nutrition Archives - Diet Free Radiant Me | Intuitive Eating | Emotional Eating

3 MUST HAVE Intuitive Eating Ingredients for 2022

It is almost New Year which means that my inbox (and probably yours too!) is being flooded with dozens of emails about the next latest diet. While all these diets are comprised of different rules, they all promise the same thing, quick weight loss.

When you see the before and after pictures attached to these emails you may be tempted to give in and try whatever diet they are promoting. You may even find success in your pursuit of losing weight in the first few weeks. Then a month or so later you notice your weight has plateaued and you stop following the dieting rules. Before you know it you say, “forget it” and drop the diet completely. Eventually, you regain all the weight you immediately lost and go back to your old eating habits.

If you have found yourself in this cycle, you are not alone. Most people who are chronic dieters find themselves in this never-ending loop. Studies have shown that this constant weight fluctuation that your body goes through is not good for your overall health. It is healthier for you to stay at the weight you’re at and practice healthier habits.

There are 3 essential ingredients I believe you need to have an overall healthier lifestyle:

1. Create a healthy mindset.

Do not listen to all of those around you telling you what to do. Instead, focus on your body’s needs and wants. What makes YOU happy? What makes YOU feel good? What eases your mind and fills your stomach? Don’t let dieting books, relatives, and friends dictate what you need or what you should eat. Only you know how to make yourself the best you can be. Re-learn to trust your body. You may be surprised what you get out of it.

>> Join me today on Bonnie.Tube to learn how you can spot a diet a mile away!

2. Find caring love and support.

Being on this journey alone can feel impossible, especially when your closest friends have all decided to diet. So, what are your options? There are plenty of support groups online full of people who have had a similar experience to you. Having a proper support system can help you stay on this journey and provide the help you may need along the way.

>> I’m personally inviting you to join a private group of women working towards creating a healthier relationship with food through Intuitive Eating. Accept your invite here.

3. Be open to learning about nutrition from a reputable source.

While the internet can be a great resource for many things, it does not replace the information provided by an expert. It’s key to connect with a reputable nutrition source such as a registered dietitian nutritionist to learn about nutrition. Get to know what you’re putting into your body. The more you know, the more you will find yourself being more conscious about what you’re eating.

This year, focus on your health, not your weight. Say no to dieting and yes to body empowerment.

>> Get started with Intuitive Eating here.

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.

Grab your copy on Amazon!

How to Meal Plan from an Intuitive Lens

After years of dieting, many of my clients resist meal planning. And I totally get it. They’ve made the decision to stop dieting and learn to eat intuitively, and planning meals just reminds them of their dieting days. But is there a way to meal plan through an Intuitive Eating lens? Yes, there is.

First, let’s understand the benefits of meal planning. There are many.

Benefits of Meal Planning

It saves time and stress.

Let’s face it, when you come home at the end of a long day tired, hungry, and stressed, the last thing you want to think about is “what am I making for dinner?”

By knowing in advance what you are going to prepare, and having the ingredients on hand, you cut out the stress and the time trying to figure it out. Take it from me, a working mom who needs to feed her family, the only way to get a balanced meal on the table is to think ahead and plan.

It avoids unnecessary food waste.

When you plan meals ahead of time, this ensures that the ingredients you bought in the grocery store has a purpose – no need to worry about items in your fridge going to waste! This is great on your wallet and the environment

It helps maintain a balanced diet.

With meal planning, you can be sure that you are having a balance of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats since you have thought about what you are making well in advance, as opposed to throwing together whatever you can and as fast as possible when you come home ravenous!

It saves money.

Having planned meals or snacks prevents you from spending money on buying take-out, running through the drive-through, or picking up last minute to-go meals at the convenience store. Many of my clients are amazed at how much money they save when they start planning meals in advance and stop buying out because “I don’t have any food at home.”

Meal planning also allows you to buy food and ingredients in bulk, which can be another great way to save money.

But the question remains, is meal planning the same as dieting?

Meal Planning is NOT Dieting When…

…There is flexibility.

If you’ve put together a menu for the day and for some reason, you aren’t able to prepare or eat what is on the menu (say for example the food spoiled), and you are cool about it and say to yourself “okay, what else do I have that I can eat”, that is meal planning through an intuitive lens. However, if you break out in hives and a sweat because you couldn’t follow the menu you planned for the day, this is dieting!

…There are foods on your menus that you like and enjoy versus foods you “should be eating”.

Meal planning that is dieting forces you to think about eating and the foods you eat in a very “black and white” way. For example, these are the foods I can eat because they are healthy, and these are the foods I can’t eat because they are unhealthy”.

Meal planning from an intuitive lens allows you to eat foods you enjoy and that satisfies you versus restricting those foods or limiting them.

…There are options.

Meal planning that is dieting is very rigid and structured with not a lot of opportunity to explore new dishes or experiment with foods because “they aren’t on your meal plan”.

Meal planning through an intuitive lens allows you have to options and variety in your meals because you’re listening to what your body wants versus only thinking about what your body “should” need or want.

In summary, there are many benefits to meal planning! If you find that planning meals is very rigid and isn’t giving you any room for options or alternatives, you are still dieting, and your diet mentality is running the show.

If, however, you are meal planning with the mindset of being prepared, this allows you to be flexible and adjust to whatever situation may come up (i.e., not enough ingredients, you forget an ingredient, food spoiled etc). This, my friend, is meal planning through an intuitive lens.

Let’s dive deeper and start the meal planning process. Come join me at 12:15 pm EST in my Facebook Group for a LIVE training on How to Meal Plan through an Intuitive Lens.

A Focus on Habits, Not Weight: A Case Study

Some people think that because I don’t “sell” weight loss, I’m against if you lose weight.

This is just not true.

What I don’t support is intentionally pursuing weight loss through dieting and restriction.

The reason? Because dieting causes weight gain. Think of all the times you’ve lost weight on a diet. How long did that weight stay off? My bet is that within a few years (if not sooner), that weight came back, plus some.

When you restrict your food, count your calories, and track every morsel of food you eat with the sole focus on losing weight, the focus is on all the external forces that manipulate your food intake and how you can shrink your body. The focus is not on the reasons why you eat and how you eat. The focus is not on behaviors that support or don’t support good health. And that’s why the pounds inevitably come back.

Let me explain further with a case study.

A Case Study

J.B. is a 60-year-old man who contacted me at the start of the pandemic. He shared with me that for the past 30 years, his wife has been nagging him to change his eating habits and lose weight. But he had no interest.

A health scare changed all that. He wasn’t feeling well and visited the urgent care center. The doctor took his blood pressure and asked him what medication he was on. He said he hasn’t taken his medication in over a year. The doctor’s response: “do you want to make your wife a widow?”

That was enough for him to reach out to me and make an appointment. I told him at the first session that we will NOT be focusing on weight loss. Instead we will focus on how to best nourish himself, identify his habits that have not been supportive of good health, and also look at how he handles stress, his sleep pattern, and of course, movement. We did this within The 5 Step Nutrition Pillar Program.

Fast forward 8 months, J.B.’s blood pressure is within target levels, his blood glucose has come down to normal levels, and he has lost 43 pounds. The only reason he knows the number of pounds he lost is because he went for a check-up at the doctor and he got weighed. Otherwise, not once in the 8 months did he get on a scale or did we discuss weight loss.

J.B. is amazed that he can turnaround his health without feeling restricted. He is eating delicious satisfying meals and if he wants dessert, he eats it. The difference is, now he is skilled at tuning into his hunger and fullness, respecting those cues, and has more energy at 60 years old than he has had in years! And he takes his time eating, often eating even slower than his wife! This helps him have the greatest pleasure in his meals.

Weight loss is not a behavior. It’s an outcome of habit and behavior change.

In Summary:

Pursuing weight loss → leads to yo-yo dieting and disordered eating → body dissatisfaction → worsens health

Focusing on habit changes → leads to nourishing your body → body appreciation → improved health

If you’re ready to improve your health, without a focus on weight, check out The 5 Step Nutrition Pillar Program, and Contact me.

Is Weight a Symbol of Something Deeper?

Isabel walked into my office having made the decision to make changes in her eating behaviors. She recently went to the doctor for her annual exam and her doctor put the scare of life into her. Her diabetes was “out of control”, her blood pressure was elevated, and she was just diagnosed with gastroparesis (delayed gastric emptying, a complication of uncontrolled diabetes). She was distraught but committed. The doctor sent Isabel on her way with a prescription to lose weight.

This isn’t unusual. Most doctors will prescribe weight loss to lower blood glucose, cholesterol levels and blood pressure. And while you may see a reduction in these values if you lose weight, the problem is that weight loss is not a behavior you can just tell someone to do. If you’ve been a dieter, you know what I mean.

Is Weight Loss Through Dieting Sustainable?

Anyone can lose weight when they “follow” a diet. But the question is – can you sustain that way of eating for a lifetime?

Research shows us the answer is NO. About 95-98% of people who lose weight on a diet regain that weight and up to two-thirds gain back even more.

You may be thinking “Bonnie, I know someone who lost weight and kept it off”. I bet you do. But the 3-5% that do keep it off most often do so with disordered eating behaviors such as tracking their foods, counting points, eliminating certain foods, not allowing themselves full pleasure in eating what they want and spending a LOT of time in the gym (to name a few). Most people really cannot live a “normal” life of “normal” eating and “normal exercising” if they are trying to maintain a weight loss achieved through dieting.

When I explained to Isabel that we will not be focusing on weight loss but instead, we will focus on habits and behaviors that will enable her body to better use the insulin she is producing and ultimately help her improve her health (which SHE really wanted to do), including learning how to minimize the symptoms of gastroparesis, she was relieved. And then, she started to cry!

Using Weight as a Cover Up

All is not always how it looks. Many times, when working with a client on improving their relationship with food, it becomes apparent that there’s a reason why they’ve struggled so long. With the realization that the odds are low that they can lose weight and keep it off, they self-sabotage their own efforts in order to keep the weight on.

Why you might ask?

Having “failed” so many times, they are embarrassed to continue to yo-yo diet. So, they cover up the shame and embarrassment by making jokes about themselves and allow others to joke about them too.

This is what happened to Isabel. She was known in her group of friends as the “fat funny one” and she took on this persona, making jokes at her own expense, when deep down she was hurting terribly.

Isabel never told anyone this, until she broke down and cried in the safe space of my office.

Weight-Neutral Nutrition Therapy: A Focus on Behaviors, Not Weight

A weight-neutral approach to nutrition therapy, including diabetes, blood pressure, and cholesterol management focuses on the habits and behaviors you can change which ultimately lead to improved health, regardless of body weight. These behaviors include balanced eating, joyful movement, stress management, improving sleep, taking medications as prescribed and engaging in mindful eating behaviors.

This approach takes the emphasis off weight and brings a sense of relief to those who’ve tried to diet to lose weight as the treatment prescribed for health. It promotes positive behavioral change without the shame and guilt often felt and it empowers them to continue along the path of healthy living.

Is Losing Weight “Bad”?

Let me assure you that I am not against weight loss. I want to make this perfectly clear. What I am against is intentionally pursuing weight loss in an effort to shrink your body to meet the warped societal standards of the “thin ideal”, and as the treatment of medical conditions.

If in the process of learning about your disease state and making sustainable habit and behavior changes (including managing your stress better and having better sleep), you lose weight, then that means it’s what your body needed to do to return to it’s natural healthy weight. And in this case, I DO believe that this will be sustainable.

Remember, weight loss is not a behavior. It is an outcome of habit and behavior change.

Take Action

If you are ready to improve your health without a focus on weight loss, reach out to me here!

Intuitive Eating and National Nutrition Month Collide

It’s interesting when people hear that I’m a registered dietitian nutritionist, yet I don’t promote diets. This is something many people don’t understand since most people are influenced by society’s message that to “manage” their weight, they have to diet and “control” their food intake.

No, it’s not about control, it’s about “taking charge”. By saying NO to diets, you are saying YES to putting yourself back in the driver’s seat and making your own food choices. Because you know what? You know how to do that. I realize that maybe you think you don’t, since you’ve been dieting for so long. But given the chance, you will step up to the plate.

I’ve said it may times – intuitive eating is not “see it, want it, eat it”. With intuitive eating, we pause to determine if we are hungry or not, to think about how eating that food made you feel last time you ate it (sluggish, tired, energized, blood sugar spike/crash etc) and then use that information to make an informed food and eating decision.

Is nutrition important? Yes, of course it is. But choosing foods that are nutrient-rich or nutrient-poor does not make you a better or worse person.

There is a way to balance both, and to have full satisfaction when doing so.

National Nutrition Month – Eat Right, Bite by Bite

This year’s theme has the following message: “Good nutrition doesn’t have to be restrictive or overwhelming. Small goals and changes can have a cumulative healthful effect, and every little bit (or bite!) of nutrition is a step in the right direction.”

When working with clients, I stress one small change at a time.

Here’s a road map to guide you this National Nutrition Month:

Week One: Just focus on eating a variety of foods every day. Now that you’re not dieting any longer, there’s no more eliminating major food groups or particular foods. Consider what you’d like to eat from each food group as you build a satisfying meal. Then, sit and savor every bite.

Week Two: Plan meals ahead if you are a busy person (like me!) and you want to be sure you have food in the house to prepare meals for the week. Meal planning is not dieting as long as you keep it flexible. I like to say that “planning is smart living”. Without planning ahead what I will make for dinner, my family likely wouldn’t sit down to a balanced meal each evening.

Week Three: Experiment with new tastes, textures and flavors of foods. Look for new recipes and get the family involved. Plan to enjoy a few family meals together each week. It doesn’t have to be dinner if schedules don’t match. Think out of the box and enjoy breakfast together. For lots of delicious recipes and Intuitive Eating Wisdom, check out my new book – Enjoying Food Peace: Recipes and Intuitive Eating Wisdom to Nourish Your Body and Mind.

Week Four: Need more support? Have specific medical nutrition needs such as diabetes, prediabetes, high cholesterol and GI issues? Contact me to learn how we can intertwine intuitive eating with nutrition therapy in a weight-neutral way.

Happy National Nutrition Month to you!!

Intuitive Eating Doesn’t Mean Disregard Nutrition

Okay, this is a serious topic for me. As a registered dietitian nutritionist I believe in honoring one’s body though nutrition and movement. This means thinking about the foods you eat in terms of how it helps your body function on a daily basis as well as how you move your body to keep your joints and muscles supple and your bones strong.

As an advocate of intuitive eating and a certified intuitive eating counselor, I help clients incorporate gentle nutrition and joyful movement into their practice, when the time is right.

What do I mean “when the time is right?”

Most, if not all, of my clients are coming to me with a disordered eating background. They are chronic dieters, going on and off diets to find the “perfect” diet to help them get their “perfect” body. Along with the diet is excessive exercise. They spent hours in the gym or in some other form of exercise for the sake of burning calories and losing weight.

For these clients, it’s most important to help them shift their mindset and change their relationship with food and their bodies before we talk about gentle nutrition and joyful movement. For these clients, it is very important that they learn to lift the food restrictions and take ALL conditions off their food in order to make peace with food.

And that often means eating foods that you might think are not “nourishing” for the body. But you are accomplishing something very important when you do this. You are making all foods emotionally equal, taking foods that once were on that mighty pedestal DOWN!

“How can you tell people to eat donuts, croissants and ice cream? You are a registered dietitian nutritionist!” is a question that I do get, thankfully not as often anymore. But it is a question that opponents to intuitive eating are often asking (not so kindly I might add). They think intuitive eating totally disregards nutrition.

This is not so!

If you are one of those people who think that, listen up.

Intuitive eating does NOT say “eat whatever you want, whenever you want it”. This is a misconception.

Intuitive eating is not about instant gratification. I see the donut, I want the donut, I eat the donut.

Nope! That’s not what intuitive eating is about.

Intuitive eating encourages you to stop and think about the foods you are choosing and how it feels in your body. It encourages you to discover what foods satisfy you more, sustain you longer and help your body function better. And, it does all this WITHOUT RULES of “eat this and don’t eat that.”

My intuitive eating work with clients is based on a foundation of 3 essential ingredients:

A Healthy Mindset
Caring Support
Nutrition Education

Yes, nutrition is important. But a healthy mindset needs to be in place along with a support system and self-care practices. Then, and only then, are you ready for gentle nutrition.

If you’d like more information on working with me to incorporate these 3 essential ingredients into your intuitive eating journey, contact me HERE. There’s no time like the present!

Finding Balance with Intuitive Eating

I recently had a client share her success story. Let’s call her Jessica. Jessica was at a barbecue when chocolate ice cream and homemade chocolate chip cookies were being served. She thought that maybe she would overeat on these desserts because that’s what she’s always done in the past. So she took a small piece of each on her plate. She ate a few spoonfuls of the ice cream, then a few bites of the cookie, and something that has never happened to her before happened…

She didn’t feel the need to eat more! She was shocked.

She was able to savor each bite using her mindful eating techniques and felt satisfied after only a few bites.

How did she do this you ask?

By using the intuitive eating strategies that I am teaching her, she is learning to move away from the all or nothing way of thinking. She didn’t feel guilty for indulging in a food she wanted. She has made peace with food and has reaped the benefits, which is showing up in so many ways in her life.

Had she found herself in this scenario a few months ago before we began working together, the outcome would have been different. The all or nothing thinking is part of a diet mentality and usually leads to overeating, followed by guilt, unhappiness, dieting, restriction, overeating etc. It’s a vicious cycle.

Intuitive eating is tuning into what your body wants, even if it’s ice cream or a cookie, and giving it what it wants. If you listen to your body, you won’t feel the need to overeat and have guilt afterwards. Your body will be happy it can enjoy the foods it wants.

You may be asking yourself, “How do I get myself to this point?” The answer is to change your mindset. You have to step away from the diet mentality of restricting certain foods or entire food groups.

The way to make peace with food is to give yourself unconditional permission to eat what you want. I know, this sounds like an opportunity to eat uncontrollably. And to be honest with you, some people use it as an excuse to do just that. However, that’s not how this process works.

Changing your mindset does not happen overnight. Those who work through the process with the support, encouragement, positive attitude and patience are the ones who will experience what Jessica did. The intuitive eating process can help you transform your relationship with food, where you end the battle with food and your body and achieve great pleasure in eating once again.

Here are 2 steps you can take today to become and intuitive eater and change your mindset:

Commit to saying goodbye to the dieting mindset! It is time to recognize that you can have your cake and eat it too. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You can find a balance that works for you!
Start tuning in and listening to your body. Your body gives you signals when it starts to get hungry and full. Tune into these signals to know when and what you should feed your body. You’ll learn to eat what your body craves without overeating.

I am here to help you embark on this journey and break out of the dieting mindset.

If you’d like further individualized support, just fill out this form at the link below and I’ll share how I can support you on your journey:

www.TalkWithBonnie.com.

“Put Your Best Fork Forward”

March is National Nutrition Month® (NMM) and every year there is a new theme to engage you, the public. NNM was created by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and is intended to promote nutrition education, highlighting the importance of making informed food choices, and developing sound eating and physical activity habits.

The theme for this year is “Put Your Best Fork Forward” when dining out and at home.

By putting your best fork forward and making healthful decisions, you hold all the power, literally and figuratively. You get to make the decisions on when, what, and how much you eat.

Remember, you already have the nutrition knowledge within yourself needed to make healthful decisions. You can choose what goes into your body and how much. It is now time to work on your confidence and empower you to make these decisions.

The process of becoming an intuitive eater and no longer being a dieter helps you become confident and regain trust in yourself to make these decisions. With intuitive eating you learn to listen to your body and fuel it with the food it wants.

When you eat intuitively you are putting your best fork forward.

Here are 3 tips to help you start your journey to putting your best fork forward:

Be Mindful. Being mindful plays a key role in when, what, and how much you eat. If you tend to eat when you are distracted or in response to an emotion, it can be difficult to pay attention to what is on your fork. Instead, avoid distractions during meal times and sit at a table to truly enjoy what you are eating.

Plan ahead. If you are going out to eat, look at the menu ahead of time. Nowadays there are plenty of healthful options at restaurants that allow you to choose a balanced meal. If you are making dinner at home, think about what you want to make the day before to ensure you have all the ingredients necessary to prepare your healthy meal when you get home.

Explore. One of the great benefits of being an intuitive eater is no food is off limits. Take this month to explore the different tastes, textures, and temperatures of food to find out what you truly enjoy. You may be surprised that foods you thought you didn’t like you do!

It’s time to take charge and take the necessary steps that will empower you to make healthful decisions for yourself.

If you would my help and support on your journey, just go to www.TalkWithBonnie.com and we’ll set up a time to talk.

5 Steps to Eating Intuitively While on Vacation

Many clients express the stress they feel right before going on vacation about the weight they “inevitably” will gain. They talk about going on a “diet” to lose a few pounds before they go away, since they’ll be eating differently.

Does this sound like you? If your mindset is wrapped around being good or bad, on or off, what you can and can’t eat, you will likely overindulge on vacation and you will feel guilty afterwards.

Yes, it is true we all expect to eat differently while on vacation, but that doesn’t mean you need to eat like it’s your last supper. Use your intuitive eating strategies to help you respond to the change in your eating pattern and adjust. You CAN eat the dessert you crave by learning to savor it so you don’t go for seconds. If you trust in the process, you’ll be able to keep your body and mind happy.

Here are 5 steps you can take to eat intuitively on vacation:

Tune into your body.

If you are craving that Pina Colada or frozen margarita, have it! If you want dessert, have it! If you are truly listening to your body, you won’t overindulge and you’ll be able to stop eating or drinking when you want too.

Trust your body.

Trusting your body and the intuitive eating process will help you enjoy your vacation even more. You will most likely eat more than your used too because you’re trying new foods, but you need to trust that your body will respond intuitively and tell you when you’ve had enough.

Make time for breakfast and lunch.

Vacations often mean sleeping late, missing breakfast and an overall erratic eating schedule (except dinner). But, your priority should be starting your day off with breakfast and packing a lunch to take with you, or planning a lunch stop in your itinerary. It’s easy to get caught up in all of the activities, but if you skip a meal, you’re more likely to overindulge at dinner. It’ll be harder for you to listen to your body telling you its full.

Be mindful when you eat out.

Vacations generally mean eating out at restaurants, and that also means more courses and larger portions. New foods and more choices does not mean you need to eat like there is no tomorrow. If you’re listening to your body, you’ll eat until you are satisfied with the new flavors. You may eat a few more bites, but you’ll be able to stop yourself before you overeat.

Pack your favorite snacks for a busy day.

It can be easy to forget to pack snacks when you’re busy with activities, but it is important. Take the few extra minutes before you leave to pack a goodie bag of pre-portioned snacks. It can be almonds, fruit, veggies, etc. Your body will thank you when you’re not starving heading into lunch or dinner.

Your vacation is a time for relaxation and happy times and should not coincide with “giving up” your intuitive eating practice. Be mindful and always listen to your body and your vacation will become even more enjoyable.

If you’d like further individualized support, just fill out this request form at www.TalkWithBonnie.com

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