“Your weight isn't a determining factor of your value in any way, and it's certainly not the most interesting thing about you.”
Nutritionist Paige Bente shows how the Foodvisor app can help shift people’s mindsets about food.
Nutritionist Paige Bente shows how the Foodvisor app can help shift people’s mindsets about food.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00This is a photo of me at a barbecue just before my senior year in high school.
00:04It's at my highest weight, I weighed 220 pounds.
00:07This is a photo of me at my lowest weight, but I had a terrible relationship with food.
00:18I remember the first time a doctor mentioned my weight, I was about six years old.
00:22Or the first time a doctor mentioned my blood pressure, I was about 11.
00:26And these aren't things that kids should hear, kids should worry about.
00:29As a kid I had a good relationship with food, I loved cooking,
00:32I loved sharing food with friends and family.
00:35As I started to gain weight, society started telling me that I didn't look the way I was
00:39supposed to look. I became aware of a difference from my classmates.
00:43I didn't do a lot of things that I wanted to do.
00:45I started trying to lose that weight,
00:47and my relationship with health and my relationship with food deteriorated.
00:59I was constantly restricting, I was avoiding new activities because I was scared of food.
01:06I had crazy rules about food.
01:08I wouldn't eat after 6pm no matter what.
01:11That doesn't sound like a fun person to be around.
01:22I really decided to make nutrition my career path in my early 20s,
01:25and I had a lot of people approaching me saying,
01:28what were the secrets, what did you do, help me lose weight.
01:31And what I realized was, while a lot of these people were coming at it from a physical point of view,
01:35they also had a really negative relationship with food and poor body image.
01:40Your weight isn't a determining factor of your value in any way,
01:44and it's certainly not the most interesting thing about you.
01:57I think if I had had the FoodVisor app in my 20s,
02:01I would have had a portal to a lot more information and knowledge
02:04that could have helped me avoid some of the pitfalls.
02:07Fad diets, eliminating entire food groups.
02:11As a dietician, I can tell you how foods are digested,
02:14how foods work in your body, what role they play.
02:18But at the end of the day, you are ultimately the expert on your own body
02:21and how foods make you feel.
02:28So I think a lot of the new food apps, especially ones like FoodVisor,
02:32are really helping us move away from sort of the diet culture
02:36that we've experienced for the last number of years.
02:39You know, moving away from tracking calories, tracking portions,
02:44and into more educational material, articles, quizzes,
02:48tools that can really increase your knowledge
02:51and change your relationship with your body.
02:54What I love most about my job now is the feeling that I'm improving
02:57people's quality of lives by giving them back the tools
03:00and the power to enjoy food and feel better about themselves.
03:03Food is delicious and we should all be able to enjoy it.