Be honest: did you buy Halloween candy early because it was on sale, only to find yourself buying a second bag this week because the first one "mysteriously" disappeared?
For many people, Halloween is the only time of year candy even crosses the threshold of the house. So when those bags hit the pantry, your candy-restricted brain can hear their siren call—even behind closed doors.
Read MoreAs you begin to explore the anti-diet or Intuitive Eating arena, a specific kind of confusion often sets in. You might find yourself wondering things like:
"If I’m anti-diet, does that mean I’m never allowed to eat a salad or go for a run again? Am I a 'bad' anti-dieter if I actually enjoy vegetables?"
It’s a valid question. Because diet culture has hijacked health behaviors for so long, we have been conditioned to believe that kale and cardio are merely tools for body manipulation. Why would we ever hold a plank if not to shrink our waistlines?
Read MoreIf you are anything like me when I first embraced intuitive eating and started rejecting diet culture, you understand in a logical, big-brain way why diets don’t work and in theory why an anti-diet approach makes sense. Yet still, there is resistance.
I have found in this work, knowing the facts isn’t enough. We also need to process some intense emotional hurdles because diet culture gave us a powerful, albeit faulty, psychological safety net.
Read MoreSince eating is required for survival, feelings of pleasure, satisfaction, and comfort related to it are hardwired into humans to make eating a desirable activity. Many of us learn to use food to help soothe or distract ourselves from uncomfortable emotions because food is readily available and reliably provides, at least momentary, comfort and distraction.
Read MoreIn the long term, improving your relationship with food makes food-centric celebrations easier to navigate and more pleasurable. The challenge with changing your relationship with food is it doesn’t happen quickly. However, if you are reading this just weeks or days before the holidays, all is not lost. There are some simple things you can do now that increase your short-term pleasure in holiday foods and lay the groundwork for deeper work in the future.
Read MoreSocial media is a hot topic these days. It is both blamed for the downfall of humanity while at the same time providing life-affirming connections for those who may be otherwise isolated.
My decision to quit social media took a few years and a good amount of personal reflection. For me, I found the toll it took on my mental and emotional health was greater than the benefits I gained from being on it.
Read MoreIntuitive Eating is not a random list of rules. The principles were developed to help you better sense, understand, and respond to your body’s internal cues. They help you improve your body awareness or remove obstacles that make it harder to have body awareness.
Strengthening interoceptive awareness will make it easier to notice and respond appropriately to your body’s internal signals, including hunger, fullness, and tricky emotions.
Read MoreIntuitive Eating is a framework of 10 principles that support self-care and can help you improve your relationship with food and your body. It helps you relearn how to listen to and trust internal cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction rather than relying on strict external diet rules.
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