Our diet-culture dilemma: RD Claire Chewning talks TikTok success, social media stigma & intuitive eating
My phone buzzed to notify me it was 5:25 p.m. and I was at risk of running late for our much-anticipated interview with Claire Chewning, a registered dietitian, intuitive eating coach, and (our words) digital anti-diet healthy habit guru (no, I don’t think she’ll be printing that title on business cards any time soon). I filled up my water bottle, scarfed down a few chips, and precariously placed my laptop on my feet to hit my best Google Hangouts video angle as I panted, “Hey, sorry I’m running late!”
I shouldn’t have worried—despite Claire’s confident and professional interview approach, she’s a millennial businesswoman through-and-through and understands the concept of a stressful day. She values hard work and personal connections in her endeavors as the entrepreneur behind Yours Chewly Nutrition, LLC while finding innovative ways to keep her clients and followers engaged via Instagram (where she’s attracted 27.4 thousand followers over the last few years) and TikTok (107.1K followers & 1.3M likes—NBD).
“TikTok scares me slightly,” I conveyed to Claire, noting it as a medium F2GW hasn’t explored yet.
“I know many people our age and older who think that’s an app for tweens and that ‘they’re never going to be on it,’” Claire revealed, citing that the wide reach of a young, impressionable audience was what drove her to hit upload on curated intuitive eating content. “I just thought, I’m going to give it a shot, because if it’s filled with young minds … they might need someone to offer helpful information about nutrition and dieting.”
Claire’s helpful information was certainly well-received—in fact, seeing her on my FYP during a nightly scroll was what prompted me to reach out and reconnect.
“Yeah, I was able to grow rather quickly ... It’s wild because a lot of the clients I had the opportunity to work with throughout 2020 found me on TikTok. So I hereby endorse TikTok.”
On training to be a dietitian—and then questioning some of what she was taught.
In the same way that Claire has adapted newer social mediums to reach clients looking for healthy & safe solutions to eating well, she’s adapted her practice as a dietitian over the years.
“Our schooling—it’s very weight-centric and numbers-centric, and while a lot of it is medical nutrition therapy for treating certain conditions, there’s very much this undertone of ‘eat perfectly and be the picture of health,’” Claire said, noting that throughout her education there were moments she felt if she wanted to be the ideal nutrition professional, she also needed to be a perfect eater.
“This sent me down a weird road of cutting out certain food groups … until I realized the relationship I’d cultivated with food as a nutritionist-in-training wasn’t even why I wanted to become a dietitian in the first place.”
“Food can be fun … but it doesn’t need to be the thing that our lives revolve around. It can add value, but it doesn’t need to instill fear or distrust in our lives.”
Claire resonates with many of the reasons intuitive eating and “anti-dieting” practices are skyrocketing—namely, that dieting as a concept feels rigid, invokes fear around certain foods, and focuses on control, occasionally at the expense of the individual’s physical and mental health.
That “lightbulb moment,” as Claire dubbed it, inspired her to seek out additional educational resources, and she stumbled across Evelyn Tribole’s Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach.
“I realized [while reading] that book was describing the relationship with food I’d had as a kid—the one that had inspired me to become a dietitian in the first place. It focused on ‘food can be fun, food is nourishing, we need food,’ but food doesn’t need to be the thing that our lives revolve around. It can add value, but it doesn’t need to instill fear or distrust in our lives.” Claire found that what worked for her practice included a combination of her impactful education, along with seeking out more information from a variety of sources. This meant delving into Tribole’s books, connecting with more senior dietitians, and obtaining an intuitive eating counselor certification.
“People are hungry, pun intended, for a new approach to food—and not everyone is on that page yet, and that’s okay—but that’s why myself and other [dietitians] are here.” And while Claire’s exceptionally impressive resumé & wealth of knowledge surrounding intuitive eating whet our appetites, her social media prowess & ability to engage online served as the main course of our conversation.
On combatting diet culture in the current media landscape
“Look at commercials,” Claire directed us, “even to this day in the mainstream media it’s about the waist trainers and supplements. I remember a big one when I was growing up was Nutrisystem.” We conferred further, noting scenes from popular shows we watched as children that made jokes targeted at the expense of someone’s food intake or weight.
“It can perpetuate a lot of stereotypes about body size, about health, and about the morality of food—comments like that can elevate certain foods at the expense of others.”
“Even if it’s not an overt message of ‘don’t eat this, this body type is bad’—we can read between the lines.”
Beyond comparison syndrome and unhealthy supplement promotions (both of which are concerning in their own right), another aspect of our ever-evolving media culture that concerned Claire was the concept that anyone & everyone, of every background, could be a teacher. And while I find little danger (and lots of humor) trying new contouring hacks I learn on TikTok, creators without a background in nutrition offering diet advice is a different story.
“Some of the drawbacks to social media are that not only does it perpetuate unhealthy stereotypes about body size … but that anyone who goes viral, people put a lot of trust and faith in the things they say … which means sometimes people are giving advice they aren’t qualified to speak on & isn’t backed by research or professional experience.”
Recognizing this negative side effect of the mainly uplifting space that is the fitness & well-being corner of the internet went hand-in-hand with learning not to compare ourselves to others. Claire resonated with my experience watching a young TikTok creator with a few million followers walk viewers through her morning routine, which included a four- to five-mile run, an ab routine, and a protein bar.
“It scares me to think about my comparison mentality growing up as a teenager today,” I admitted, recognizing I’d still found ways to compare my weight and routine to others a decade ago, even without a plethora of TikTok content available to me.
“Unless you find a dietitian or Health at Every Size® trainer’s handle, what never gets mentioned from the people promoting ‘what I eat in a day’ is that body diversity is intentional, and that even if you ate exactly like [they] ate and moved in the same way [they] move, the two would still look like totally different people.” Claire went on to warn against the mental anguish it can cause to take this kind of social media advice at face value based on a person you may want to look like and emulate.
This comment brought to mind the hurried anxiety I felt jumping on the call with Claire—someone I knew to be extremely kind, accepting, and patient—and other feelings of inadequacy I had when I couldn’t hold myself to what I viewed as the ‘perfect’ standard. And how I, along with many others I knew spanning various ages, told ourselves something that Claire echoed as we wrapped up our conversation about social media & diet culture; “Maybe people are seeing a body type or person and they’re latching onto them, thinking they want & need that—telling themselves, well maybe if I do that and can do those things, I’m going to look like that person, but at the expense of their mental health … and like it or not, that’s not how our bodies work as human beings.”
After agreeing that fitness and diet content on social needed a disclaimer akin to those that pop up to dispute false election information (“warning, following this routine won’t necessarily replicate the outcome”), we moved on to the topic that started it all—Claire’s passion for food, her work ethic, and the positives of social media—including the work it brings nutrition professionals like her.
Her top advice to dietitians (and anyone else) looking to start their own business was to develop a social media presence that fostered a community of people who like you, know you, and trust you. This community on social led to many client-nutritionist relationships that mutually benefited Claire’s business endeavors and, of course, her clients’ physical and mental well-being. So after asking Claire about her favorite foods (peanut butter & jelly, hands down) and the diet fad she’d kill if she could (Keto—turns out it’s an eating practice designed as a therapeutic tool for children with epilepsy, and any diet that requires you to remove a major macronutrient category like carbohydrates should be drop-kicked to neverland), we had to ask how she and her clients were faring amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and the havoc it wreaked on our routines.
“We all feel stuck in so many ways,” Claire said before jumping into the steps she’s taken to turn the pandemic and resulting quarantine into a productive time for her and her clients. For Claire, this meant growing her social media presence and helping her clients adjust to their feelings around food amidst a whole lot of uncertainty.
“For so many people, [food] is something to be controlled and something to shame ourselves over. And I think this year with more time on our hands and being at home more, some people have really been able to question their relationship with food, and ask themselves, ‘Do I actually enjoy how I’m feeling mentally and physically?’” She found that between her clients and connections who reached out to her on social media, increasing numbers were expressing a more open-minded approach to eating and realizing a lot about themselves & their habits with more time to spare.
The biggest takeaway? Be flexible and adaptable in our eating, and in life. Claire shows her clients how to take every eating experience and turn it into a learning opportunity, rather than something that compromises self-esteem. “It’s [about] taking those moments and using them to get curious rather than to guilt and shame ourselves over an eating experience.”
And another thing that’s robbed us of much of our peace of mind (hello, 2020) has also provided us the time to learn, grow, and practice this kind of malleability.
“We have to start with a mindset before we can start with behaviors,” Claire relayed when asked her top piece of intuitive eating advice, “Progress, and I use the term progress lightly because it can be a ‘diet-y’ word, whatever that looks like to you, it’s not known to be linear. Diet culture teaches us it’s a straight line every day that has to be better than the last, or you start over from square one. The reality of intuitive eating and this process is that there are going to be ups and downs, days that feel more neutral, and everything in between.”
After wrapping up with Claire, I ran out to eat dinner and mull over the conversation in my mind. I thought about Claire’s final piece of intuitive eating advice—to view progress as a squiggly line rather than a black-and-white, all-or-nothing bar of success, and to focus on the bigger picture—and it dawned on me that while I could & would certainly use her wisdom to shape my relationship with food and fitness, I could also apply this mindset to go easy on myself and my mental health during the pandemic.
Claire Chewning is an intuitive eating coach, Registered Dietitian, yoga practitioner, and host of the Yours Chewly podcast. To learn more about Claire’s Intuitive Eating Discovery Course and 1:1 coaching, visit her website at www.clairechewning.com. You can also find Claire on Instagram & TikTok.
