A Letter to Latinas on Nutrition
Written by Isabel Vasquez, RD, LDN
Dear fellow Latina,
You don’t need to ditch the platanos or the yuca or the arroz blanco. Please don’t restrict yourself from that food. I know that restricting that doesn’t only mean restricting the calories and nutrients, but our culture. It means minimizing the sentimentality of it, the memories of our abuelas cooking it for us when we were young (and maybe even now!), the memories of craving it as a kid, of missing it when we were in a different environment. Food is culture. As a Latina dietitian, I don’t want you to ever minimize the cultural importance of our food.
For us, food is also often a symbol of love. I know it can be tough balancing the U.S. culture to restrict with the familial pressure to eat more. Or even balancing your family’s unwelcome comments on weight gain with their pressuring you to eat more. You can find that balance though. You can work on learning your body’s needs. You can learn to honor them. You can pick up on your hunger cues, your fullness cues, your emotions, and your needs. You can get to know your body better so that you can take care of it. The reality is, no one else is living in your body. They may believe they know what’s best for it, but they don’t know what it’s like living in your body.* No fitness or health influencer can really tell you exactly what your body needs. It will take the development of various skills, but you can do it. You can learn to set those boundaries around comments on your body and eating habits. You can learn more about intuitive eating and get to a place where you have a healthier relationship with food and your body.
I know this may seem scary when it comes to your health. You may think, “but if I let myself eat all the starches and fried foods that my family makes, I’ll never lose weight and I’ll be setting myself up to get the diabetes and high blood pressure that runs in my family.” It may be true that you won’t lose weight! However, that doesn’t mean you are disregarding your health. Despite diet culture’s unending (and quite frankly, unethical) attempt at promising you weight loss in the name of health, there is no proven method of sustainable weight loss. 95% of dieters end up gaining the weight back (and often, more). However, because of how fatphobic our society is and how much we have been bred to fear weight gain for various reasons, many people end up in a cycle of chasing weight loss, gaining it back, and then starting a new diet. These weight fluctuations, plus the weight stigma so prevalent around us, has been shown to be more harmful to health than being at a higher weight. Think of all the stress that diets cause. Restricting, stressing over what/how much to eat, feeling like a failure, fearing what will happen if you “slip up”, and feeling like your body says so much about who you are. The resulting stress has been shown to be harmful to both physical and mental health. Intuitive Eating, on the other hand, has been shown to promote health without being centered around weight! You don’t have to be dragged down feeling like your weight says so much about you or dragged down letting your weight control your life. You can work on your health without that being centered on your weight.
I know it’s hard. I know you probably think that the foods you grew up eating don’t fit in with a nutritious diet. I know you may consider a bunch of them to be “unhealthy”. There are bigger issues with that. Our Latin foods are left out of westernized nutrition. That’s a problem with society, not with our foods. We deserve to be included in nutrition recommendations. Caring about nutrition doesn’t mean giving up your cultural foods. You can promote your health AND include those Latin foods you love. You can acknowledge the struggles you have with accepting your body AND acknowledge that weight loss isn’t the answer.
We can work on this together.
Sincerely,
Latina Dietitian, Isabel
*This is not the case for someone with an active eating disorder. In that case, guidance from a registered dietitian experienced in eating disorders is critical to recovery.
