Intuitive Eating 101: The 10 Principles

Intuitive Eating is a framework of 10 principles that support self-care and can help you improve your relationship with food and your body. It helps you relearn how to listen to and trust internal cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction rather than relying on strict external diet rules.

Read More
Amber Hanson
Food and Mood: 6 Nutrients To Eat For Anxiety and Depression

What we eat does impact how we feel. If we skip regular meals and prop ourselves up with caffeine, sugar, and refined snack foods, we are not only missing important nutrients, but we are also causing blood sugar, our brain’s preferred energy source, to erratically spike and drop throughout the day, which is very stressful on the body.

Read More
Amber Hanson
Gentle Nutrition: Let Go of Dieting to Nurture Your Body

If you have been around here for a while you may have noticed a change in the language used to describe Whole You Nutrition. In the past few months, I have updated business materials including the website to explicitly state “anti-diet gentle nutrition.” You might be wondering, what exactly does anti-diet gentle nutrition mean?

Read More
Amber Hanson
A Nutritionist's Concerns About Weight Loss Drugs

Considered by some to be an “easy fix,” these drugs have to potential to exacerbate anti-fat bias. The affordability, spotty insurance coverage, and the fact it won’t work for everyone (either because it simple doesn’t work or the side effects are untenable), or someone simply doesn’t care to take a medication, means these biases will unduly impact those with marginalized identities including those in larger bodies, POC, trans folks, and those with lower socioeconomic status.

Read More
Amber Hanson
Eat the Rainbow: How Colorful Foods Can Improve Your Health

The idea behind eating the rainbow is to get a variety of different foods on your plate each day. Did you know the color of your food can give a hint as to what health promoting phytonutrients it contains? Here I will breakdown the color code so you can learn the benefits of adding ROY G BIV to your meals and snacks.

Read More
Amber Hanson
How to Detox Your Body

It is important to keep in mind a few things as we navigate detox and cleanse messages during this time of year. First, our body has a pretty amazing system in place that detoxes your body on the daily. And second, all those packages of juices, shakes, and supplements are trying to profit off your fears. The very same fears that those products are perpetuating in their marketing. One way to avoid the pitfalls of very convincing messages cultivated to help us part with our hard-earned dollars in exchange for a box of green juice or a canister of powder is to know more about how the body works.

Read More
Amber Hanson
How to Meal Plan

There are probably as many different ways to meal plan as there are meals in a week. The key is really finding what works for you and your family. And what works might look different depending on the season of the year (like summer versus winter) or the season of life (like newborn baby versus teenagers versus kid-free home). The single biggest factor in long-term health in not following a specific diet but rather eating mostly whole, minimally processed foods. Eating whole foods consistently tends to require some planning. Here I will cover why meal planning is helpful and offer some suggestions on how you can get started

Read More
Amber Hanson
Recommended Reading: Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

When I first read the book, I nodded along to many of the examples and explanations, recognizing both myself and many of my clients in the pages. After this last year when the pandemic only added to this already underrecognized burden with the possible addition of distance learning, multiple people working from home, cooking every.single.meal every.single.day, trying to keep a space clean that always has people in it, with limited resources for support or a break (like childcare, cleaning services, going to a restaurant for a meal, or socializing with friends); let’s just say, burnout is real and at an all time high.

Read More
Amber Hanson
How to Approach Picky Eating

It can take 15 or more exposures to a food before it is accepted. Try serving it in different ways too – roasted, sautéed, raw (for things like veggies and fruit), shredded, cubed, etc. Flavors and textures of food change depending on how they are prepared. Just keep serving it! You can also introduce foods during non-mealtimes to take some of the pressure off from eating it. Talk about foods you see while prepping, grocery shopping, in a garden, on the counter. Let kids touch and play with food to get more familiar with it.

Read More
Amber Hanson
Eat Lower on the Food Processing Chain

Instead of refined pasta pick whole, intact grains like quinoa, farro or brown rice. Instead of fruit snacks choose no-sugar added fresh, frozen, or dried fruit. Instead of puffed veggie stix pick actual vegetables (fresh, frozen, heck – even canned). Instead of chicken nuggets grab a package of chicken thighs.

Read More
Amber Hanson