Resources
UCAN Favorites
These are a few of our favorite things. Campus resources, podcasts, articles, videos, books, and websites. Bookmark this page and keep coming back for more!
Our Favorite Campus Resources Accordion Closed
LiveWellNAU — Check out the 8 dimensions of wellness and click on each piece of the wellness wheel to find specific campus resources pertinent to that area of wellness. Take the wellness self-assessment survey on the LiveWellNAU website to find out which area of wellness could use more support.
NAU Counseling Services –Counseling services provides short-term individual and couples counseling, group counseling, crisis services, outreach, and consultation about students of concern.
NAU Medical Services— Our fully staffed health center provides a wide array of services from physical therapy, to immunizations, a pharmacy, and medical care.
NAU Campus Dietitian— Your campus dietitian provides individual counseling, grocery store tours, cooking classes, and campus presentations.
NAU Health Promotion–Health Promotion is the preventive branch of Campus Health Services. They support students in making healthy choices to support academic success. The office uses a public health approach to managing student health at a population level. They offer screenings, coordinate events to reduce stress, conduct trainings and presentations all over campus and develop policies to support a healthier campus community.
Campus Recreation–Campus Recreation offers innovative programs and state of the art facilities to support your physical activity needs. They offer group classes, aquatics, personal training, a climbing wall, and much more.
FIT Classes–Take your pick from some amazing fitness classes on our campus, including tennis, yoga, swimming, skiing, and martial arts, just to name a few.
A List of Student Support Programs–And for a complete list of programs on our campus here to support student success and well-being, visit this page.
Our Favorite Podcasts Accordion Closed
UCAN Health Coach — Our UCAN health coaches talk all things health and wellness as college students at Northern Arizona University. They share how they navigate self-acceptance, self-compassion, balance, enjoyment and nourishment as busy college students.
Love, Food — Registered Dietitian Julie Duffy Dillon responds to listeners’ letters to Food. Food always writes back in this clever podcast aimed at addressing some of our culture’s common beliefs about food and body. This weekly podcast series is for those with a complicated relationship with Food hoping to rewrite their fate.
Food Psych — Registered Dietitian Christy Harrison talks with inspiring guests in the body positive, Health At Every Size® movement. She “calls out diet culture for the life thief that it is, and challenges it in all its sneaky forms—including the restrictive behaviors that often masquerade as wellness and fitness.”
Body Kindness — Registered Dietitian Rebecca Scritchfield talks with people from all walks of life about their journey towards food peace and body acceptance. Her podcasts surrounds the motto that, “health is about being kind to your body.”
Dietitians Unplugged — Registered Dietitians Aaron Flores and Glenys Oyston explore the idea that health and wellness is more than a pants size. Each episode addresses topics that can improve your health, body image and fitness without obsessing on the scale or counting calories.
Our Favorite Websites Accordion Closed
Budget Bytes — As a foodie and nutritionist, Beth believes, “Good food doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive.” She offers newsletters and recipes galore that won’t break the bank.
Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH) — ASDAH is for folks who are passionate about supporting a body positive, non-diet message. There are many useful resources including a blog, webinars, infographics, and ways to get connected with other like-minded folks.
Am I Hungry? — Physician, Dr. Michelle May offers useful resources for those pursuing food peace and body positivity on her website.
Spoon University — This website includes articles about food and health that are written for college students, by college students.
Our Favorite Videos Accordion Closed
Let’s unpack our fear of fatness–- in this inspiring and elucidating TED talk, Athena Nair – a psychology and sociology student at Tufts University – shares how her own painful experiences with disordered eating and internalized fat phobia led her to seek freedom from diet culture and to embrace body positivity. She discusses how our society has come to stigmatize fat bodies, the harmful effects that this stigma inflicts on our physical and mental health, and how these effects can ultimately be overcome through the cultivation of body positivity and self-love.
How to love your body — in this honest and poignant talk, Sarah Doyle shares her journey of overcoming a debilitating eating disorder that lasted a decade, and discovering the true meaning of self-love and self-acceptance. She shares how “self-acceptance teaches us that there is no wrong way to have a body, and that no body is broken, nor does it need to be fixed or tweaked”, contrary to the toxic messages that the media, beauty, fashion, and diet industries often inundate us with. As Sarah shares, the problem is not our bodies, but how we have been conditioned by these forces to think about and to treat our bodies.
Trust your hunger and make peace with food — in this relatable and humorous talk, dietitian and college professor Eva Lahijani shares how she has dedicated her career to helping her clients and her students make peace with food through three powerful strategies. She talks about the importance of reconnecting with our hunger, especially since many of us disrupt our natural hunger cues when we restrict our diet, or when we use food to soothe our emotions, satisfy our boredom, or, alleviate our stress.
Body trust is a birthright — in this refreshing and thought-provoking talk, dietitian Dana Sturtevant and therapist Hilary Kinavey introduce the “body trust” approach that they created to promote healing from the toxic effects of a weight obsessed world. They discuss how hyper vigilance regarding food, weight, and health drives us to spend more time thinking about our bodies – and judging them – than actually being in them. They also invite us to reflect on when and how we may have started to regard parts of our body as unsatisfactory or problematic, which often indicates the onset of body shame. Perhaps most importantly, they invite us to consider the implications of stigmatizing larger bodies and imposing a distorted and limiting view of health on all individuals.
30 seconds to mindfulness — author and psychotherapist Phill Boissière shares a technique through which the transformative benefits of mindfulness can be achieved in just 30 seconds. He developed this technique – called the 3×3 technique – by pairing what he refers to as one of the most basic breathing techniques with one of the most basic mindfulness techniques. In this talk, Phil will explain the 3 steps of the technique in detail, walk you through how to apply them, and convince you that they are worth integrating into your daily life.
6 tips for better sleep –– using fun and colorful animations, sleep scientist Matt Walker provides 6 simple ways that you can boost your sleep by both falling asleep more quickly, as well as staying asleep longer. Beyond just providing these tips, he also explains the science behind each one, so that you can better understand how sleep operates at the level of the brain and why it is so vital to our wellbeing. If you’ve been struggling to secure those vital hours of nourishing sleep, this video could be a game changer. It will just take 5 minutes of your time!
The brain changing benefits of exercise –– in this lively and insightful talk, neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki explains how exercise is transformative for not just our bodies but also our brains. She discusses the specific mechanisms through which movement can boost our mood and our memory, as well as protect our brains from neuro-degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. This talk will equip you with valuable knowledge about the mind body connection, and leave you feeling inspired to move your body.
Our Favorite Books Accordion Closed
Intuitive Eating — Dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch wrote this book that helps readers learn to tune into their hunger and fullness cues and allow those cues to guide food choices and timing. This is the perfect book to get started on the journey toward becoming a non-dieter.
Body Kindness — Dietitian and mother, Rebecca Scritchfield struggled with her body image for years. She is now helping others reclaim a full life by embracing the skin you’re in while discovering ways to treat your body with kindness.
Body Respect — Nutrition researchers Dr. Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor address the science behind weight and health, helping readers see the true underlying causes of illness and suffering, which has more to do with chronic stress, poverty, social inequality, oppression and stigma, than body weight.
Our Favorite Articles Accordion Closed
SELF Weight Issue — SELF is a website that addresses fitness, food, health, love and beauty. Check out a series of articles on the topic of weight, body image, and health.
Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift — For the science-minded folks, this open access article addresses the scientific evidence that supports ditching diet culture.
12 Reasons to Ditch the Diet Mentality — A great overview of the risks of dieting to support you on a journey towards health and happiness.