Intuitive Eating, Is A Lot Like Mindfulness

10 principles of intuitive eating:

1. Reject the Diet Mentality
Intuitive eating says that you are the expert of your body and to eliminate rules for eating. This can be empowering and help free yourself of restrictions and allow you to gain more awareness of your body.  

2. Honor Your Hunger
Hunger is your body’s way of telling you to eat. Start to cue in to your hunger and fullness by taking time throughout the day, to check in with your body, and by asking yourself how hungry or full you feel. By doing this you’ll be able to identify those different levels of hunger and fullness.

3. Make Peace with Food & 4. Challenge the Food Police
Are there foods that you consider off-limits? Or do you feel guilty about what or how much you eat?  So make peace with food by giving yourself unconditional permission to eat. Drop the labels of "good" and "bad" or "healthy" and "junk" foods.

5. Respect Your Fullness
Learn to identify when you’re comfortably full the point when you’re no longer hungry and the food you’re eating is losing its enjoyability. Do this by taking time during your meal to ask yourself how the food tastes and how full you feel.

6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor of Eating
Eating should be an enjoyable, satisfying experience. Make the time special by eating with others, or making the food with others. Viewing food as precious and valuable can truly help shape the experience of eating.

7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food
Although eating should be enjoyable, it shouldn’t be your main source of comfort. Learning and utilizing other coping skills that revitalize your senses. Smell, touch, sight and hearing can all be as powerful as a source of comfort that taste is.

8. Respect Your Body
Accept and respect your body as it is now, whatever shape and size you are. Your body is a temple, its what protects you, moves you and holds you.

9. Exercise — Feel the Difference
 Tuning in to how exercise feels, and try experimenting with different forms of exercise and finding things you enjoy — if it’s going to the gym you don’t like, think of walking, dancing, bike riding, rock climbing or playing with your kids instead.

10. Honor Your Health
When you start tuning in to how food tastes and how your body feels when you eat, then you’ll also start noticing that some foods make you feel better than others. Strive for foods that taste good to you and, in your overall diet, get in foods that are also healthy for you.

Media and Body Image: Revenge Body?

What message are we really getting?

While I've seen the new show by Khole Kardashian, what is message she is really sharing in regards to finding a healthy body and mind? While, I do see a small glimmers in the previews of the show that the participants overcome the idea of becoming healthy for someone else and begin owning their own emotional story, its unclear on whether the masses are grasping that idea. I state that because, this is not the premise of the show, the premise is clearly a gimmick.

 Lets be honest, how many people will really watch a self-empowerment show that the Kardashians have their named attached to? The gimmick is all about having the audience buy in to watching the show, about making money, and not about spreading body positivity.

Here are the facts:

Losing weight in order to get over a past trauma is not effective, in fact its a symptom of avoidance of the true emotional struggle that takes place after any loss. This mindset could very likely lead to disordered eating, that if untreated has the potential to turn into an eating disorder. In my practice with clients I have noticed that once a person begins to loose weight rapidly they get "hooked" on the positive reinforcement of feedback from other people. For example, once they loose the weight, they hear comments such as "you look great" and things of the like, which leads to further motivation to stress their bodies with future weight loss.

People tend to forget that weight lose or dramatic body changes is a trauma within itself. The body under goes extreme stress, which is why a body positive out look/acceptance of the body can be more healing than almost any other practice. The long-term method that shows health in the mind and body is intuitive eating, and practicing loving kindness towards the body.

I'll be posting more about intuitive eating soon!

9 ways to help combat Impostor Syndrome

I've often dealt with feelings of doubt about my performance , whether its been in school, at work, volunteering, in relationships. As I'm headed down the path of self-improvement, working to gain a promotion or simply doing something new, that fear pops up. This fear that I'm bumping up against the limits of my own abilities.

This is a common headspace to be in, one that creates anxiety and is known as Impostor Syndrome. The voice inside my head may start saying things like:

■ “Who gave you permission to do that?”

■ “Do you have a the qualifications to even try?”

■ “Who said you could try to help people, you're not good enough to do that?”

If you suffer from something similar to this, your voice may be telling you something very similar, all directed towards the idea of "Am I really good enough, I'm such a fraud?!"

Moving beyond these fears takes awareness, affirmations, and challenging the belief often. Those that are naturally gifted and dedicated to our skill or talent or work, we often discount its value. Because we feel as though we haven't really tired or earned it the hard way because its something that we are passionate about.

For example, I love practicing yoga and have been practicing for 4 years, I wanted to spread the love to others so I decided to do a 200 hour yoga teacher training to help empower others. Now that I'm a teacher and have the chance to share this wonderful practice I tell myself that:

"I'm a fake"

Even though I know I have years of practice and the training to actually teach.

Here are some ways that I've found help me to practice overcoming these thoughts and feelings:

1. Stop comparing myself to others

2. Remind myself that I am a trained and/or have a skill to perform the task

3. Call out your thoughts by name "I'm experiencing Imposter Syndrome"

4. Remember that making a mistake doesn't mean you're a fake

5. Realize that when you hold yourself back you are robbing the world of the value you add

6. Find someone that you can talk to about feeling like a fraud

7. You're not gonna die from not being "perfect"

8. Keep track on the positive feedback you hear

9. Accept that you have a role in your success up to this point

5 Love your Body Practices

1. Go on a gratitude walk.

In our busy world and life, it's easy to overlook the benefits of simply moving your body with pleasure and gratitude. Practicing gratitude with movement reprograms your cellular biology much faster than just gratitude alone. Movement can make improvements in areas of digestion elimination, serotonin and dopamine. It'll also develop the will center of your prefrontal cortex, making you more committed to your self loving practice.

2.  Eat with the vision of love

Put guilt and shame behind you when you eat, and eat with love of yourself and nourishment in mind. Take a look at the emotional need behind the craving of certain foods and figure out how you can lovingly care for yourself in a pleasurable way, without the need for food for emotional avoidance. Try replacing the habitual consumption of food with an action: try an activity you've postponed, put energy toward developing a friendship or relationship, honor your creativity, explore something new that gives you pleasure.

3. Give yourself an all-over-body hug.

Treat your body to something that your body craves, such as a hot bath with Epsom salts or essential oil body scrubs. Utilize the caregivers around you for a full body massage that its just the right pressure.  As you do these, imagine you're washing and melting self-judgment away.

4. Health the relationship you have with yourself and you body

Look in the mirror and say "I love you". Start by place one hand on your belly and one hand on your heart, and tell yourself out loud how much you love every inch of YOU.  Say it like you mean it.

5. Give your body rest

Sleep when you need to and let yourself rest often. Taking care of your body is not a sign of laziness or not being motivated, its a sign that you are taking time to love and respect your body.