C.H.U.L.A. Method Breakdown: Understand Your Needs
Written by Isabel Vasquez RD, LDN
Welcome to the third blog in our CHULA Method series! ICYMI, the CHULA Method is what we use here at Your Latina Nutrition to support you in living your most vibrant and authentic life by reclaiming the joy years of dieting have stolen from you. It’s an acronym that stands for:
In this five-article series, we’re explaining one part of the CHULA method in each post.
If you missed it, click here to read our first two posts in the series.
This post is dedicated to the U in CHULA: “Understand your needs”. We’ll share what it means and how you can put it into practice!
Diet and wellness culture makes it confusing to know what your body really needs. We constantly hear about the latest “quick fix”, and we receive conflicting information about what foods are “good” and which are “bad”.
A lot of diet culture’s advice is pretty extreme. It makes many people feel like they need to monitor every single thing they eat and spend hours in the gym to be healthy. In reality, for many people, health lies somewhere in the middle ground, not in the extremes.
Gentle Nutrition Basics
When you think about understanding your nutritional needs, there are two main principles we like to start with.
Eat Enough Throughout the Day
The first is consistency. Many people actually don’t eat enough throughout the day, and they restrict food without a medical need to do so.
They may be stuck in the binge-restrict cycle and only notice compensatory eating at the end of the day.
Most of us need to eat at least every 3–5 hours to maintain our energy levels throughout the day. We may need to eat sooner or later depending on what and how much we ate last.
Listening to your hunger is one of the main parts of the CHULA method. We cover it in a separate post where we discuss the L in CHULA, for “Listen to your hunger”.
Incorporate Nutritional Variety
The second aspect of gentle nutrition we tend to focus on first with clients is variety.
By this, we mean having a wide variety of food groups (starches/grain, protein, fat, veggies, fruit, and dairy).
Each food group provides unique benefits so incorporating all the food groups throughout the day or week is typically beneficial to health.
Diet culture can make us perfectionistic about our eating, but know that you typically won’t make or break your health in a day.
Don’t beat yourself up if you aren’t “perfectly” incorporating every food group every day, whatever that even means! Try to zoom out and look at the big picture.
Are you incorporating a variety of food groups throughout your days and weeks?
Satisfaction Matters
Finding satisfaction is also extremely important and may even improve your body’s ability to absorb nutrients.
For many of our clients, that means embracing their cultural foods for the satisfaction and nutrition they bring!
If you’re worried that our Latine cultural foods aren’t “healthy enough”, read this blog on the nutritional value of our cultural foods. They’re packed with nutrition and deserve to be enjoyed!
Your Need For Physical Activity and Rest
In addition to understanding your needs around food, you have needs around movement and rest.
Once again, fitness culture makes us feel we need to go to the extreme for the movement to be “worth it”. That leads to all-or-nothing thoughts and behaviors so we either go to the gym for hours or we don’t do anything at all.
Related: Intuitive movement: What it is and 8 tips to embrace it
For most people, it’s more enjoyable and sustainable to find the middle ground.
If you struggle to be active, you might start by setting reminders to get up from your desk every hour or so. If you tend to overdo it with activity, you might incorporate intentional rest days.
Try to connect with your body non-judgmentally to help guide when you move and when you rest.
Final Thoughts
This was a quick overview of how to understand your needs. We shared some general tips around incorporating nutrition and movement to support your health, but your needs are individual.
What’s safe and helpful for you as far as nutrition and physical activity go vary based on any health conditions you have.
It can help to get support from a registered dietitian as they can assess your unique needs and provide individualized advice. Learn about working with our dietitian team via insurance here
Click here to read the rest of this CHULA method series.
For education on how to ADD nutrition to your favorite Latine cultural dishes, make peace with food, and focus on your health without dieting, join our nutrition library for just $27/month!
