Tag Archive for: support

Social Media: Is it Helpful or Harmful When Practicing Intuitive Eating?

There are many different places that people find out about the world of Intuitive Eating. These include:

  • A family member
  • A friend
  • A HAES aligned health professional
  • The internet
  • Social media**

Nowadays, social media is the new way of sending and receiving all kinds of information—from keeping tabs on your long distance friends to being up to date on the latest news.

Social media is here to stay and while on one hand it may appear to be a very fun and engaging place to be, it’s important to understand the “not so fun” side of social media.

In terms of Intuitive Eating, social media can send many mixed messages—both helpful and  harmful to your Intuitive Eating journey and understanding of Intuitive Eating.

How Social Media is Helpful 

1.It gives a voice to qualified well-educated people to speak on important Intuitive Eating and other nutrition-related topics.

Social media gives Registered Dietitians and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselors a place to promote real, evidenced-based information about Intuitive Eating. Meaning, it allows Intuitive Eating to be represented CORRECTLY.

It also gives them a place to advocate against diet culture and for a more non-diet approach when it comes to mending relationships with food and your body.

2.It provides a starting point, or baseline, for Intuitive Eater newbies.

As mentioned before, especially nowadays, many people come into the world of Intuitive Eating because of social media posts they see online, or information they see circulating on their newsfeeds.

With this being said, social media provides just a starting point, providing baseline information, for Intuitive Eating newbies to being their journey toward mending their relationship with food and body.

Check out Intuitive Eating Basics, a self-paced course to give you a taste of Intuitive Eating and begin to reject your diet mentality and reconnect with your inner signals.

3.It helps challenge, tackle, and stand up against the toxic messages of diet culture.

With many influential RDNs and other Intuitive Eating Counselors and experts on social media, this allows for

4.It provides an environment for Intuitive Eaters to share stories, feel supported and connect with others going through similar experiences.

Social media can provide a large sense of community, accountability and relatability—especially for those who are struggling or just starting out on their Intuitive Eating journey.

How Social Media is Harmful

1.There’s lots and lots of mixed messages.

 Social media can be a confusing place filled with misinformation. While one account is telling you one thing, another account could tell you the exact opposite—so beware!

My recommendation to you is to only consume content from qualified “social media influencers”, like Registered Dietitians, Certified Intuitive Eating Counselors, and other health care professionals that are HAES aligned (Health at Every Size) and are committed to weight neutral practice.

2.You might be influenced to listen to (and follow) the “wrong” social media voices.

With so many different kinds of accounts to follow on social media, there are bound to be ones that claim to be supportive for your Intuitive Eating journey, but in reality are not.

Be sure to follow accounts that support a non-diet approach, align with your personal Intuitive Eating values, and advocate against diet culture.

3.It enables anyone and everyone to create a “brand”.

 Anyone with a phone and a WIFI signal can create a social media platform and claim to be an expert in just about anything! Be cautious with following accounts that simply have a lot of followers, or generate a lot of likes, thumbs up, etc.—this does NOT mean the information they are sharing is valid, correct or helpful for you!

4.It promotes diet culture messages but claims they’re Intuitive Eating.

The messages of Intuitive Eating are often misinterpreted or twisted by diet culture.

For example, social media accounts that…

  • Claim Intuitive Eating is a way to lose weight
  • Push the thin ideal
  • Promote a certain way of eating
  • Claim a way of eating or living is a form of “lifestyle” or for “wellness”

>>>All of these examples are diet culture in disguise!

 

Do your due diligence. Check out the accounts you follow, look into the people behind the accounts, and be alert to misguided information.

 

For up to date, reliable information on Intuitive Eating, check out my website here. 

 

 

How to Change Your Diet Mindset in 3 Steps

Let’s face it, the way we think determines what we do. This is true of most any area of our life à food, weight, relationships, career etc.

 

In the world of dieting, your thoughts play a big role in the actions you take, or don’t take.

 

“I’ll never be able to lose weight.”

“I can’t change my eating habits; I’ve tried and always fail.”

“I’m a loser, a failure, not even worthy of spending time and money on myself.”

 

These are examples of negative self-talk. Very destructive thoughts and words that keep you cycling in despair.

 

You’re probably all too familiar with the negative self-criticism that perpetuates the vicious cycle of dieting.

 

The same holds true if you’ve been working on Intuitive Eating.

 

Each time you think you can’t succeed at learning to be an Intuitive Eater, you are strengthening a self-fulfilling prophecy so that you don’t.

 

If you think you can’t, you won’t. If you think you can, you will.

 

3 Steps to Changing Your Mindset

 

Step 1: Become Aware.

Take the time to consider what your thoughts are relating to food, body, weight, etc. Are you even aware of these thoughts? Is this the first time you’re stopping to think about them? Are these thoughts on autopilot?

Once you become aware and identify your thought patterns, consider how they have been impacting your relationship with food and your body. How has these thoughts affected your feelings, your behaviors and ultimately your results?

 

Step 2: Assess Importance.

You are in charge of your thoughts and your actions. No one else. Now that you have become more aware of them, you’ll want to take time to consider if this is something worth your time to invest in changing them.

Is it important to you if you change your mindset? Why, or why not?

 

Step 3: Do the Work.

Now what do you do with the info you gathered from steps 1 and 2? You do the work to make the change you so desire. And it will take work. But it is work that will change your life. As you practice changing your thoughts, you will see that your beliefs change, your feelings change, your behaviors change, and your results change.

But you’ve got to do the work.

 

Mind Your Language While Doing the Work

Ever notice how often you say “I’ll try”? “I’ll try not to eat when I’m upset”, “I’ll try not to say “I should have” or “I shouldn’t have”.

Using the word “I’ll try” gives the message that you will less likely follow through, versus saying “I will”.

Replace “I can’t” with “I can”.

Replace “I’ll try” with “I will”.

 

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How I’m Dealing with COVID-19 (and Strategies for You)

I pride myself on being open and transparent with my clients and online community. That’s why I’ve decided to share in this week’s blog how I’ve personally been dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s been tough! The first 5 weeks of the “stay at home” order was really hard for me. But I’m happy to share that I’m feeling much better this week and back to myself.

My 3 biggest stressors were as follows:

1. Worry about the health and safety of my parents: My parents are in Florida and were not able to come home to New York at the beginning of April as was planned. As you can imagine, I didn’t want them to leave their apartment. “Stay put” I told them more than once. They probably got sick of hearing it. But how were they going to get food and groceries was a thought that kept swirling around in my mind. How can I keep them safe and well from so far away?

2. Worry about my husband and kids: At first, my husband still went into the city to go to work. He would travel the Long Island Rail Road every day to and from work. While he said the trains were getting emptier and emptier, it didn’t make me feel any less worried that maybe he’d be exposed to the virus. Thankfully, his firm eventually moved to working virtually, but until they did, I was a bundle of nerves.

My two daughters live at home so I was relieved when their schools decided to go virtual! But my two sons and grandchildren live in New Jersey. I haven’t seen them now in a while and I worry about their health and safety. We do Zoom every now and then and that’s lovely. But it’s not the same as an in-person hug.

3. Worry about my business: I have both an online and offline business and private practice. My online business hasn’t changed much as my clients are used to seeing me virtually. But what about all the clients and patients that would walk through the door of my office here in Long Island. Many of them were comfortable moving to virtual sessions, so no problem there. But there were several patients who either don’t have a computer, weren’t comfortable with the tech or who were just not in the right head space to figure it out.

I know I am not alone in feeling the stress and worry about the health of my family and the future of my business. There are many businesses that unfortunately will not recover. My heart goes out to them, but I believe people are resilient and we will all figure it out!

The Impact of the Stress on My Body and Mind

All this worry impacted me in many ways:

Poor Sleep: I started not sleeping well. It would take a while until I fell asleep, then if I woke up in the night to use the restroom (which I did!), I could not fall back to sleep. My brain was very busy worrying and trying to figure out how to keep my parents and my family safe and healthy.

Less Energy: I found myself dragging and very lethargic. A large part was due to not getting enough sleep. And when I did sleep, it was not a good quality sleep. And, feelings of worry can physically drain the body, and I felt it on many levels.

More Emotional: I cried almost daily. Most of the time, it was when I was alone and not busy which gave me time to think (which wasn’t always so good). And sometimes it was when I was trying to fall asleep and my mind went to my parents and I started praying for them. By the way, it’s okay to cry. I suggest it to my clients all the time. Once you have a good cry, you’ll feel better (I know I do!)

What About Food?

I’ve been making a concerted effort during this time to continue to eat and nourish (and hydrate) my body throughout the day. I have been using the strategies that I teach my clients, so I don’t end up in the peanut butter jar. I’m not “perfect”, and that’s okay because there is no perfection when it comes to food and eating (that’s dieting – a topic for another time).

For many people who have struggled with their relationship with food, this pandemic is not helping. I have been hearing this from clients and others who’ve reached out to me for help. They find themselves eating to soothe the worry, having no structure to meals now that they are home and not working (or not working a full schedule), and late-night snacking is becoming a problem again.

What About You?

I wonder if you’re experiencing the same. Please take a moment and complete this 2-question survey. I am working on creating a free workshop for you so I can offer you more support during this difficult time.

Strategies in Managing the Stress (that I used and that will help you too)

1. Stop watching the news. At the beginning, you couldn’t peel me away from the T.V. But then I realized that watching the death toll climb was causing me more stress and I decided to cut back on the news watching. It helped a great deal!

2. Have a flexible but structured meal schedule. It’s so important to be sure you are eating and not skipping meals. When you are stressed, your hunger signals are blunted and it’s harder to rely on them. Now that my husband is home, we eat all three meals together. It started out feeling weird, after all, I thought that only happens in retirement (and we are far from that!). But it’s actually nice taking time in the morning, mid-day and then after our workday to sit together and chat.

If you live alone, that’s okay. You are your best company. Put on some soft music, set the table with a nice placemat and dishes, and enjoy your meals!

3. Take time to mediate and breath: I have found deep breathing to be one of the best strategies to calm me down. Whenever I feel myself getting worked up, I take a moment and breathe. Within minutes, I am feeling better. There are many meditation apps that you can download to your phone that are also very helpful. The two that I use are Calm and Headspace. Check them out.

4. Seek support and community: There’s no shame in asking for help as you navigate this unprecedented time! Whether it be a confidant, a therapist, your partner or an online support group, it’s important to speak about your feelings. I’m grateful for my husband, good friends and my colleagues who support me while I support them at the same time.  

Reach Out

Please know that I am here for you if you want to talk. I am offering virtual mini weekly sessions and a space for you to vent, work through a challenge and navigate the changes in your relationship with food that have surfaced during the pandemic.

Just email me at Bonnie@DietFreeRadiantMe.com to learn more.

Reminder: Please Take the Survey

Click here to answer 2 questions about your Food Challenges During COVID-19.

Thank you!

When Others Judge Your Body

Healing your negative body image is an important part of your journey towards WholeBody Trust™. And, contrary to popular belief, this piece doesn’t have to wait until the last leg of your journey. This is a common misconception by many.

“I’ve made peace with food, now I have to work on my body image.” is something I hear often. And, to be totally honest, that’s what I initially thought as well. But as I myself dove into learning how to heal my own body image and learned how to guide others, it became more apparent that healing your relationship with food and your body go hand-in-hand.

Your negative body image didn’t happen overnight. And while I’m not going to go into detail here about how to heal your body image, I will say that there are a lot of facets to how your body image developed (more on this in my Body Image Healing Course, free to you when you join Intuitive Eating Mastery Circle).

Let me tell you about Amanda (name changed to protect the privacy of my client). Amanda came to me for help after many decades of yo-yo dieting. She was fed up with losing and gaining weight, ultimately ending up weighing more than when she started her dieting career. She knew dieting wasn’t the answer, but she was still afraid to give it up.

Amanda took a leap of faith and we began working on intuitive eating, a self-care framework for eating and nourishing the body that includes 10 principles. As we worked through my 5 step process and the intuitive eating principles, one theme kept coming up – her negative body image.

Amanda spend so much time over the years hating on her body, that she was having a difficult time accepting that she may not lose weight. She worked hard on really appreciating and respecting her body for all it does for her daily to keep her alive, and this helped her tremendously. But there was one thing that was still a big issue, and this was her perception that others are judging her for being in a larger body.

Can you relate to this? You are starting to feel okay with where your body has landed on this journey, but you still worry what others will think of you?

Truth be told, we don’t know if others are thinking or saying anything about your body. We cannot control other people’s thoughts but what we CAN control are our own, and how we care for our body.

Amanda worked hard on taking the best care of her body as she could, and that included nourishing it regularly, engaging in gentle movement and exercises that felt good in her body, getting enough sleep each night and managing her stress levels. She bought some new stylish clothes that fit comfortably and she started getting out more with friends, laughing, and living her life without a focus on her body.

And you know what she found?

Amanda realized that she has so many blessings in her life with good health, wonderful family and amazing friends. She no longer wanted to waste hours upon hours worrying if others were judging her body. Once she made this commitment to herself, her confidence started to increase, and she no longer cared what others might think or say about her body.

We live in a culture where we are surrounded daily with messages that we need to shrink our bodies and while I hope that this will change in the very near future, the fact remains that we need to be okay with who we are no matter what others think.

Now, this might mean taking some steps to change your habits and behaviors and that’s okay! You deserve to take the time and make the investment in yourself so you can live your best healthy life.

And as far as other people judging you/your body? As you work towards healing your negative body image and cultivating a positive body image using self compassion and mindfulness strategies (among others), you will come to feel better in your body and love all of yourself without regard to anyone else. And, this will show as you carry yourself through the world.

If I can support you in any way to come to this place of peace with food and your body, please reach out to me here or email me at Bonnie@DietFreeRadiantMe.com. It’s my mission in life to help women (and men) such as you!

 

3 Powerful Strategies to Decrease Food Related Stress

Food is supposed to be enjoyed; yet so people tell me that food is stressful. They report that all aspects of food, whether its deciding what to eat, shopping and preparing food for meals, or even the thought of going out to eat, all leads to stress.

Do you feel the same way?

Does thinking about what you should cook, going to the grocery store and preparing food lead to unwanted stress?

If you have had a difficult relationship with food for some time now, then I’m sure you experience these feelings.

If you do feel the same – how do you manage the stress?  I know you probably want food to be a non-issue in your life, but may think how can it be?

I’m here to tell you it CAN be a non-issue! You CAN develop a healthy, loving relationship with food that can lead to less stress when preparing and shopping for meals…and eating it.

Here are 3 strategies that you can put into place immediately to help you minimize the stress around food:

Strategy #1: Set up your environment for success.

While I’m all about teaching you how to be intuitive in your eating, I am also very practical. It is important to be mindful of your eating and one way to do that is to reduce your external eating cues. That means put all food away after you’ve eaten and don’t leave food on the counters or table. If food is left out, it can very easily lead to mindless munching which then leads to feelings of guilt and frustration for eating when you aren’t hungry.

Strategy #2: Seek assistance from your family members.

Food shopping and meal prep doesn’t have to just be your responsibility. Get everyone involved in the menu planning. Even better, assign everyone a night to prepare the dinner. This way the whole family is involved, the kids will more likely eat what they help to prepare, and you get quality family time too. This will lead to less stress on you to feel like you have to do everything.

Strategy #3: Start to use meditation and visualization.

Meditation can be a powerful tool to help keep your mind clear and stress-free. You can use meditation as a way to visualize yourself being stress-free around food and, by visualizing that, you can start to believe it will happen too.

These strategies are a good place to get started and you can use them as a way to figure out what works best for you.

Want more resources?

Self-Paced Online Program – Stress Less Eat Less™ – see the crazy low-priced deal HERE!

Complimentary Discovery Session – let’s chat to see how I can help you. Go to www.TalkWithBonnie.com and schedule a time.

 

When Diet Culture Steals Your Logical Thinking

This is a painful blog for me to write. It shows just how much diet culture and striving for the thin ideal overtakes one’s logical thinking brain.

 

Here’s the story…

 

I’m treating a client for a gastrointestinal disorder. Due to the nature of her condition and her intolerance to many foods, she shared with me that she lost weight. How does she know? Her clothes are big on her. And, yes, she weighs herself regularly.

 

She went to her internist this week to discuss her varying medical issues she is currently dealing with. The doctor weighed her and told her she lost X pounds in the last 3 months. I’m not revealing the number of pounds she lost, the number isn’t relevant. What IS relevant is that it’s a significant weight change in a short period of time, coupled with a review of her labs which reveal that she is malnourished.

 

My client’s reaction?

 

I’m happy I lost weight, I like how I look and I’m getting compliments.

 

This is where I cringed. Here is a bright woman who for the last 50 years has been chasing weight loss only to regain what she’s lost (no news here!). Now that she’s losing weight, she is thrilled, but what she fails to comprehend is that this weight loss is DETRIMENTAL to her health.

 

Her body is not absorbing the nutrients from the foods she is eating. She is malnourished. Yet, she says she “wouldn’t mind losing a little more”.

 

Diet culture has messed with people’s intelligence. The society we live in today worships thinness so much so that people are willing to go to any lengths to lose weight and claim a higher status that diet culture promises.

 

If you’ve fallen prey to this unfortunate outcome of living in a diet-obsessed culture, here’s 3 steps you can do right now to turn this around:

 

Step 1: Be honest with yourself: Take a long hard look at how you are treating your body. Are you dieting and wishfully dreaming for that thin body? And if so, to what extent and detriment to get there? What harm are you already experiencing physically and emotionally?

 

Step 2: Commit to stop dieting: This might be very scary if you’ve allowed diets to “control” your eating for a long time. But you must commit to never diet again, otherwise you will always be tempted by another diet that pops up (and there will be many!).

 

Step 3: Seek support: If diet culture and the pursuit of thinness has prevented you from making logical decisions about your health and well-being, please reach out for support. You need help from a qualified health professional to help you turn this around. It is possible! And, it shows strength to reach out for support.

 

I’m happy to report that my client is now doing well. She has given up the notion that her body needs to look a certain way and she has started to appreciate her body shape and capabilities. She is slowly re-nourishing her body and healing from her gut disorder. And, her logical thinking has returned.

 

What about you? How has diet culture and striving for the thin idea affected your logical thinking? Let me know below! And, as always, if you want to chat, just contact me.

 

8 Benefits of Intuitive Eating (and 3 Ways to Commit)

The other day I was giving thought to this past year and the work that I’ve done with my clients. I often like to reflect at the end of the year about what I accomplished in my work, how I’ve helped clients improve their health, and the impact I’ve made on the lives of people who are finally trusting their bodies again.

 

Not everyone can say that they love going to work every day. I remember sitting on the beach when on vacation a few summers ago with 2 of my close friends and their husbands. We were talking about how we were leaving the next day and going back to work. My friends were complaining about having to return to work. I remained silent. They asked me why I wasn’t complaining too, and I simply said, “I love what I do”.

 

It wasn’t always this way. Back in 2011 I had grown to “hate” my work. I was creating meal plans upon meal plans and really got no joy in it. Why? Because most of these clients that I was creating meal plans for really knew how to eat to nourish their bodies and improve their health.

 

So, what were they coming to me for, you may think?

 

Weight loss!

 

They wanted to me to put some form of magic meal plan together that would help them lose the weight they so desperately wanted to lose. And you know what? If they followed the meal plan, it worked. They lost the weight. But they also learned nothing. All they learned is how to be a good “listener’ and “follower” of when to eat, what to eat and how much to eat that someone else (me) assumed was right for them.

 

You may wonder “what is wrong with that, they lost the weight, didn’t they?”

 

Yes, at first. But months or years later, that weight came back. Okay, not for all these people. But for a large majority of the chronic dieters that I saw in my office back then, this was the outcome.

 

You know why? Because…

 

Following a meal plan that someone else creates for you takes you further away from listening to your own body. You and your body become strangers.  ~Bonnie R. Giller

 

And I didn’t want to continue to cause this harm for people. That’s when I decided to learn about intuitive eating and become a certified intuitive eating counselor.  I am so thankful that I got to a low point in my business back then, so that I can have the positive impact on people’s lives that I have today.

 

8 Benefits of Intuitive Eating

  1. Intuitive eating helps you to become friends with your body again.

 

  1. Intuitive eating helps you to trust that you, yes YOU, can decide for yourself when to eat, how much to eat, and what to eat.

 

  1. Intuitive eating brings peace around food, allowing food to be a non-issue in your life.

 

  1. Intuitive eating helps you eat without feelings of guilt, shame, embarrassment or regret.

 

  1. Intuitive eating brings you pleasure and satisfaction in your meals.

 

  1. Intuitive eating shows respect to your body.

 

  1. Intuitive eating allows you to live your life to the fullest!

 

  1. Intuitive eating helps you regain WholeBody Trust™, which encompasses 3 pillars: Mind Trust, Hunger Trust and Food Trust™.

 

If you haven’t yet ventured into learning intuitive eating, what is holding you back?

 

3 Ways to Commit to Your Intuitive Eating Journey

 

  1. Declare Yourself Diet-Free: Decide that you are giving up dieting forever and declare it. Scream it at the top of your lungs. Hear yourself say the words. If you want to, tell a trusted friend or loved one that you have made this important decision, so you can change your future.

 

  1. Dump All Diet Paraphernalia: Go through your house and get rid of all the diet books and other items that reek of dieting. Seriously, doing this will show yourself that you mean business. If you hold on to even one diet, you are not fully committed to this journey.

 

  1. Decide to Ask for Support: Realize that you don’t need to do this alone. Asking for support takes courage and shows strength. Think about the other areas of your life that you have gotten support – tutoring at school, physical therapy for a broken leg, therapy to help your marriage etc. And, if you’re not one to have ever asked for support in the past, maybe this is the time to start.

 

Every day when I wake up, I am thankful for the work I get to do with my wonderful clients and the women in my Intuitive Eating Mastery Circle™. I would love to help you too. If you feel so inclined as to explore how you can learn to have WholeBody Trust™ through Intuitive Eating, contact me here.

 

 

 

 

3 Steps to Food Autonomy

Food is a very personal choice for you. What you choose to eat, why you choose to eat it and how you choose to eat it are decisions YOU get to make around the food you eat. However, there are 2 groups of people that do not honor this choice. In today’s blog, I will shed light on who these people are.

 

 Group #1: Chronic Dieters

A chronic dieter is someone who has been on and off multiple diets over their lifetime chasing a certain body weight, dress size or body shape. As a chronic dieter, you believe that the answer to all your food and weight problems lies in the diet you follow. So each time a new diet comes to market, you get excited and truly believe that THIS will be THE ONE. Unfortunately, even if you do lose weight, you know the way this story ends. You regain the weight lost plus some extra pounds just for good measure.

 

You no longer are confident in making food choices for yourself. You are so used to following a plan, a menu or rules that have been dictated to you, that when it comes time for you to figure out what you want to eat, you really don’t know the answer to (what should be) a simple question. You have given away your food autonomy.

 

Group #2: “Health Coaches”

The internet is swarming with people who call themselves health coaches. Maybe they took a 90 hour health coach course, or a 3 month certificate program, either way they are now “health coaches”. In my opinion, most of them do more harm than good. They give you lists of foods to eat and not to eat, rules to follow, and they spout inaccurate information about grains, dairy and gluten. Some will tell you they are teaching you intuitive eating, but it’s really disguised in a diet as they are giving you rules and telling you what to eat.

 

These health coaches are taking away YOUR free choice around food.

 

Health Coaches aka Diet Coaches

There’s a particular group of these health coaches who I’m thinking about as I write this blog. They lost weight on a liquid diet program (I won’t mention the name of one of the programs I’m thinking about when I write this, but if you think hard enough, you can probably guess) and then they “train” with the company to be a health coach. They are big marketers, telling you how amazing their diet is to lose weight and posting before and after pictures to hook you in.

 

In speaking with these health coaches (yes, I’ve had conversations with them), they demonize gluten, sugar, and dairy and speak about how they eat as if they have an “I’m better than thou” attitude. But they also slip and say things like “oh my gosh, that pastry looks divine. If I take one bite, I’ll eat the entire plate”, and “I don’t eat gluten except for _____ (fill in the blank) once a week because I just love it and then I start again the next day”. (Disclaimer – I’m not saying this about ALL health coaches, but many that I come in contact with).

 

These statements are reflective of the diet mentality and food battles that rage on!

 

3 Steps to Food Autonomy

  1. Stop dieting! I know this is so hard because diets feel safe to you. However, they have never worked for you and they never will, so it’s time to take a leap of faith and say NO MORE. You have the power within yourself to make your own food choices. I know you do, and I also know that you might not believe that right now. That’s okay. One step at a time.

 

  1. Stop listening to others! Decide that you will no longer listen to those health coaches that are telling you what to eat and not to eat. Instead, seek out a reputable registered dietitian nutritionist who is also a certified intuitive eating counselor who can help you get back into the drivers seat when it comes to food and your body.

 

  1. Do connect with a community! It’s lonely when you are swimming upstream alone. We are all surrounded by people steeped in diet culture. It’s likely that your inner circle of family and friends don’t understand when you say you are not dieting anymore. Come join the ladies in the Intuitive Eating Mastery Circle for the comradery and support that will help you take charge of your food choices again. As a reader of my blog, you get 50% off your membership. No commitment, you can cancel at any time.

 

Being in charge of your own food choices is your birthright. Take it back today. I’m here to help you. All you have to do is ask.

 

3 Steps to Stop Overeating on Vacation

Summer is in full swing, it’s my favorite season! There’s less stress, no school carpools or tutors to schedule and it’s a time when my husband and I take some much needed time off.

 

In the days when I was dieting, I would often be apprehensive about an upcoming vacation. It would start with the thought of trying on all the summer clothes in my closet to see what “looked good” and have them piled high on my bed until I narrowed it down to what would make it into my suitcase.

 

Then of course it was the thought of what I would eat on vacation. Would the restaurants have food that was “on my diet”? What would happen to my weight if I ate out at a restaurant each evening? And what about the drinks? I don’t mean water, that I have no problem drinking. I mean the cocktails that I may want to enjoy at the pool or at dinner. How many calories and how much sugar will it have and how will it affect the number on the scale?

 

Oh my, this is just so exhausting, so forget it! I’ll just enjoy my vacation and start my diet again when I get home.

 

Does this sound familiar to you? Have you done this, or thought these same things? (Please comment below the blog in the comment section….)

 

The above scenario depicts what I call the “Vacation Diet Mindset”. Yep, there’s a name for this. You are so good on your diet all week/month/year long, but vacation comes and all that “goodness” gets tossed out the window. Why?

 

Well, since you’ve been depriving yourself of the food you love while dieting, you figure that when you are away on vacation and enjoying yourself, you might as well enjoy yourself with food too. But the problem is it leads you to overeating and overindulging and quite honestly, not respecting your body.

 

Here’s the thing. If you were not restricting all week/month/year before your vacation, you’d be enjoying all the food you love all the time and you wouldn’t have to go into “Vacation Diet Mindset” when you went away.

 

So how do you shift out of this mindset? Here’s 3 steps to get started:

  1. Commit to no longer dieting. And by dieting, I also mean your own self-designed diets and food rules you put into affect for yourself. I know that’s a tall order, but until you are able to give yourself unconditional permission to eat what you desire, you will restrict and deprive and fall into the Vacation Diet Mindset on your next vacation.

 

  1. Take the Mindful Eating Pledge. Basically, this means promising yourself that you will be mindful of the food choices you make and you will maintain an awareness so you can fully savor and enjoy the food you are eating. When you do this, you will find that it will be easier to recognize fullness and stop before you get overfull.

 

  1. Ask for Support. The journey towards returning to being an intuitive eater and achieving WholeBody Trust™ of your mind, your hunger and your food takes time and requires support. There is no reason you need to do this alone. Seek support from your loved ones, a registered dietitian nutritionist-certified intuitive eating counselor and a community of like-minded women on the same journey as you. It’s powerful!

 

Are you struggling with your intuitive eating journey and want to take it to the next level? Join us in the Intuitive Eating Mastery Circle. Learn more here.

 

3 tips to manage food stress in your life

44708423 – vector illustration in super mom concept, many hands working with very busy business and housework part, feeding baby, cleaning house, cooking, doing washing, working with laptop. flat design.

I returned to my office yesterday after a 4-day weekend. Wow, the number of emails, messages, Facebook notifications and faxes was truly overwhelming. Then the phone calls started…people somehow know the minute I sit behind my desk.

 

I was overwhelmed. That overwhelm caused me to procrastinate on getting some projects done, like this blog for IE Wednesday which I am writing quite late!

 

What I didn’t do was turn to food. Yet so many people do.

 

Food has become a way for so many women in my community to distract from pain, procrastinate from work, and deal with the stress and overwhelm they experience in their lives. The problem is that food does not fix any of these things!!

 

Food is supposed to be enjoyed. Yet, when speaking with so many clients, and potential clients, they tell me that food is stressful. All aspects of food, whether its deciding what to eat, shopping and preparing food for meals, or even the thought of going out to eat food.

 

And certainly, the guilt they feel after they eat what they think they “shouldn’t eat’!

 

Stress, stress, stress!

 

So today I wanted to share some strategies with you to help you manage food-related stress, without turning to food to cope!

 

If you have had a difficult relationship with food for some time now, then you can probably relate with today’s topic.

 

I know you probably want food to be a non-issue in your life. And you know what? It can be.

 

Let’s first start with 3 strategies that you can put into place immediately to help you minimize the stress around food.

 

Strategy #1: Set up your environment for success.

While I’m all about teaching you how to be intuitive in your eating (of course…I teach intuitive eating!), I am also very practical. It is important to be mindful of your eating and one way to do that is to reduce your external eating cues. That means put all food away after you’ve eaten and don’t leave food on the counters or table. If food is left out, it can very easily lead to mindless munching which then leads to feelings of guilt and frustration for eating when you weren’t hungry.

 

Strategy #2: Seek assistance from your family members.

Food shopping and meal prep doesn’t have to just be your responsibility. Get everyone involved in the menu planning. Even better, assign everyone a night to prepare the dinner. This way the whole family is involved, the kids will more likely eat what they help to prepare, and you get quality family time too.

 

Strategy #3. Start to use meditation and visualization.  Meditation can be a powerful tool to help keep your mind clear and stress-free. You can use meditation as a way to visualize yourself being stress-free around food and, by visualizing that, you can start to believe it will happen too.

 

These strategies are a good place to get started and you can use them as a way to figure out what works best for you.

 

But I have more right inside my online ‘do-it-yourself’ program where you will get my best strategies to decreasing the stress and overwhelm in your daily life!

 

And, because reality has it that there will be times when stress just happens, I teach you the most important questions you need to ask, and practices for you to use to beat that stress without turning to food (because let’s face it, it’s not about the food, it’s about the reasons you are eating!)

 

Save 30% during this Memorial Day Special – 2 days only. Seriously, check out all you get for just $67. You can’t get coaching or a therapy session for that fee anywhere!