126: The Intersection Between Addiction and Nutrition

08/01/18 • 67 min

Nutrition during addiction recovery is an often very misunderstood and mischaracterized element of healing. Healing from addiction requires a multi-faceted approach and nutrition can play an important role. However, it's not the end-all-be-all of wellbeing. In this podcast episode, Tessa Acker, MPH, RD and I talk about our work in the Substance Use Disorder (SUD) world where we both engage in nutrition groups for those in recovery. We talk about why this intersection is so tricky and how the structure of recovery is helpful in so many ways but can often be extremely challenging when navigating food. Tessa Acker is a registered dietitian with a Master's in Public Health Nutrition from the University of Minnesota, where she focused on underserved and disadvantaged populations. She pursued this field with the belief that nutrition is the foundation for a healthy life and wanted to help others obtain, learn about, and enjoy healthy foods. She began her career working on international nutrition issues with the United Nations and Clinton Foundation in Peru and Malawi, but has since returned to the United States to work with her brother, Ian Acker, at Fit To Recover (FTR). FTR is a community center and gym for people in recovery from SUDs. Tessa is the founder and lead dietitian of the nutrition pillar, Food to Recover, where she aims to help people in recovery see the role nutrition can play during recovery and in their everyday lives, develop and maintain a healthy relationship with food, and gain skills and knowledge to feel confident making their own food and nutrition choices. Tessa is also a certified yoga teacher and enjoys all of the adventures that Utah has to offer. Links mentioned:

Fit To Recover website: https://www.fit2recover.org/
Listen to episode 94: Food Addiction—Fact of Fiction
Leave a review for the podcast here.
For RDs: take A Dietitian's role in SUDs online training.
Positive Nutrition Online Course coming soon!
Join the Nutrition Matters Podcast Community on FB.
Donate to the podcast here.

Fit To Recover website: https://www.fit2recover.org/
Listen to episode 94: Food Addiction—Fact of Fiction
Leave a review for the podcast here.
For RDs: take A Dietitian's role in SUDs online training.
Positive Nutrition Online Course coming soon!
Join the Nutrition Matters Podcast Community on FB.
Donate to the podcast here.

Previous Episode

125: Resilience Through Loss

Laura Iu is a registered dietitian, intuitive eating coach and yoga teacher who is passionate about helping people heal their relationships with food and body. She lives and works in New York City and helps people heal themselves through food and joyful movement. Laura founded Nourish New York, where she offers private yoga and intuitive eating coaching. In this episode, Laura shares her experience of losing both of her parents early in her childhood. She talks about how the experience of loss affected her own relationship with food and how it affects the way she practices and helps others find a peaceful relationship with food. She talks about what resilience means for her and talks about how she's processing the loss she's experienced now in her adult years. If you've suffered loss of any kind, you'll love hearing about how you can take the things you've learned in your process of healing and use that strength toward your relationship with food, or vice versa. Links mentioned:

Laura's website: https://lauraiu.com/
Leave a review for the podcast here.
Positive Nutrition Online Course coming soon!
Join the Nutrition Matters Podcast Community on FB.
Donate to the podcast here.

Next Episode

127: Tips for Shifting from Rigid Meal Plans to Flexibility with Food

Devrie Pettit, MS, RD is a registered dietitian who has gone through an interesting professional journey from selling meal plans online to supporting a message focused on Intuitive Eating, HAES, and restriction recovery. She and her best friend started an online business a few years ago selling meal plans where they did their best to promote flexibility within their programs. Soon they realized that people who were participating in their programs were rigidly obsessed with the meal plan and not taking the ideas as a framework and guidelines rather than rules and Devrie started to feel like she wanted to make a change with her offerings and focus. She eventually re-branded her business to be more in alignment with her personal philosophy around food and discovered the weight-neutral approach. She still has a soft spot for those who are wrestling with these concepts, and she came on the podcast to talk about her best tips for embracing flexibility with food. In this podcast, we discuss food plans: the good, the bad and the ugly. We talk about how to detect diets in all their sneaky forms and we talk about strategies for incorporating flexibility into your life with food. We discuss why food plans in all the forms can be so seductive and alluring and provide some ideas for moving forward without rigidity. Links mentioned: