"There’s no one in the world that knows our bodies better than we do... We can’t accept chronic illness that’s preventable… if it’s preventable it’s unacceptable."
Michelle Shapiro, RD
EFR 628: Ending Diet Culture Through Functional Nutrition and the Relationship Between Body Positivity and True Physical and Mental Health with Michelle Shapiro
What is a radically neutral approach to nutrition and health? It’s an approach rooted in compassion and intuition and it’s changing thousands of people’s lives.
Meet Michelle Shapiro, a Holistic Registered Dietician and Certified Functional Nutrition and Lifestyle Practitioner who helps people use functional nutrition to heal gut issues, reverse anxiety, and approach weight lovingly. At the root of her practice is, you guessed it, compassion and intuition.
In this discussion, Chase and Michelle break down a few controversial health topics along with what we can do to empower ourselves to have greater health. Michelle shares her thoughts on the effects of diet culture and anti-diet culture, fasting, intuitive eating, and functional nutrition practices that actually work for human beings. She also speaks on the relationship between body positivity, body image, physical health, and mental health.
This is a very insightful episode you certainly won’t want to skip over!
Follow Michelle Shapiro @michelleshapirord
Visit her website
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Key Highlights
Michelle sheds light on the role of “new-ancient” health and wellness modalities and the rising anti-diet culture movement. “Overtime, as we’ve seen, chronic illness rates in America have consistently gone up, regardless of the fact that we’re putting more and more [modern Western medicine] interventions into place,” she says.
How do you separate yourself from the noise of diet culture and find information that serves you and your needs? Michelle emphasizes the power of intuition and intuitive eating in developing your ideal diet, lifestyle, and wellness practices.
Ask yourself questions, especially when making changes to your diet or lifestyle.
“The way that I describe the body positivity movement is that it is an extreme knee jerk reaction to a tremendous amount of very real trauma after a really long time,” Michelle says. She then details the principles of compassion and coddling she uses with her clients to make health changes as well as with her opinions on HAES (Health at Every Size).
Michelle shares her unique opinion on the individualization of fasting, highlighting the types of people that would benefit or would not benefit from fasting. Is fasting right for you? Tune in to learn more!
Powerful Quotes by Michelle Shapiro
There’s no one in the world that knows our bodies better than we do.
The human body cannot be fixed. It’s all about achieving balance without force.
Functional nutritionists view things from a root cause perspective. So, if a client comes to me with anxiety or gut issues, I’m not looking to manage those issues, I’m looking to help them reverse at the root of those conditions.
We can’t accept chronic illness that’s preventable… if it’s preventable it’s unacceptable.
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