Nutrition
Food should be simple. If you are feeling confused about what and how to eat, it can be that you have not yet learned about healthy foods for the body or perhaps that you have digested too much information, particularly from marketers pushing the latest gimmick and supplements, and feel overwhelmed by food choices. After all, What is healthy eating? If you walk away from your meals feeling nourished rather than just full, it’s a good sign you are eating healthy. If you crave diversity and color and smaller portions in your food, it’s a good sign you are (or want to be) eating healthy. You see, we actually know what our body needs to be healthy. Mindful and intuitive eating is our natural way, but it often gets reared out of us.
In our modern times, we speed our way through food unconsciously, saving time and money with processed and GMO foods and deprive our bodies of the whole ingredients and natural nutrients that our ancestors enjoyed. When you give your body whole, nutritious fuel, you:
Have more energy and feel less tired.
Feed your brain, helping you be more creative and capable.
Sleep better.
Improve or prevent chronic health conditions - (see Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Conditions by Lorig et al. 2020).
Here is my free Food is Simple Guide. If you want a powerful and nourished body and need a coach to help you get there, I can help. Contact me today. Don’t let another week or another month go by in unhealthy eating habits.
EMOTIONAL EATING HABITS
Emotional eating is using food to make yourself feel better - to fill fundamental, non-physical needs that are not being met. Unfortunately, emotional eating is a sign of our times. We often find ourselves in chronic stress or in situations where we are not treated with the unconditional love that we truly deserve! First, if you are experiencing grief, trauma, or other immediate life circumstances that have changed your eating habits, get the psychotherapeutic help you need to express and manage the strong emotions by delving deeper into them and your past. Only when you feel really ready to work on your future, should you seek health coaching.
Often past grief, trauma, or micro-traumas, linger long past the immediate experience of them. For example, the trauma of a past experience may be over, yet you are still living the stress by ruminating in your past, trying to find the scenario where you get to win; or maybe you adopted your own internal, negative and constant critic, trying to be some better person that doesn’t get mistreated or unloved. Our minds heavily engage and invest in these ego-preserving patterns. It is the nature of being human to use our intelligence to seek self-preservation. Yet, the use of the mind in these ways is indeed insane because the outcomes we are looking for are impossible. You can’t change the past and you can’t prevent other people from hurting you. You CAN change yourself in the present moment however. This is your Superpower!
Practicing conscious or mindful eating; resolving your emotional experience through psychotherapy, shadow work and/or embodiment work; and meditation can help break emotional eating habits. Simply being aware of when you are eating to feel good versus actually hungry can be a powerful mindful moment that breaks the spell of unconscious eating. Use the free Food is Simple Guide to inspire a new way of approaching food.
Meditation and embodiment work can help increase awareness of emotional eating habits. Regular meditation practice trains the mind to accept nothing happening (aka boredom) as a positive experience; it can help you be aware of and consciously work through negative self-talk; and it can help increase mindfulness in every moment of your life. Embodiment practices tune in to tension and somatic responses in the body and work to release them through self-awareness and yoga. If you want to tap into your Superpower of being present and self-aware, I can help. Contact me and let’s get started.
CURBING FOOD INTAKE
Few of us enjoy being on a diet. Yet successful results from burning more calories than we take in feels really great. Mindful and intuitive eating with conscious urge control to reduce food intake can be very effective over the long term. However, many of us have not developed consistent control over our impulse urges or need for immediate gratification because we follow the urge without connecting to its consequences or we dismiss the consequences as unimportant. One key to managing the urge to eat more than you planned is to embody how our food choices will make us feel in an hour, while we are sleeping, or the next morning. Try this exercise of connecting your present and future self:
When you are beginning to feel an urge to eat more than you planned, don’t make a decision. Leave the choice open.
Connect with your Future Self. Choose a time when your food choices typically haunt you: in an hour, during sleep hours, the next morning, on the scale, etc.. Visualize yourself in that space and imagine suffering from the food choice. Feel it in your body, in your emotions, and in your heart. Recreate the experience when you really feel the consequences of unhealthy choices and make it real in the present moment.
Place your hand on your heart and ask yourself: Do I really need this?
Make your decision.
Don’t forget! When you are actually in the moment you imagined during this exercise, connect with your Past Self - the one that made the food choice. What would you like to tell your past self in that moment? Offer your past self praise or words of wisdom, encouragement, and love.
As additional aides when faced with an unhealthy food urge, try DEADS:
Delay at least 20 minutes before deciding if you need the food.
Escape from situations that trigger unhealthy choices.
Avoid having unhealthy foods (or foods that you commonly overindulge in) in the house.
Distract yourself by leaving the place you normally eat at and doing something else.
Substitute the unhealthy food with a healthier choice.
Also, try the practice of Urge Surfing.
Finally, it helps to truly honor the food you consume. A simple meal blessing brings you into the present moment and checks the food you plan to consume with your values. Here are a few meal blessings you can try out and see if one resonates with you!
START YOUR WEIGHT LOSS JOURNEY
Develop a Self-Affirmations that are going to be your mantras. You will say it to yourself every morning and every evening to inspire and remind you of Your Why.
Learn and Be Prepared to bring mindful and conscious techniques into managing your food and urges (see above).
Choose your Food Plan that lowers caloric intake, matches the time you have available for food prep, and uses foods you enjoy eating.
Create your Move Plan that increases caloric output, starts with where you are at in physical capabilities, and is very achievable.
Set a Start Date and set a very small set of Rules. You need to set some basic rules that cease behaviors that caused weight gain and will help you stay on track. For example: I will not alter my Food Plan for at least 10 consecutive days; I will not eat in front of the TV; I will get to the gym at least two times a week, etc.
Be Prepared to Manage the Gap between intake and output. You will experience hunger and muscle soreness, especially in the beginning. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Reframe it as a good feeling by using another positive affirmation like: “I love the way I feel right now. I feel fit and healthy.” Meditate. Plan to drink lots of water to curb hunger. You can aid your digestion by drinking hot water with ginger, lemon, or turmeric after meals, especially dinner.
Just do it. Implement the plan as you prepared it, only making adjustments that are clearly not working. Say your daily affirmations. Stick to your rules. Reframe setbacks. Don’t give up on yourself. Review your plans and your techniques and your reasons at least once a day. You can do this! If you want support, I’m here to help. Contact me and let’s do this!
CHRONIC INFLAMMATION
Many of us believe we are eating wholesome foods that are good for us, but the truth is a large part of our modern diet is comprised of inflammatory foods that the body responds to in an allergic way (pain, redness and swelling). If you would describe your body as puffy, pudgy, rotund around the mid-section, achy, or just uncomfortable, then it’s likely you have chronic inflammation from your foods. Chronic inflammation is a leading cause of chronic disease and foods that cause dis-ease need to be identified and eliminated so that you can live your best life!
The easiest way to tell if you have chronic inflammation from foods is to eliminate inflammatory foods from you diet for a 2-3 days and see if you feel better. Feeling better can be a powerful inspiration to alter your eating habits and reduce or completely avoid inflammatory foods. Below, I provide a helpful list of inflammatory and anti-inflammatory foods you can use to make simple and life-saving changes to your diet. Also, there are many anti-inflammatory diets out there for a more regimented lifestyle change, but a mediterranean style diet or The Dash Diet, such as the ones offered by Mayo Clinic are backed by medical research as being healthy, anti-inflammatory, and effective for weight loss.
