Intuitive Eating Principle 9: Movement - Feel the Difference

The ninth principle of Intuitive Eating is: Movement—Feel the Difference. This is another non-food based intuitive eating principle. This principle offers a powerful way to feel connected to and truly alive in the body you have today.

Feeling healthy, strong, empowered and content with your body is a primary component of this principle. We all know that movement/exercise is important for our physical and mental health, so why can it be so difficult to create and stick to a consistent movement routine? One main reason is that we can often get hung up on what kind of exercise is “best” versus what we actually enjoy. If exercise feels like just another chore it will be difficult to remain excited about it. When you find what movement you actually enjoy and look forward to, you can feel the difference in both your mindset and your body.

There is no one “best” or right way to move your body. When you find movement that you enjoy and actually find pleasure in, you are far more likely to make it a habit. Many people think that running, high intensity interval training, Crossfit or getting a Peloton will make all of the difference and will magically create the desire to exercise. However, if you don’t enjoy it, you most likely will not follow through with doing it consistently. Consistency is really how movement benefits our mental and physical wellbeing and allows you to feel the difference.

If movement/exercise becomes a means only to support a desire for weight loss, it can get tangled up in the diet mentality. (You can review principle one: Reject the Diet Mentality here.) When it feels like exercise is solely related to attempting to control the size and shape of your body, then that movement can feel like a chore, or worse punishment, and can create feelings of being a failure. This will ONLY equate to giving up because those feelings of failure, resistance and discomfort are the very feelings most people attempt to avoid.

When you break it down and consider what you enjoy doing to move your body, if you can find something that brings you a sense of accomplishment, makes your body feel good and lifts your mood, it is a win-win-win! When you focus on how the movement you choose makes you feel, this creates an opportunity to choose movement that brings you pleasure and can become something you crave. Another benefit of focusing on how the movement makes you feel is that desired feeling state can support you through any resistance.

Focusing on how movement makes you feel will create feelings of alignment with how you want to feel. When you can connect with how you want to feel and movement/exercise creates those positive internal connections, you are far more likely to follow through and remain consistent. When movement creates feelings of being strong, accomplished, healthy and relaxed, you will be more consistent because these are feelings most of us want to feel more frequently.

The true key here is finding movement that you truly enjoy and look forward to doing. If you love to be outside, find movement that you can do outdoors in nature such as walking, biking, playing a team sport, jogging, hiking… If you prefer to be indoors you might enjoy yoga, dance classes, barre classes or any other group fitness classes at the gym. You can always catch a YouTube video of any kind for any movement you like to do. If you love a variety and mixing it up you can craft a routine based on several forms of movement that bring you pleasure.

No matter what form of movement you choose, be sure not to entangle it with calorie burn, punishing yourself for eating something you judged as “bad” or in any way to control your body in some form. While your body may change as you become stronger with consistent movement, that can be a side bonus that just happens by the way. If changing and controlling your body is your sole purpose, most likely it will trigger anxiety, stress and frustration—and this is simply not sustainable. Find movement you enjoy and allow yourself to do it for the sheer pleasure of moving your body and feeling good in mind, body and spirit.

Now to feel the difference. When you begin to create your movement routine and put it into practice consistently, keep notes on how you feel prior to and following the movement that you engage in consistently. Reflect on how the movement you choose to do makes you feel. Any time that you are experiencing resistance, consult your notes and connect with the feelings you experience following the movement that you do. If you experience resistance, ask yourself if you could commit to doing 10 minutes of some form of movement. Allow the positive feelings that you know you can create for yourself through movement to motivate you to commit to those 10 minutes. Once the 10 minutes are up, you can stop, or if you’re feeling really good, you might just find that you want to keep going! Getting started is generally the hardest part. Keeping up with your reflection log related to how movement makes you feel gives you a layer of support to create consistency.

The first step is consider what you love to do. The second step is to get started. There is no right way to get started and you can always change your mind and find something new so try not to get hung up until you find the “perfect” exercise. When you begin moving your body in a way that you enjoy consistently you will feel the difference and create a healthy relationship with your body and with yourself. What movement can you commit to doing today?

Spring Cleaning for Emotional Eating

During this time of the year, you might spend some extra time cleaning out your home. Clearing out the cobwebs and dust bunnies that have collected in the corners over the winter, changing out clothing for the new season and getting rid of old stuff that might be cluttering your space and fogging your mind. This process requires a lot of effort and when it is completed it feels so refreshing. After a good spring cleaning you feel lighter, calmer, and accomplished don’t you? I know I love a clean and clutter free space, I just don’t always love doing the work it takes to get there!

While you might spend this time cleaning your physical space, do you ever think about spring cleaning your pantry, fridge, habits and emotions? Spring is a time of renewal and hope. With more light, energy, nature and bright colors all around, spring provides inspiration. If you have become bogged down by emotional and stress eating and these habits feel frustrating, NOW is the time to clear it all out.

When you consider spring cleaning for emotional eating, it’s helpful to work in the direction that makes the most sense for you. You might begin from clearing your pantry + fridge to then clearing your habits and emotions. However, you might feel more comfortable working from the other way around, where you clear out emotions + habits and then shift to kitchen. No matter which direction suits you the best, the outcome will definitely be the same. Through this process of spring cleaning for emotional eating, you can refresh and renew your relationship with food—and with yourself.

Spring Cleaning the Pantry + Fridge

While it might make more sense for you to work from the other direction, l will start with clearing out the pantry and fridge first. When you spring clean there is a process of letting go of things that no longer serve you, releasing built up grime, dust and dirt and a creation of positive feelings with the action you are taking. The same is true as you clean and clear your pantry and fridge.

When starting, you want to align with your goal and then determine if the items in your fridge and pantry serve you and your goals. What do you want? How do you want to feel? Do the foods currently in your fridge and pantry provide that outcome? If yes, take inventory and plan when you will use them. Get creative, cook new dishes, refresh old ones, have fun with it. If no, these items don’t align with your goals and how you want to feel, you can choose to donate them or give them to a neighbor or friend. It’s a helpful process that will leave you feeling empowered and motivated to care for yourself. After the clearing process, be sure to organize and clean them out so it feels calming to open and access your fridge and pantry.

During this clearing process, notice what foods might be “trigger” foods. Trigger foods are ones that it’s difficult to stop eating once you start or ones that you crave to temporarily suppress stress and uncomfortable emotions. These foods are not bad foods or good foods, they just may not serve you and it’s helpful to evaluate if having them in your space helps move you in the direction of your goals. If they don’t, you don’t have to keep them.

Spring Cleaning Habits + Emotions

Now let’s dive into spring cleaning for your habits and emotions. This process is a bit less straight forward. You can’t just give or throw away your habits and emotions so easily. You can start this process of spring cleaning emotional eating through self-reflection. Be honest with yourself about how often you are using food to suppress stress and emotions, how often you turn to food for comfort. Be curious about how that makes you feel about yourself. Become aware of how any habits and patterns of stress and emotional eating have created a rift in your relationship with yourself and your body.

Once you can deeply reflect and develop self-awareness, you can begin to clear out the habits and develop healthier ways to cope with your stress and emotions. To change a habit you need to replace it with a new, healthier, more desired habit. If you have been feeling stressed during the quarantine or if you struggled with any winter blues, you might have developed a habit of soothing with food in the evenings, when feeling down, lonely or bored, among other emotions. For example, maybe you started eating something after dinner that comforts you and releases your stress regardless of whether or not you were still hungry. There may be some pondering about wanting to stop this habit or maybe even some guilt for having it, however, it feels too difficult to break.

You want to consider spring cleaning this habit first by determining what else could you do in the evenings to soothe your mind and body that do not include the comfort foods? How do you want to feel? Can you practice assessing your hunger levels and committing to only eating if you truly feel hungry? Can you journal to connect with why this habit feels so good and so bad at the same time? You want to dive into self-awareness and self-reflection and create a plan to shift this habit into something more desirable and something that can still soothe you without food.

Changing a habit takes time and constant self-reflection and self-awareness. I recently wrote 10 blogs about creating a life that you love, you can review the overview here. You can go back and check out each of the steps in depth on the blog for support with this challenging change process. While awareness is the first step, you have to create action steps and a formulate a plan to actually follow through.

When you are spring cleaning any habits that no longer serve you, awareness that the habit has become problematic is the first step and then deciding what you could do and aligning with a sense of what you truly want is the next. Then you, of course, need to have a plan for how you are going to make it happen. Following through, consistency and believing in yourself are super important when it comes to creating the change you desire.

Commit to yourself to spring clean just one habit. Be sure to give yourself time to reflect in order to ensure that you make it happen.

As you begin to shift your habit, you may notice more emotions and stress to become present when you are no longer soothing them with food. This is where journaling is a great place to start when working to spring clean your emotions. Giving yourself time and space to recognize, sit with, understand, process and release your emotions is essential. Journaling offers you a specific safe place to do this.

Anytime you experience a food craving is a great time to pull out your journal and get in touch with the craving. This way you can determine if it’s an emotional craving or more general craving. Go through the Pause, Reflect, Release process where you first pause and give yourself space away from the craving. Then reflect where you can explore and understand the craving and then attempt to release the craving. If is an emotional craving, you will choose a coping tool to help manage or release the emotion. If it is a general craving, you might choose to eat the food, however you want to be sure do so mindfully. Allow yourself to savor and enjoy your food.

Breath work, movement, and talking are additional helpful tools to cleanse and clear in mind and body. No matter what you do to begin to spring clean your stress and emotional eating patterns, start somewhere and believe in yourself and your ability to create the change you desire.

The Power of Visualization

Your mind is your most powerful tool for healing. When you picture something in your mind, it is perceived as possible and the nervous system responds accordingly. If you are still in quarantine, this can be a useful technique to add that will help support the process of finding inner balance, inner calm and inner peace.

Visualization is a technique that is used to improve wellbeing, performance, follow through and outcomes. When you rehearse something in your mind, visualize yourself doing it, you are more likely to make it happen. Visualizing helps bring what you can imagine in your mind come into fruition.

When you visualize something in your mind’s eye you can cultivate any inner experience. When you are dealing with stress, anxiety, uncertainty and any immobilizing feelings such as helplessness, hopelessness or fear, you are essentially imagining negative outcomes. If you shift this to positivity, hopefulness, and empowerment, you can create a whole different outcome and a far more peaceful state of being.

When managing stress there are some very helpful visualization techniques you can use to release the discomfort of stress and bring on a feeling of inner peace. Releasing negative, uncomfortable, untrue and non-useful thoughts can be a helpful visualization to practice to support the process of letting these thoughts go.

Visualization to Release Thoughts and Calm Your Mind

Here a few visualizations you can use to imagine your thoughts releasing from your mind:

• –  Picture yourself sitting under a tree. Imagine that your thoughts (worries, stressors…) are on the leaves floating down from the tree, releasing the thoughts and letting them go.

• –  Picture yourself lying down in your favorite space in nature, imagine releasing your thoughts to the clouds and watch them floating away, letting the thoughts go.

• –  Picture a hallway with doors, imagine that your thoughts are coming in through one door and leaving through another, letting the thoughts go.

• –  Imagine a revolving door, picture your thoughts coming in and then leaving through the door.

• –  Picture yourself seated on the banks of a river, imagine a basket of leaves beside you, anytime you are distracted by a thought, take a leaf out of the basket, write the word thought onto the leaf, place the leaf into the river and watch it float away.

You can set a timer for any amount of time, even 1-5 minutes can make a big difference. Practice the visualization related to releasing your thoughts to help let them go. Notice the impact.

Visualization for Productivity

If you are struggling to get the things done in your day that you’d like to do, you can use visualization to improve your chances to get stuff done. First, write out your plan for your day. Then, spend 3-5 full, deep breaths holding the image of getting each item on your list completed.

Notice any resistance or struggle. If there is a strong resistance, be curious about why it is there. Keep practicing until you can picture yourself completing the item on your list without resistance or make any adjustments to your schedule as necessary. Reflect on this process and notice the impact on your productivity, motivation and ability to follow through.

Visualization for Healing

The final visualization technique I will include here supports healing stress and anxiety in mind and body. This visualization offers an ability to feel supported, calm, safe and content.

Begin by resting comfortably. Imagine a small sphere of light resting at the center of your chest. This can be a soft, golden light, or it can take on any color that is soothing, comforting or healing to you. With each inhale, imaging that the light is expanding throughout your body, with each exhale allow the light to return to your heart center. Continue with this deep breathing until you can visualize the light expanding all the way around your whole physical body. Once you can visualize that you are resting in this sphere of light, continue to breathe slowly and deeply, leaving the light in this expanded state all around you.

Picture yourself resting in this light space. Picture yourself breathing in the light, filling your body with soothing, calming and healing energy. Allow yourself to feel safe, calm and supported as you are resting within this light space.

After 5-20 minutes, begin to imagine the light slowly contracting with each exhale. Continue with this visualization until it returns to a single point at your heart center. Now imagine in your mind’s eye your light moving deep within your heart space. Allow all that remains of your light deep within your heart space and picture it as a sparkling gem. Know that you can repeat this visualization of your light any time you need to, for healing, to help you feel safe, calm, supported and full of vitality.

No matter how you begin to use visualization, know that you hold the power within to shift your mood state, your thoughts, your nervous system and your own daily outcomes. What visualization technique will you try today?