Hello friends!
I hope you all had a very merry Christmas! I’m closing out the year of blog posts with a 2023 year in review… sharing some of what’s been happening in my life this year in high-level, summary form! I find it useful/fun/encouraging this time of year to take some time to reflect on the year we are finishing before heading into a new one, and I would encourage you to consider doing something similar if you haven’t tried it before! 🙂
2023 Year in Review:
Happy Wednesday!
I’m feeling epically ready to rest and recharge as we head into Christmas and New Years’. Anyone else?? I know the holidays can bring up a mix of emotions, and some years may be more joyful or difficult than others. I hope that with whatever you have going on in your life right now, you are able to take some time to rest and recenter a bit.
Backing up to the previous weekend, we had dinners scheduled Saturday & Sunday with friends we are connected to from college. It was so great to catch up — it had been much too long since seeing both couples/friends! Prior to that we were sick/recovering from colds… it seems everyone has been getting sick lately! Hoping we have gotten all our sickness out of the way before the holidays…
Before we get to some December eats, I wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas! However you have found your way to the blog, I am grateful that you are here.
Closing out the year with some pre-Christmas December eats!
Hi everyone!
Today I wanted to share a round-up of my favorite/go-to simple meal and snack ideas. While cooking more involved dishes is something I do enjoy when I have time, most of the time I am thinking creatively about quick and easy ways to get nourishing, satisfying breakfasts/lunches/dinners together throughout our busy weeks. Anyone else with me???
I’m looking forward to a bit more time to make some of my favorite recipes over the Christmas season. At the same time, what I most want over my holiday time-off is downtime for reading, resting, and relaxing. That likely means a continued focus on simple, yet delicious meals and snacks.
I always find it helpful to see what other people are making throughout their weeks, and how they tend to go about getting dinner on the table on top of the busyness of regular life. Everyone’s life is unique, and thus we all may have such different preferences for going about prepping or acquiring meals and snacks, which I find fascinating!
I hope my go-to ideas inspire you as you consider ways to “navigate food less stressfully” in your life this holiday season and in the new year to come!
I can’t believe we are already well into December! As the end of the year draws near, I am looking forward to more time to rest, lots of walks outside, and getting to all the books I want to read that are piling up!
Since the holidays tend to be more challenging for most people when it comes to food and body image, I wanted to do a brief post on some tips and strategies for navigating food and body image this time of year.
First, I will provide some examples of what disordered eating could look like at the holidays. Then we will get to 5 strategies for experiencing a life-giving and truly healthy approach to food and your body during the holiday season.
Hi everyone!
How was your Thanksgiving? I feel like it came and went so quickly!
Our long weekend was a mix of relaxing, getting some random things done, enjoying the actual holiday, and severely stressing during the final minutes of the Michigan-OSU game. Let’s just say my heart rate was rather elevated, but as they say, all is well that ends well!
At least here in Michigan, the weather leading up to and on Thanksgiving was amazing! While it is getting colder and grayer now, we have had the sunniest November I can ever remember. That has been such a blessing!
We enjoyed several long sunny walks over the time off. This beautiful sunrise was from one of my recent runs! I’m always grateful for this field that allows me to see some of the early morning sun.
On to discussing some November meals, snacks, and desserts!
As always, these posts are meant to inspire you in your own culinary and eating adventures! Each of us has our own nutrition needs, food preferences, and individual patterns/rhythms when it comes to eating… I recommend eating in a way that works best for you! 🙂
When I think of what generally causes a person (such as myself) to feel overwhelmed by any sort of big goal or desired end result, there are often two key aspects that can cause overwhelm:
(1) the nature or difficulty of the goal itself, and
(2) how we are approaching the goal mentally and emotionally (regardless of its actual objective difficulty).
Overwhelm Source #1: The nature or difficulty of the goal (recovery) itself.
From an objective standpoint, recovering from anorexia is a very challenging process. There is a reason recovery rates are so grim. (BUT that does NOT need to be the case for you!)
There is the obvious physical/nutritional health component. This may include things like:
So much more could be said, but suffice it to say for the purposes of this post that weight restoration / overall bodily healing is often very uncomfortable from a purely physical standpoint.
Happy Wednesday!
I feel like the week is already flying by!
I am definitely happy that daylight savings time is now over and that the mornings are lighter earlier on. I find that having brighter daylight earlier in the morning makes such a difference to my day!!
In other news…our Book Club is starting next week on Tuesday! We will be going through Soul-Deep Beauty. It’s not too late to join us! Reading/commitment level is meant to be rather minimal. You can contact me if you are interested or if you would like more information. This is open to anyone!
Read on for some November culinary inspiration!
Our thought patterns have a tremendous impact on our behaviors and our ability to grow and make changes.
Thinking about a non-food example — let’s say I am trying to have a productive work day (intended behavior). BUT, as life would have it, I slept miserably and have a terrible headache. I got out of bed later than I wanted and have barely crossed anything off my to-do list by the time early afternoon rolls around. Some common thought patterns here might be for me to start catastrophizing the day (Now my entire day is ruined! My whole week is going to be thrown off!), viewing the day as overly black-and white (I have gotten NOTHING done that I wanted… this day is an absolute failure) and continually judging myself for struggling to get done wanted I had planned and hoped.
Mentally reacting to my day in this way would likely cause me to continue spiraling throughout the day and week, veering even further from my original intentions.
Instead, a much more helpful response would be to recognize these unhelpful thought patterns, approach my day with flexibility and adjust as needed, show myself understanding and compassion, and live in the reality that I didn’t sleep well / am not feeling well instead of fighting reality by trying to plow ahead.
Like areas of our lives such as time/task management, habit-building, and health routines, many of us may have experience reacting to food with similar unhelpful thought patterns.
How we think about food has a great impact on how we engage with food.
In today’s blog post, I’m going to identify 10 common thought patterns that may be perpetuating any disordered eating you are struggling with.
For each thought pattern, I will provide an example as well as a way to reframe/look at the situation differently. I’ll also provide some additional tips and notes to consider. I hope you find this post helpful and something you can bookmark/come back to repeatedly!
10 Common Thought Patterns Perpetuating Your Disordered Eating:
If you are wrestling with a compulsive-like behavior, such as binge eating or compulsive eating, it may currently feel like it is hard or next to impossible to change this frustrating pattern. When this happens, maybe you feel like you are on autopilot, somewhat akin to having an out-of-body experience, and feel like all your typical values, health goals, and intentions have gone flying out the window..
Whenever an eating episode like this occurs (whether it is once in a while, every day, or multiple times a day), you likely feel some sort of combination of discouragement, disgust, and embarrassment regarding yourself and the eating behaviors. You may vow to change your ways, possibly restricting the next day or meal, yet the pattern continues.
UGH!
Maybe you even fear feeling hungry, you avoid social situations, and you are confused about what body size might be healthy for you. I can imagine that if you are dealing with something like this it is likely affecting your work, relationships, and overall self-care. You may be feeling alone and isolated, with no one knowing about your struggle.
If so, this post is for you!
When dealing with compulsive eating behaviors, it can be helpful to have tools and strategies for debriefing (or looking back on) the behavior, in order to identify patterns, triggers, and possible avenues for intervention and (ultimately) healing.
In today’s post, we will think about 4 areas to debrief when it comes to binge/compulsive eating experiences.
We will then consider a few ideas for intervention and healing. Because, if you’re like me, when it comes to frustrating, negative and unwanted dynamics, I’m guessing you are wanting this to eventually be a thing of the past! Which it can be!!
Guide to Debriefing & Intervening in Binge/Compulsive Eating Experiences:
Hello everyone! I hope your week is going well so far.
Two weekends ago we were able to make it up to Tahquamenon Falls to enjoy some fall colors and time outside. I was feeling a little unsure about the trip with the colder weather and rain that was forecasted all weekend (of course just a few days prior to our trip it was 70s and sunny there!). However, I’m really glad we ended up going!
The bulk of the rain was overnight, so wasn’t too bad. As my dad likes to say, “There is no such thing as bad weather… only bad clothing decisions!!” So I was sure to pack ALL the cold weather gear, perfect for staying warm while camping outside in the 40-degree rainy/drizzly weather.
It was a quick trip! Saturday we went on a long hike (between the upper and lower falls). We also went up to Whitefish Point, went to an absolutely delicious restaurant for dinner (more details later in post), and watched the Michigan game from our car/tent.
Time continues to fly by (at least from my perspective!)… we are already over halfway into October and it feels like the holidays are fast approaching! I am trying to slow down and focus on each day/week at a time… enjoying the things to be grateful for each day instead of constantly looking ahead OR overly looking at the negatives!
Delicious eats from the past few weeks… October edition!
