March & April Reading Round-Up!

 

It’s been an interesting two months over here at Center Stage Nutrition. I’ve been losing time between work, celebrating matching (yay!), and actually trying to leave my house every now and again that advertising my blog has fallen by the wayside.

I’m actually not too sure how to feel about it. For a while, I’ve had other topics I’ve really wanted to write about, but haven’t really felt like I could write them here since I write a lot about teen health and wellness. Part of me wonders if I should open up my niche just a little bit while I go through my master’s program and internship, letting you guys see the process of an “RD2B” and figuring out what I want to do.

The other part of me is scared, for no good reason, about changing everything around. Maybe it is the idea of change. I’m still Em, I’m still writing here and interacting with you guys, but maybe the teen stuff can wait.

We’ll have to see!

My laptop randomly died last week (another shout out to my Nutrition Writer’s group, who was patient while I panicked during the meeting) so my content calendar is going to be off for a while. I thought I would do another reading round up post.

Books!

I’ve been on a self-help book kick lately, so I read:

How People Grow: What the Bible teaches us about personal growth 

And

Boundaries in Dating

You can read my review of Boundaries in Dating here, and I would recommend How People Grow for anyone who works with people. Even if you’re not particularly religious but go to church and pray sometimes, Grow is a great resource on how humans need support. Cloud and Townstead are Christian counselors, so their books have a great mix of psychology and theology.

I’m also currently reading When Breath Becomes Air, but I’m taking breaks because I learned my lesson after reading The Bright Hour: reading dying people’s memoirs needs to be a slow process so I don’t overwhelm myself with emotion.

Blog posts!

I’m tall and not middle aged, but I have worn heels in the past. So seeing Midlife Drama in Pyjamas post “Is this all worth it just to not be short?!” made me laugh. 

As always, Bite My Words with some wisdom regarding a new study done on how to get kids to eat more greens. 

This is also a great example of how studies are capable of being fallible and the importance of critically reading new research.

The Individuator wrote an interesting post about authenticity and speaking their mind to those who asked. What are your thoughts on this kind of openness?  As I get more comfortable to my coworkers I find I can be more of myself around them, but still tend to shut off. What about you?

Dances with Fat wrote a great piece about that new Amy Schumer movie called I Feel Pretty. 

(You can read the full article here)

My friend Jenna, who founded the Nutrition Writer’s Group, wrote a book review on the Bad Food Bible, and if you’re eyeing a new book to read, give Jenna’s review a look to see if you should pick up a copy of BFB!

That’s all from me today. As always, do your homework, eat a vegetable, and don’t forget to smile at someone today. See you soon!

 

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Patience, jobs, and internships…oh my!

Today I want to talk about something I’ve been dealing with “behind the screen” for the past few months.

While my first job is going fine, I discovered after graduation that there was a low enrollment number in the diabetes course I was supposed to teach. No one was at fault, and sometimes these things happen, but the hours I had weren’t enough to cover graduate school costs, a car, and groceries while living at home. So I set out in search of a second job to help supplement the one I have now.

My fellow busybodies know that not having places to go can start to drive someone up the wall. I did my best to keep working in any way I could: I kept this blog up, which proved to be a benefit because there’s a lot of regular traffic here now- hi, daily visitor! I started learning everything I could about social media and how to market yourself to other people.

In the beginning it was difficult to know what I would be up against while I job searched in the “real world” vs my undergrad. I assumed that I would be frustrated, but in the end I would be fine- after all, I knew I’d have a job eventually, so why stress? I love working on this blog, writing, podcasting, creating stuff for you guys, so I thought that would help pass time.

(By the way, shameless plug, but have you listened to my podcast? They’re super short snippets of info that supplement the blog)

But it’s not that easy. After getting used to living on my own, buying my own groceries, and having an established routine at school, living at home was already an adjustment  and not having a regular paying job on top of that was stressful.

I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t know what to expect emotionally.

For the first few weeks I felt normal, fine, and a little bit relieved to have some time to relax.

For the next few I started feeling anxious and antsy, a bit “cabin-fever-y”. Living in the Midwest in the middle of frigid January (oh, how I miss my undergrad’s tunnels…) didn’t help.

By the time we got to February I was constantly depressed, like there was a cloud following me everywhere. I was reminded constantly that I didn’t have places I needed to go, and I felt lonely. I love my dogs, but I missed my friends at school.

I had to realize it was okay that I was looking for a job. I’m one of the lucky ones where my parents were just as upset about my hours as I was, in a “man, that sucks that that happened to you” way rather than a “what do you mean you’re not working!” way. They were patient while I sorted through the feelings and applied everywhere I could.

I also had to realize that the depression I was feeling was okay too. Accepting that I was sad because I wasn’t working was one of the hardest parts of these past few months.

After weeks of nothing I finally broke down to my mom, crying and wondering if I would ever achieve anything, and while in the moment all these feelings felt real and painful, I knew they would pass.  Still, for the week following, I wondered if I would get anywhere.

Remember way back, when this blog was a baby, when I talked about resiliency? (Am I at the blogging stage yet where I cringe at my old posts? Or is there a time frame I’m still in? Is there a blog honeymoon stage? …Did I take my meds today?)

I had to remember those lessons too.

Sometimes we slip back and regress in the face of stress and disappointment. It can feel like you take 10 steps forward, 9 back, and you start to doubt if you were ever strong in the first place.

You just have to keep going. It sounds easy when you say it out loud or think it when things are going well, but over the past couple years, I’ve learned that waking up and filling out more applications, or waking up and job searching, is all you can do.

If you just wake up and feel depressed, that’s okay too.

Just keep going. One day at a time.

I just got a job as a diet clerk at a hospital, so I’m really excited to start getting more clinical experience before I hear back on my internship. I’ve turned in all the pre-hire paperwork and now, luckily, the waiting game is hearing my start date.

One day at a time.

Do your homework, eat a vegetable, and don’t forget to smile at someone today. Talk to you soon!

Em

4 things I learned recording my first podcast

This week was exciting for two reasons:

One, I did my first presentation and it went pretty well.

Two, I started a podcast and while it has yet to have a name, I’m pretty darn proud of how I’m doing so far. I like writing the scripts and getting to chat- though I can understand the pressure people talk about when they mention that working solo can get daunting- it’s tough not having someone to play off of.

This is me after 3 hours of recording

Both of these events taught me a lot, as far as the presentation goes I’ve already written about that. So here are 4 things I learned by starting a podcast:

1. Script it out

Now I’m a pretty thorough planner. I already have a content calendar getting me through May for this blog with lots of ideas for after that! But for some reason, the podcast came to me at random.

I had felt a bit like I was floundering with the blog and because I’m having a road block when it comes to vlogging, I began to feel like this blog wasn’t going to get anywhere. So a few nights ago, after publishing Nutrition Education and Teen Girls I thought about how I could dive deeper.

Then it hit me…Anchor! (And before you ask, I’m not sponsored, I found them a while back when I played around with the idea of a podcast a few months ago but tabled it due to time).

Thinking that it would be fun to give it a shot, I didn’t realize how recording, re-recording, and just writing an outline would still leave me up ish’s creek.

I needed a script.

By the time I realized I should script what I wanted to say, I was lucky enough to have already been recording for a while so I could just type up the bits I remembered that I said and liked, then flesh those out a bit more.

2. Check beforehand

Notice a bit of a pattern here?

I was looking forward to doing something similar to a live radio show, which Anchor used to offer, but their redesign made it so that it was solely focused on podcasting.

So, when it was T-minus one hour when I said I’d go live and noticed that wasn’t an option, I was scrambling to record so I would have something at the time I said.

I ended up being unable to make the deadline but now I know, right?

3. Patience

Despite a theatre and improv background, I still would stumble over my words and talk fast. I had to remind myself that the message would make more sense if I spoke slower and really tried to enunciate rather than just chatted into the mic.

I want there to be that casual ‘chat’ feel, but you still need to understand me to have that conversation!

Working hard to speak slowly, think about my opinions and feelings on the topic, and being patient when I made a mistake was something I learned the hard way.

4. Trying new things is fun!

I read The Healthy Maven’s post ‘Is Blogging Dead?”  and felt so comforted about my own doubts regarding my own blog. I had been feeling a little nervous that this wouldn’t pan out, and while I don’t do it for a job, shouting into a void only gets you so far.

It was Davida’s post that encouraged me to try new things, and to start living more so I have more to write about. And her advice about trying different avenues to reach different kinds of people gave me a bit of needed courage to try the podcast!

While these four things deal more with the podcast I created, they have a lot of weight as life lessons as well. Especially the whole ‘trying new things is fun’ and ‘patience’ one, amiright?

One of the coolest things about growing up is the ability to learn from mistakes and go on to make new ones to learn from. I know that as Center Stage grows and changes there’s going to be a lot of learning curves, and it’s more important to look at them with excitement like I did with the podcast rather than nervousness!

Mistakes happen, we just need to accept them and learn from them.

Leave a comment below to let me know what you learned this week!

Do your homework, eat a vegetable, and smile at someone if you can. Bye!

 

Nutrition education and teen girls

For the first time in a long while I had a really week last week.

I had a job interview for a diet clerk job at a hospital some ways away in the morning, I volunteered at my old middle school in the afternoon, and I attended an orientation on human trafficking and how to spot it in the evening.

Not only did I get some good old highway driving in (#suburbiaproblems), but I also biked somewhere for the first time since November. And it wasn’t like my campus biking- this was about 20 minutes of biking through an upper-middle class town while dodging guys in small cars, with darkened windows, wearing HEADPHONES.

Come on, y’all. Please don’t tell me you’re wearing those while you drive. Think of the children.  (And me…please)

That’s why I didn’t write this post on last week- I was out and about for a while. My dogs didn’t like it one bit. Friday was another weird day for me- Grandma came over, and I even went to a theatre performance based off of the stories of male prostitutes in Chicago.

But I did want to address this article, because I was so so happy to see it show up on my Google alerts.

Malnutrition Deeply, an offset of the website News Deeply, published an article the other day titled “Nutrition Community ‘Leaving Adolescent Girls Behind’.”  It’s an interview with Dr. Marie T. Ruel, who is the director of Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division for the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Her main philosophy is that women are often left behind once past what’s called their first 1,000 days, which is the period in which health practitioners work to protect newborns and infants against malnutrition while they grow.

Other points about the interview include agriculture, value chains, and how to urge government intervention. It’s a great read and you should spend some time with it.

Adolescent Nutrition

I think the reason Dr. Ruel discusses nutrition intervention for adolescents designated female at birth/capable of child-bearing because of a few things:

• Society’s outlook on how teen girls eat
• The importance of pre-conception nutrition for a healthy pregnancy
• Nutrition intervention in general towards teens

When talking about this article with people, I noted something my Dad mentioned: when someone mentions they have two teen boys, the joke is ‘How do you keep food in the house’, whereas with girls…you can’t really say that.

Even though all teens are growing at the same rate, it’s only okay for boys to eat to fuel growth spurts. Girls, both through peer and media influence, are already being told they need to eat less and that “fat” is a bad thing.

Using nutrition intervention for teen girls, letting them know it’s OKAY to eat, and that they must eat, already puts us on the right path for helping teenagers have a healthy puberty and adjust to being body positive, intuitively eating adults.

In general, nutrition intervention in teens seems to fall by the wayside compared to adult and child nutrition. Think of the nutrition education you had in school- was it one unit, maybe two in health class? What resources did you have?

Compared to childhood nutrition, where there are a lot of books and resources and TV shows for kids, and adults, who have blogs, dietitians, books geared toward them- teens don’t get much.

And we could save them a lot of stress in adulthood by teaching them now.

What do you guys think? Do you think we need more nutrition education at home, or should the school be more active?

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Opinion: Weight Watchers…get with the program.

 

Recently some news came out about Weight Watchers piloting a free program for teenagers. Rebecca Stritchfield wrote an amazing piece on it, and the circles I inhabit have come forward explaining why, exactly, this is a bad idea.

Teens are a vulnerable population as their bodies are beginning to change and rather than helping them celebrate this step into adulthood, weight watchers seems keen to make it easier to shame girls, and some boys, that their body is bad.

They’re not even an adult yet. Let them grow, learn, and enjoy their lives without the stress of ‘points’ or whatever garbage you decide to shove down their throats because you’re unwilling to change your mentality as to the idea of what healthy looks like.

This news in conjunction with the fact that I’m currently reading When Girls Feel Fat: Helping Girls Through Adolescence by Sandra Susan Friedman has me thinking a lot about my own journey through body positivity.

The journey includes: being metaphorically dragged by my heels down a gravel road, laying by the side of the road refusing to move forward, and somethings rolling backward. There are occasions where I march forward, talk with people on the same journey, and stop and smell the roses of what it feels like to like my body and what it can do.

I don’t identify with girls who only started hating their size and body in high school or middle school. I remember teasing about my weight starting as early as elementary school and using food to cope with the fact that I had very few friends. I read and wrote a lot, liked a lot of non-mainstream nerdy things, and it wasn’t really until middle school that my social circle expanded.

Even then, food was my enemy. Because I was taller and heavier than my peers, and going through puberty sooner, my body felt less of a vessel to be celebrated and more of a neon sign to my faults. I couldn’t tell you when I started my first diet because I don’t remember.

What I do remember is my freshman year diet of five ritz crackers for breakfast, a 140-calorie bar for lunch, and a big dinner after I worked out because I ‘earned it’. Nowadays I know much better than that. It took years of learning, of dieting, and of wondering what was wrong with me to only realize that it wasn’t me.  Even this past summer I found myself thinking thoughts like that which I had in high school at the peak of my Eating Disorder-like behavior.

I don’t agree with weight loss for teens. I feel like now more than ever I can say that, after having a whole summer to come to this conclusion plus years of nutrition schooling.

I believe in healthy lifestyles for teens. But healthy lifestyles don’t include counting points or calories, excluding “”unclean”” food, or avoiding carbs just because some doctor without a nutrition degree said so.

I’ll talk about this more in my ‘should teens lose weight’ post, but teens don’t need a point system to tell them how to eat. They need patience, guidance, and occasionally therapy to help them through this time of intense change. They need adults helping them establish healthy habits (which yes, includes treats every now and again), and to learn that their bodies deserve to be hungry and to grow.

For the sake of girls and boys who, like me, weren’t small enough for society’s liking- don’t sign your child up for weight watchers. Talk to them. Teach them what a healthy lifestyle looks like. Find role models similar to your child’s height and weight and show them that success doesn’t come in pounds. Books such as “I’m, like, SO Fat!” and “When Girls Feel Fat” are excellent resources in helping teens who are having issues with body positivity and healthy living.

Remind them, like Clarence the Angel reminds George Bailey at the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life”, that “no man is a failure who has friends”.

Let me know what you think about this. You can comment, reach me on Twitter, Facebook, and even Instagram.

The Next Chapter//December Reads

 I have my very first business trip this month. The idea that I’m heading out of state for job training brings up the quote from the movie A Christmas Story:

“Honors and benefits, already at the age of nine!”

I really do feel like a nine-year-old kid. I only just graduated from college. It feels like I need to be doing something else than what I’m doing. Writing a blog, weightlifting, waiting to hear back on graduate schools/applying for the dietetic internship, and working a job in my field? It all sounds like someone else’s life.

What about you guys? Does anything in this New Year really stick out to you as new and exciting, something you’re excited to try?

 

On the Bookshelf

Today I want to cover what books I’m reading and to hear about what books you guys are reading. I’ve already published some of my Goodreads reviews.

To prepare for my job as a diabetes lifestyle coach, I’ve read:

• 21 things to know about diabetes and nutrition, by Cassandra L. Verdi MPH RD CDE and Stephanie A. Dunbar, MPH RD CDE

This is a great introductory look at the relationship between nutrition and diabetes, and where to get started when it comes to nutrition. While my work will primarily be with patients who are prediabetic, I still wanted to make sure that I brushed up on diabetes and nutrition guidelines before I started training. This was a pretty quick read, too.

• Eat what you love, Love what you eat with diabetes by Michelle May MD and Megrette Fletcher, Med, RD, CDE

This book was recommended in an Intuitive Eating group I’m a part of on Facebook. A member had asked about books that have an Intuitive Eating aproach to diabetes care and this was the one people brought up the most. I appreciate the non-judgmental, every food has its place look at diabetes nutrition and friendly way material is presented in this book. I’ve been taking notes on how this book approaches eating, nutrition, and movement to help improve my vocabulary for when I do presentations to my group!

To better my writing, I’m reading:

• Ready, aim, specialize! By Kelly James-Enger

I don’t know about you beans, but when I’m learning a new topic I really need all the info laid out in front of me before I dive in. I’ve read a lot of blogs about freelancing, but Ready, aim really helped me figure out the basic-basics of freelancing and specializing. This book also helps you recognize things in your life you can use as writing topics, and even lists resources to help you find experts to quote. This was another quick read!

• You can’t make this stuff up: the complete guide to writing creative nonfiction […] By Lee Gutkind

I just started this book today (1/2) but creative nonfiction has always interested me as a writing medium. I’ll keep you updated on this, but so far I really like it!

Other books I’m reading are:

• Hunger by Roxane Gay (FINALLY!!!)
• Walden by Thoreau
• Motivational Interviewing in Nutrition and Fitness by Dawn Clifford and Laura Curtis

What are you reading? If you’re on Goodreads, drop your profile below so I can follow you and get some more reading recs!

A Chronic Illness Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring…except for me, at 2am, realizing that something I ate on Christmas Eve had caused a flare up.

My second this month.

Every time I tried to fall back asleep it would only be minutes before my gut would wake me up again. I had finally gotten comfortable enough to go back to sleep around 7am when my family decided it was time to wake up for presents, and then we could go about our business.

This was the first time I had a moderate flare up at home and my parents saw first hand what I looked like when my digestive system decided it was time for a revolution. It mainly looked like an ashen face, nausea, and sleeping through Heidi, The Bishop’s Wife, and Christmas in Conneticut. Christmas breakfast was a homemade popover eaten over the span of 6 hours, a bottle of Gatorade and some tortilla chips, and dinner was Hawaiian rolls and more tortilla chips. With another Gatorade to wash it down. (Hydration is important, y’all)

If you follow my Instagram you might have noticed I get sick a lot. Weirdly enough, this is a new thing for me. I have never gotten sick this often, it was only recently that it’s started to happen a few months apart (and in this past month’s case, a week and a half). I’ve tried to be careful with what I eat, eating low FODMAP and avoiding trigger foods (one of which is, unfortunately, hummus… :c). Unfortunately, it looks like I need to limit alcohol even more than I already do, and really watch my sugar intake.

People who have chronic illnesses apparent since childhood probably know all of what I’m feeling right now. Maybe they’re saying, ‘welcome to the club, suck it up’, or they’re nodding and saying ‘yep, I’ve been there, friend’. This isn’t my first Christmas affected by GI issues, but it was the one that really sent me over the top in the fatigue department.

I don’t know if it’s denial, or maybe just forgetfulness, that caused the flare up I had on Christmas. All I know is that there were a lot of tears shed, guilt felt as I had to sleep while my family ate Christmas dinner, and a lot of the pity party ‘I’m so sick of being sick’ feelings that I’m sure many people aren’t strangers to.

This being my second flare up in a month, it might be time to seek out opinions from medical professionals, and by being open about it here I’m really hoping to help you guys feel less alone and maybe seek out professional opinions of your own.

Christmas can already be a major source of stress for people who have issues with family, or no family to go home to at all. I can only imagine what it must be like to have a chronic illness and that kind of stress combined, considering stress can be a major trigger for chronic illnesses. The best thing you and I can do, beans, is working to reduce stress with exercise, mindfulness, and in some cases avoiding the things that cause you stress. Taking care of yourself should always be a top priority, even during the holidays. Remember, you need to look after yourself just as much as you should look after others.

Overall, looking past the disease, it was a beautiful Christmas. I went to Church for the first time in a very long time, and was lucky to give and receive lovely gifts and spend time with my family. Molly enjoyed having a cuddle buddy all day, especially since I was wrapped up in blankets trying to keep warm.

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and I’ll look forward to hearing all about your New Year’s!

Let me know your favorite part about your holiday via Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook!

November Recap (I missed you!)

It’s been a while, beans!

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. It’s been a long, rewarding month for me. I’ve been doing a lot of brainstorming when it comes to this blog and I think I’ve got a good amount of ideas of where I want this to go.

Since it’s been so long since we last saw each other, why don’t I give you some quick updates on what’s been going on my side of the screen. In the comments below, let me know some of the highlights of your November! I’d love to hear it.

Legally Blonde

My first and last show at my University has come and gone. It was a fun three months of blood, sweat, and tears to work with a company to put together such an amazing show. We sold out every single night, and my family was even able to come on closing night!

An interesting thing that this company does that my other school’s company didn’t is they require actors help with strike. From 10:45pm to 2:30am the next day, I got to flex my tech theatre muscles for the first time in months helping take down the BEAUTIFUL set.

Blonde was a wonderful way to end my time in undergrad and I’m lucky I had the time to do it.

Christmas Walk

My town does a Christmas walk the day after Thanksgiving. In recent memory, I’ve only missed it once and that was because I was in A Christmas Carol a few years back. It’s our town’s way to represent all its small businesses. It starts with Santa lighting up the tree that stands in the middle of our downtown area, and then we’re free to go about and explore what goodies the shops have set up for the occasion!

Mom had gotten some delicious samples of infused balsamic vinaigrette at a networking event she had attended a few weeks back. My Dad, looking for ways to flavor his food without using salt, wanted to give it a shot and I wanted to see what it was like. (Disclaimer: I’ve spoken with the manager of this store, and asked about employment opportunities. But that was a result of the experience and I’m not being paid to say the following).

Olive ‘n’ Vinnies was bustling when we walked in. We were greeted immediately by one of the owners. He walked us through some of the vinaigrettes they offer.

I was skeptical about balsamic being infused- not that I didn’t think it was possible, I just didn’t know what kind of taste to expect.

We started with the espresso infused balsamic and beans, I LOVED it! It was so yummy. The mouthfeel was great, and the espresso blended into the balsamic well. I also enjoyed their raspberry, and of course, their lavender flavor.

I loved this little store and I’m looking forward to going back. I’ve got less than 20 days left of undergrad, and I hope my mini bottles of lavender and espresso balsamic will tie me over!

Aren’t they cute?!

It was great to spend time with my family. We didn’t have to prep a lot for Thanksgiving (my cousin hosted us), so I got to walk my beagle girl and chill out with my Mom for a while.

Selfie by the tree Santa lit 🙂 

“Back at the ranch”

Now I’m back up at school and I have more free time than I did before break. Finals are coming up in a week and a half, but until then I picked up crochet in hopes to get away from screens a little bit more.

I’ve also started a sourdough culture. I explained this on Instagram, but my Mom makes an amazing sourdough bread stuffing every Thanksgiving and Christmas. My major must have rubbed off on me, because I realized while helping my Mom cook that I could make my own sourdough bread. So now I have a small culture in a large mason jar, getting ready for Saturday when I’ll give baking a shot.

Graduation is soon and my senioritis is strong. I can’t wait for the next chapter of my life to start.

Tell me how your Thanksgiving went in the comments below! Try any new recipes?

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