MIndfulness

Have you ever found yourself freaking out over something small and immediately numbing through food, alcohol, scrolling, or work? Or maybe you've impulsively reacted in a way that you knew was an extreme or disproportionate response to the thing that triggered you? If you can relate to either of these scenarios, it's likely you experienced a dysregulated nervous system hijack your emotions and reactions and the body's attempt to regulate and soothe unsettled nerves.

In the last 10 months I’ve spent working with my chiropractor, Dr. Sydne Pomin, to address chronic pain and adjust my body alignment, I’ve learned so much about the intricate connection between spinal health and mental health.

Self-love is a trendy aspiration. It also feels cliche, out of reach, and dismissive of the true internal struggles we can experience in the wake of body disappointment, unworthiness, and shame. Self-kindness, on the other hand, feels more genuine to me — an accessible middle path.

This year, I've been working A LOT behind the scenes on rebranding my website so that it accurately reflects me as a person and the way I support my clients.

After more than a decade, I recently returned to the Pilates reformer. Before this reintroduction — and what has otherwise been a general uptick in movement recently — I found myself in a many-months-long lethargic lull. For various reasons, old routines were no longer working, but I also hadn't found a new routine that felt right.

This is the in-between space. You recognize something no longer works in your life and you begin to transition away from it. Then you realize this transition is a process that requires you to be in suspension – neither here nor there – for an undesignated length of time.

There’s more influencing our food choices than we may realize. Often, when we serve ourselves another helping or reach for a snack we know our body isn’t craving, we blame our lack of discipline and willpower. In reality, the reactive, compulsive, and automatic ways we engage with food are, in part, a downstream effect of living with unprocessed body grief, shame, and neglect, or feelings of unworthiness and disappointment in our bodies and ourselves. learn about the five mindsets and practices I turn to in order to help my clients gently process the emotional discomfort often tied to food, so they can begin to feel more at home in their body as it is and move forward in a healthier and more complete way.

Many of us expect January to be the month that we feel motivated and eager to hit the ground running, tackling those New Year’s resolutions. But what if we don’t feel motivated? What if setting grand plans for the year ahead isn’t for us, or it doesn’t feel good to do right away in January?

In my work with clients, radical self-care is the practice of attuning to our physical and emotional bodies and responding in a way that creates an internal sense of calm and safety. You can start down this path by watching your energy usage throughout the day (e.g. where it goes and how it comes back in) and nurturing the energy deficits - whether you’re numbed out or strung out - in an intentional way. (Two specific practices are suggested at the end.).

In order to accept and embrace your current body, you must grieve the loss of your old body.

This is a suggestion I’ll offer my clients in session. As we move towards an accepting, compassionate and mindful existence with food and body, we often experience sadness and grief about our changing bodies.

If you're looking for emotional support and a reminder that you're not alone navigating difficult emotions and hard things, I've compiled a list of documentaries, podcasts and a few books I've personally been enjoying and am excited to share with you in hopes that something here will be helpful.

I'm sharing a short clip from the workshop I gave a few weeks ago, Nurturing the Wise Mind for Conscious Nourishment. In the clip I talk about a psychological concept called window of tolerance to explain how and why we use food to soothe, escape, numb, or create a sense of control.

In my last article I explained that restricting food leads to food guilt and overeating, what it means to give ourselves unconditional permission to eat (i.e. the Permission Paradox), and why permission is essential for making peace with food.

The idea of permission is scary for emotional and restrictive eaters. In this article I answer the three most common questions I get from clients when they begin this work.

My clients reach out to me because they’re unhappy in their food life. They’re using food to deal with emotions, they feel stressed and guilty about their food choices and body, and they’re exhausted from trying to stick to a healthy diet. They want support learning how to live joyfully, feel at ease around food, and regain trust in their bodies and decision making. This is 100% possible. But in order to get there, I help them understand that…..

If you’re overcoming a troubled relationship with food and you’re feeling frustrated or discouraged, there’s likely a disconnect between the expectations you have for yourself and the reality of the healing journey or what I call, “The Process”. If we don’t acknowledge and remedy this disconnect, and we don’t know that our rocky experience with The Process is to be expected, we might give up prematurely and walk away as if we’re doing something wrong. The antidote to shame and self-doubt inflicted by unrealistic expectations is to understand The Process, trust it, and learn to flow with it.

In a world where being busy is a status symbol and consuming digital content has led to short attention spans and seeking quick-fix solutions, we’ve lost touch with what it means to be connected; to be connected with others, with nature, with our food, and with ourselves.

As a Behavioral Food Therapist, there are a variety of reasons clients choose to partner with me on their healing journey. While they might initially be attracted to the idea of "perfecting" their diet, deep down they know the solution to their mindless eating habits, weight concerns, food anxiety, low energy, or self-doubt is multi-faceted. They might not be able to articulate it at first, but their gut instinct tells them it's not just "what" they eat that deserves attention, but also "how" they interact with food and with themSELVES.

In witnessing a dear friend go through difficult times, I've been reminded that our greatest strength – our courage – comes from our willingness to be seen; to see ourselves and to allow others we trust to see us.

Why is it important to address tricky food habits? Because they keep us stuck and make us feel bad on many levels. And there are techniques and mindsets we can adopt to free up mental and emotional bandwidth, find ease in our food life, and have more energy for what really matters.

There's a strong connection between racism, diet culture, and body discrimination. Diet culture is rooted in the ideal that thin bodies are better; that thin promises health, love, and acceptance. Diet culture does not tolerate the inherent and healthy diversity of body shapes and sizes in the human race. But science shows there are healthy people in large bodies and unhealthy people in small bodies.

It's been a heavy couple of weeks. And I want to take this moment to extend strength, empathy, and solidarity to my Black readers.

Intuitive Eating is a powerful evidence-based and weight-inclusive approach to health I use to help my clients cultivate a healthy relationship to food and body. The framework supports those wanting to make more mindful, intentional food and self-care choices as well as those looking to address emotional eating, bingeing, restriction, yo-yo dieting and other forms of disordered eating.

The health of our gut influences our whole health. Everything from cravings, mood swings, low immunity, brain fog, and chronic aches and pains can be tied to poor digestive functioning.

But HOW we eat and interact with food throughout the day impacts our digestion just as much as WHAT we eat.

Habits are the cornerstone of daily life. Whether intentional or not, a sequence of repeated patterns and rituals guide us through life at home, at work and everywhere in between. But maybe some of these habits don't serve us, or we're missing a habit we know could bring greater [fill in the blank for what you're looking for: productivity, peace, mindfulness, intentionality, etc.] to our life.

In today’s video I'm sharing what we can focus on instead of weight loss if we want to make positive changes for our physical health AND emotional well-being.

This is a two-part video series that helps to reframe how we think about weight so we can establish a gentler, kinder, healthier, more joyful way of living and being in relationship with food and our bodies.