Welcome to Sunday Coffee. In these videos, we have a chat; it’s Sunday, and I am drinking coffee.

I use Claude to create two helpful charts about vitamin supplements.

• The first is about when to take the vitamin or mineral.

• The second is which supplements can be taken together.

Paid subscribers can download each of these charts. Consider supporting my work.

Subscribe now

If you’d like to work with me 1:1 and have your insurance pay for the session, you can! I work at Nourish, and here is my scheduling link.

Book a session with Megrette

Read more

To set the record straight, water hydrates you. Electrolytes don’t hydrate you on their own; they’re what your body uses to actually absorb and hang onto the fluid you drink. I’ll come back to that in a bit.

We covered fiber a couple of issues back, and vitamins in the last issue. Now we’re finishing the micronutrient bucket with minerals, including electrolytes, so you can skip the hype and maybe save a few bucks.

Where we are on the Roadmap

This is Step 1 of the NWLR Roadmap: Food Math: It’s Time to Stop Subtracting Food from Your Diet. If you’re new here, I’m Megrette, a weight-inclusive dietitian and diabetes educator at Nourish, and I write NWLR to help you prevent or manage diabetes without getting tangled up in diet culture.

Work with me at Nourish

Subscribe to get:

• Discover what minerals actually do in your body, and why eating them isn’t the same as absorbing them

• See why the same amount of iron in two different foods doesn’t mean the same amount ends up in your blood

• Learn how pairing foods helps your body actually use more of what you’re already eating

Subscribe now

Read more

If you are wondering why you might be confused, consider if you have ever been told that vitamins give you energy?

To set the record straight, food gives you energy (BTW: we measure energy in calories). Vitamins don’t give you energy. Vitamins are what your body needs to get energy out of macronutrients. These include protein, carbohydrates, fat, and yes, even alcohol, since alcohol has calories too.

What are micronutrients

Vitamins and minerals help your body function and help prevent future disease. Why do I lump them together? Because they don’t fuel you the way protein, carbs, and fat do. They keep the whole system running.

We talked about fiber in the last issue. In part two of this series, we’re going to talk about minerals, including electrolytes, since electrolytes are just minerals with an electrical charge.

Where we are on the Roadmap

This is Step 1 of the NWLR Roadmap: Food Math: It’s Time to Stop Subtracting Food from Your Diet. This shift away from diet culture lays the foundation for what comes next: understanding diabetes without guilt or shame. If you’re new here, I’m Megrette, a weight-inclusive dietitian and diabetes educator, and I write NWLR to help you prevent or manage diabetes without getting tangled up in diet culture.

Subscribe to get:

• Discover what a vitamin actually does in your body, not just that you’re “supposed to” eat one

• See, side by side, how two foods that look nutritionally identical can differ a lot in vitamins

• Learn which everyday meals already cover your needs, without tracking anything

Subscribe now

Read more

Fiber confuses people, and I think I know why. Fiber is a carbohydrate, but your body can’t digest it, so it doesn’t add up as calories the way other carbs do (the whole “Net Carb” thing). A carb that isn’t really a carb, at least not calorically, is a strange thing to wrap your head around, and I think that’s part of why fiber needs to get treated like its own separate category instead of getting folded into the carb conversation the way sugar and starch do.

Why Learn About Fiber

Fiber connects to almost everything we’ve covered in this series so far. Back in Part 3, I mentioned that fiber binds to cholesterol in your gut so it can’t move into your bloodstream. The American Heart Association ties 5 to 10 grams of soluble fiber a day to roughly a 5 to 10 percent drop in LDL cholesterol (Harvard Health). That matters more if you’re managing diabetes, given how much higher your cardiovascular risk already is.

Fiber has a direct relationship with blood sugar, too. People who eat more fiber have a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and for those who already have it, adding fiber is associated with a modest reduction in both fasting blood glucose and A1C (meta-analysis).

There’s a cancer connection, too. Several large studies link higher fiber intake to a lower risk of colorectal cancer, with a 7-13 percent drop for every additional 10 grams of fiber per day, depending on which study you read (Nature Index, meta-analysis). The range tells you the debate hasn’t ended, but the direction holds across a lot of different studies.

Constipation can be helped by adding fiber, specifically water-soluble fiber, but if you’re already eating fiber and still dealing with constipation, that doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong, and it’s worth mentioning at your next medical visit.

Then there’s your gut biome, which might be the most underrated one on this list. Fiber is food for the bacteria living in your gut. When they break it down, they produce short-chain fatty acids- acetate, propionate, and butyrate- that help regulate metabolism, support your immune system, and may play a role in insulin sensitivity (The relationship between gut microbiota and fiber). Your gut bacteria are the 7-billion pets that you need to feed every day.

The average American eats about 15 grams of fiber a day. The recommendation is 25 grams for women and 38 grams for men. Only about 5 to 7 percent of adults hit that number (Cleveland Clinic). Fiber has been called a “nutrient of public health concern” by the USDA since 2005. That’s a polite way of saying almost nobody is getting enough, and it matters.

I’m Megrette, a weight-inclusive dietitian and diabetes educator, and this is Part 4, the last part of this four-part series on protein, carbs, fat, and fiber. If you’re new here, welcome. We’re on Step 1 of the NWLR Roadmap, adding to your plate instead of subtracting from it, and fiber might be the clearest example of what “adding” actually looks like.

Become a paid subscriber to learn

• The difference between soluble and insoluble fiber, and why you don’t have to memorize which foods are which

• Why fiber can be a shortcut for spotting how processed a food is, and where that shortcut breaks down

• Where added fiber shows up (yogurt, bars, sodas, even bread) and whether it counts the same as fiber that comes with the food naturally

• How to use the same 5-step process from Parts 1 through 3 to build fiber into a meal without turning it into a math problem

Subscribe now

Read more

Maybe the day went sideways, and it was impossible for you to nourish yourself. You reach for self-compassion, understanding that one day doesn’t make or break your diet, but poof, your mind just said, “Screw it, go eat XYZ.”

The mind is a storytelling machine, and it has been trained to judge you (good or bad) faster than a rerun of Judge Judy. The gavel crashes down at basically anything related to food, eating, and body image, and diet culture has placed you on trial without your permission.

This good/bad judgment happens before you’ve even tasted the meal.

We’re deep into Step 1 of the Roadmap right now: Food Math: It’s Time to Stop Subtracting Food from Your Diet.

Instead of focusing on restriction, we’re exploring the radical idea of adding more flavor, nutrients, pleasure, and flexibility. We’ve been building on protein, carbs, and fat, and the next article about fiber will be available for subscribers on August 10.

Thanks for reading NWLR. If you’re new here, subscribe to NWLR and join us as we use the Roadmap to untangle diet culture from diabetes care.

I’ve written about this pull toward grading yourself before, if you want the fuller version:

• A Different Way to Check In With Yourself

• How to Start Giving Yourself Permission

Subscribe now

Storytelling Machine

The mind’s whole job is prediction, and it predicts by telling stories; that’s what it’s for. So when your body reports something- I’m hungry, my knees hurt, I just ate breakfast for the first time in a while- your mind doesn’t leave it there. It reaches for a story to explain it, and it reaches for the most familiar one first, because a familiar story is a well-worn path.

It’s like watching the same movie over and over again because we know how it will end. That pull toward the familiar path is what I call the force of familiar. The force of familiar is felt by everyone, and you can visualize it like a gossamer thread. It isn’t strong by itself. However, over time the force of familiar becomes stronger as the threads become woven together.

Diet and wellness culture has so often called food good or bad that we’ve come to believe it. And once enough individual foods get sorted that way, the sorting doesn’t stay contained; eating itself starts to feel like something you can get right or wrong. So when you sit down to add carbs instead of subtracting calories, don’t be surprised if your mind still reaches for that old story: adding any food must be “bad” or “wrong.”

Compassionate curiosity is how you can cut the force of familiar. The next time you’re looking for something to eat, instead of wondering, “was I good today?” ask a different question: how can I add balance to this meal, snack, or choice?

Why?

Well, “Was I good?” is a closed-ended question; it only has two exits, yes or no, and “no” feels like a bad thing. “Yes” can feel worse; that’s the door swinging open for the same knock, knock, knocking inner teenager from the start. “Oh, I was good, so now I can have XYZ!”

Asking an open-ended question like How can I add balance? is an example of compassionate curiosity. It is coming alongside yourself and helping you pause. That tiny gap between stimulus and response is how mindful eating helps us to align with our value of nourishing the body.

If this is landing for you, here’s what’s coming for paid subscribers this month:

• Learn where vitamins are in your diet, and how to add them without turning it into another rule to follow (August 17)

• Discover why we need vitamins and minerals and how the food you eat can meet your nutritional needs (August 24)

• Explore how to include more plant-based meals in your diet, in two parts (September 14 and 21)

Subscribe now

What could this compassionate curiosity look like over time? It looks like a practice that quietly erodes internalized weight and diabetes stigma. However, it is easy for “adding” to turn into performing; if it does, that is something to be curious about. Who am I performing to? Why do they get to judge me and my food choices? Am I adding food because I am allowed? In what ways does this food nourish some aspect of my body, mind, or emotions?

There is a lot of perfectionism in diabetes and diet culture. It is normal to see judgment slide into your thoughts. When it shows up, give yourself permission to reach for some compassionate curiosity. Pull out the old, ITI: Isn’t that interesting?

• See when the good/bad story shows up around a food choice

• Pause, and bring a little compassionate curiosity to it; this is what cuts the force of familiar.

• Reach for your autonomy, your actual choice, and ask: how can I add balance to this meal, snack, or choice?

If you want support putting this into practice with your own meals, that’s exactly the kind of work we do together at Nourish.

You can find the full Roadmap. Check out how this fits into the bigger picture.

NWLR Roadmap

And if you’re not subscribed yet, I’d love to have you join me for the rest of Step 1.

In this video, I mention the Thought Compass as a tool to help sort out your thoughts and feelings. Here is the link:

I also mention the force of familiar. Here is some more information about the force of familiar.

Despite what you might remember from the 1990’s (if your memory or birthday go back that far), fat isn’t the villain it’s made out to be. However, saturated fat didn’t have a glow-up, and it does have a real and well-documented relationship with heart disease. Because we are working to prevent or manage diabetes, this relationship deserves more attention than almost anything else we’ve covered so far in this series.

Why Learn About Fat

People with diabetes are about twice as likely to develop heart disease or have a stroke as people without diabetes, and cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death for people with diabetes, causing more deaths than diabetes itself does (American Diabetes Association). More than 65% of people with diabetes die from some form of heart disease or stroke (University of Utah, CVRTI).

Shit, that’s a heavy way to open an article, but I’d rather you understand why we’re spending a whole article here than have you skim past “fat” because it sounds like old news or you were told on your size acceptance journey to ignore fat.

I’m Megrette, a weight-inclusive dietitian and diabetes educator, and this is Part 3 of a four-part series on protein, carbs, fat, and fiber, one at a time, so you feel confident building a balanced meal. If you’re new here, welcome. We’re on Step 1 of the NWLR Roadmap. This step is about adding to your plate, not subtracting from it, and understanding fat, especially saturated fat, is part of that add.

What Is Saturated Fat?

Saturated fat is solid at room temperature. Butter, lard, and the visible white fat on a steak are all saturated fat. The reason they are solid is that saturated fat molecules are straight chains that pack together tightly, much like how you can pack straight sticks into a box more tightly than curved ones. That packing is what makes it solid.

Liquid fats, like olive oil, aren’t purely unsaturated. Most oils are blends, weighted heavily toward unsaturated fats, which is why they stay liquid on your counter.

Then there's the plant-based exception that trips people up: tropical oils, especially coconut oil, are solid at room temperature despite being plant-based. It’s not just the shape of the molecule; it is also how long the fatty acid chain is. Coconut oil is mostly made of medium-chain saturated fats, like lauric acid, and some research suggests your body handles medium-chain fats differently than the long-chain saturated fat in butter or a marbled steak. That's the argument you'll see why coconut oil is okay to eat. Now, I don’t want to suggest that this is a conspiracy, but nutritional science is confusing, and like English, there are a lot of exceptions.

Your body processes different fats differently: some are processed by the liver, and others are absorbed through the same slower lymphatic route long-chain fats take. True MCT oil (the shorter-chain C8 and C10 fats) is metabolized quickly because it goes straight to the liver. So coconut oil doesn't earn the metabolic pass that pure MCT oil gets. The American Heart Association's position is that coconut oil still raises LDL cholesterol about as much as butter does, and it continues to recommend limiting it.

Hydrogenation is worth understanding because it’s still sitting in your pantry. Food companies hydrogenate plant-based fats, essentially forcing hydrogen into unsaturated fats to make them more solid, extend their shelf life, and withstand higher cooking temperatures. This process creates trans fat. A hydrogenated product can honestly claim “low cholesterol” on the label because it is, yet it still isn’t a health food.

Trans fat lowers your good cholesterol (HDL - you can remember this because the H stands for helping) and raises your bad cholesterol (LDL - you can remember this because the L stands for Lousy or Litter-bug) at the same time. This combination is the exact opposite of what we want to do to prevent heart disease.

If you see “partially hydrogenated oil” anywhere in an ingredient list, that’s trans fat, regardless of what the front of the package says. The FDA allows a product to list 0g trans fat if it has less than 0.5g per serving. This means that the “trans fat free” on the front doesn’t always mean zero. Without making us all paranoid, it is helpful to check the ingredient list, not just the nutrition panel.

Become a paid subscriber to learn

• How to use the “count the feet” method to gauge saturated fat before you even look at a label

• Where fat hides in foods that don’t look fatty, and which of those foods are actually worth keeping

• Why the American Heart Association and the USDA don’t agree on your daily saturated fat target, and what that disagreement actually means for your plate

• Real swaps that lower saturated fat without turning your meals into “diet food”

Subscribe now

Read more

We’ve covered protein in Part 1 of this four-part series. Now we are ready to move on to carbs. If protein wears a halo, carbs have grown horns. Carbs have been vilified for a few decades now, and this vilification is just the space where diet culture grows.

If you’ve ever felt confused about whether you should eat carbs, or guilty when you do, you are not alone, and you are not wrong to want a clearer answer. So be sure to keep reading if you want to understand where carbs are in your diet, what they do for your body, and how to create a balanced meal that will help you balance your blood glucose, no restriction, diet culture, or weight loss required.

I’m Megrette, a weight-inclusive dietitian and diabetes educator, and this is Part 2 of a four-part series on protein, carbs, fat, and fiber, one at a time, so you feel confident eating a balanced diet. If you are new here, welcome. We are on Step 1 of the NWLR Roadmap. This step is about adding to your plate.

Why Your Body Wants Carbs at All

Just like with protein, understanding what carbs do in your body changes how you think about eating them. Carbs are your body’s default fuel. They are also, for anyone managing diabetes, the macro that gets the most attention and often the most fear. So let’s take a look at what your body is actually doing with the carbs you eat.

Carbs are energy. When you eat a carbohydrate, your body breaks it down into glucose. Every single cell in your body can use glucose for energy. Your body prefers glucose because fat burns in a carbohydrate flame. That’s right, for you to metabolize fat, your body needs glucose. Oh, and your body doesn’t WANT to use protein for energy. It can, but it isn’t its first choice. When I learned this, I imagined the cell making a yucky-face, like the face you make when something tastes bad. To your cells, protein as a fuel tastes bad.

Your brain runs on glucose. Your brain uses about 120 grams of glucose per day, which is more than any other organ. It can adapt to running on ketones (which is what happens on a very low-carb diet), but it prefers glucose. This is why people who cut carbs sharply often feel foggy and irritable for the first few weeks. Their brain is being asked to run on a backup fuel it wasn’t set up for.

Your red blood cells can only use glucose. This one surprises most people. Red blood cells have no mitochondria, which means they cannot burn ketones or fat for energy. They literally can only run on glucose. So the idea that your body doesn’t need carbs isn’t right. There are cells in your body that need carbs and can’t use anything else.

Your muscles store carbs for you. Your muscles store extra carbohydrates as glycogen. When you go for a walk, take the stairs, or do anything active, your muscles pull from that glycogen. This is why endurance athletes carb-load before a race. They are topping off the tank.

Carbs are the vehicle for a lot of your micronutrients. Whole-food carbs like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans provide vitamins, minerals, and plant compounds you cannot easily get from other foods. Vitamin C, potassium, folate, magnesium, and hundreds of phytonutrients ride along with the carbs.

Carbs bring fiber. Fiber is technically a carbohydrate that your body cannot digest, which is exactly what makes it useful. Fiber only comes from plant-based carbs. If you cut carbs, you also cut fiber. Another cool thing about these fiber-containing carbohydrates is they are what your gut bacteria eat. That’s right, you aren’t just helping your cells; you are feeding your gut biome.

Carbs help your mood. Carbs help your body absorb tryptophan, which your brain uses to make serotonin. Serotonin is one of the reasons you feel calm and content. When people cut carbs too sharply, they often feel cranky because there is a fuel shortage.

Your blood glucose regulation system was built to handle carbs. Your body has an entire system of hormones (insulin and glucagon are the main two) that manages the glucose in your blood. That system exists because your body expects to eat carbs. Cutting carbs sharply, then adding them back, then cutting again, is one version of yo-yo dieting. Weight cycling like this has been shown to worsen blood glucose control and increase diabetes risk over time [https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9630080/]

Become a paid subscriber to learn

• How to add carbs to your meal without counting grams or getting pulled into diet culture.

• How different carbs affect your blood glucose, and why “don’t eat carbs” isn’t the answer.

• The story on simple vs. complex carbs (and why the labels don’t tell the whole truth).

• What matters (and what doesn’t) about added sugar.

• How to build meals that satisfy you and support your blood glucose at the same time.

Subscribe now

Where Carbs Are Found

Carbs live in more foods than most people realize, and once you can see where they show up, the whole conversation about “eating carbs” gets a lot less mysterious.

Grains. Bread, rice, pasta, oats, tortillas, crackers, cereal, quinoa, farro, barley. Both refined grains (white bread, white rice) and whole grains (whole-wheat bread, brown rice, oats) are carbohydrates. The difference is that whole grains bring fiber, some protein, and micronutrients along with the carbs.

Vegetables. All vegetables have some carbs, but the amount varies enormously. Starchy vegetables (potatoes, corn, peas, winter squash, sweet potatoes) contain significant amounts of carbs, similar to grains. Non-starchy vegetables (leafy greens, broccoli, peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, cauliflower) have very few carbs and a lot of fiber, water, and micronutrients. This is why most eating patterns suggest filling half your plate with non-starchy vegetables. You get volume, satisfaction, and nutrition without much impact on blood glucose.

Fruit. Fruit is carbs, fiber, vitamins, and water. A whole piece of fruit is very different from fruit juice, which loses most of the fiber and delivers the carbs much faster. This is why an apple satisfies you longer than a glass of apple juice made from the same apple.

Dairy. Milk and yogurt contain carbs (from lactose, the sugar naturally in dairy) alongside their protein. Cheese and cottage cheese are much lower in carbs because most of the lactose is left behind during processing. So milk and yogurt have carbs, but cheese and cottage cheese don’t.

Beans and lentils. These are our unicorns from Part 1. Beans and lentils bring protein, carbs, and fiber all at once. This combination is why they have such a gentle effect on blood glucose despite being a real source of carbs.

Desserts. Cake, cookies, ice cream, candy, pastries. These are carbs (from sugar and flour) plus fat, usually without much fiber or protein or micronutrients. This is where “carbs” and “diet culture” collide most loudly, so we will spend more time on this later.

Drinks. Regular soda, juice, sweetened coffee drinks, sports drinks, sweet tea. Liquid carbs hit your bloodstream faster than any other form, because there’s no chewing and no digestion of solids to slow them down. For my clients who drink sweetened beverages, becoming aware that a 12-ounce can of soda contains about 40 grams of carbohydrates often helps explain why their blood glucose becomes elevated after drinking one.

Simple vs. Complex Carbs (and Why That Isn’t the Whole Story)

You have probably heard that “simple” carbs are bad and “complex” carbs are good. Like most nutrition rules, this is partly true and partly misleading.

Simple carbs are made of one or two sugar molecules. Table sugar, honey, the sugar in fruit, and the sugar in milk are all simple carbs. Complex carbs are made of longer chains of sugar molecules linked together. Starches (in bread, rice, pasta, potatoes) and fiber (in beans, vegetables, whole grains) are complex carbs.

The idea behind “simple is bad, complex is good” is that complex carbs take longer to break down, so they raise blood glucose more gradually. That’s often true, but not always. White bread is a complex carb (starch) that hits your bloodstream almost as fast as sugar water, because the fiber has been stripped out and the starch has been finely ground. Fruit is a simple carb, but a whole apple raises blood glucose slowly because the sugar comes wrapped in fiber and water.

So the simple-vs.-complex label doesn’t tell you what you actually need to know. What matters more is what else is in the food. Is there fiber? Is there protein or fat? Is the food whole or has it been broken down (juiced, milled, refined)? Those questions predict the impact on blood glucose better than “simple or complex” does.

When someone tells you not to eat carbs, what they usually mean, whether they know it or not, is don’t eat carbs that have been stripped of everything else. Here’s what those foods look like on a label:

Now compare that to what happens when you eat carbs that still have their fiber, protein, or micronutrients:

Both tables have carbs. The bottom table provides fiber and often protein and micronutrients, too. The top table doesn’t. Pssst: In Part 1, you learned about Net Carbs and how this relates to fiber.

But “don’t eat carbs” puts a lot of foods on the “avoid” list that don’t belong there. Beans, fruit, whole grains, and vegetables are all carbs, and they are some of the most nourishing foods you can eat. Cutting them out doesn’t make you healthier. It gets you caught up in diet culture, and THAT usually makes you tired, cranky, and constipated.

Added Sugar

Added sugar is exactly what it sounds like: sugar that gets added to a food during processing or preparation. It shows up in obvious places (soda, candy, dessert) and in less obvious ones (pasta sauce, salad dressing, flavored yogurt, bread, granola bars, ketchup).

The current recommendations are:

• The American Heart Association suggests no more than 6 teaspoons (about 25 grams) of added sugar per day for women, and 9 teaspoons (about 36 grams) for men.

• The World Health Organization suggests keeping added sugar under 10% of your total calories, and ideally under 5%.

The word "recommendation" is just that: a suggestion. It isn’t an order, or an accusation. It is a general guideline to help you evaluate your diet. You may notice that these numbers are lower than what most Americans actually eat. So don’t freak out if your diet has more sugar than the recommendation. Most of us are having about 17 teaspoons of sugar in our diet. Start noticing whether your diet has hidden sugar. The sugar in ice cream or a cookie isn’t hidden. It is supposed to be there (right, because it is a dessert!) It is the hidden sugar in your drinks, bread, yogurt, sauces, crackers, cereal, and even mayo.

If you read those recommendations and then got hit by diet culture’s three-punch routine of doubt, guilt, and panic, I’m sorry because that sucks. That reaction is not the one I’m hoping you have. What is helpful is cultivating mindful awareness. Mindful awareness sounds like: “Huh, I didn’t realize my morning coffee had 15 grams of added sugar in it.” Awareness invites you to notice, wonder, and consider. Diet culture demands you fix, restrict, and punish.

If you find yourself noticing added sugar in places it hides, that’s Discover. If you find yourself experimenting with lower-sugar options or different preparations, that’s Explore. Both Discover and Explore are you giving yourself permission; they aren’t a commitment to ALWAYS eat or NEVER have. You are allowed to look and notice without changing anything.

If you are wondering, “Should I focus on added sugar?” That question is itself diet culture. You can tell because it starts with “Should.” When you “should” on yourself, you are telling yourself what to do, not asking.

But Megrette, that was a question! Hmmm, okay, it was technically a question, but did it land as a question or an order, a command, a requirement? Compassionate curiosity isn’t you yelling or scolding yourself. It sounds different, maybe like, “What do I want to know about the sugar I’m eating?” or “Once I know how much sugar I am eating, what do I want to do with that knowledge?”

Combining Foods Improves Your Diet

You already know how this works from Part 1. A unicorn is a meal that combines protein, carbs, and fiber. The individual foods don’t have to be unicorns. Your meal becomes one when you combine them.

In this article, we started with carbs. So this time, let’s build meals that start with a carb and add what’s missing. For this example, we aimed for about 25 grams of protein, around 50 grams of carbs, and at least 7-8 grams of fiber.

Try to ask, “What can I add to this to balance the meal?” That is what Step 1 of the NWLR Roadmap is about: adding nutritious foods. Adding balance is how NWLR helps you prevent or manage diabetes.

Be sure to subscribe because in part 3 and 4 of this series we will be talking more about fat and fiber.

A note for readers eating vegetarian or vegan: your ratio is different. Vegan meals work better at a closer 1:3 ratio (25g protein to 75g carbs) because plant proteins come packaged with more carbs than animal proteins do. We are going to spend more time on managing blood sugars on a vegetarian and vegan diet in a future series.

Subscribe now

My struggle stems from the fact that I know what a balanced diet looks like, but I am not sure what it looks like for you. Diets aren’t fixed, and we eat a huge variety of foods that change day to day, week to week, season to season. My other struggle is I don’t want to drag you (or me for that matter) into diet culture.

My solution is to write a 4-part series on adding macronutrients to your diet. And to answer the quiz, macronutrients are where calories are found. I know! All of your calories come from protein, carbohydrates, fat, or alcohol.

Now, protein is having a moment right now. You can’t scroll five posts without someone telling you to eat more of it, add it to your coffee, or worry that you’re not getting enough. This is why I am kicking this series off with protein.

If you are new here, welcome. We are talking about the NWLR Roadmap: Step 1, Food Math: It's Time to Stop Subtracting Food from Your Diet. This step is about adding to your plate, not subtracting from it. Protein is our first stop because it’s the nutrient everyone has an opinion about right now, and I would like to help you sort what’s useful without getting pulled into diet culture.

I’m Megrette, a weight-inclusive dietitian and diabetes educator, and this is the first of a four-part series walking through protein, carbs, fat, and fiber, one at a time, so you feel confident eating a balanced diet.

Why Your Body Wants Protein at All

You want to understand how to add protein, but first let’s understand why. Knowing why your body wants and needs protein often changes how you think about eating protein. It can shift it from a ‘have-to’ to a ‘get-to,’ and that changes how you relate to adding it.

Protein does a few jobs you’ve probably never thought to thank it for:

• It’s structural. The protein actin is essential for cell shape, motility, and muscle contraction. The protein you eat is what is needed to build and shape your muscles and to contract them, which is very cool.

• It’s an enzyme and an antibody. Protein keeps the chemical reactions in your body running and helps your immune system recognize what does and doesn’t belong there. There are all these cool things happening in your muscles like transporter molecules (made of protein) that move glucose to the cell when you need energy.

• It’s a messenger. A lot of your hormones are proteins, carrying signals from one part of your body to another. They coat the fat molecules, called lipoproteins, so they can move through your body.

• Proteins are the building blocks for neurotransmitters. Glutamate, GABA, and glycine aren’t just related to brain chemistry; they act directly as neurotransmitters. Dopamine and serotonin are built from other amino acids you eat. So when a meal with protein in it leaves you feeling steadier, that’s not in your head. Well, it is in your head, quite literally, just not in the way “it’s in your head” usually gets used against people.

• Protein creates a greater sense of satiety, which I like to describe as “The level of satisfaction you get from eating.” So, if you eat a salad and you're full but not satisfied, ask: was there enough protein in the meal?

This series will help you understand why adding food to your diet supports your body's needs, and it can also help you untangle from diet culture because you feel less hungry and more satisfied.

Become a paid subscriber to learn

• How to add protein to your meal without having to count grams or weigh food.

• How adding to your meal actually makes it easier to meet your nutrition goals.

• Why your blood glucose levels are better when you include protein at meals.

• Discover nutritional ‘unicorns’

• Learn how to create your own unicorns at each meal.

Subscribe now

Read more

Yet you don’t want to get caught up in another fad diet. You want to know how to meet your protein goals without dieting. You want to understand how to eat a balanced meal that meets your nutritional needs, not just your protein target.

If you’re new to No Weight Loss Required, welcome. I’m Megrette, a weight-inclusive dietitian and diabetes educator. I write NWLR because I know that diets don’t work long-term, and that if changing the way you eat were easy, you would have already done it. This newsletter is for people who want to prevent or manage diabetes without dieting and who are ready to try a different approach.

I created the No Weight Loss Required Roadmap, a four-step approach to creating sustainable change. Here is the full Roadmap

From July through September, we’re on Step 1: Food Math: It’s Time to Stop Subtracting Food from Your Diet. Instead of focusing on restriction, we are going to explore the radical idea of adding more flavor, nutrients, pleasure, and flexibility to your meals. A great question to start with is, “What can I add to this meal to make it more balanced?”

You’re reading NWLR because you’re looking for a way to take care of yourself that doesn’t involve another set of rules. That’s what we’re building toward here, and I’m glad you’re along for it.

So what would it look like to eat 75 grams of protein? Start by dividing 75 grams by the number of meals you eat. If you eat three meals a day, that’s about 25 grams of protein per meal.

The next question worth asking is whether you want only protein at that meal. A protein shake or a high-protein yogurt can get you to 25 grams quickly, but these grab-and-go choices are rarely satisfying and lack balance. Let’s assume you want to eat a meal. That’s where the 5-step process comes in.

If you’re just getting started with Step 1, these two articles are a good place to begin.

Why become a paid subscriber?

As a paid subscriber, you’ll learn how to create balanced meals that meet your protein needs and are actually satisfying. Over the next three months, each article walks you through one step of the 5-step process so you can build meals that work in your real life, without dieting.

Subscribe now

Let’s start building the meal with protein. It’s where the process starts and you’ll add to it from here.

• Step 1 is to start with your protein. This is your anchor. It sets the tone for the rest of the plate.

• Step 2 is to add carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are your body’s preferred source of energy and add fiber to your meal. A meal without carbohydrates isn’t balanced. It’s missing the fuel that keeps your energy steady and your hunger manageable.

• Step 3 is to add color and texture. This is the step that makes a meal satisfying, not just nutritious. When your plate has three colors and three textures, you tend to feel more satisfied at the end of the meal. Non-starchy vegetables do most of the work here.

• Step 4 will help you understand how to reduce the amount of saturated fat in your diet. Saturated fat is linked with heart disease. Four-footed animals like beef and pork carry more saturated fat than two-footed ones like chicken and turkey, or no-footed ones like fish. Knowing what’s on your plate helps you make informed choices without avoiding anything.

• Step 5 is to see how it all comes together. This is where meal ideas show you exactly what Steps 1 through 4 look like on a real plate, across different foods and preparations.

Over the next three months, paid subscribers will get a full article on each step, with handouts, meal ideas, and the numbers so you can see how the pieces add up.

Let me show you what this looks like with eggs.

Step 1 — Protein

Two large eggs give you about 12 grams of protein. That’s a good start, but to reach 25 grams, you’ll want to add a protein partner. Some options that work well with eggs are cottage cheese stirred into a scramble or shredded cheddar melted in. Each of these adds around 7 to 13 grams of protein, depending on how much you use.

Step 2 — Carbohydrates

For Step 2, you’re adding carbohydrates and fiber. Toast, half a bagel, or a bowl of grits are common pairings with eggs that add carbohydrates and make the meal feel more complete. Choosing higher-fiber options like a Bagel Thins or whole-wheat toast with 3 or more grams of fiber, or adding fruit on the side, brings fiber and color.

Step 3 — Color and Texture

For Step 3, ask yourself: What can I add for volume and color?

Non-starchy vegetables add volume without significantly increasing carbohydrate intake, and they provide vitamins and minerals your body needs that protein and grains alone don’t provide. When you skip this step, the meal can hit its protein and carbohydrate targets and still leave you feeling like something is missing. That’s because something is.

With eggs, this step is easy to overlook because eggs and toast fill the plate quickly. A handful of spinach wilted into the scramble, sliced tomato on the side, or sauteed bell peppers adds color, adds texture, and fills your plate with the micronutrients that make a meal genuinely nourishing rather than just complete on paper.

Here’s what three common additions actually contribute:

Step 4 — Count the Feet

To understand how much saturated fat is in a breakfast meal, count the number of feet. Four-footed animals like beef and pork carry the most saturated fat. Dairy is an animal product and also contains saturated fat, and where it falls in the framework depends on the fat content. Whole-fat dairy, including butter, whole milk, whole-fat cheese, and whole-fat yogurt, counts as four-footed. Reduced-fat dairy, including 2% milk, low-fat cottage cheese, and low-fat yogurt, counts as two-footed, meaning it has less saturated fat than whole-fat versions. Non-fat dairy, including skim milk, non-fat yogurt, and non-fat cottage cheese, counts as no-footed, meaning it has very little saturated fat. Fish is also no-footed.

At breakfast, this means that butter, whole-fat cheese, and pork sausage or a sausage patty all add saturated fat to your meal. Swapping to a chicken or turkey sausage moves you from four-footed to two-footed. Using low-fat cottage cheese in your scramble instead of whole-fat cheese does the same thing.

Step 5 — Three Simple Egg Breakfasts

Scrambled eggs with cottage cheese, whole wheat toast, and sliced tomato on the side. The cottage cheese is stirred into the eggs before cooking, which adds protein without significantly changing the texture. Adding toast, red tomato, and if you add spinach, will increase the color and texture.

Fried eggs over grits with turkey sausage on the side will help you meet your carbohydrate and protein goals. Shifting to turkey sausage keeps saturated fat lower than pork sausage, and a handful of sauteed bell peppers adds color and texture.

A veggie egg scramble with shredded cheddar, a whole Bagel Thin, and fresh fruit. The cheddar melts into the eggs, adding flavor and protein. The Bagel Thin and fruit provide the carbohydrates, color, and fiber.

Eating a balanced diet doesn’t have to be confusing. You can work with me at Nourish. Most Nourish clients have no co-pay. If you’d like to work with me directly, use my link to find an appointment.

Work with me at Nourish

The NWLR Roadmap is the best place to begin if you want to understand where we’re headed and why.

Subscribe now

Welcome to Sunday Coffee, where I talk with you while in my PJs, drinking coffee. This Sunday, I am explaining how to eat 75 g of protein.

I am using a 5-step process to build a balanced meal.

In July, August, and Sept, you will learn how to stop subtracting and restricting food from your diet and start adding balance.

Subscribe now

Get more from Megrette Fletcher (She/Her) in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Read more

He wanted help figuring out what to eat when time is short, and his attention is even shorter. He typically grabbed cereal for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch, but he’d been seeing things on social media that were making him second-guess both of those choices. “I thought sandwiches were bad?” he said. Then he mentioned, almost like he was embarrassed to admit it, that he really liked cereal and didn’t want to give it up.

Where We Are on the Roadmap

We’re in Step 4 of the NWLR Roadmap, Sustainable Self-Care. This step is about building the conditions that make self-care something you can actually keep doing. We’ve talked about belonging, ease, and feeling seen and heard, and now we’re adding nonjudgment to that foundation. If you missed those earlier articles, they’re linked below.

If we haven’t met, I’m Megrette, a weight-inclusive dietitian and diabetes educator. If you’d like one-on-one support, you can work with me at Nourish, and visits are covered by insurance.

Work with me at Nourish

What is Nonjudgment

Let’s start by saying what nonjudgment isn’t. Being nonjudgmental doesn’t mean saying everything is fine or that all food choices have the same effect on your body. Jerome’s breakfast choice of cereal is higher in carbohydrates than eggs or Greek yogurt. Foods higher in carbohydrates aren’t bad or wrong. They are simply higher in carbohydrates than other choices. The issue is that our thoughts run ahead of our logical brain, and we see the word “Carbohydrates” jump to the judgment that cereal is wrong.

Jerome likes cereal. Jerome isn’t wrong for liking cereal. Liking cereal is a preference, not a judgment. If I were to ask you, “ What is your favorite color, and you said, “Yellow,” and I said, “Well, my favorite color is green.”

Who’s right? You see what I am putting down here. Preferences aren’t right or wrong; they are just present.

But…

Shifting to a nonjudgmental stance starts by slowing down our thoughts so we can see when our logical mind skips a few steps. We’re going to walk through three shifts using Jerome’s two food situations, and by the end, you’ll have a framework you can use any time you catch yourself in that “am I doing it wrong?” loop.

Shift 1: From Right and Wrong to Pleasant, Neutral, and Unpleasant

Jerome told me he really likes cereal. So let’s start there. Instead of asking “Is cereal good or bad?” I want to invite you to ask something different. Was eating cereal this morning pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant?

Many of my clients say cereal is a pleasant option because it’s easy to make and already in the house. Having something available and easy is a big part of what makes cereal genuinely pleasant, especially on a morning when there are three kids to get out the door. Where it starts to feel neutral is that it doesn’t keep him full for very long, which gets annoying. Many people also find that eating something with very little protein causes their blood glucose to rise, which tends to make them tired, making choosing cereal for breakfast unpleasant.

• Taste -> Pleasant

• Easy -> Pleasant

• Fast -> Pleasant

• Hungry an hour later -> Neutral, but moving towards unpleasant

• Elevated blood glucose -> Unpleasant

• Feeling tired -> Unpleasant

So when Jerome eats cereal, it isn’t simply good or bad. Parts of that experience are pleasant, and parts are unpleasant.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now to walk through how to use that information without sliding back into judgment, including what to do when the self-critical voice shows up mid-sandwich.

Read more

Maybe you’ve been told you want too much, or you’ve gotten so used to ignoring your needs. If any of that sounds familiar, this video is for you.

There’s a reason your needs started to feel like they don’t count, and it surprised a lot of my clients when I named it. It isn’t a personal failing, and it isn’t that you’re bad at self-care. Once you can see the reason, you can start to do something about it. That’s what this video is about.

We’re on Step 4 of the NWLR Roadmap, sustainable self-care. It rests on three conditions: belonging, ease, and feeling seen and heard. We’ve covered belonging and ease. Now I want to shift gears and explore what it feels like to be seen and heard by yourself.

• NVC Feelings and Needs List

• NEDA Definition of Weight Stigma

I have created a framework that has been one of the most useful tools in my work, and I walk through a feelings list on screen so you can see how to use it in your own life. By the end, you’ll know that you have needs, that having them is normal, and what the first move out of feeling like they don’t count actually looks like. The last part is the piece I most want people to hear, so it’s worth watching all the way through.

The links I mention are below: the feelings list you can download, and the NEDA page on weight stigma.

If we haven’t met, I’m Megrette, a weight-inclusive dietitian and diabetes educator, and this is No Weight Loss Required, a weight-inclusive space for preventing and managing diabetes. If you’re new here, welcome. I see people 1:1 at Nourish

Visits are Covered By Insurance

The paid articles in June pick up where this video leaves off, going deeper into how to put words to your needs and how reaching for non-judgment becomes a path toward accepting yourself. If that’s the work you want to do, subscribing is how you get it.

Subscribe now

That feeling is what I call “feeling seen and heard.” It is one of the loveliest experiences there is. And it’s often out of reach for most of us. Not because the people around us do not care, but because being seen and heard requires a kind of listening that is missing from our busy, go-go-go life.

When not feeling seen and heard becomes familiar, something starts to shift. Maybe you feel like you have two heads, or that you are confused. You likely feel stuck. Then tired. Then embarrassed. And eventually, if no one notices, including you, you can start to feel broken.

I would like to jump in here and remind you that people aren’t broken. We covered this in Step 3 of the NWLR Roadmap, and it is worth saying again. You are not broken. You are hurt, and there is a world of difference between these two thoughts.

Learn more:

In this article, I wanted to explore how to address the stuck, tired, and embarrassed feelings that prevent sustainable change. As you already know, diet culture has trained us to “fix” these feelings. To push past them, override them, or treat them as evidence that you need to try harder. That is the opposite of what you actually need. Before I go on, let’s get on the same page.

Where We Are on the Roadmap

We are in Step 4 of the NWLR Roadmap, Sustainable Self-Care. This step explores the conditions that make self-care sustainable. We’ve talked about belonging and ease, and now we are going to transition to feeling seen and heard.

If you missed the last few articles on belonging and ease, they are linked below. Belonging is something you have, not something you earn. Here is a quote from the article about the science of belonging:

After belonging comes ease. In case you missed the memo, ease is the next basic human need. Reaching for ease is a good thing, not you being ‘lazy’. Ease is more likely to be experienced as you align with your values. It seems to arrive not when you do what is quick, but when you let go of someone else's values — cough, cough, diet culture.

Hi, my name is Megrette Fletcher, and I’m a weight-inclusive registered dietitian and certified diabetes care and education specialist. If you are looking for one-on-one support, you can work with me at Nourish.

My clients laugh when I talk about “Bob”, so I wanted to let you in on the joke. Bob is a fictitious person I picked on. He represents diet culture’s values, and we all know a “Bob”. The thing is, the “Bob’s” in the world feel comfortable telling you “you should” do what he is doing, or have the same values as him. Because Bob is confident his values are ‘right’, he assumes you should adopt them as well. (As you can see, Bob doesn’t always stay in his lane, which is a common experience for fat folks when society and people talk about food, eating, weight, and body acceptance.) I mention this now because Bob will show up again later in this article.

Keep reading if you want practice steps to feel seen and heard

This article will give you clear steps by offering three walk-throughs, the “I get to” framework.

We will apply it to the following three feelings: stuck, tired, and embarrassed. Each walk-through is a way to begin seeing and hearing your own needs without trying to fix yourself.

This practice is a helpful skill for creating sustainable self-care. Why? Because you cannot care for needs you don’t see. And shockingly, the most important person who needs to see and hear you is you. (You might be feeling a bit like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, who was told AFTER being chased by flying monkeys that “you had the power all along.” - THANKS GLINDA).

Subscribe now

Read more

I want to talk about ease today because it’s been sold to us as so many different things that it’s hard to recognize the real one when it shows up. Diet culture has been especially busy in this department. It has trained you to push past exhaustion so you can “eat right,” to treat punishment as virtue, and to believe that if you just tried harder, ease would somehow be waiting at the end of all that trying. Sound familiar?

Where We Are on the Roadmap

We are in Step 4 of the NWLR Roadmap, Sustainable Self-Care. Within Step 4, we’re working through what has to be in place for self-care to actually be sustainable. We just finished a stretch on belonging. Now we are looking at ease.

In the next article, I’ll walk you through a practice for seeing and hearing the feelings that have been blocking ease (the stuck, tired, and embarrassed feelings most of us know well). But before we get to the practice, I want to make sure we are on the same page about what ease actually is.

Thanks for Reading NWLR

You’re reading this newsletter because you want to prevent or manage diabetes without diet culture. Hi, I’m Megrette, a weight-inclusive dietitian and diabetes educator. If you are looking for one-on-one support, you can work with me at Nourish.

If you missed the recent articles on belonging, here’s the short version.

• Belonging is part of being human.

• It is in your DNA.

• You already have it.

• Society has framed belonging as something you have to purchase or perform, which is the lie at the center of so much of this work.

• You don’t earn belonging. You have belonging (and it’s okay to reclaim it.)

Ease is different. Ease is a basic human need, and like all basic needs, it arrives when you release what is blocking it, not when you push, run, or try harder to grasp it.

What Ease Actually Is

Let me start with the relatable stuff. Ease is:

• Being able to take a deep breath and put down your worries

• Having enjoyable, healthy-promoting foods within reach

• Having time to think

• Space to function

Notice that none of these require you to do something extraordinary. Ease isn’t a reward you earn for being good. It is a basic human need, the kind of thing your nervous system actually requires to function.

What Ease Isn’t

Here is where it gets tricky, because so much of what we’ve been told is ease isn’t actually ease. Ease isn’t:

• Pushing past exhaustion to “eat right.”

• Punishing yourself mentally, physically, or emotionally

• Skipping work to play on your phone

• Avoiding dishes, laundry, or personal finances

Ease is space to function. It isn’t dodging the necessary tasks of your life.

Why the Counterfeits Are So Convincing

Matt Willis made a reel that I keep thinking about. He lists all the ways things get sold to us as one thing when they’re actually another. Scrolling is sold as rest when it’s actually distraction. Fast food is sold as a pleasure, even though it doesn’t always taste great. Alcohol gets sold as fun when it’s really escape. The full list is worth a look.

The pattern is selling you a counterfeit offer that provides a small relief, just enough to feel like something, but it doesn’t actually deliver what it promised. You scroll for twenty minutes, and you don’t feel rested. You eat the fast food, and you don’t feel nourished. The counterfeit is doing something, but it isn’t doing what it was sold for. And because we keep reaching for it, expecting the real thing, we keep coming up short.

Share

The Dark Playground

Tim Urban has a TED Talk in which he describes a place called the “dark playground.” It’s where we go to avoid what needs to be done. The dark playground is where I end up when the task at hand feels too big, too undefined, or too heavy, and my brain reaches for a small relief instead.

I know that the dark playground isn’t me being lazy; it’s me being overwhelmed. If the thing you are avoiding has been made impossibly heavy by diet culture, by weight stigma, by years of being told you are doing it wrong, of course, your brain reaches for the scroll or the snack or the fifth tab of online shopping. That isn’t a moral failing. That’s a person trying to find a small piece of relief in a system that has set them up to be exhausted.

Why This Matters for Sustainable Self-Care

Sustainable self-care isn’t possible if it is always hard. Ease is the key. The counterfeits keep you cycling between effort and collapse, which is the opposite of sustainable. Ease is what makes sustainable self-care possible.

So What Does Real Ease Require?

Ease is what results when you align with your values. That’s the short answer. The longer answer is that alignment becomes possible when three conditions are in place.

• Basic needs met. You can’t have ease if you are hungry, exhausted, or in pain. The body has to be tended to first. This is where ease and food meet, and it’s why so much of NWLR is about adding food back to your day instead of taking it away.

• Autonomy. Ease requires the ability to choose. If every food decision is dictated by a rule, you don’t have ease; you have compliance. Compliance isn’t ease, even if it looks tidy from the outside.

• Agency. You can see that you are a bright and able person. Diet culture has spent years convincing you otherwise, and that messaging is loud. Seeing your own brightness and ability is what lets you actually use your autonomy. Without agency, even good choices feel like guesses.

When you’re in alignment with your values, ease shows up. It’s not a reward or a privilege; it’s the result of taking the steps to make what you need reachable. It’s not about being “good.”

What Comes Next

Now you know what ease is and what it isn’t. Remember to subscribe because the next article will help you overcome the familiar feelings of being stuck, tired, and embarrassed.

Subscribe now

If you want one-on-one support while you work through this, you can find me at Nourish.

Work with me 1:1

My name is Megrette Fletcher, and I’m a weight-inclusive registered dietitian and certified diabetes care and education specialist.

If you are new here, welcome. No Weight Loss Required is a weight-inclusive resource for people who want to prevent or manage diabetes without focusing on weight. We are currently in Step 4 of the NWLR Roadmap: Conditions for Sustainable Self-Care. Over the last three posts, we have been laying the foundation of sustainable self-care, starting with belonging.

NWLR Roadmap

Free Articles

If you haven’t subscribed and are curious, here are some free articles to start your journey:

I think we can all relate to Doris. The systems we create work for a while, and then they don’t. If you’re someone who has dieted, it’s familiar to ask yourself, “What isn’t working?” and if you do, cool.

Don’t Miss Out

In this article, you will find clear examples of how to see what is working and make it easier to do, including:

• Cooking dinner

• Packing lunches

• Exercise

• Going to bed on time

Subscribe now

What Diet Culture Gets Wrong About Change

Diet culture has trained you to scan for what isn’t working.

• What am I doing wrong?

• What do I need to stop?

• What do I need to cut out?

• When did I make a mistake?

The scan happens fast, almost automatically, because you have been practicing it for a long time.

The problem is that this overlooks some key factors. Diet culture tells you, “You don’t know,” and over time, you start to believe it. This isn’t true: You are a bright and able person. You are doing something that works. Seeing what works is unfamiliar, so unfamiliar it can feel wrong.

Doris wanted me to tell her what she was doing wrong, but that isn’t how change works.

The reason it can feel hard isn’t that the process is complicated. It’s because diet culture has trained you to look away from what’s working.

Making What Works The Default

The goal isn’t to do more. (because…. It’s not sustainable!) The goal is to make what works the default. When something starts working, diet culture immediately says you need to do more! Now cut the carbs, → now add more vegetables, → now you HAVE to do this every day. This is adding friction to something that was just starting to work. It kills the system before it becomes the default.

I bet you don’t believe me. It’s fine, honestly, it is good to doubt, so let’s use Amazon as an example. When you buy something from Amazon, do they make it harder to buy again? They don’t, do they? They make it easier. They make it so easy that it becomes the default. What’s the takeaway?

The examples below are invitations to explore your options, not commit to them. This is the Explore step of the DEPC process. You are looking at possibilities, not making a commitment.

Cooking dinner is working. What would make it easier?

• Maybe it is having foods the family likes -> Would keeping a list of popular dinner meals so you aren’t scratching your head, wondering what to cook every week?

• If having the ingredients at home helps you cook dinner, -> Would doing ingredient prep, so cooking is faster when you get home, be easier?

• Saving money -> Would using frozen, pre-chopped vegetables, which don’t spoil, and decrease prep time, be a cost-effective option?

• Having a way to stick to the at-home meal plan. Maybe having a plan B is worth considering. Keep simple go-to meal ingredients always on hand, like frozen meatballs and broccoli, for a quick pasta dinner

Packing lunches is working. What would make it easier?

• Having lunches pre-packed -> Pack lunches after dinner and take last night’s leftovers

• Having a less busy morning -> Make lunch the night before

• Having a plan B for when plans change -> Keep frozen meals available. I just learned that Target sells Purple Carrot, which is to say, frozen meals have come a long way since the 2000’s

• Having parts of the lunch already portioned -> Oranges, Pear, Plums, and Apples come pre-portioned. If you need fruit cut up, and it’s in the budget, could you imagine buying sliced apples?

Exercise is working. What would make it easier?

• What would make it easier to be consistent? →Making it a social event and inviting a friend, co-worker, or neighbor.

• Simply remembering to go →How about scheduling it so it’s already on the calendar?

• Making it less boring -> What about downloading your favorite show or podcast before going to the gym

• Having a smoother morning -> Would packing your gym bag the night before, or keeping it in the car, be an option?

• Having energy for the workout -> How about a midday snack so you aren’t running on empty after work?

Going to bed on time is working. What would make it easier?

• Having a reminder -> Set a phone reminder to go to bed

• Reducing screen pull -> When the reminder goes off, charge your phone outside of where you sleep

• Having a wind-down routine -> Skin care, journaling, or reading signals to your body that sleep is coming

• Reconnecting with your why -> Come alongside the part of you that doesn’t want to go to bed and ask, "Is staying up going to feel better than waking up refreshed?”

Share

Back to Doris

When Doris and I sat down, I didn’t tell her what she did wrong. I asked what worked.

“Meal prepping worked.” She said with confidence. “I just don’t like what I’m cooking anymore.”

I asked, “Could you imagine eating a salad?”

Here face seemed confused, so I shared the idea of a salad in a jar, which is about layering the dressing at the bottom, adding the heartier vegetables, then the greens on top.

“Oh, that makes it so easy for me to grab this before my shift starts,” Doris said, with a bit of glee in her voice. And then, without any prompting, she said. “I could make grain bowls this way, too.”

The more Doris talked, the more it became clear that she didn’t need a new system. The meal prepping was already hers. She just didn’t want to eat stew in Texas in July. (Which honestly makes a lot of sense.) When I pointed out that the system wasn’t broken, but the season had changed, the lightbulb was 100 watts. She didn’t need to be told what to do next. She could see it herself because, like you, Doris is bright and able!

If you found this article helpful, consider sharing it with someone who might need it.

If you would like support applying the change process to your own self-care, I see clients through Nourish, where you can use your insurance.

Subscribe now

Then she said something that landed hard for me,

“I don’t know what that looks like. I know I should be taking care of myself now, but I don’t. I don’t know why. I want to, but it feels… wrong. Like I’m doing something I’m not supposed to be doing.”

Cherry is bright and able, and she knows herself well. Her frustration makes sense because I’ve heard it before and I’ve experienced it myself. I like to joke that when this happens, it feels like, “My inner teenager has taken the wheel of my life, and she doesn’t have a driver’s license!”

This conflict between our adult rational mind and our impulsive adolescent brain is often the heart of the problem. Putting herself last was adulting. This behavior had been repeated so many times, for so many years, that it had become the only thing that felt right. Now things shifted, and it wasn’t about other people’s needs. The freedom Cherry was experiencing was intoxicating. Belonging to herself, making her own needs the priority, felt unfamiliar, scary, and a bit out of control. This, as you may have noticed, is unfamiliar and has a way of feeling wrong.

Where We Are

We are in Step 4 of the NWLR Roadmap: Sustainable Self-Care. This is the third article in the belonging series. In the first article, you learned that belonging is biological, not earned. In the second article, you learned that stigma is the barrier to belonging and that constant exposure is how it becomes part of how you see yourself. This article asks the next question: what do you do with that?

If you are new here, I am Megrette Fletcher, a weight-inclusive registered dietitian and certified diabetes care and education specialist. I work one-on-one with clients through Nourish, where you can see me using your insurance.

Subscribe now

Why Belonging to Yourself Feels Wrong

Belonging isn’t only about other people. It is also about whether you include yourself in the circle of people who deserve care, rest, and support. For many people, especially those who have spent years managing chronic illness, raising children, or simply surviving in a world that sends constant messages about who deserves to take up space, belonging to yourself is the hardest kind.

While it is easy to default to self-blame and think it is a character flaw, relax, it’s the force of familiar back at work.

The force of familiar is a bit of a brain cramp and it works like gravity. The mind builds pathways through repetition. Once you have done something enough times, that pathway becomes the default. It pulls you back, not because the behavior is helpful or effective, but because it is familiar. For Cherry, putting herself last had been repeated thousands of times across twenty years. That pathway runs deep. Belonging to herself didn’t just feel unfamiliar; it felt wrong, even dangerous, the way eating breakfast can feel wrong when restriction has been repeated long enough.

The funny thing about the force of familiar is what breaks these invisible threads. It isn’t willpower, effort, SMART Goals, or force. It isn’t a decision to simply do better. What interrupts the force of familiar is compassionate curiosity. Getting close enough to the pull to ask: isn’t that interesting that I don’t know how to care for myself? I know how to care for other people, so I wonder why it is hard for me to care for myself.

Read more

“I don’t ever remember telling myself I belong.”

That sentence sat between us for a while. Not because it was surprising, but because it was an honest reflection. Martin doesn’t lack self-awareness, and he manages his health carefully, shows up consistently to our sessions, and asks thoughtful questions. And yet, in all that time, the idea that he simply belonged, without earning it, without proving it, had never quite occurred to him.

Stepping Out of Diet Culture

We are in Step 4 of the NWLR Roadmap: Sustainable Self-Care. In Step 3, we explored what it means to heal rather than fix, and how that shift changes the way you relate to your body and your health. Now we are looking at the conditions that make sustainable self-care possible, starting with belonging.

If you are new here, my name is Megrette Fletcher, and I’m a weight-inclusive registered dietitian and certified diabetes care and education specialist. I work one-on-one with clients through Nourish, where you can see me using your insurance.

Subscribe now

If you missed the first belonging article, you can read it here: The Science of Belonging.

What Gets In The Way of Belonging

In The Science of Belonging, you learned that belonging is biological. Now it’s time to learn why belonging often feels out of reach. Diet culture is hard to name and harder to escape: it isn’t just something that happened to you. It is something that is happening repeatedly to you, and constant exposure is how it becomes part of how you see yourself. Because diet culture is hard to recognize, I like to call it “Bob”. Everyone has met “Bob” in their life. There are so many “Bob’s” in the world, on social media, in the news, on podcasts, etc.

When the “Bob’s” in the world use hurtful language, or refer to you in the third person, you know “The obese” or “Diabetics,” you might brush it off. It makes sense. Yet, stigma (and the trauma stigma creates) is like crafting sparkles. You try to brush them away, but they just stick to you. You think you’ve gotten them all, and then someone says, “Hey, you have got sparkles on your face.”

Stigma is what happens when your size, your blood sugar, your insulin pump, or your diagnosis gets treated as a reason to exclude, blame, or judge you. It doesn’t just come from a random stranger. It can come from a comment someone makes at a family dinner. It can come from a provider who addresses your weight before asking how you are. It can come from a gown or chair that doesn’t fit your body, or a culture that treats diabetes as a personal failure.

Read more

Sustainable self-care isn’t about finding the right plan or pushing yourself harder. It starts with something much more fundamental: Feeling deeply that you belong.

Sustainable Self-Care

You already know that sustainable change is harder than it looks. And spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with trying harder. You are here because you want to step out of diet culture to prevent or manage diabetes. NWLR will help you do that. The NWLR Roadmap provides the direction, and this quarter, we’re exploring the conditions that make sustainable self-care possible, starting with belonging.

Free resources to catch up:

• Sunday Coffee, March 29

• Setting Your Sights on Sustainable Change

Keep reading to dig deeper into the first condition: belonging.

Belonging

If not eating certain foods, or only eating certain foods, makes you feel like you belong, you might have found the secret to sustainable self-care. However, if following this type of diet makes you feel alone and left out, it is likely this change is temporary.

In 1995, Baumeister and Leary published a landmark paper identifying belonging as a fundamental human need. Belonging is not a reward for good behavior, or something you earn by eating well or losing weight.

Belonging also isn’t something you lose when a diet stops working. Your need to belong is wired into you, and your body has always known it. Understanding that belonging is required for sustainable self-care might just change how you prevent or manage diabetes.

Subscribe now

When Support Becomes a Diet Tool

Many people seek support around their weight or health condition because support feels like belonging, and that makes sense. Being part of a group, having someone in your corner, and feeling seen are real human needs. But diet culture has a way of attaching conditions to that support, telling you that you belong if you are trying to lose weight, if you are watching what you eat, or if you are working really hard.

This is where diet culture comes in. It is hard to spot diet culture, so let’s call it Bob. Let’s say Bob is a fictitious person who represents diet culture. He is a stand-in for everyone who has ever made you feel like you had to earn your place at the table. Bob decides the conditions for belonging and moves the goalposts when you get close. And when you don’t meet them, he is quick to remind you that you just haven’t tried hard enough. If you didn’t notice, Bob is a bit of an A-hole. So why are you trying to please Bob?

• Because you want and need support.

• Because belonging is hard-wired into your DNA.

When support is conditional on weight-loss behavior, it becomes a diet tool, and like all diet tools, it is unstable by definition. The moment you stop the behavior, you risk losing the support. That is not belonging, it’s oppression dressed as connection.

Belonging Is Already Yours

Sustainable self-care flows from belonging, not toward it. When you care for yourself because you already belong, the motivation is stable. When you care for yourself to earn a sense of belonging, it isn’t. That is why so many plans don’t stick. Despite what Bob has told you, it isn’t a willpower or effort problem. It is a belonging problem.

Diet culture and all the Bob’s in the world want you to forget that you belong. You belong in your body, in your relationships, in your community, and in your life. There is no weight loss required to belong.

What’s Coming

If this article on belonging landed, make sure you subscribe, and what the heck, share this post. Over the next few weeks, NWLR will explore what conditions are needed for sustainable self-care.

We are going to start with belonging.

If you have read this far, I wanted to say welcome. I’m thrilled you are joining us. You are invited to subscribe to NWLR. A great place to begin is looking at the previous steps on the NWLR Roadmap. Visit the main page of NWLR, and you will see each step broken down.

Become a paid subscriber for less than a Starbucks Latte, and access all of the locked articles. Become a founding subscriber to unlock the 5 mini-courses, including Nutrition 101 and Sweet Bodies, the body image course. These resources are here to help you step out of diet culture and into sustainable self-care.

If you don’t know, my name is Megrette, and I am a weight-inclusive diabetes educator and dietitian. I work one-on-one with clients, and the easiest way to connect with me is through Nourish. You can use your insurance to see me, which is awesome!

Work with me at Nourish

Learn more about the NWLR and step out of diet culture today.