“I just need to have more willpower.”
“I just need to stop binging on “bad” foods.”
I often hear these sorts of things from clients when we first meet. The message we hear in the culture around us is that if we just try harder and have more discipline than we can resist temptation and be successful.
But what if it wasn’t a willpower issue? What if it wasn’t your fault? What if you didn’t actually need to try harder?
When you tell yourself you can’t have something, suddenly that thing gets power and the more you want it. This is scarcity. You might not have literal scarcity (as in you have immediate access to food), but if you are labeling certain foods as “bad” and trying to avoid them, you are creating emotional scarcity.
Eating allllll the cookies isn’t a willpower issue, it’s a control/scarcity issue. When you take morality out of food and it become neutral, the reactivity you feel goes away. (Note: we aren't saying that broccoli and ice cream are nutritionally equivalent, but they are morally equivalent.)
This removal of scarcity falls under the intuitive eating principle "Make peace with food" aka "full permission." It can be one of the more tricky principles to work though, so if trying this on your own sounds daunting, or if you've tried unsuccessfully before, reach out! I would love to be a support!
Overcoming Body Shame
In addition to helping my clients heal their relationship with food, I also do a lot of I work with them on improving body image. Below are eight areas that can help move you from self-hatred to self-acceptance.
1) Clothing
Wearing clothes that fit and that you like helps improve the way you feel about yourself. When clothing is uncomfortable, it is easy to feel like it is your body that is the problem. This same idea goes for the clothes in your closet. What percentage of clothes fit you now and that you like? When we look at old clothes that no longer fit us, it can bring up feelings of shame and frustration.
2) Social media
Pay attention to media that leaves you feeling worse about yourself or creates comparison thoughts. What messaging are you ingesting? Diet culture is loud and pervasive everywhere. Intentionally strive to incorporate more body positive voices in your life. This could be via books, social media, podcasts etc.
3) Self-talk/ self-compassion practice
So often our inner voice is extremely critical when we are struggling with body image issues. We can't shame and hate ourselves into loving ourselves. If we talked to someone else the way we talk to ourselves, that person probably wouldn’t want to be friends with us. The goal with self-talk is to first identify what those critical narratives are. From there the goal is to identify whose voice it is. These messages are typically coming from past experiences and people in our lives, often family members. From here we need to start to create a new narrative. What would you say to yourself if you did feel accepting of your body? What would you tell a friend? We are trying to create a new "internal board of advisors."
4) Movement
Movement can bring us out of our heads and into our bodies and help remind us of what our bodies can do versus just the external aesthetic. Exercising for weight loss just increases the negative relationship with self, but when we can exercise to feel good, to feel strong, to feel less stressed etc, it helps improve body image.
5) Body appreciation
What are the positive ways that your body shows up for you? How does your body help you in your day to day? What do you appreciate about your body? So often we are caught up in focusing on the negatives. Remembering the positives can help us cultivate greater self-compassion.
6) Intuitive eating
When we are dieting, we are sending the message to our body that it isn't okay as it is. When we eat intuitively we are communicating to ourselves that we are okay and deserving of food and pleasure. Also, when we are eating foods that feel good, we will feel better in our body overall.
7) Exposure
Shame makes us want to hide and avoid situations where we are afraid of judgement. The more we hide, the bigger the shame gets. What would you do differently in your life if you didn't feel shame? Identify these behaviors and work towards exposing yourself to them and practicing them. This will reduce the fear and build trust in yourself that you are okay.
8) Cultivate community
Who makes you feel safe and accepted in your life? What are your values and traits that are important to you and that these people respect? The more we can build community and authentic connections, the more we can build from the outside the experience of being accepted which can help us to see our worth.
In It Together: COVID-19 Stress Eating Survival Tips
We’ve all seen the memes about stress eating and the “Quarantine 15” which are humorous in their relatability. Working from home is new territory for many, and combined with fitness centers being closed and an increase in stress, food has become a greater than normal source of comfort and escape.
Check out my blog post for Poplin Style where I share a few tips on how to navigate this time.
Mellicia Marx, the founder of Poplin Style, has been an invaluable resource for many of my clients as well as myself. Clothing is often a big body image trigger, whether from holding onto clothes that no longer fit and feeling frustrated when you have nothing to comfortably wear, or from the frustration of not being able to find clothes shopping that fit and that are a style that you like.
Imagine opening up your closet and only seeing clothes that fit and that you like. Mellicia works with her clients every step of the process to get them there feeling empowered in the body they have now. I can’t recommend her enough as a resource, and if you are at all curious to learn more, sign up for a complementary 1hr consultation!
Interview: Intuitive Eating While Working From Home
During this strange time of social distancing, many of us are finding ourselves with a stockpile of groceries and living 24/7 within a few steps of our refrigerator. Add to that the feeling of being anxious and out of control, and many are struggling with emotional eating and their relationship with food. Check out my interview for Fit & Fly where I talk about intuitive eating and how to approach this time without jumping on yet another diet!
Fit & Fly hosts fitness, wellness, and cultural retreats curated for women in locations around the world, and I have had the honor of being the fitness instructor on several of their retreats. The company empowers women to travel, to pursue adventure, to create meaningful and lasting friendships, and above all, to take care of themselves mind, body, and spirit. If you are itching to travel when the world opens back up, check out their upcoming retreats!
Podcast: Intuitive Eating & Living During COVID-19
With COVID-19 causing a major shift in our daily lives, a lot of us are coping by trying to put together the perfect daily routine, and workout plan, and generally I think just struggling to process all that’s going on. In this episode I share a lot of great tools for being more gentle with yourself about your productivity, reconnecting with your body so that you can eat and move your body more intuitively, and being more in tune with our feelings so that we can find healthy ways of coping.
Giving Up vs. Letting Go; Poplin Style Guest Blog Post
Check out my Poplin Style guest blog post!
When I work with clients I often hear the belief that if you aren’t dieting it means you are giving up on your health, and it’s a free for all. In this post I differentiate between “giving up” and “letting go,” and share strategies on how to feel more confident and empowered in the body you have now. (Hint: letting go doesn’t mean that you have to feel in love with your body… you can still feel both a bit conflicted and empowered).
What is Poplin Style?
Mellicia Marx, owner of Poplin Style, helps women curate a closet that fits their body, style and budget.
Imagine waking up and looking into your closet and seeing clothes that all fit and that you like. For many clients I work with this is far from reality. There can be a lot of emotional conflict in the idea of overhauling ones wardrobe. Many are holding off on buying new clothes or letting go of old clothes until they lose weight. And yet everyday when faced with feeling uncomfortable in ones clothes, it only perpetuates a negative sense of body image.
Mellicia has been an invaluable resource to many of my clients. She helps navigate the shopping experience and figure out how to feel styled and empowered in the body you have now. This process can be incredibly overwhelming to do on ones own and so having someone like Mellicia can be a game changer!!
Curious? Book a complimentary 1hr consultation with her and learn more.
Podcast: Intuitive Eating, An End To The Diet Cycle Crazies
Join me and physical therapist Allison Feldt in her Edmond's Moms Room Podcast series as I dive into how you can break free from the diet cycle and find freedom from food and body. If you’re tired of constantly falling off the wagon or thinking of food as “good” or “bad,” take a listen. Want to learn more? Schedule a free consultation!
(Edmond's Moms Room is a local podcast for women in our community to engage, support and empower themselves and others. It is a platform celebrating motherhood, self care, health and business. A community of mom bosses!)
You’ll Never “Get There" - Letting Go of Perfectionism
I’ll have a six-pack by summer, and everyone will be really impressed.
That thought has crossed my mind every winter since I was 15. And it has always been wrong.
First, it has been wrong because I’ve never had a six-pack. Sure, I’ve sometimes lost a little fat or gained a little muscle, but I’ve never developed anything close to a picture-perfect physique.
Second, and more importantly, this thought has always been wrong because no one else would care. Other people don’t care about what I look like to the degree I imagine they do, if they care at all. They care a lot more about what I do and what I say, and they care a lot more about what they look like because they’re just as deluded as I am.
And third, this thought has been wrong because it was born out of a “finished product” mindset. The dream of showing up to a 4th of July BBQ with six-pack abs to show off was the dream of being a finished product, ready for the world to judge. I believed that if I could just reach that moment, I’d be done: I would never again have to worry about how I looked, restrict what I ate, or do the hard work of regular exercise. If I could just “get there,” everything would be better and easier for the rest of my life. (1)
This belief is plainly absurd. Even if I did manage to earn a six-pack through healthy eating and exercise, I wouldn’t be done. I would still be self-conscious about other aspects of my appearance, not to mention aspects of my personality. There would still be room for improvement. Yeah, I have a six-pack, but some people have an eight-pack! That’s what I really need. And I could easily slip backward if I lapsed in my routine of exercise and eating well.
Another Way to Think
An alternative to this unhealthy way of thinking is what’s known as a “growth mindset,” in which you see yourself as a perpetual work in progress. (2) With a growth mindset, you aim for gradual improvement rather than the rapid achievement of something praiseworthy.2 Instead of feeding your dependent self-esteem by comparing yourself to others, you build independent self-esteem by trying to do better this week than you did last week. (3)
When you have a “slip up” – a lapse of discipline or an indulgence at a party – it’s not the end of the world. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It means you’d be wise to strategize and put forth greater effort. (2) A key feature of a growth mindset is understanding the brain’s capacity for growth and change: neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. You’re not doomed to repeat mistakes and failures. If you use them as learning opportunities, your brain will adapt, and you’ll do better in the future. (2)
Having a growth mindset means understanding that it’s normal to struggle. And it means knowing that anyone – yes, even you – can improve. Having a growth mindset means understanding that you’re never done, that you’ll never get there. A growth-minded approach to health and fitness would be to focus on developing and sustaining healthy habits for the rest of your life, not achieving some outcome-based goal like six-pack abs.
“There is no particular time when you can say, ‘I’ve done it, I’ve finished.’” –Stuart Wilde (4)
Built into a growth mindset is the idea that most important concepts are not black-and-white, but instead lie on a spectrum. Healthy and unhealthy are two idealized ends of one such spectrum. People cannot be sorted into all-or-nothing categories like “in shape” and “out of shape.” There is a fitness continuum, and you can never actually arrive at one end or the other. The growth-minded goal, then, is to move toward greater health and fitness.
One critical outgrowth of this way to thinking is the philosophy that everything counts. This has two meanings, which are really two sides of the same coin:
Every step in the right direction is worthwhile.
Every moment is an opportunity to take a step in the right direction.
This radically different from an all-or-nothing approach, where there is a defined end result and a deadline (as in I’ll have a six-pack by summer). If you don’t achieve the result you’re aiming for by the deadline you’ve set, you’ll feel like a failure, which is demoralizing and demotivating. It’s far better to approach health and fitness with the attitude that everything counts. As long as you’re choosing to take advantage of some of the opportunities you’re given to take steps in the right direction, you’re succeeding. And the more often you take those steps, the more momentum you build.
Permission to be Human
Everyone knows that the media skews our image of what human beings should look like, always making us feel inadequate because we’re not perfect. We all know that advertisers want us to feel unhappy because then we’ll buy their products in a foolish effort to feel better. But how often do we actually remember what we know? How often do we take that knowledge and do something with it?
Obsessing over an appearance-goal is a profoundly unkind thing to do to yourself. You’re a human being. You’re not supposed to be perfect. You’re supposed to be a work in progress. So please give yourself permission to be a work in progress, with the understanding that you’ll never be done working.
You’ll never “get there,” and that’s okay.
Since you’ll never get there, why not throw perfectionism away and give yourself permission to be human?
Since you’ll never be a finished product, why not embrace growth?
Since you’ll never find enduring satisfaction from reaching a goal, why not keep your eyes on the process?
Since you’ll never complete the work, why not find a way to enjoy it?
Since you’ll never be done, why not work at a sustainable pace?
Since you’ll never get there, why not start loving yourself now?
Works Cited
1 Inspired by: Stutz, Phil and Barry Michels. The Tools: Transform Your Problems into Courage, Confidence, and Creativity. Spiegel & Grau, 2012.
2 Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine Books, 2007.
3 Ben-Shahar, Tal. Psychology 1504: Positive Psychology. Harvard Open Course, 2009.
4 Wilde, Stuart. Infinite Self: 33 Steps to Reclaiming Your Inner Power. Hay House, 1996.
About the Author
Chris Loper is a behavioral change coach who helps busy adults improve their lives and careers. If you’d like to swap out unhealthy habits for healthy ones or replace procrastination with productivity, call 425-466-6698 or send an email to chris@becomingbetter.org. Click here to learn more. And if you liked this post, be sure to subscribe to his popular self-improvement blog, Becoming Better. Chris also writes the blog for Northwest Educational Services.
8 Unintentional Ways Trainers Promote Disordered Eating (and What to Do Instead)
My challenge to the fitness industry:
"Let’s focus on helping our clients become the experts of their own bodies. Let’s encourage them as multidimensional people, not just a set of measurements, and let’s expand the definition of health to encompass the whole person and a wide range of health behaviors. Let’s dispel the harmful myth that wellness is indicated by the size of one’s body."
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Continue reading my blog post on the Girls Gone Strong site HERE!
5 Strategies to Cultivate Body Respect in a Thin-Privileged World
As a nutrition coach, I often hear things like:
- “I just can’t accept my body at this size.”
- “I need to lose weight so that I can feel more confident.”
- “I will [start dating, apply for that new job, try that new class, etc.] after I reach my goal weight.”
The trouble with these statements and the fantasy of how amazing life will be at a smaller size is that they require us to put our life on hold, they perpetuate the weight bias in our culture, and they support the belief that we can shame our bodies into changing.
When people say they want to lose weight, they often mean I want to be respected. I want to be loved. I want to be seen. I want liberation from fear and self-loathing. Weight-loss culture will never give us those things because it is founded on fear/hate-based systems like sexism, racism, classism and ableism. — Virgie Tovar, Fat activist
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Continue reading my blog post on the Girls Gone Strong site HERE!
Amazon Presentation: Why Dieting Doesn’t Work and What to do About It
I had an awesome time presenting today at Amazon on the trap of dieting, why we fall off the wagon and an alternative approach to health and health goals. Here are a couple slides from the presentation.
And for those who weren't able to attend, below is a blog post I wrote introducing the topic:
What if food wasn’t “good” or “bad”? I challenge my clients to stop living in fear of “falling off the wagon” and instead identify the problem as the wagon itself. The wagon as the nutrition morality we try to fit ourselves into that doesn’t accommodate us no matter what size we are.
Did you know the greatest predictor of weight gain is going on a diet? Statistics show that within 1-5years roughly 95% of dieters will regain any weight that was lost, and the majority of those dieters will regain even more.
It’s hardly easy to resist a $60 billion-dollar diet industry working hard to gain repeat customers. The promise of weight-loss is seductive.
But let’s say you could block out all that marketing…what about your inner voice?
“Yum that cookie looks delicious. But I really shouldn’t. I bet there are a million calories in that thing! But I have been really good today, and I’m going to the gym later. Ughh it probably has dairy and gluten in it though. Screw it! Give me two. I’ll be good tomorrow.”
Sound familiar?
It is important to note that dieting doesn’t need to look like a formal program (Paleo, Weight Watchers, Ketogenic, Intermittent Fasting, etc), because it is actually less about what you are or are not eating and more about how you feeland think about what you put in your mouth.
The more we try to control food, the more we think about it, and the more stressful it becomes. The “bad” foods begin to gain power and start calling to us. Eventually willpower runs out and we slip up, sending the pendulum swinging to the “dark side” of indulgence. We then create a self-fulfilling prophecy, proving to ourselves that we just need to try harder, be better, have more willpower to diet “successfully.” And so, the cycle repeats itself.
In order to stop shame-eating cookies, a shift is needed in the way we think about food. Thinking is the basis for behaviors, and the more we can get out of our head, the more we can get out of our way with nutrition and break free from the false promise of dieting.
This alternative approach is called “intuitive eating.” It is a process of learning how to be the expert of your own body and its hunger signals. This non-diet approach helps break the cycle of chronic dieting and heal your relationship with food. The reward is enjoying the pleasure of eating without guilt, making peace with food, improved body image and no longer falling off the wagon!
Curious to learn more? Sign up for a free consultation with Natalie Joffe!
Dating, Body Image, and Finding Love
Today I talked with relationship expert, Julie Pierce. Her brand Radiant Heart Love & Relationship offers proven approaches for relationship success and helps busy, love-seeking women confidently find and attract their life partner without compromise. In a world that is weight- biased and judges on external appearance, remaining grounded and self-compassionate around dating can be difficult.
Check out my interview with Julie to learn more about how to approach dating and love from a new lens!
If you're interested in connecting with Julie or learning more, you can find her:
Fo more information and tools on self-compassion, Kristen Neff’s research greatly informs this nutrition work. Her TED talk, “The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion,” is worth a watch!
Neff's research demonstrates that self-compassion provides the supportive environment necessary for change because it allows you to see yourself clearly, detect maladaptive patterns, and make changes that are actually sustainable over time. Another recent research article concluded, “self-compassion helps people improve body image and eating behavior.
You can take take this self-compassion assessment on her website, and if interested try some of her self-compassion exercises which you can find HERE.
The Way Of The Life Athlete
We live in a culture where stress is a status symbol, where rest and self-care are seen as unproductive, and where "pain is gain" and working out for the calorie burn are celebrated. We have become so disconnected from our bodies that we have forgotten what it's like to be with ourselves.
Check out my interview below with two-time Olympic Track and Field athlete, Peter Shmock. He shares his Life Athlete philosophy —where pain is not gain, where less is more — and by strengthening and quieting your mind, your mind and body work together toward your goals, helping you attain your ideal fitness, for life.
Life Athletes train hard. But by learning to pay attention to your body, you become your own best coach, achieving your performance goals with the least amount of effort, instead of the most. Life Athlete is a lifestyle. It stays with you when you leave the gym. It’s a practice, a way. It sets a new standard for how you can attain your top level of fitness, for life.
You can subscribe to Peter's podcast via iTunes or Sound Cloud in addition to his website. Also check out his book, The Way Of The Life Athlete.
Practitioner Spotlight: Lily Stokely, ND: A Non-Diet Approach To Food Allergies, Elimination Diets And Naturopathic Care
Check out my interview with Seattle based Health at Every Size ® naturopath, Lily Stokely who shares her approach to topics such as food allergies, elimination diets and inflammatory foods.
Lily Stokely is physician at Emerald City Naturopathic Clinic specializing in primary care, counseling, biofeedback, physical medicine, family medicine, and eating disorder prevention and treatment. Lily lives and practices from the perspective that every individual has their own unique definition of what it is to be healthy. She is passionate about aiding people in their health journey and loves to work from an integrative, whole body, mind, spirit perspective. Additionally, Lily is a yoga teacher of 8 years with experience instructing private and public classes as well as yoga teacher trainings. To learn more or to schedule an appointment, visit her website www.lilystokely.com/
NJ: Many naturopaths emphasize eliminating sugar or significantly reducing inflammatory foods. While this can be well intended, clients often are left being triggered into viewing foods as "good" or "bad" and feeling guilty or stressed if they eat an inflammatory food. How do you approach this?
LS: It’s important to remember that stress is a major contributor to inflammation as well as an emotional trigger to crave sugar and other “inflammatory” foods. When food rules are placed on an individual and these rules are not followed there is inherent stress that follows. I avoid the use of categorization of inflammatory foods. What is inflammatory to one individual may be supportive for another. It’s important to also remember that when any one food group becomes restricted that the individual is then more susceptible to binges and/or body shame which contributes to other disordered eating, exercise behaviors and increased stress. It is possible that some foods for certain individuals may cause a variety of reactions in the following days. For some there is a psychosomatic response that stems from the shame of eating these “forbidden” foods. Stress and anxiety can cause a vast array of symptoms from numbness in extremities, digestive upset, and brain fog.
The medical providers role here is to help the individual sort through the emotional and physical connections to these foods. Sometimes even if the individual does react to a food they were told to avoid, there often is an emotional reason for choosing to eat the food even knowing that it may cause unpleasant physical responses. It is here that the medical provider can provide support in aiding the individual to be empowered in their ability to make food choices. They then can decide if the emotional need may out weigh the physical symptoms or visa versa in that specific scenario.
NJ: Clients can approach food allergy testing with a diet mindset, almost hoping to be intolerant to something so as to have a medical motivation to cut down on dairy or gluten in hopes of weight loss. What are your thoughts on this?
LS: Avoiding dairy or gluten or any food group is a major misconception in that it is tied to weight loss. If an individual is sensitive to one of these food groups and they begin to avoid it sometimes the body may lose weight, however the body also has the potential to have unchanged weight or even gain weight.
NJ: As a weight-inclusive practitioner, what do you use to assess a client's health if you don’t use weight?
LS: Health at Every Size ® is the practice that each individual has an innate weight in which their body can thrive. This model steps away from the concepts of generalized health based on weight and BMI and embraces the science that demonstrates a body may be at varying weights and can remain in a healthy state. Weight is not an indicator of health independently from other health markers. Health at Every Size ® invites individuals to experience their body and how they live in it so that the true definition of health can be experienced; a body free of limitations. A naturopathic doctor that practices in the Health at Every Size ® model will not use your weight as a measure of your health, but will rather assess your health by how you feel in your body, how much energy you have through out the day, if you are in pain or if your body is able to move freely, and other laboratory markers. For conditions considered to be more metabolically (Diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension etc) related an intuitive eating approach is taken in regards to awareness of relationship with food and eating behaviors in addition to use of herbs, supplements and other modalities.
NJ: How can someone work on intuitive eating and healing their relationship with food while testing for food allergies or considering an elimination diet? Along those lines, how do you hold space for healing the relationship with food without food allergy exploration triggering the diet mindset?
LS: If rules of a diet are given ahead of time, the individual is less likely to listen to the body’s innate signals in how they relate with a food on a physiological level. If the individual is using intuitive eating, they use the body’s messages as a guide as to what foods are more or less supportive. It takes time to learn to listen to the body’s messages, however health is a life long practice, not a quick fix. Exploring food allergies and sensitivities can be approached from this perspective. If an individual has an allergy or sensitivity to a food, there are always messages that the body communicates. The practice, and where an educated provider on intuitive eating can be most helpful, is to explore the sometimes discrete language of each individuals body. For some this is easy, ie “I get a stuffy nose every time I eat dairy.” For others it may take more patience, ie. “My joints hurt 5 days after eating gluten.” If someone is told they have a food sensitivity without this inner listening practice then they will be put into a restrictive relationship with that food group which sometimes spirals into a restrictive relationship with many food groups. For an individual at risk of an eating disorder, this is where real harm from health care providers can stem.
Cultivating a healing relationship with food can happen simultaneously while exploring possible food sensitivities so long as it respects the individuals own experience of foods and the body sensations that arise. A medical visit that embraces this perspective might offer possibilities of what food reactions might look like and tools to examine where this might occur in an individuals diet. This must be accompanied by the essential aspects of counseling around self-awareness of the physical and emotional relationship with foods.
NJ: Sometimes food allergy testing indicates a client is reactive to foods they never felt to be an issue, often resulting in them becoming overwhelmed about needing to eliminate one more thing from their diet. How do you approach this topic?
LS: It’s important to remember that ALL food sensitivities will have a palpable response in that individuals body. If there is absolutely no response then there is not a food sensitivity. There many options for food allergy laboratory testing evolving; all of which have been shown in research to not be 100% accurate (IgG, IgE, IgA, skin allergy testing etc.). The gold standard in naturopathic medicine for allergy testing is an elimination diet, which although I don’t recommend doing the traditional elimination(more harm than benefit in regards to relationship with food), this infers that the body’s messages and response to foods are the most precise ways to diagnose a food sensitivity.
There is also a spectrum of food allergy, food intolerance, and food sensitivities that is often important to define to fully understand the varying ways foods can affect an individual.
Food Allergy: A severe immune reaction that can result in death or serious harm if ingested. ie. Anaphylaxis. Celiacs disease can also go into this category due to the type of immune reactivity that occurs however symptom presentation and reaction is not always as immediately severe as a typical anaphylactic reaction.
Food Intolerance: The body lacks specific enzymes to digest a food or food group. Ie Lactose Intolerance
Food Sensitivity: Often immune related, however can present on a spectrum of reactions from very severe to sometimes very subtle. The more subtle reactions are sometimes based on quantity and frequency of food consumed and not that the food was consumed or not.
Keeping these definitions in mind is helpful when interpreting food allergy lab testing panels. In the above example, an individual asked to fully avoid a food in which they notice no difference when avoiding the food may have a mild sensitivity that only demonstrates symptoms when the food is eaten in greater quantities. Another example as to where an intuitive eating approach is a better fit as the individual will have less stress around this food and may learn their unique tolerance to the food and how to navigate how much and how often to eat this food.
NJ: How do you approach food allergy testing in your practice?
LS: I will sometimes use food allergy testing and I always will then use that information infused into an intuitive eating approach.
If a patient is having a challenging time sorting through possible reactions to foods and reactions are moderate to severe I find food allergy testing useful. I use it as one tool of many to aid the individual in building a connection between their environment (food being one piece of this) and their body sensations. I spend several visits reviewing the results, counseling them around relationship with this food group and if that feels like a reasonable food that could be contributing to discomfort. These conversations always include aspects of emotional relationship and explore that individual’s experience of how that food relates in their body. Even if the test is positive, it doesn’t always mean the recommendation to limit this food is made.
Nutrition In The New Year- my interview with Dr. Aron Choi
Check out my interview with naturopathic physician, Dr. Aron Choi, where I talk about how to shift to a non-diet mentality in the new year. I encourage letting go of the traditional focus on weight loss and instead transforming your relationship with food and body to create lasting change.
Dr. Choi practices in Seattle and is passionate about helping his client deal with their chronic health issues by understanding the true cause of their problem and using individualized therapies to help them live a fulfilling life.
Expert Q&A: How To Overcome Emotional Eating
Women with ADHD face unique challenges when it comes to eating. Research has shown that women with ADHD are up to 3 times more likely to develop an eating disorder such as bulimia or anorexia. Check out my interview with Kaleidoscope Society on ways to approach emotional eating.
7 Exercise Tips For Women With ADHD
Studies show that exercise can be just as effective as stimulant medications for treating ADHD. Exercise triggers the brain to release dopamine and serotonin, which improves mood, reduces stress and anxiety, enhances working memory, executive function, impulse control, learning and memory.
However, for women with ADHD sticking to an exercise routine can be challenging, especially when it feels like a struggle just to get through the day.
So what’s a girl to do? CLICK HERE to read on for 7 tips from my interview with Kaleidoscope Society.
Being Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Through the Holidays
Had a great time today sharing how to start 2018 without jumping on another diet that will only keep you in the diet cycle and feeling frustrated with your body.
Host:
Chelsea Behrens
Speakers:
Chris Cuffee, Fitness Coach
Natalie Joffe, Nutrition Coach
Audrey Godwin, Award-Winning Entrepreneur & Founder of Resilient Business Solutions, Inc.
More about us Speakers:
Chris Cuffee is a fitness coach who uses inspirational tactics and stories to push his clients to the next level. He believes our mindset can determine our outcome, which is why he encourages others to think positive thoughts about themselves, their efforts, and the world around them. One of his favorite quotes is, "Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.” - Napoleon Hill
Natalie Joffe is a certified nutrition coach who specializes in helping her clients let go of disordered eating and diet cycling to create a positive and lasting relationship with food and body.
If you eat “good” all week but find you fall off the wagon on the weekends, emotionally eat in stressful times, know what to eat but can’t seem to actually do it consistently, think about food as either "good" or "bad" and feel guilty when you eat indulgent foods, then Natalie can support you in creating sustainable and positive change.
Audrey Godwin is an award-winning entrepreneur, founder of Resilient Business Solutions, Inc. and champion for women’s economic development. Her trademark Positioned 4 Profit ™ helps contribution centered, smart and decisive women business owners to go from financially stretched to financially secure. Her clients increase cash flow, profitability and personal income while decreasing stress and worry.
As a retired CPA – serving clients as a Trusted Advisor and Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Audrey empowers and equips women to become financial masters that keep more of what they make and leave a financial legacy that is meaningful to those they love.
Audrey believes that financial mastery is not an all or nothing choice, but a series of clear decisions, executed well to get a desired outcome. Her financial success tips have been featured on NBC, The Seattle, Times and The News Tribune, as well as radio shows around the United States.
Her signature Start Here, Get Clear Strategy Session is the starting point for women business leaders who are reach to get the financial results they desire and finally deserve.
Chelsea Behrens is a public speaker who works in our local tech industry. A true story-teller at heart, she is passionate about helping others through sharing her own transformative life experiences.
As the host of this event her intention is to connect people in our community while leveraging professionals with valuable insight for living happy, healthy, and wealthy through the holidays and beyond.
SELF CARE TIPS: HOW TO GET STARTED ON A SELF CARE JOURNEY
Check out my interview with Sahily Perez, Seattle plus size fashion and style blogger and founder of Pretty in Pigment. Sahily is inspiring women to feel comfortable and confident in anything that they wear and challenging them to live life unapologetically. She encourages her readers to see clothing as a form of self-expression and shows them how to have fun with it at all sizes.
King 5 New Day North West: Dieting Challenges
Had a great time today on King 5 New Day NW cooking up a St. Patty's themed appetizer and talking about diet challenges. Check it out!