feel myself bracing for that.

And if I am being honest, part of that bracing has to do with how I show up in my body. As a fat dietitian, I know I am being read before I say a word.

In a debate setting, that feeling gets amplified. It starts to feel like I am not just sharing ideas, I am defending my existence. Like I have to prove that what I am saying is valid before anyone is willing to hear it. That pressure makes everything tighter. More guarded. Less like me.

In a room like Birmingham, that dynamic does not disappear, but it shifts. There is more space to name it. To acknowledge the assumptions that might be showing up in the room, including the ones about me, and to use that as part of the work itself. Not as a defense, but as an example. An example of how quickly we form judgments, and how much those judgments shape what we are willing to hear. The same way we do with the people we work with.

And then I start talking. And something shifts.

I feel at home behind the podium in the same way I feel at home working with clients. There is space. There is time. I can read the room. I can say something, pause, and let it sit.

You can feel when something is landing. It is not dramatic. No one is having a breakthrough in the middle of the talk. But you start to notice it. Heads nodding. People staying with you instead of checking their phones. A kind of quiet where you can tell people are actually thinking.

That kind of space matters.

Because the work I do does not happen in arguments. Debate asks me to be more confrontational, more certain, more guarded. It asks me to say the exact right thing in order to win. If I am honest, that version of me does not really feel like me.

Debate is about convincing. This work is about opening up curiosity.

It is about creating enough space for someone to start questioning something they have always believed without even realizing it.

That is what I see with clients too. Change does not usually show up as a big moment. It is slower than that. It looks like more questions. More curiosity. A willingness to sit with something instead of immediately trying to fix it.

Sometimes it is just finding the right language for something that never quite made sense before. That kind of change needs time. It needs space.

And it needs a kind of relationship, whether that is with a client or a room full of people, where someone feels safe enough to stay with the discomfort instead of pushing back against it.

Debate does not leave much room for that. It moves too fast. It rewards certainty over curiosity. It skips over the part where something quietly starts to shift.

I am realizing more and more that my work does not live well in those spaces.

I am not trying to win. I am trying to build a relationship with the person in front of me long enough for something to land. I am trying to foster an unlearning of old ways of thinking.

And that is not something you can rush.

Share

Leave a comment

Clichés bother me. You know the ones. The ones that end up on an inspirational poster with the fierce animal. Or maybe the pretty wooden board hanging on a wall with some elegant font telling you something profound about life.

One of the classics is: It’s about the journey, not the destination.

Ugh, I hate that one.

Not because it’s wrong. Actually, that might be exactly why it bothers me. Clichés are clichés for a reason. They’re often true. But they get repeated so often, and so casually, that they start to feel hollow and performative. We repeat them without really sitting with what they mean.

The journey matters. But actually living that idea is much harder than printing it on a poster.

This came to mind recently as I’ve been thinking about my own experiences and the work I do with clients.

How often do we miss the small wins that make up the journey? Not the big breakthroughs. Not the dramatic before-and-after moments. The quiet ones. The ones so small we might not even notice them.

Small wins rarely look impressive.

Sometimes a small win is pausing before the inner critic takes over. Sometimes it’s realizing you ate something and moved on with your day. Sometimes it’s noticing a familiar thought and recognizing it as just that, a thought. Sometimes it’s choosing comfort instead of obligation. Sometimes it’s simply letting your body exist for a moment without trying to fix it.

None of these moments looks particularly impressive from the outside. They’re easy to dismiss. Easy to miss entirely.

And maybe that’s part of the problem.

Small wins are hard to remember because they’re so small. Unless we’re really paying attention, they slip past us. Our brains seem much better at remembering mistakes, setbacks, and the things we wish we’d done differently.

We’re not really trained to notice the small things. Life pulls our attention toward the big stuff, the milestones, the problems, the big moments. And somewhere in the middle of all that, the small shifts get lost.

I see this with clients all the time.

Someone will describe a week that felt messy or frustrating. But inside that same story, there might be several quiet moments where something shifted slightly. A different response to a familiar thought. A moment of curiosity instead of judgment.

And often they don’t see it. The win is there, but it doesn’t feel like one. Part of that might be how strange it feels to celebrate ourselves.

At least for me, it does.

Celebrating yourself can feel uncomfortably close to arrogance. I don’t remember seeing many people around me openly celebrate themselves growing up, and maybe that shapes how it feels now. Being the center of that kind of attention can feel awkward.

And sometimes, if I’m being honest, celebrating a small win can feel trivial.

The world feels heavy right now. There’s so much suffering, so much uncertainty, so much noise. When you zoom out and look at everything happening, celebrating something small in your own life can feel almost… insignificant.

Like, so what?

Maybe that’s part of why small wins can be hard to notice. Not just because they’re small, but because they feel small compared to everything else.

But lately I’ve been wondering if maybe celebration isn’t the point.

Maybe the point is awareness. Maybe noticing a small win isn’t about applauding ourselves in some big way. Maybe it’s simply about being present enough to see what’s actually happening.

A small win might even feel hard to remember.

Maybe that’s why I’m thinking about this right now. Because I see clients miss their own progress all the time. Because I probably miss my own more than I realize. Because the world can feel overwhelming, and the big “aha” moments we’re waiting for don’t always arrive.

Maybe the quiet moments are the journey we keep hearing about in that cliché. Not the big breakthroughs.

Just the small shifts we notice when we’re paying attention.

Which makes me reluctantly admit something I hate.

The cliché might be right.

Share

Leave a comment

Bones shares what it was like growing up in Central Florida with mostly positive food memories, how dieting entered his life later, and how shame — not food itself — became the louder voice over time. He opens up about therapy, disordered eating, masculinity, sexual trauma, and the difference between hearing your body and listening to it.

This conversation isn’t about having it all figured out. It’s about being in the middle of the work — and having the courage to talk about it anyway.

What We Talk About

• Growing up with largely neutral food experiences — and how diet culture still found its way in

• Early moments of shame and how they quietly shape adult behaviors

• Binge eating and the “messy room” feeling of not knowing where to begin

• The difference between hearing your body (external noise) and listening to it (internal connection)

• Masculinity, gender expression, and why having a male-centered space mattered

• Therapy as work — and why doing the journaling actually matters

• Why there may not be an “after” in healing — only possibility

• Creating new neural pathways (the “desire path” metaphor)

• Relearning how to eat without shame as the framework

Things Referenced in This Episode

• Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One by Kristen Arnett

• Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary (The Ringer production)

• Beyond Yacht Rock 2000

Work With Aaron

If this episode resonated with you, there are several ways to stay connected

• Your Body Unscripted Online Course

• 1:1 Coaching with Aaron

• Men’s Group Info

• Men Unscripted Playlist on Spotify

Share

Leave a comment

I usually post every Monday at 5am. It’s become a rhythm. A quiet commitment. And this week, if I’m honest, I don’t really have it.

Nothing dramatic happened. I’m not in crisis. I’m just tired, and there is so much to be tired from these days.

I usually write on the weekend, and this time I didn’t feel that spark of “this is the thing I need to talk about.” The past few weeks felt different. There was something clear. Something meaningful. This week feels slower. Heavier.

Not heavy in a bad way. Just drained, tired and maybe a little less motivated.

What’s louder than the tiredness is the voice that shows up alongside it:

You should post weekly.
If you stop, you’ll lose momentum.
You already struggle to build a following.
The algorithm says you should.
If you don’t post, you’re irrelevant.

It’s wild how quickly normal thought to rest turns into a character flaw.

Part of me is afraid that if I skip a week, everything falls apart. That readers disappear. That eventually I’ll give up on this whole thing. There’s some perfectionism in there, too. Not about writing the perfect post, but about staying perfectly consistent no matter what.

I notice how many “shoulds” live in my head. They show up in my work, my family, around money, my health, and my body. They don’t always run the show, but they create tension.

Right now, my body feels tired. It has for some time. It feels like it needs to recalibrate.

If I zoom out, I know this is normal. Energy shifts. Creativity ebbs. Humans aren’t machines. And if someone I care about felt like this, I know what I’d say:

Rest.
Take care of yourself.
You don’t have to force it.

So maybe congruence this week isn’t a polished essay or something engineered to get clicks. Maybe it’s just saying: I’m tired. Maybe it’s trusting that you’re not here because I hit publish at 5am every Monday without fail.

I don’t have a grand insight. I just know I don’t want to make something up for the sake of momentum.

So this is me choosing congruence over performance.

Still here.
Just human.

Stay tuned, more to come.

Share

Leave a comment

I spend my days helping people untangle shame, especially around their bodies and the foods they eat. And then I watched shame packaged as inspiration during this year’s Super Bowl.

I was watching the game with friends. Snacks out. Casual conversation. I barely registered the Mike Tyson ad the first time it aired. But I knew something didn’t sit right.

Later, I rewatched it.

That’s when it landed.

The tone.
The language.
The framing.

It was worse than I thought. Thirty seconds of fat-shaming disguised as inspiration. Calling people “fudgy.” Reducing bodies to punchlines. Framing weight as a moral collapse.

And then this line:

“I had so much self-hate when I was like that, I wanted to kill myself.”

Let’s be clear. That is not empowerment. That is shame. And shame does not work. Not clinically. Not culturally. Not politically.

Shame does not create sustainable health. It creates secrecy. Bingeing in private and restricting in public. Gym punishment cycles. Self-hatred disguised as discipline.

It reinforces the stereotype that fat people are lazy, out of control, weak. It tells the public that larger bodies are evidence of moral failure.

That messaging has consequences. I see them every week.

The ad claims transformation. What it sells is humiliation.

Even if the intent was to say, “I was in pain,” the impact is something else.

For anyone living in a larger body, it reinforces a brutal narrative:
You should hate yourself.
You should feel disgust.
You should be ashamed.

And when someone says they wanted to kill themselves because they were fat, broadcast into millions of homes, that framing is reckless.

For people currently experiencing suicidal ideation, that line does not land as a metaphor. It lands as validation of their worst intrusive thoughts.

That is not careful storytelling.
That is dangerous messaging.

And then there’s the messenger.

It is hard to ignore the irony of positioning someone with a long and documented history of harming others as the moral authority on discipline and worthiness.

The hypocrisy is thick.

But this is not just about one commercial. It is about a pattern.

This administration continues to frame health as morality. It continues to weaponize shame. It continues to position body size as a personal defect rather than the complex intersection of biology, environment, stress, trauma, and access.

They call it MAHA.

Make America Healthy Again.

But what we are watching is something else.

MASAA.

Make Americans Shamed Again and Again.

Again through public messaging.
Again through policy.
Again through spectacle.
Again through celebrity humiliation.

Shame is cheap. It is loud. It makes for dramatic television.

But it does not make people healthier.

It makes them quieter. It makes them hide. It convinces them their bodies are the problem rather than the systems around them.

If we truly cared about health, we would invest in food access, mental health care, community infrastructure, and reducing weight stigma in medical settings.

Instead, we air humiliation during the Super Bowl and call it inspiration.

I am not interested in pretending that is harmless.

Shame has never been a public health strategy.

It is a control strategy.

And the people who pay for it are the ones already carrying the most.

Share

Leave a comment