by Libby

7 Questions to Consider When it Comes to Your Exercise Routine

Something that a number of my clients have shared with me is that it has felt to them like other eating disorder professionals / dietitians have conveyed the idea that they are “automatically being disordered” if they want to exercise or be physically fit.

Hmmm. *Skeptically scratching head.* I have to say I disagree!

I do think this is a tricky line to walk, as exercise and fitness intentions can certainly come from a place of being “mostly disordered.”

That being said, I don’t think that NEEDS to be the case. It’s all about your RELATIONSHIP with exercise, and your motivations for doing what you are doing. If your relationship with exercise IS currently disordered right now, we can work towards HEALING and CHANGING that. You can pursue physical fitness and exercise in a way that is genuinely and holistically healthy.

I am all about fitness and physical health in my own personal life, and love when clients and blog readers are passionate about this, too.

However, this wasn’t always the case. When it comes to working one’s way out of a completely unhealthy relationship with exercise, I GET YOU if that’s where you are at as you find yourself reading this blog post.

Based on my own personal experience and my work with clients, I have a lot of insight into what typically goes on emotionally and psychologically when it comes to a healthy versus unhealthy relationship with exercise.

Whether you are regularly exercising right now, taking a break, or thinking of getting back into it, here are 7 questions to consider when it comes to your exercise routine.

7 Questions to Consider When it Comes to Your Exercise Routine: 

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by Libby

Everyday Eats {October 2024}

Hello & Happy Wednesday!

This month is / has been a bit unusual for me with more travel during October than is typical for me… two weekends ago Alec and I were on Mackinac Island for our annual fall color trip which was fabulous!! The colors weren’t actually *that peak* on most of the island, but it was still a phenomenal weekend nevertheless.

This week I am out of town in Florida with family for my mom’s (delayed) 60th birthday trip. For the past several years most of my vacation time has been either long weekends or trips with more of an itinerary, so this time I am really looking forward to a lot of relaxing with mostly no plans for an entire week!!

Beach, reading, walking/running, unstructured time, eating out for dinners… will (likely) report more next week with a food recap!

Posting may be a little less frequent in the coming months, as I am in the middle of some work transitions & projects, including a website revamp that is coming in mid/late January! Be on the lookout for a new look!! I’m aiming to continue w/ monthly food recaps and whatever else I have time for as far as usual Wednesday posting goes, at least for a few months here.

This was our favorite spot on the island that we ended up returning to 4 different times. We went on a morning walk/loop that we really liked the first morning (that included going to this overlook) and did the same route the next two mornings. We also went back one evening as it was a perfect spot to watch the sunset! The above spot is right by where the Somewhere in Time gazebo is.

More life updates, Mackinac eats, & October food favorites:

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by Libby

7 Reasons to Eat More (or Enough) Dietary Fat

Out of the three macronutrients — fat, protein, and carbohydrate — dietary fat has to be my favorite! Give me all the nut butter, grass-fed / organic beef & eggs & butter, and plenty of dark chocolate (obviously) :).

Some of my favorite (daily) ways to consume dietary fat include peanut butter & whole-milk yogurt on my breakfast bowls, walnuts/cashews in my energy bites & bars, olive oil-based dressings & nuts on salads, oils & butters for dinner veggies & rolls, meats & eggs w/ dinner, and evening dark chocolate & other delish sweets to cap off a nourishing day of eats.

Thankfully the low-fat craze of the 90s seems to be less of a thing now, but so many people still seem to fear eating dietary fat!

Like all things food-related, not all foods are of the same quality, and therefore the “same food” can be healthful or less-than-healthful depending on its quality. High-quality, preferably organic sources of dietary fat (including saturated fat sources!) are EXCELLENT and NECESSARY for optimal health.

That being said, you all know I”m all about balance and I’m not going to bat an eye about eating processed desserts, non-organic meat/eggs, or seed oils once in a while. Unless there is a valid health reason to be totally black and white about a certain food, I’m not going to concern myself with eating “less-than-ideal” options once in a while. I know my body can handle this and it is perfectly fine!

We need to look at the big picture of our health, food patterns, and overall toxic load, and not miss the forest for the trees by obsessing over the store-bought cupcakes or non-organic ground beef we ate yesterday.

Dietary fat does NOT “make you fat.”

In fact, I would argue that avoiding high-quality sources of dietary fat puts you at *greater risk* for unhealthy weight gain (beyond YOUR body’s natural healthy weight range), due to the effect that not getting enough dietary fat has on things like our metabolism, hormones, and overall nutritional status.

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by Libby

3 Fall Salads to Try (+ Fall Weekend Eats)

Hello & Happy October!

I love everything fall-food-related… give me all the roasted root veggies, pumpkin-flavored everything, warm spices, and cozy soups & pastas.

I also love making fall-inspired salads. So much tastebud magic can happen when we combine flavors/foods like roasted veggies, maple, roasted pecans, apples, and pears!

Today I’m sharing three of my favorite fall salads, using my favorite maple tahini dressing!

This is my go-to fall dressing for a variety of salads/bowls… featuring tahini, maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, dijon mustard, and the usual add-ins (salt/pepper/etc.). It is nice and creamy, and can function as a dip or a dressing!

The dressing is incredibly easy to make — I usually add everything to my Vitamix and simply give it a blend! I also usually make the dressing x3 so it will last for a good week or so!

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by Libby

Everyday Eats {September 2024}

I hope your Wednesday is going well so far! 🙂 I’m loving the start to fall and the leaves starting to change… I always enjoy this time of year!

One annoying thing lately is that we have this insane construction project going on right outside our townhouse, and it is now officially impossible for me to cross the road and get to my favorite everyday running/walking path. UGGHHH. (It also adds ten mins to ANYWHERE we go with having to go around it all). I’m so bummed to miss out on the fall colors and scenery on my usual path while we *eagerly await* the construction to wrap up! (They seem in no hurry…). So, I’ve had to adjust my route and make do for the time being. It is not very scenic and not nearly as exciting but that is okay. I will appreciate my old route all the more when I can get back to it!

Diving right in with some end-of-summer / beginning-of-fall recent eats! What is the best thing you’ve eaten lately??

I loved this tasty fall salad! Mixed greens w/ black rice, roasted sweet potatoes, feta, dried cranberries, toasted pecans, and green onion. Based off of this salad recipe from Cookie & Kate. I did make the ginger dressing she includes in the recipe, but didn’t love it with this salad combination, so I ended up using my usual balsamic vinaigrette when I ate it the next few times throughout the week. However, a lot of people in the recipe comments say they love it with the ginger dressing!

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by Libby

7 Ways to Channel Your Driven Nature OTHER Than Your Eating Disorder

If you are like the vast majority of people who have experienced anorexia nervosa (in the past or present), I’d venture that there’s a good chance that you would use all or (at least) several of the following personality traits to describe yourself…

  • Organized
  • Hardworking
  • Diligent
  • Dependable
  • Perfectionistic
  • Intentional
  • Empathetic
  • … and Driven!

In general, many traits (including the ones listed above) can be good and fulfilling and helpful when they are channeled in the appropriate direction and with the appropriate intensity.

The same traits can also be harmful when channeled in the wrong direction and with too much or too little intensity.

Take being organized, for example. It can be a great quality to be an organized person, provided you aren’t completely obsessive with this to the point that it is negatively impacting your life and those around you, and that your organizational goals actually make sense.

We can channel our amazing organization skills towards keeping our home nice and tidy and staying on top of our household to-dos (while also being reasonably flexible with this). Or we can obsess over needing to organize the extra toiletries in our hallway closet for the third time this month.

There are two sides to every coin!

When it comes to drivenness, I think that being a driven person is a quality that can be AWESOME. I consider myself to be a very driven person and love to be inspired by the passion and intensity of other driven people.

But for all driven people, an important question to ask oneself is, where are am I driving?

And who is driving?

When it comes to anorexia nervosa, we are ferociously driving towards things like control of body size and food intake, and the suppression of distressing and uncomfortable emotions. Ultimately we are heading towards isolation, captivity, physical and emotional harm, and possibly even death.

It is our compulsions and fears who are in the driver’s seat, not our healthy, authentic selves, unhindered by suffocating grips of the anorexia.

In today’s blog post, I’m sharing 7 ways to channel your driven nature OTHER than your eating disorder.

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by Libby

Intuitive Eating — 10 Principles in Action

Today I wanted to do a post revisiting the topic of Intuitive Eating. In case you aren’t familiar, Intuitive Eating is a framework for eating developed by two dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elysh Resch. There is nothing inherently fancy or “new” about Intuitive Eating — it is essentially relearning how to naturally eat and be in tune with our bodies, dismantling and untangling the (largely unhelpful) outside voices and influences that may have negatively impacted our relationship with food and natural ways of nourishing ourselves.

Intuitive Eating is 10 principles summarizing a process of how to do that — relearn to eat in a natural, intuitive, and life-giving way.

You can read one of my earlier blog posts sharing more about the nuts and bolts of Intuitive Eating here!

In TODAY’s blog post, I’m going through recent examples of how the 10 principles might organically show up in my everyday life and eating. When we are relearning how to eat normally, I find it can often be helpful to see examples of how others go about this.

When I’m eating and going about life, (outside of client sessions) I don’t really *think* about the specific and individual Intuitive Eating principles per se at this point in my food journey. BUT they definitely make regular and continual appearances even if they are mostly integrated on autopilot.

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by Libby

Question to Challenge Your Disordered Eating: What Would Make This Better?

When it comes to experiencing any degree of disordered eating, often we might feel this urge or need to cut anything out of our daily eats that feels “unnecessary” or “extra.” This tendency to “do without whenever possible” can become more and more extreme over time.

Salad on my dressing? No thanks.

Dessert after dinner? Definitely not.

Cream in my coffee? Nope.

While the focus of today’s post is on a question to ask yourself to challenge this facet of your disordered eating, it is important to point out that there are MANY and varied benefits to NOT cutting out every last thing… from needing to eat enough to have a healthy metabolism/body/brain/hormones to feeling less obsessive and chaotic around food, when we pursue SATISFACTION in our eating, both a healthy diet and a healthy relationship with food tend to fall into place. 

There are many factors that go into making a food or eating experience satisfying. Some of these include eating enough, eating when we are decently hungry most of the time (versus famished or full), eating enough fat/carb/protein, and allocating enough time to eat and prepare our food.

Additionally, a key component of satisfaction in eating is seeking to eat foods we genuinely enjoy (at least most of the time — not every eating experience will be tasty and delish and this is also perfectly normal), and eating foods in a way that they taste good/best… elevating what we are eating from “fine enough” to truly satisfying.

One question to ask yourself to challenge your disordered eating is, “What would make this better?”

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by Libby

Everyday Eats {August 2024}

Hello & Happy Tuesday! I’m experimenting with posting blog posts more organically, as opposed to just Wednesdays — hence the unusual Tuesday post!

How was your weekend and start to the week? While my personal life doesn’t change too much with back-to-school, there has been a definite energy shift living in/near a college town with all the students back, as well as the younger students starting up school again. It’s crazy to me how summer is basically over already! I feel like it really flew by this year!

Alec and I usually do some sort of end-of-summer trip, but this year we are just doing a mini staycation (mostly Friday and Saturday, and somewhat on Sunday/Monday). Nothing too extensive in the works — a couple meals out, a bit of hiking, watching Michigan Football, seeing a movie… all fun and good and chill! Alec has some projects he is working on outside of that, and so I’ll probably read a lot, too.

What are your plans for the upcoming long weekend??

I’ve also been going on lots of sunrise walks and runs! This time of year sunrise is lining up with the time I’m heading out.

Let’s get to some recent August eats!

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by Libby

Allowing the Different “Parts” of You to Have a Voice in Your Eating Choices

While we are, of course, cohesive beings, it can sometimes be helpful to conceptualize the different “parts” of our personalities, or of who we are.

We often talk with this “parts” vocabulary in everyday life.

One part of me would like to relax and watch TV all evening, while another part of me feels like getting these chores done would be helpful for the rest of my week.

Part of me wants to say “yes” to dinner with friends this Friday, and part of me wants to stay home and have a chill/quiet evening instead.

We are all complex, multifaceted, and nuanced individuals. We have various needs, desires, and preferences that sometimes are at odds with one another!

In general, I find it can be helpful to “consult” these various parts of ourselves when it comes to decision making, not letting one part dominate or run the show 24/7.

If ALL I do is stay home and have introvert time every single day, I probably wouldn’t have many (or any) friendships. If ALL I do are chores and other tasks in the evenings, I would almost certainly feel burnt out.

When it comes to your food decisions, are you letting multiple parts of you weigh in on your decisions? Or is one part of you calling ALL the shots?

For the purpose of this blog post, we are going to consider two “key parts.”

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