Catfish | A. Svechnikov

FIFTEEN

"Ms. Johnson." She spoke carefully, her eyes softening with worry as her gaze met mine, "Are you alright? Because you look like you've been crying."

My lips pulled up tiredly as I jumped it. "I just didn't get much sleep last night that's all." The words were true but a guilty taste lingered on my tongue afterward. "I'm fine really. You don't need to worry."

I wasn't fine, I was disoriented, exhausted, tired, and currently experiencing a headache as a result of my lack of sleep, but I couldn't admit that to a patient. I'd worked hard for this job and had made so much progress, I wasn't ready to stumble backward. I could get a hold of my emotions. I'd done it before and I could do it again.

Swallowing hard, hoping that she didn't catch the slight waver in my voice, I let out a silent breath of relief when she accepted my reply a few moments later. "Okay, did your sister bring her dog yet? Can I see a picture of him?"

"Later." I smiled at her looking at her chart once more noticing a change in her weight. "Alexa, you're weights going down. What's going on?"

"The high protein diet just isn't working for me." She frowned, I could feel her genuine disappointment. "It doesn't make me feel good."

"It doesn't make you feel good?"

"No."

I pause to think for a moment, pursing my lips outwards before speaking, "How about we try something new, something called intuitive eating."

"What is that? I've never heard of that diet." She shakes her head at me confused.

"It's not a diet, it's not a tool for weight loss or weight gain, or anything in that sense," I say setting the clipboard down as her eyes light up at my statement. "It's not just eating when you're hungry and stopping when you're full, and it's not just giving up on all the progress we've made with you not eating anything at all and me telling you to just eat whatever you want."

"I still don't understand." The young girl pushes her curls off her face. "What am I supposed to eat then and when?"

"It's about trusting your body, trusting the signs it's giving you, trusting the hunger cues, the fullness cues.  It's about understanding what a true normal eater is and having that trust in your body to ask for what it needs and then building on that trust by giving it what it's asking for."

"So if my brain says don't eat, don't eat?"

"So for me, intuitive eating is food freedom. Eating food that I love and also foods that make me and my body feel good, eating my soul with foods that my inner child loves, nostalgic foods. Being an intuitive eater means understanding that there is nothing healthy or unhealthy about food based on its nutritional value."

"So if I want ice cream cake, I can just eat ice cream cake whenever I want with no consequences?"

"Yes! If your body tells you that you want ice cream cake, do it. Food can have more nutritional density than other foods, but that doesn't necessarily make it healthier or less healthy for us. It's okay to leave the table a little bit hungry because you weren't satisfied with what you had, it's also okay to leave the table a little bit full on every other day that isn't, you know, thanksgiving because you're allowed to be full."

"That makes a lot of sense." She tilts her head, I could almost visually see the wheels turning inside her brain. "It's like being proud of yourself without judgment of what food is going to do to my body."

"Yes!" I impulsively jumped up and cheered. "The food is going to nourish and fuel your body and your soul. It's what helps you have beautiful hair, what helps you grow your nails, what helps you keep muscle in your body, it's what helps you insulate your body. All of that stuff keeps your internal organs working, we don't have to be afraid of food."