Intuitive Eating During the New Year and Beyond

We're a few weeks into January and still in the thick of "New Years resolution season." Most of the gyms and diet companies are still pumping out ads for their products like it's nobody's business. So if you've recently started working on your relationship with food, this can be a challenging time to continue on the road toward intuitive eating. Some major diet companies have even started using intuitive eating principles to help sell their weight loss products and brand. The temptation to fall back into old habits can be overwhelming.

But don't lose hope. It's normal and okay to feel that tension and to question what you're doing. Below I'm sharing a few tips on how to navigate the resolution hype and continue striving for freedom from diets and a healed relationship with food.

1. Remember that your reasons for pursuing a different route are still true, even during this season. Whatever it was that brought you to intuitive eating is still there. It's easy to second guess ourselves when we see what the rest of the world is doing and wonder if we should be doing that too. Consider keeping a journal to record your past relationship with food and what it has been like up to this point. Reference those notes to reflect when you start to feel like restriction is the better option.

2. Know that healing your relationship with food is not a fad. Unlike most of the products and plans being promoted right now, making peace with food is not simply a trend. The mindset shift can transform every area of your life. For most people, food is intricately linked to emotion and relationships. Healing the way you think about food can also help improve other areas of life. When we're not constantly worried about how many calories we're eating, we have time to spend with our loved ones, we can meet over meals without anxiety and spend brain power focusing on more important work.

3. Understand that taking the focus off of weight loss does not mean you're abandoning your health. You're simply giving yourself unconditional permission to eat all foods. And that doesn't mean you have to eat only desserts all the time to prove that you're doing it right. The point is that you're removing all the arbitrary rules that diet culture provides and instead putting the power back in your own hands. You have the power to eat foods that nourish you physically as well as emotionally whenever you want and need to. Health is so much more complex than sticking to a rigid calorie guideline and getting x amount of minutes of exercise/day. You're not a formula and following those guidelines doesn't automatically equal health.

Keep these tips in mind as you go forward in your journey to intuitive eating. It can be a long and challenging road, especially in January, but the reward is freedom and a fuller richer life. I'll be cheering for you!

Our Values Should Frame Our Health Decisions

We all have a set of core values. We use those values to inform the decisions that we make as we move throughout the world. An activity to try is to write down as many of your core values as you can think of, then spend time contemplating how you're currently living them out, how that will look in the future and what's getting in the way of living out those values right now.

This gives you a foundation to work from. When we identify what we hold most important in our lives, we know what to focus our time and energy on. So often our core values do not align with the concepts of dieting and pursuing weight loss. If we value time spent with loved ones and serving others, it doesn't make sense to also be engaging in diet culture. The lifestyle needed to manage our weight and food intake can be incredibly isolating. It would be difficult to maintain strong relationships with friends if we're always worried about our food choices. When we're doing something that goes against our values, we usually feel a sense of discomfort. We just have to be willing to be honest with ourselves about it.

Your values might be different than mine, or someone else, but that's okay! It's important that we take the time to think about what our own biggest priorities are. If you're ready to start thinking about how to align your values with your health, try answering some of the questions below:

Questions for reflection:

What are your core values?

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

How will you think about and treat your body?

What food will you eat?

How will you move your body?

Think about your answers to these questions and decide what steps you can take to start aligning your core values with your health decisions and what might be getting in the way of living out your values.  It may be helpful to work with a dietitian to help you dive deeper into these topics. Please reach out if you have any questions!

You Don't Need A New Body For Spring Break

You don't need to change your body for spring break.

A spring break body is a body that you take with you on spring break. That's all.

We really can't control the size of our bodies. Especially not in the long term. And we can cause a lot of harm trying to do so.

When we go on a vacation, the whole point is to relax and get a break from our usual routine and commitments. How can we do that if we're obsessed with changing our body size? We won't be able to enjoy ourselves or be present with our friends or family. Going to the beach and putting on a bathing suit can feel scary. Diet culture tells us that only certain bodies are acceptable in bathing suits. People make hurtful comments and those stick with us. Our culture makes it really, really tough to accept our bodies.

But in case you've never heard it before, you are acceptable just as you are. You don't need a new "spring break body" to wear a bathing suit. You have permission to enjoy yourself and your vacation without worrying about what your body looks like. Having a smaller body is not a requirement for a fun vacation.

All bodies are good bodies

It takes intentional work to get to a place where we believe this about ourselves and others. But it's totally possible. Think about how wonderful it would be for our children and their children to grow up knowing they don't need to change their body to be accepted and beautiful. We first need to work on our own hearts and address our own weight biases. All of us have a purpose and something to contribute to society, regardless of what our bodies look like. If we're spending less time thinking about our own bodies, we can focus more on serving other people which would be an amazing thing.

Plus, if we're not focusing all of our energy on making our body smaller before our trip, we'll have a lot more free time!

Below are a few things you should do with your extra time to prepare for spring break:

• Purchase sunscreen to protect your skin from sun damage

• Plan some fun activities that you're going to do while there

• Pack clothes that fit and you feel comfortable in

• Get good sleep so you're rested for a long drive or flight

• Feed yourself regularly so you have adequate energy to enjoy the activities you have planned

If you'd like more help learning how to accept your body, I'd love to work together! Reach out to me on the contact page or schedule a discovery call to learn about your options.

Health at Every Size: An Overview

Health at Every Size

In short-Health at Every Size is an approach that evaluates a person's health, based on behaviors and lifestyle factors rather than weight. That's not to say everyone at any weight is automatically healthy. We are simply taking the focus off of weight to assess people from a truly holistic perspective. 

We know that for the vast majority of people, long term, sustained weight loss is not possible. Yet, we're all still encouraged to diet and lose weight, at any cost. A fundamental aspect of HAES is that we all stop the pursuit of weight loss. Some may hear that and wonder: "if we're not trying to lose weight, how do we prevent chronic diseases?" Well, the research shows us that changing health behaviors (like movement, sleep, and stress management) can improve physiological outcomes (like blood pressure, cholesterol levels, etc) even without weight loss. So its's possible to improve our risk factors for disease, without sacrificing our health in the process. 

The basic components of Health at Every Size are respect, critical awareness and compassionate self care. Each is an encouragement to reject our culture's widely held assumptions about weight and forge a new path. 

Respect

Celebrate the differences in our bodies; all shapes and sizes. Acknowledge your own weight bias and discrimination and begin working through that. Know that all bodies are good bodies and we are not able to tell how healthy or unhealthy someone is simply by looking at them. A smaller body size does not equate to better health. 

Critical Awareness

To fully embrace HAES, we need to challenge many common cultural beliefs. This includes scientific assumptions about the role that weight plays in health. The research only shows a correlation, not a causation of weight's role in chronic issues. We should seek to support health policies that provide fair accurate information, as well as necessary services for all people regardless of physical, economic or social status. 

Compassionate Self-Care

We can cultivate better self-care in several ways. We can find the joy in moving our bodies, eating intuitively, appropriately managing stress and improving sleep habits. When we begin taking care of our body in these ways, it will have the opportunity to settle into it's natural set point range. Your personal set point weight may be above or below where it currently is but once our body reaches that cozy range, we won't have to fight to stay there. This is a good thing.  We can learn to truly take care of ourselves, and support our health, rather than striving for a smaller body. 

If you're interested in learning more about Health at Every Size and applying it to your own life, schedule a free discovery call with me to start diving in.