Tag Archive for: cooking

How to Build an Intuitive Kitchen

For many chronic dieters, the kitchen is a source of pain for a few reasons. First, when you’ve been dieting, chances are you were eating foods you believed you “should” eat, or that you were told to it, and not necessarily foods you wanted to eat.

 

How many times would you make a meal for your family, only to be eating something different?

 

What comes to mind for me is Pizza night! The family is eating pizza, but you are eating salmon and salad, not that there’s anything wrong with salmon and salad, of course. Its’ just that you really wanted the pizza (or lasagna, mac and cheese, burgers and fries etc.) but didn’t allow yourself to eat it.

 

Now that you are on your Intuitive Eating journey, things are different! You’re learning to give yourself unconditional permission to eat, but the problem is, you don’t really know what to eat.

 

The Importance of Bringing Intuitive Eating into the Kitchen

A big part of the Intuitive Eating journey is to have new experiences with food as you rebuild trust in yourself and the food choices you make.

 

1. Bringing Intuitive Eating into the kitchen gives you the opportunity to heal your relationship with food and continue to learn and grow using curiosity, self-discovery, and self-compassion. It also allows you to break free from the diet culture rules and reframe thoughts around food and meal preparation.

 For example, instead of the kitchen being a place of fear with lots of unsatisfying meals, boring meal prep, and only “safe” ingredients”, the kitchen can now be a place for exploration, experimentation, and satisfaction!

2. By bringing all ingredients into the kitchen again, you learn to neutralize them as you create new and exciting dishes. In this way, you learn what your true food preferences are (which are often lost while dieting), and you may just discover something new that you enjoy too!

3. Being intuitive in the kitchen while cooking allows you to be more present moment to moment with the cooking process and can enhance satisfaction when you sit down to eat your creation.

 

How to Build an Intuitive Kitchen

 

As an Intuitive Eater, you trust that when you walk into the kitchen, you will have what you need to put together a satisfying meal. One of principles of Intuitive Eating is Discover the Satisfaction Factor. To do this, you explore all the sensual qualities of food to learn your true food preferences. Yet, it’s hard to do this if your pantry is not stocked with a variety of ingredients.

 

Stocking Your Kitchen

Stocking your kitchen with a variety of foods in the pantry, freezer, and fridge allows you to have the security and comfort of knowing that a tasty, satisfying meal is always available within arm’s reach.

A well-stocked kitchen causes less stress around food; meals can be created easily with what is available in the kitchen.

  • No rigid meal plan necessary
  • No long cooking times
  • No stress or panic about ingredients or items running out

One of my goals is to have a variety of (and enough) ingredients to create a great “throw together” nourishing meal at any time, and to be able to open my cookbook and make a recipe that I desire in that moment without having to run out for an ingredient.

 

Here are some ideas to get you started in stocking your kitchen:

Pantry

  • Pasta, all kinds and shapes
  • Grains, such as barley, quinoa, and rice
  • Oats and oatmeal
  • Canned tuna, salmon, sardines
  • Canned beans
  • Canned tomatoes and tomato sauces
  • Flour
  • Oils
  • Vinegars
  • Dried fruits
  • Nuts and nut butters
  • Spices and dried herbs
  • Tortilla chips
  • Sweeteners
  • Onions and garlic
  • Potatoes

 

Refrigerator

  • Eggs
  • Milk
  • Yogurt
  • Cheese
  • Orange juice
  • Lemons and limes
  • Condiments such as salad dressing, mayonnaise etc.

 

Freezer

  • Frozen meals
  • Frozen fruits
  • Frozen vegetables
  • Veggie burgers
  • Frozen French fries or tater tots
  • Bread
  • Ice cream

 

Add to this list as you think about what types of foods you can’t wait to try.

 

Get Creative

Now that you have your kitchen stocked, what do you want to cook? That’s often a hard question for chronic dieters as they are allowing all foods back into their lives.

 

Take some time to ask yourself “what do I really want to eat.” Then, pull out a recipe and your ingredients and take the time to enjoy every step of the cooking process. As you are dicing the tomatoes, take in the sweet aroma, listen as the onions and peppers as they are sizzling in the pan, and try to use every one of your senses to get the most enjoyment! This will further enhance the pleasure when you finally eat what you’ve created.

 

Need inspiration? Check out my cookbook: Enjoying Food Peace: Intuitive Eating Wisdom to Nourish Your Body and Mind. There are over 150 recipes that will help you bring the satisfaction and pleasure back into eating.

Enjoying Food Peace Book

Grab your copy on Amazon!

 

 

Food and Celebrations: Lessons Learned

thanksgiving table with foodWhat is it about holidays and food? It seems that the word “holiday” is synonymous with the word “food” or should I say “TOO MUCH FOOD”!

 

I’ve just finished celebrating a month full of holidays. It’s been fun spending time with family…my parents, my children, my grandson. Have I mentioned my grandson lately? He is just so scrumptious! He’s able to call me grandma now…I just can’t get enough.

 

But I divert. Back to topic.

 

I told my kids that I wasn’t going to overcook this holiday. I was going to make a basic meal, ensuring that there was protein, whole grains and lots of vegetables. And I did. But the problem was…I made too much! Meaning, too many choices. I was so worried “what if she doesn’t like that, what if he doesn’t like this…I must have all these choices.

 

Well, I was wrong. After each meal ended (and there were many), I looked at the leftovers and said, “It looks like I’m putting away more than I took out”. Now, of course that’s not possible, but what I mean is people ate and then stopped. And, I was left with a lot of leftovers.

 

So, my lessons learned are as follows:
1) My family knows what it means to listen to their inner satiety (fullness signals) and they stopped eating when they were just full (okay, to be totally honest, some did eat a little past comfortable satiety, but even this happens now and then in an intuitive eater.)

 

2) Listen to my “gut” instinct. The next time I plan to make a basic meal, I need to stick to my plan and not worry that I won’t have enough food, because I always do!

 

3) Immediately freeze my leftovers, in small containers, so I have ready-to-go meals for during the week. I often work late hours, and it’s great to pull out already cooked food from my freezer so my family has a balanced meal every night.

 

4) Remember the reason we are celebrating, whether it be a holiday, a birthday, anniversary or job promotion. Food does NOT have to be the center of the celebration. Yes, it’s an important part, I won’t deny that. But, focus on the people you will be partying with, the conversations you will have, and perhaps new people you will meet.

 

What are the lessons you’ve learned from food-abundant celebrations?

 

 

Cooking and Intuitive Eating

hearthealthycooking

Do you love to cook?  Do you take the time to prepare what you love?  As a past dieter (I’m hoping by now you are on your way to saying that!), consider how you decided what you were going to cook for dinner.  More than likely it was what the “diet menu” dictated for the night.  If you didn’t like the choice, I bet you still made it because to deviate from the menu would mean you “broke your diet”.

 

So think about it.  When you were dieting, and you cooked what you were told to cook, did you really enjoy it?  Did you derive great satisfaction from it?  I have many clients who are wonderful cooks, and unfortunately stopped cooking when they were on the diet rollercoaster.  It was too tempting to cook “something really good” and not be able to eat it.

 

Now think about the last yummy meal you cooked as an intuitive eater.  You took the time to figure out what you really wanted to eat, you pulled out a favorite family recipe or opened up a new cookbook, and took the time to prepare what you wanted.  How did you feel?

 

I have been working on writing my next cookbook which, although is not yet titled, will incorporate the principles of intuitive eating.  I have had so much fun creating and testing new recipes.  As an intuitive eater, it has opened my mind and my meal options to so many delicious foods that as a past dieter, I would not have eaten.

 

By taking the time to ask yourself what you want to eat, and taking the time to prepare that food, you will feel more satisfied, more in tune with your internal signals and more nourished.

 

It doesn’t have to be anything complicated.  It can be a simple sandwich, a plate of vegetable crudité with hummus, or if you are feeling adventurous, a three-course meal.  The key is to approach it from an intuitive eating standpoint and find ways to make cooking an enjoyable part of your life.

 

Your turn to take action:  Ask yourself what you really want to eat for dinner tonight.  Take the time to prepare and enjoy it.  Let me know how this experience was for you.