Tag Archive for: support system

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:

  1. A Healthy Mindset
  2. Caring Support
  3. 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!

 

 

Change the Tape that Plays in Your Head

tape 2It can be frustrating to not achieve the weight loss goals you have set out for yourself.  Often you might see this as a failure and a reflection of who you are as a person.  You therefore develop a negative internal monologue with yourself that tends to only perpetuate weight gain or the inability to lose weight.  Bullying yourself is not the way to long lasting weight loss, nor is it part of a healthy lifestyle.

Many times the roadblocks in the journey to weight loss are not a lack of nutrition education or even support, but rather they are barriers you put up in your own psyche that prevents you from moving forward.  Your emotional health is key to your physical health, and talking yourself down will not lead to success.  How many times have you eaten what you consider “poorly” or not in keeping with your “diet plan” throughout the first half of the day, and your inner voice starts bullying you saying, “You can’t even make it a few hours without eating unhealthy” or “Can’t you stick to anything?  You’re such a failure!  You’ll never lose weight!”  The disappoint that accompanies these thoughts almost always leads to more unhealthy choices throughout the rest of the day.

Instead of criticizing yourself, be your own cheerleader.  The day is not ruined if you chose to eat a bagel for breakfast instead of oatmeal.  Tell yourself it is OK and move on.  There are so many more things to the day than what you eat.  Food should only be a part of your life, not what controls it.  The more you can shift your mind from the negative to focusing on all the great things about what you do in a day, the more success you are sure to have on your weight loss journey.

Support from others is great and is a key piece in the weight loss puzzle, but the support you give yourself is equally if not more important.  After all, you are on this journey for you and nobody else, and while weight loss is great, achieving happiness and a sense of peace with the way you maintain a healthy lifestyle is even better.

Please share with me at least 1 thing you are proud of that you did today!