I met on Thursday with a local therapist who specializes in eating disorder treatment. She has a number of vegan patients and wanted to chat with me about some of the nutritional and cultural considerations; I was eager to hear her perspective on treatment as a whole. It was a good conversation, rich and interesting….
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When I was in college, I had a different relationship with “going home” than most of my peers. For them, winter and spring holidays meant booking flights and spending a week someplace else. For me, it meant a subway ride or a walk forty blocks south of campus. As someone who’s chosen to stay in…
The post Weekend Reading, 4.14.19 appeared first on The Full Helping.
I used to write about digestion all the time on this blog, but it’s been a while since the topic came up. It’s not that my interest in GI health has waned—it hasn’t—but it’s become more of a professional focus and less of a personal one, mostly because my own struggles with IBS have receded…
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On Friday I wrapped up my very short but incredibly meaningful two-week rotation at the John Theurer Cancer Center in Hackensack, New Jersey. The commute wouldn’t have made it sustainable for me to stay any longer, but I wish I could have. I valued pretty much every moment of the experience. One of the things…
The post Weekend Reading, 3.31.19 appeared first on The Full Helping.
Last Monday was the first day of my oncology rotation. The rotation is only two weeks long, and I requested specially (in spite of a very long commute) because I knew it would be my only opportunity to learn about working with cancer patients. I spent most of last weekend sick with another cold (I’ve…
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Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I probably should have thought to post something festive before today, but instead it’s coming to you in a day or two. It’s a very tasty cabbage and pasta recipe, which I hope you’ll like. I wrapped up another community rotation of my internship this past week. This rotation included a…
The post Weekend Reading, 3.17.19 appeared first on The Full Helping.
My pattern for the last few weeks has been to feel extremely optimistic about my productivity level on Friday night, when the weekend begins, and completely overwhelmed by midday Sunday. I was so behind on so many things yesterday that I decided to save this blog post for my lunch break today, and I’m glad…
The post (Late) Weekend Reading, 3.11.19 appeared first on The Full Helping.
Hi friends! I’m a little short on words after NEDA week and pretty tired besides (I started a new rotation for my dietetic internship this week), so I’m taking a Sunday afternoon pause today. I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your responses to the last few posts, here…
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I’m keeping this weekend reading post short and sweet, mostly because my writing energies have been wrapped up in posts for NEDA week 2019, which begins tomorrow! It won’t be a regular week of recipe-sharing here on the blog, but rather a week in which I take some time to celebrate the recovery process, with…
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My closest friend from college and his fiancé were in town this weekend, and I had the pleasure of having them over for brunch on Saturday. I whipped up the butternut black bean enchiladas from Power Plates, along with a big salad and a pot of coffee. The three of us had a happy few…
The post (Long) Weekend Reading, 2.18.19 appeared first on The Full Helping.
My current internship rotation is a pretty big departure from the last one. It’s outpatient nutrition counseling at a community health center with multiple locations around the city; I’m splitting my time between Harlem, Chelsea, and the Bronx. The work is nearly all diabetes management, with some weight management and general nutrition guidance thrown in….
The post Weekend Reading, 2.10.19 appeared first on The Full Helping.
This week, two people who are close to me were waiting for news about their health. They both got the news they were hoping for, and a few days later, my oldest friend welcomed her second child into the world. Things happen all the time that make us stop and reconsider what we have. Sometimes…
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I was so saddened to hear on Friday that Fatima Ali, a former Top Chef contestant, had passed away after a year-long battle with Ewing’s sarcoma. It’s been a long time since I tuned into Top Chef, but I’d learned about Chef Ali when she contributed this essay to Healthyish. She wrote it when her…
The post Weekend Reading, 1.27.19 appeared first on The Full Helping.
As I write this post the wind is howling furiously outside my window, and my apartment, which usually manages to stay pretty warm no matter what’s going on outside, is decidedly drafty and chilly. It’s a true winter’s day in New York City. Because of that, because of recurring sinus stuff that won’t quite quit…
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As I write this post the wind is howling furiously outside my window, and my apartment, which usually manages to stay pretty warm no matter what’s going on outside, is decidedly drafty and chilly. It’s a true winter’s day in New York City. Because of that, because of recurring sinus stuff that won’t quite quit…
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A week-long head cold wasn’t how I planned to begin 2019, but the nice thing about having some time off from the DI is that I’ve been able to absolutely nothing in the last few days, aside from drinking tea, answering emails from my phone, and catching up on television. In the past, I’ve been…
The post Weekend Reading, 1.6.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
I’ve been reading a lot of Pema Chodron’s writings about tonglen practice lately. One quotation of hers keeps sticking with me: Tonglen practice (and all meditation practice) is not about later, when you get it all together and you’re this person you really respect. You may be the most violent person in the world—that’s a…
The post Weekend Reading, 12.30.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
It hasn’t been a smooth season for me as far as body image goes. I started grappling with dysmorphia back in the fall. The discomfort has quieted down since then, but it hasn’t gone away. The last few months are the most consistently uncomfortable I’ve felt in my body in a good many years. I’ve…
The post Weekend Reading, 12.9.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
Happy December, friends! It’s been a somewhat rocky entrance to the month for me, as the past week was full of personal unrest. I slipped into patterns of behavior that feel like me at my worst—stuff so old and habitual and frustrating to me that I don’t even want to write about it. Here’s the…
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Now that my post-bacc is years behind me (I’m realizing as I write this that I began it in 2010, which is nuts), it’s very easy to tell an elegant story of adversity being channeled into growth, or about the benefits of experiencing rejection. I’ve been aware for a long time that I was probably…
The post Weekend Reading, 11.25.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
My next door neighbor—I’ll call him Glen—passed away recently. I’m not sure when. I’d known he wasn’t well for a long time, based on our passing encounters and the haunting sound of his cough echoing through the hallway we shared late at night. For the past few months I suspected things might have taken a…
The post Weekend Reading, 11.18.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
For dietitians, the DI year is supposed to be a pre-professional experience, supervised work that prepares us for the realities of practice. One of these realities, I’m starting to realize, is the exercise of judgment. When I started the DI, I assumed that I’d be trained in guidelines and standards that would neatly inform all…
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Five or so years ago, I sat in my apartment in DC one late winter evening with my friend Reed. We were surrounded by dirty mugs (we’d actually taken pictures at the number of coffee cups in my dishwasher as a joke, to document how hyper-caffeinated we were), index cards, papers. It was a chaotic…
The post Weekend Reading, 11.4.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
It’s the last day of my little mid-rotation fall break. Of course I didn’t do all of the things I wanted to do this week: ambitious home cleaning and organization projects, getting up-to-date on my inbox, etc.. But it was good. I gave myself a lot of empty time. I lay around plenty. I cooked…
The post Weekend Reading, 10.28.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
After one week off, it feels like a while since I’ve checked in for the weekend roundup! It’s good to be back. And I’m back at the very start of a week long break between DI rotations. I haven’t quite settled into it yet, but I have high hopes for some rest, some cooking, and…
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Hi friends. I’m taking a pause instead of getting weekend reading up tonight. No urgent reason, but I’ve had a lot of work to do today, and I’m feeling the need to wind down early. I’ve got something on my mind to write about, but doing so tonight would mean rushing, and it would give…
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I’m sending this weekend reading out into the world from a hectic Sunday, which also happens to be an underslept Sunday. The combination of those two things means that I’m short on words, but last weekend’s post—which wasn’t short on words—did leave me with some follow up thoughts. Two of them aren’t my thoughts. They’re…
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Whenever I write about my experience of eating disorders, I make a point of saying that the healing process isn’t linear. It’s full of odd, surprising twists and turns, realizations and moments that take one by surprise. Still, I think it’s natural to hope or expect that a linear trend will emerge. After all, it’s…
The post Weekend Reading, 9.30.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
Week 3 of the DI is behind me, week 4 is about to begin. This past week was the most challenging to date; the excitement of a new beginning had started to wear off, and the reality of a long year ahead was settling in. For the first time, I felt overwhelmed by the pace…
The post Weekend Reading, 9.23.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
My current DI placement is at a nursing home that offers both long- and short-term care. I’m learning a lot about what and how people eat when they’re recovering from surgeries or in the process of rehabilitation. And I’m gaining a better understanding of food choices and habits toward the end of life. Not surprisingly,…
The post Weekend Reading, 9.16.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
Two Aprils ago, I sat in my apartment with a college friend who over the years has become like a brother to me, though he lives on the West Coast and we see each other only a few times each year. “You know,” he said, “I know it’s last minute and you’ll probably say no,…
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Last Sunday, I came clean about being stuck in a cycle of repetitive, anxious thoughts. My friend Maria shared the following response: When I was in my thirties, I had a therapist who suggested something that sounded really counter intuitive to me about my fearful thought patterns. She said that when I started into a…
The post Weekend Reading, 8.26.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
I often read about the power of choosing one’s thoughts, or something along those lines: shifting perspective, flipping the script, quieting negative self-talk, and so on. It sounds so compelling and empowering, yet so elusive. Most of the time, I feel that my thoughts choose me. I often wish—especially when they’re particularly exhausting—that they’d choose…
The post Weekend Reading, 8.19.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
This week has flown by, and as I watched it pass I definitely sensed that the slowness of summer was giving way to the busier energy of fall. We’re not there yet, I know. But it’s coming. I got my first two DI rotation placements, which means that I now have a sense of my…
The post Weekend Reading, 8.12.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
I got a lot of good advice while I was a post-bacc student. Some of it took a while to settle in, either because I needed to overcome some initial resistance in order to see its truth, or because I couldn’t grasp what had been offered without hindsight to help me. Some if it hit…
The post Weekend Reading, 8.5.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
Spontaneity has never been my strong suit. I’ve always admired it from afar, nodding my head approvingly at the idea of carpe diem, going with the flow, and all of that. But acknowledging its value and actually welcoming it into my life are two very different things. I know that my resistance to spontaneity has…
The post Weekend Reading, 7.29.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
“Young at Heart” is a ballad that most of us have heard at least a few times; it’s ubiquitous enough to appear in movies pretty often. It happens to have been one of my grandmother’s favorite songs, and the tune she always put me to sleep with when I stayed with her. I don’t know…
The post Weekend Reading, 7.22.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
Toward the end of this past week, I found myself grappling with a couple of missteps—or errors, or mistakes, or whatever you’d like to call them. Small things, but substantial enough to make me feel regret. They were largely unintentional (and most of them were actually pretty impersonal, in the tune of missed deadlines), but…
The post Weekend Reading, 7.15.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
I was chatting with a friend—a new friend, but she already feels like an old friend—a few days ago, and it became clear that we’ve visited some similar emotional and psychological territory in the last few years. “There’s so much goodness right now,” she exclaimed (and I think I’m paraphrasing a little). “But at the…
The post Weekend Reading, 7.8.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.
Happy Sunday, and happy 1st of July! Summer sure is flowing along. This week, Maria Popova sent out a “mid-week pick-me-up” email linking back to a post from the Brain Pickings archive. It featured a 1958 letter from John Steinbeck to his son, Thom, who had written home from boarding school with a confession of…
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