Valery Kallen, MS, RD

09/03/2021

06/20/2018

Kids should be spending their summer playing, not sitting in a cage. PLEASE HELP 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 The organizations below are doing incredible work but they need money in order to fix this situation. Every dollar helps. PLEASE. PLEASE. PLEASE.

・・・
THERE IS A HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW
HERE ARE WAYS TO HELP
👇🏼
It’s been nearly two months since the Trump administration announced its new “zero tolerance” policy regarding illegal immigration, which federal officials say has led to over 2,000 immigrant children in government custody separated from their parents. Some families have been separated for months. Some parents have been deported without their children.

Here's a list of organizations helping children who've been separated from their families at the Texas-Mexico border:
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🌿RAICES
Free & low-cost legal services to immigrant children, families and refugees in Texas.
Accepting donations & volunteers. In addition campaign will donate $5 to RAICES for every postcard kids write to help separated immigrant children.
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🌿Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service
Raising money to provide immigrant children immediate shelter and beds, medical services, counseling & therapy to help them deal with the trauma of family separation.
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🌿Together Rising .rising
Raising money for advocacy groups working to reunify immigrant children & families.
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🌿Comfort Cases
Rraising money to provide backpacks to separated immigrant children containing blankets, pajamas, toiletries, stuffed animal, books, journals & art supplies.
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🌿The CARA Project
Recruiting attorneys, law students & paralegals with asylum work experience.
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🌿The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights
Looking for more child advocates to visit the immigrant kids inside detention centers weekly & accompany them to immigration proceedings. Also provides training to adults to become child advocates.
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🌿Kids In Need of Defense
Nationwide pro bono network to represent unaccompanied children through their immigration proceedings. No immigration law experience required.

06/15/2018

Can you remember the first time you had a negative thought about your body?
The first time you took a look at your stomach, legs, arms and thought they weren’t good enough?
Recent research has shown that kids as young as 5 years old can become concerned with body image and start associating a thinner body as better. This increases if family members (esp. moms) have their own body image issues. 👉🏼Kids are hella perceptive.
I was a very skinny kid and didn’t hit puberty until I was about 15, so I was glaringly aware that my body wasn’t like the women on the magazine covers with hips and breasts. I barely even filled out a training bra - and was immensely self-conscious about it. Then came puberty and weight gain but not in the “right places” - suddenly I found myself thinking about why my pants from sophomore year weren’t fitting me.
No one told me this was normal.
Instead, I was told that I needed to start exercising because now I was becoming a woman and had to “watch my figure.”
That was womanhood, I supposed.
Junior year. I remember waking up and doing crunches every morning making me late for homeroom damn near every day. After school I would run laps around our yard like a maniac.
Senior year. I remember standing in front of the mirror and pinching. Posing. Pinching. Changing clothes 10 times, wishing I could just disappear.
It never crossed my mind that maybe my body wasn’t the problem. Maybe I didn’t have to devote all of my energy trying desperately to change it. Maybe I could just work on changing my thoughts.
I wish someone had told me.

05/30/2018

Couple things...
1. This is my new favorite lunch: avocado “huevos rancheros” on a thick toast 🥑🍞🥚🍅🧀
2. Sunny ☀️ days where I can eat outdoors and read for an hour are the best 📚
3. Please read anything that has written. Jes poured her soul out into and it brought me to tears several times. Her recent interview on podcast did as well. I’m just a puddle 😭
4. Read books by people in larger bodies who share their struggle. Fat stigma and discrimination are very real. The oppression that people in larger bodies face on a daily basis is very real - and no one deserves to be treated this way. It has to stop. And no, it’s not “their fault” - a common retort I hear from fat shamers. 📣Being fat isn’t a fault.
📣Being fat isn’t a problem.
People’s attitudes towards fatness, people’s assumptions about fatness, people’s judgements about fatness - these things are the problems. These things need to change. And we start to change by *LISTENING* to people in larger bodies and trusting them and their lived experience.
Jes, thank you for this book, for your other book and past writing, and for sharing your story with us for years. I’m thankful for you and your voice. You make a tremendous difference in people’s lives. ❤️🙏🏼

05/30/2018

Love this artwork and post from and .nutrition 👌🏼👏🏼❤️

・・・
This doodle was inspired by a caption posted by the everso insightful Amy (.nutrition):
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“I did some math yesterday - & if you are spending January through June trying to manipulate your body size/appearance for a 1wk beach vacation, you spend 50% of your year stressed out about a trip that is about 2% of your year - and let me tell you, you are worth self-care 100% of the time.” 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼
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If we take a look at how we treat ourselves over the course of a year, we spend roughly half of the year trying to change ourselves, and the remainder feeling guilty for “falling off the wagon” & “overindulging” in all of the “temptations” of the holidays.
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So all-in-all, 1 year can become one big cycle of restricting and bingeing, with a sprinkle of dieter’s remorse...
However, there are small steps we can take to start slowing the cycle, and it begins with a little reflection, awareness, & forgiveness☀️
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Today’s challenge: take a minute to get deep & do a little self-reflecting 🤔
1) What are your priorities in life?
2) How do you plan to truly live to the fullest?
3) Most importantly, what kind of memories do you wish to create?

05/25/2018

Breaking out of your comfort zone is never easy, but it’s even more difficult for anyone dealing with disordered eating/an eating disorder.
Our ED brains hold us hostage with food rules and food fears, leaving little room for variety and spontaneity. And when we do forgo a rule and follow our cravings, the guilt and shame of going against our ED voice is overwhelming.
One thing I do with my clients is help them brainstorm Food Challenges - small ways to go outside their comfort zone and challenge their eating disorder’s rules. We usually come up with a handful for the week ahead.
Here are some examples, with varying levels of difficulty since everyone is coming from a different place in their recovery.
• Order regular fries instead of sweet potato fries 🍟
• Add a chocolate or candy topping to your fro-yo 🍬
• Have a candy bar (ie: Kit Kat, M&M’s) as a snack 🍫
• Use a creamy dressing on your salad 🥗
• Try a flavored yogurt instead of plain/adding your own fruit
• Buy a milk chocolate bar instead of the dark chocolate one that you force yourself to enjoy 😉
• Add a bag of potato chips to your lunch
• Eat something that you only allow yourself on weekends during the week (ie: a bagel for breakfast during the week)
What food rules has your eating disorder created?
How can you challenge just one of those rules today?
Remember that recovery is a series of
SMALL 🌻
BRAVE 💪🏼💕
CHOICES ✨
repeated over and over and over again.
What is one brave choice you can make today? 👊🏼💕🔥

05/22/2018

📣PSA: You don't win a prize for eating the least amount of food groups.
Unless the prize is LESS OPTIONS. 🏆☹️
The prize is certainly NOT "more healthy" - because our bodies actually THRIVE on a variety of foods. 🥐🍌🥗🧀🍗🍟🍎🍩
I've been seeing WAY TOO MUCH of this bu****it:
"Check out my gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, paleo, FODMAP-friendly ______ recipe." 🤯
I mean, C'MON. 🤦🏻‍♀️
Do we really need to qualify our recipes with THIS MANY EXCEPTIONS?
If you have even one 👆🏼medically necessary food exception due to a food allergy, that is already super limiting. But adding 3 more to the list, just because of "diet fads" is crazy restrictive - not to mention dangerous and unnecessary.
What this means is that you are likely...
- preparing all your own food
- buying all sorts of pricey ingredients
- avoiding social situations or having to bring your own meals to places
- feeling guilty whenever you crave foods that fall out of your self-imposed rules
- probably not meeting your energy needs and feeling hungry more often throughout the day
- possibly bingeing/feeling out of control around food on the regular
If any of the above resonates, hear me out:
You don't need to eliminate tons of food groups to obtain some sort of superior health status. THAT'S NOT HOW HEALTH WORKS. That's how driving yourself crazy or into an eating disorder works.
📣Less food groups just = less options, NOT better health.
If you want to be healthy, eat more foods, eat the foods your body is craving and enjoys. Eat foods that are satisfying and allow you to fully participate in LIFE! Don’t deprive yourself unnecessarily in the name of fake wellness. 🙅🏻‍♀️ YES I SAID IT: FAKE WELLNESS. FAKE AF.

05/22/2018

I see so many so-called influencers peddling these bu****it products and it’s not only infuriating but insulting to my and YOUR intelligence.
You do not need to suppress your appetite - you are a human and you are literally BY DESIGN required to eat in order to sustain life. And eat PLENTY.
You do not need to shrink down, down, down, disappear... in order to make these companies RICH.
Resist these cheap and dirty attempts to rob you of your sanity, your dollar, your worth. You’re better than that.
Image:
via

05/21/2018

YESSS 100% AGREED!
👊🏼👊🏼👊🏼

・・・
I’m irritated that I’m writing ANYTHING in response to a Kardashian, but this matters: appetite suppression is life suppression.
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Our bodies tell us what they need. We need to be able to listen - even though would tell us not to.
A useful rule of thumb:
If diet culture suggests a ‘solution,’ give them a big thumbs down.👎
Choose something else to focus on. Practice being IN your body. Be a rebel. Don’t make your life small - take up space, make noise, know that you’re in good company.💛
-

05/13/2018

Happy Mother's Day to my Mama!! 💐❤️🌸☀️
My mom always tells me the story of how she wanted a son... but instead got me. And so it began, me never quite giving her what she wants, and her loving me anyway!
Over the years, if mama wanted me to go left, I would most certainly go right. I have always been an independent spirit, paving my own way. I am my mother's daughter.
It was my mama who decided to leave her entire life behind at 24, because she wanted a better life for our family. Her parents thought she was crazy. No one thought she would succeed. She did it anyway.
She left the Soviet Union with 4 year old me and my dad in tow, and somehow got us to the US. She didn't know the language. She didn't come from money. But she was a hard worker, an optimist, and a people person. I am my mother's daughter.
We are only 20 years apart. For most of my life, people thought she was my sister. She was the cool, young mom. She worked in fashion and watched Dawson's Creek with me and taught me how to apply eyeliner. I smoked my first and last cigarette with her.
But she was also the one person I could always always depend on, the glue who held our family together, sometimes working 3 jobs to pay the bills, commuting 4 hours each day so that I could live in a nice house with a yard.
There was never a problem she couldn't solve and I still call her first whenever I have a question, whether it's how to get a stain out, how to file my taxes, or just to vent about my life for an obscene amount of time. She always listens.
We are a Leo and a Scorpio. We are fiercely protective over each other and also have the unique ability to drive each other absolutely crazy. We love hard, we laugh a lot, we know how to push each others' buttons. We are a mother and daughter.
Thank you, mama, for always being my #1 supporter, shoulder to cry on, hand to hold, fellow dessert and fry lover, and beautiful person inside and out. I am SO lucky that you are mine and I LOVE YOU more than anything.
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

05/13/2018

perfectly captured everything I’ve been thinking about today.❤️
👇🏼
・・・
It's Mother's Day here in the good ol' USA! Gentle reminder that today can and will be a wonderful day for many, AND many others will struggle immensely.
If you struggle with this day, for any reason-I am thinking of you.
~If you lost your mother.
~If you don't have the hallmark relationship with your mother.
~If you lost a child.
~If you are struggling with infertility.
~If you have chosen not to be a mother and feel judged for that choice.
~If wanting to be a mom is one of your reasons to strive for recovery, but you are not there yet.
~If your mental illness makes you feel like a "bad mom."
~If your mental illness makes you feel like a "bad kid."
Breathe and remind yourself: You are worthy, you are seen. You are enough.
Thinking of you all today🌺🌸🌷🌼🌻🌹

05/12/2018

Enjoying a much needed restful Saturday after a hectic week and was in the mood for pizza but not in the mood for leaving my apartment or changing out of my pajamas. Thankful that my favorite pizza spot delivers ❤️🍕 This is the Van Dammer: Brussels sprout, mozzarella, eggs, black pepper and truffle oil. Not pictured, side of shis**to peppers.👌🏼
Taking this day to relax, recharge, and process thoughts and feelings. Will probably take a walk at some point. Will probably also cry at some point. And all of this is ok.
Sending love to anyone having a rough time with life. These are the ebbs and flows. We can do this. ❤️

05/06/2018

I was sharing a bit of my own recovery story with a client recently and had a really hard time describing the actual turning point. I said that somewhere along the way, I just started not to care as much anymore (about controlling my food and my body) - but that made it sound like it was just an easy decision I made one day.
I thought about it some more and realized that the IDGAF attitude wasn't actually a decision at all, but rather the RESULT of many other small decisions.
It was a series of choices, small acts of courage in the face of extreme fear.
+ I will be brave and eat that cookie, just because I want it.
+ I will be brave and wear the shorts, even though I hate my thighs.
+ I will be brave and not order the salad even though the burger scares me.
+ I will be brave and set a boundary with that person who puts me down.
+ I will be brave and do yoga even though it doesn't feel like a real workout.
+ I will be brave and not wear makeup even though I may look ugly without it.
I will be brave and do exactly what makes me happy, not what I "should" do.
I will be brave.... despite the amplified fears in my head telling me that the risks are too high, that I might lose people's respect, lose love and affection, lose what makes me feel special.
Because what actually happened is that I didn't lose anything at all - at least nothing that truly mattered or aligned with my values.
I gained.
I gained self-respect, self-compassion, self-worth. I gained an understanding of who I was when I stopped caring so much about other people's opinion and started caring about MY OWN OPINION.
One brave step at a time.
🙏🏼❤️💪🏼

05/06/2018

You know you’re going to be good friends with someone when you’re hanging out for the first time and you both order the same meal - with the home fries instead of the side salad!😉
Had such a lovely time getting to know today! Ashley is an RD specializing in adolescent eating and feeding issues so if you know any kids/preteens/teens struggling with food, she’s your gal!
This was also such a great reminder of why recovery means so much to me and why I am so passionate about it for my clients and community on IG.
THIS is recovery.
+ Not stressing over what to order or scouring the menu looking for the safest choice.
+ Not making “deals” with yourself about what’s okay and what you’ll do later to make up for it.
+ Ordering exactly what you’re in the mood for and enjoying every bite!😋
+ Eating exactly as much as you’re hungry for and stopping when you’re full and satisfied.
+ Getting to know someone - laughing soooo much - and not worrying for a second about the food!
This is recovery. This is food freedom. This is life. 🙏🏼❤️🌻

05/03/2018

Nailed it! 🏖👏🏼☀️🌊
Seriously, wtf even IS a “summer body”?
Oh wait, I know, I know!
A marketing scheme!
A+ for me! Where is my prize? I hope it’s cookies. 🤓🏆🍪
via amazing human 🦄

05/02/2018

is who keeps it real about recovery and choosing to embrace the good and the hard parts. ED isn’t a choice but recovery is a choice, over and over. It’s choosing yourself. Read more below 👇🏼
・・・
Never did I think, before I started my recovery, that I could look at my body and see something beautiful.
I spent so long hating it, punishing it, destroying it.
And I’ll be the first to tell you — it’s not easy. It’s certainly not constant, either.
There are days (sometimes weeks) when I don’t feel confident, when I regress, or
It takes work. Choice, every day.
It takes therapy sessions.
Hard conversations with myself and with people I love.
Educating myself and googling s**t and knowing ITS OKAY when I don’t have the answers.
Stepping back.
Staying still.
Standing up, getting up, moving forward.
And you know what?
Somehow, even though I didn’t think I could do it, I DID.
I’m here. Living in recovery.
In whatever state of being I’m in, I’m here.
Seeing the way my body folds
like gentle hands in conversation —
patiently; respectfully;
is my recovery win. Because I chose it.
Even when I didn’t think it was an option,
I chose it.

05/01/2018

Diet culture is consistently reinforcing the importance of external guidance when it comes to our eating habits, our physical activity, and our general health and wellbeing.
We are taught to seek out the advice of the so-called experts: scientists and doctors, dietitians and researchers, gurus and personal trainers, or that girl you follow on IG who wears yoga pants and does a lot of juice cleanses. She seems like she knows what she's doing.🙄
A quick scan of the health and wellness section in any bookstore 📚 would truly give the impression that we don't know a damn thing about taking care of ourselves unless a book gives us the exact plan. We need the recipes, the guide, the map. 🔐🔮🔧
In all of these big and small ways, diet culture trains us to SHUT OFF our internal wisdom. Truly, the only way they can effectively sell us a solution (and they sell $60+ billion worth/year) is when we feel that we are at a complete loss to find the answers ourselves. 🤔😕
Diet culture has us so confused and distrustful of ourselves that we are constantly searching for external validation about OUR OWN BODIES. The bodies that have been with us since DAY ONE. Bodies that we intimately know, better than anyone else.
Sometimes clients will ask me, "How was my eating this week?" "What should I add to my meal to make it more filling?" "Was that too much food?"
And I always say, "How did YOU feel about your eating this week?" "What would YOU have enjoyed adding to your meal?" and "Where was YOUR fullness level at when you finished?"
Haha, I annoy them so much with this s**t 😂😉❤️
Intuitive Eating is re-learning that YOU are the expert of your unique body. And you don't need a single piece of nutrition knowledge to know what feels good for YOUR BODY when you are truly TUNING IN and LISTENING and FEELING.
👉🏼Turning OFF the fear, and turning ON the curiosity.
👉🏼Making decisions based on what you're in the mood for and NOT what you "should" be eating according to the latest guest on Dr. Oz.
YOU are your compass. If it's broken, all you have to do is start fixing it again. The Intuitive Eating book is a great starting place 👍🏼❤️