Integrating Mindful and Intuitive Eating Practices

Mindful and intuitive eating are powerful practices to support the process of healing from emotional and stress eating patterns. When these elements are integrated and practiced consistently by easing them into your daily routine, they can make a major impact on your relationship with food. Mindful eating is all about being present with your food and eating in a state where you are calm, emotionally balanced, and your body is craving food and nourishment. Intuitive eating is about trusting yourself, and freeing yourself from food fears. Intuitive eating ultimately empowers you to be in charge of your food choices.

Mindful eating beautifully integrates into each of the principles of intuitive eating (as created by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch many years ago, I highly recommend their book—Intuitive Eating!). The principles are based on creating a healthy relationship with food, your body, and yourself. The intuitive eating principles allow you to step into the awareness that you are expert on what your body wants and needs. When you integrate the concepts of mindfulness along with these ten intuitive eating principles you have a very sound roadmap to make peace with food.

The ten principles of intuitive eating are:

1.    Reject the Diet Mentality

2.    Honor Your Hunger

3.    Make Peace with Food

4.    Challenge the Food Police

5.    Discover the Satisfaction Factor

6.    Feel Your Fullness

7.    Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness

8.    Respect Your Body

9.    Movement—Feel the Difference

10. Honor Your Health—Gentle Nutrition

You can click on any of the above principles to learn specifically about that one. Through each post I am detailing how to integrate each step into your life, one step at a time. Within each I try to weave in where mindfulness and mindful eating practices can enhance each of the practices and the process as a whole. I offer specific ways to consider each step and how to engage with each specific practice so you can begin immediately.

Each of the principles of intuitive eating are simple, and yet are not necessarily easy in practice. Diet culture is real and quite entrenched in our culture. It can be super difficult to pull away from the diet mentality—especially if you have been a victim of their promises and empty hopes for a long time. Diet culture has shifted subtly into the guise of health and wellness or branded as a lifestyle in recent years. However, if the way you eat does not make you healthy or feel well, if it requires restriction, and lacks any pleasure derived from food, is it really a sustainable way for you to eat? This is where I will begin in the next post with this very topic and principle one of intuitive eating!

Over these next several weeks we are moving into the holiday season, which during a “normal” year can cause stress, yet with the uncertainty of our current times, this season will most likely cause additional stress. Traditionally, those who struggle with emotional and stress eating feel increasing overwhelmed from Halloween until after the new year. The cold and dark of the winter, increased focus on treats and food, and increased pressure and stress all can amp up emotional and stress eating during this time.

If you begin integrating these intuitive and mindful eating practices you might find yourself in a very different place than you may have landed without them. Think of each of these steps as an opportunity to let go of old ideas, structures and fears when it comes to food, dieting, and body image and to begin to step into a space of empowerment and freedom when it comes to food, your body and most importantly, your life. Stay tuned for a deep dive into principle number one coming soon!

How to Strengthen Your Mindset Muscle

If you have ever tried to build muscle at the gym, then you know that only lifting weights once in a while simply won’t cut it if you want to get stronger. It’s through consistency and repetition that you begin to build your muscles and feel stronger over time. The same is true for building your mental muscles related to your mindset and creating the opportunity to change your own patterns.

Think of building your mindset as if it’s strengthening your mental muscles. Each time you practice strengthening your mindset you become stronger. If you take a long break from this practice, most likely you will have to start small and rebuild one repetition at a time in order to regain your strength.

Mindset is what you focus on with determination coupled with consistently following through. Mindset is the muscle you strengthen that supports the process of change through taking consistent action. Each time you practice engaging your mindset, you become far more likely to follow through on the action steps needed to create the change you desire.

When you have a strong and focused mindset you are able to work through the mental noise and take control of the mental gymnastics that can derail you. We all have an inner self-saboteur. When your mindset muscle is strong, you’re ready to deal with that saboteur part of yourself. Through strengthening your mindset, you are prepared to remain strong in the face of the internal saboteur—usually experienced as convincing excuses— that usually arise from fear or shame.

Fear and shame are two emotions that can keep you living small, keep you feeling stuck and out of alignment with your vision for your life. The trick is that you must experience and understand these emotions, allowing you to feel and recognize the fear and/or shame and get curious about why it’s there. The shame plays off of the fear by way of reminding yourself how you maybe didn’t follow through in the past. The shame will then try to convince you that you won’t follow through based on these perceived failures from the past. This inevitably makes you feel so crummy about yourself so that you feel safer feeling the fear of change rather than taking the action YOU KNOW would move you closer to your vision. The mind is so tricky to conquer. The good news is that with consistency and practice you can have a greater understanding of your patterns and where the fear and shame are just an old narrative that you DO have the power to change.

Setting the foundation to build your mindset and strengthen your mindset muscle begins with knowing what you want and why you want it. When you can connect to your vision for your life and set goals, you have your future self to route for you and support you through the change process. The process from there really comes down to putting in the effort and using the energy of your hope for and belief in your future self to create a plan and then to take decisive action—consistently.

As always, it’s most effective for long-term sustainable change when you start small and develop your own inner trust muscle. You have to trust yourself; you have to believe in yourself. That is where you have to face—and at times wrestle with—the discomfort of any lingering experience of fear or shame. If you haven’t believed in or trusted your own abilities in the past, then it will try to come back and convince you that it won’t now either.

Setting up your plan based on your vision for your life and the goals that support your vision with action steps gives you a roadmap to follow. You want your goals and action steps to be simple, specific, doable and desirable. You build on these steps over time as you begin to trust yourself and believe that you not only can, but that you WILL follow through. For example, if you want to move more, you might begin with putting on the clothes you want to move in and wearing them for the time you want to move. The next time, wear the clothes and move for 5-10 minutes. Plan each detail such as the days you will do this and specifics of what you will do for the week. Review at the end of the week and check in with what happened when you did follow through and what happened when you didn’t. Understanding your own pitfalls, blocks and inner saboteur as well as what motivates you gives you valuable information about how to move forward. Self-reflection and self-awareness will guide your process. You can apply this process to anything you’d like to integrate, change or do.

When you do this consistently, week to week, you will be strengthening your mindset muscle, which will draw you closer to your vision for your life. If you are someone who prefers step-by-step specifics, try the going through these steps below to begin strengthening your mindset today.

1.    What do you want?

2.    Why do you want this?

3.    What will allow you to get what you want?

4.    When will you do the action that allows you get what you want?

5.    What fear or shame comes up for you around taking this action?

6.    Where can you start small and put these actions into place?

7.    Now create your plan.

8.    Now reflect on how it goes and learn from your struggles and from what motivates you.

9.    Practice, be consistent!

10. Re-evaluate.

If you go through these steps to strengthen your mindset muscle so you can align yourself with your vision for your best life, I would love to hear how it goes. If you’d like a refresher on the 10 steps to create a life you love, you can revisit the full overview HERE or go to the blog and read about each step in depth. Change is challenging and yet necessary for growth. The stronger your mindset is through the change process, the more alignment you will experience with your vision for a life you love. Practice strengthening your mindset muscle and you will feel the impact within your life in so many positive ways.

Fall Gracefully into Fall with these 5 Practices

Fall has arrived. It is evident in the cooler temperatures, shorter daylight hours and the apple trees heavy with ripening fruit. This has been one of the most unusual summers, and if you are like most of us, you might have gotten away from some of the healthy practices that support your mind and body for the better.

A new season delivers an opportunity to renew your energy to live your best life with a new hope and a new sense of focus. The five following practices will allow you to return with ease and grace back into routines that support your wellbeing in mind, body and spirit. These practices are drawn from the foundations of wellness that create and sustain your overall health and wellbeing.

1. Meal Planning + Preparation

If you enjoyed your share of outdoor dining and takeout this summer that afforded you some semblance of normalcy, you might be ready to get back into a routine of cooking more at home. If you have a busy day it can be hard to decide what’s for dinner and you may not have the energy to cook. However, if you plan and prep ahead of time it’s one less decision you have to make.

The process of dedicating time and energy to cooking is much easier when you have a plan—and then a plan for how that plan will get implemented! Beginning with meal planning for the week on a calendar, and then determining what can be prepped in advance saves you a ton of time and energy when it comes to the actual mealtime. Soups, salads and stir fry’s can be easily prepped so you can cook once and have easy meals to put together all week long. Veggies and fruits can be washed and prepped so they are easy to grab and go. Check out my resources page HERE for some further inspiration.

2. Morning Intention Setting + Gratitude

If the summer zapped your morning routine, now is a great time to reevaluate and ignite a new one. A morning routine allows you to set up your day in an intentional and meaningful way. The simple practice of asking yourself, “how do I want to feel today?” can significantly impact your mood, your perspective and your continued focus for your day. When setting your intentions for the day, you begin with asking yourself that simple question, “how do I want to feel today?” Write down three feelings you’d like to experience throughout your day today. Then ask yourself, “what ACTION do a need to take to create these feelings?” These feelings are not necessarily going to create themselves, however, you can intentionally create them by taking the action steps that you know will help you feel how you want to feel. You can create these feelings with a mindset of taking decisive action consistently throughout your day. Write down one to three actions you can take per feeling that you want to cultivate within yourself. Now look through your plan for the day and note when you will complete these actions. Visualize yourself completing them and notice how that feels.

Next, take a moment and consider what you feel grateful for in this moment. Write at least three of them down. As you see each of these things on the page, feel the emotions that come along with having this attitude of gratitude. Take time to savor these feelings. This simple practice added to your morning routine may take only 5-10 minutes and yet can have a major lasting positive impact on your mood, your focus, your energy and your daily outcomes. (You can read more about creating a morning routine HERE.)

3. Move Your Body Daily

You may have been active this past summer, however, if your day has looked significantly different since living in these quarantined times, you may have ended up moving less without your normal commute or it may have been too hot for you to enjoy getting outside.

Enjoying the cooler crisp temperatures gives some space to getting out for a brisk walk, a bike ride, a morning jog, and soon enough, maybe spending an afternoon raking leaves. If you prefer to get your movement in indoors, there are so many options online these days for live classes or on demand through YouTube. Even a 20 minute walk, workout, yoga class or stretch can make a big difference in your energy for the day. Moving daily offers a healthy release of stress, an improved mood, detox for your mind and body and always provides a sense of accomplishment. Nobody ever regrets being consistent with exercise! (You can read more about the health benefits of moving your body HERE.)

4. Meditation

Many people tell me they want to meditate but either don’t know how, don’t know where to start or say that it’s too hard or too difficult to maintain. The research is very clear that meditation has a plethora of benefits including improved mood, mental focus and clarity, reduced stress, just to name a few. (You can read more about the benefits if you’d like to HERE.) Meditation offers time to be quiet, to just be, and this is not how most of us normally roll. We have so many distractions and most of us are always multitasking. When you take time to meditate you allow your nervous system an opportunity to find its way to balance, for your thoughts to settle, and for your body to relax. Offering yourself even five to ten minutes to find a point of focus (such as your breath) and maintain your attention on that point of focus can offer a huge return on your time investment.

Meditation is a very simple concept and yet it’s not so easy in practice. Using an app like InsightTimer, a simple timer like the one on your smart phone, taking a class or individual training with a teacher are all a great way to get started with a meditation practice. Generally, starting small and building up over time makes a big difference in your likelihood to stick with it as the practice gets more and more comfortable with time and practice.

5. Journaling

Our current circumstance is probably the craziest and most jarring experience in my 44 years. Creating a space to process everything that you are thinking, feeling, experiencing, wondering, fretting about, hoping… through journaling can offer tremendous benefits. A journal offers a dedicated place to write out your thoughts, feelings, concerns, hopes, dreams and more. Journaling offers a place where you can document your day for stories to reflect on in the future or to pass down to future generations. Journaling allows you an opportunity to reflect and become more deeply self-aware, notice any problematic patterns you might have or it can be a place to simply hold space for yourself.

Journaling can be one of the most therapeutic practices. A journal acts as a container, a special place to hold the inner workings of your mind and heart along with the stories of your life. Having this container creates a safe place to hold all of this for you while simultaneously creating separation from having to live with your thoughts and feelings swirling all of the time. Once you close your journal after letting it all pour out of your head and onto the page, you can let it go and enjoy the release you created for yourself. You can put your journal away and give yourself freedom from the mental and emotional swirling.

I recommend you select one of these five practices that you feel could benefit your current life and will make the most positive impact based on your present circumstances. Begin to integrate this practice daily, ensuring that you create consistency with the practice you choose and notice the impact that it has on your life and your wellbeing. Once that practice has become a consistent habit that you no longer have to think about doing, move on and begin another. The most important thing is that you make your wellbeing in mind, body and spirit a priority within your life. I’d love to hear what practice you will integrate and the impact that it has on your life!