Tag: joy-based eating

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

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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by Libby

Benefits of Eating Regularly (3 Meals & 3 Snacks)

Today I wanted to do a post on some key reasons why eating regularly is beneficial – both from a nutrition and a relationship with food standpoint.

By “eating regularly,” I’m talking 3 meals and around 3 snacks per day, every 3 hours or so. Some people may prefer/need more like 2 or 4+ snacks, and some people eat a little more often or go a little longer in between meals, depending on hunger cues/personal preferences/schedules each day. BUT, I find these rules of thumb for regular eating rhythms tend to work well for pretty much everyone. (Since they are based on human biology & psychology!)

As an example (everyone is different!) you can see how I might incorporate 3 meals & about 3 snacks in my everyday eating here.

Oftentimes, a client will come to me eating only 2-3 meals per day and no snacks. Snacks might be viewed as “bad,” and the thought of eating more regularly may at first seem anxiety-inducing or counterproductive. However, it’s common that the client is experiencing a range of symptoms that can be vastly improved upon with regular eating rhythms.

These symptoms may include bloating, constipation/diarrhea, obsession/preoccupation with food, binge eating, chaotic eating, difficulty noticing or listening to hunger/fullness cues, lack of hunger cues, slowed metabolism, imbalanced hormones, feeling addicted to food, and more!

Once we begin to understand more what is going on and start to make gentle shifts towards more regular and balanced eating, these concerns start to improve.

Let’s explore some of the main reasons why I recommend eating regularly! (3 meals and ~3 snacks)

Benefits of eating regularly: 

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by Libby

Healthy Food Boundaries vs. Unhealthy Restriction

Something I am passionate about when it comes to food is the idea of increasing permission with food. Working on “permission with food” is almost always a big part of disordered eating recovery.

Giving yourself greater permission with food might look like…

  • Allowing yourself foods that you like but typically avoid because they are “less healthy” (and doing so without guilt or “compensatory measures” like restricting the next day)
  • Growing in flexibility with how you approach food, such as enjoying a dessert at a time of day you might not normally eat dessert
  • In general, starting to heal any food rules you might consciously or subconsciously be using to navigate food decisions in a fear or anxiety-based way

Many of us may know from experience that restricting food intake and/or NOT giving yourself permission with food is a surefire way to experience chaos and obsession with food. You can read more on this idea and the cycle of restriction in this blog post. Chaos/obsession with food might look like binge eating, compulsively eating, and/or obsessively thinking about food (whether or not you “act” on those obsessions by eating).

If you are growing in healing your relationship with food and your body, maybe you have started to experience some of the benefits (nutritionally and mentally/emotionally) of giving yourself greater permission with food. HOWEVER, you may also be at a place in your journey of wondering when/if it is “okay” to say no to a food without doing this from a place of restriction…(the place/mentality you are working so hard to leave!).

When making a food choice, is there a healthy/life-giving way to say no to a certain food without it coming from a dieting/restricting mentality?

In other words, what is the difference between setting what I call a “healthy food boundary” versus engaging in unhealthy, disordered eating-type restriction?

Let’s begin to explore this idea in the rest of this post! As always, I’d love to hear any thoughts that you have (feel free to leave them in the comments or message me personally).

To get us thinking, let’s consider an example evening dessert scenario.

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by Libby

5 Nutrition & Exercise Goals to Consider (Other than Directly Pursuing Weight Loss)

Something I talk about with clients a lot is the idea that we can’t DIRECTLY control our weight or body size… however difficult that may be to accept, we can’t go out and magically choose to automatically be our perfectly desired size.

That doesn’t mean throwing all care about our health and wellness out the window… far from it!! On the contrary, I see pursuing life-giving healthy behaviors (which we can generally control) as the best path to improved health, not first and foremost fixating on weight loss or changing your body size.

Letting go of fixating on weight is not the same as letting go of caring about your health!

Actually, I see fixating on weight as generally being detrimental to health. You can read some more about my thoughts on weight here.

“Weight loss” or “body change” are not actions we can go out and directly “do” or make happen. Nor do those things necessarily mean improved health! When we instead choose to focus on caring for ourselves well physically through behaviors we can actually do and control, we can trust we are on the path to improved health. When combining this approach with addressing any underlying root issues (such as environmental toxins, hormonal imbalances, gut issues, etc.) that are preventing our bodies from being in balance despite healthy behavior changes, our actions are likely to lead our bodies to the sizes at which they are the healthiest. This could mean losing weight, gaining weight, or staying roughly the same. I see the point as better health, not a specific weight or size goal.

I am all about self-improvement and setting intentions. Not focusing on weight does NOT mean “giving up on health progress.” Instead of pursuing weight loss as a goal, here are 5 behavior-oriented nutrition & exercise goals to consider! Maybe one or two will resonate with you depending on where you are currently at in your own health and wellness journey.

5 Nutrition & Exercise Goals to Consider (Other than Directly Pursuing Weight Loss):

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by Libby

Increasing Satisfaction in Eating

Hello everyone! Today we are talking about SATISFACTION in eating. A lot of what I think about when it comes to having a healthy relationship with food connects back to satisfaction. Satisfaction can be thought of on a physical level (are you adequately nourished and responding to your hunger/fullness cues?) and also a more psychological/emotional level (are you regularly eating foods you enjoy and not feeling deprived?).

So often it seems that satisfaction gets left out when thinking about nutrition and eating. YES food is fuel for our bodies. YES it is important to eat plenty of fruits and veggies. HOWEVER, are you also seeking to pursue enjoyment in your daily eating experience, feeling appropriately satiated throughout the day, and regularly eating foods you find pleasurable?

As I have written about before, the array of health benefits we can get from food have to do with much more than their physical/nutritional benefits. For optimal health, it is important take into account not only the nutritional content of what we are eating, but also our emotional and mental well-being – aka our relationship with food.

When we seek satisfaction, listening to our bodies, and a healthy relationship with food as the foundation for our eating, meeting our nutritional needs tends to fall into place without our constant micromanaging. You may be wondering: how can I grow in experiencing greater satisfaction in eating? (*and thus improve my physical, nutritional, mental, and emotional health??*) Let’s explore this idea with the following ideas!

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by Libby

Exploring Different “Types of Hunger”

When many people first hear of Intuitive Eating, they tend to think it is simply about eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are full. While this is certainly an important part of being an intuitive eater, eating intuitively goes well beyond responding to our physiological hunger/fullness cues. In this post we will explore some of the other kinds of “hungers.”

This concept of “types of hungers” is introduced in the Intuitive Eating book and I will elaborate and expand a bit more in terms of how I tend to think about it. Of course, generally when we think of feeling hungry we are talking about a physiological drive to eat. Everyone experiences physiological hunger in slightly different ways, often some combination of a grumbling stomach, lightheadedness, irritability, difficulty concentrating, etc. For the purposes of this post, we will explore hunger as a concept of various drives/reasons to eat including and beyond just physical hunger.

Let’s explore some of the different types of hunger!

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by Libby

What is Intuitive Eating?

This post was first published on January 13, 2021. As many of you are newer to the blog, I wanted to repost it today as the principles of intuitive eating are relevant for much of my nutrition philosophy! 

Today I want to spend some time discussing what intuitive eating is, as this framework of eating underlies much of what I believe and talk about when it comes to food. When I first learned about intuitive eating towards the end of high school, it greatly helped me in my recovery from an eating disorder and in improving my relationship with food.

The intuitive eating framework was developed by two dietitians, Eveyln Tribole, M.S., R.D.N., and Elyse Resch, M.S., R.D.N. The first edition of the book, Intuitive Eating, was published in 1995, and the fourth (and most recent) edition was published in June of 2021. The book goes in depth on the ten principles of intuitive eating (which I will describe more below) and is a resource I would HIGHLY recommend if you are interested in learning more! (*There is also a workbook that you can get to go along with the book that is also really helpful!) Since the publication of the book, there have been over 100 studies on intuitive eating, validating its effectiveness when it comes to improving one’s overall health (both physical and mental), including one’s relationship with food.

Intuitive eating is a way of eating that focuses on tuning into your own internal bodily cues, mind, emotions, and overall intuition. It places emphasis on the reality that our bodies know best what/when/how much to eat – better than an app or calorie tracker, a meal plan, or a diet (or “lifestyle/wellness plan”) – YOU yourself innately have the ability to eat in a way that cares for YOUR body and YOUR specific needs at any given point in time.

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