Why Eating Well Is a Form of Self-Respect

Food is tricky. There are so many enticing foods out there. Food is often used as a motivator, a treat, and a reward. So how do we tease out eating well, intuitive eating, and being our best and healthiest versions of ourselves? This is super complicated and that’s what I am going to talk about here, so read on!

When you respect yourself and your body, you consider what you eat a part of the process of respecting yourself. While I DO NOT recommend food restrictions (dieting mindset) or withholding foods that you enjoy. This only causes feeling of deprivation, however, there are some useful guidelines that can help you make the best choice possible in the moment for your mind, your body, and for your future self—when the decision relates to what you are about to eat.

Here are a series of questions that you can ask yourself about the foods you are choosing to eat:

• Before you eat, ask your food: “what do you have to offer me?” Ideally, we want our food to offer nutrients: fiber, vitamins, minerals, protein, health fat, and carbohydrates in order to give our bodies the nourishment it needs to build healthy cells and tissues. Nutrients are the ideal answer to this question!

• Next, ask your food, “are you desirable and enjoyable to eat?” This is super important as well because if your food does not offer some form of pleasure, that may be placing you at risk of feeling unsatisfied. When you are feeling unsatisfied by a meal, you may end up mindlessly grazing other foods in order to feel a sense of pleasure and satisfaction. This contributes to the negative cycle of emotional eating.

• Next, ask yourself, “am I actually hungry for this food?” If the answer is yes, you will most likely eat the food! If the answer is no, you can ask yourself “do I want to eat this food for any reason other than taste and nutrition?” If the answer is yes, ask yourself, “why do I want to eat this food?” This is where it may get interesting. If you want to eat this food for comfort, to avoid feelings, to fill the time or to fill any other void you may be experiencing in your life, this is indicative of emotional eating.

Emotional eating is eating for the purpose of numbing out or disconnecting from uncomfortable emotions. This creates a disconnect between our bodies and our emotions. Here are some common examples of emotional eating:

• Eating when lonely which causes food to become your friend,

• Eating when you are bored which causes food to become something to do to fill your time

• Eating when you are anxious which causes food to become a way to calm yourself down

• Eating when you are tired which causes a sugar rush for energy

• Eating when you are sad which uses food to help escape the discomfort of sadness and to temporarily feel happy

• You can read more about how to heal emotional eating on my post: 6 steps to finding freedom from emotional eating.

These examples of emotional eating are not healthy reasons to eat. When you eat emotionally, you are essentially demonstrating a sense of lack of self-respect or honoring your emotions and your internal experiences.

Offering yourself empowerment when it comes to your food choices allows you to move away from a deprivation mindset. A deprivation mindset is: “I can’t have that” while an empowered, Inner Strength based mindset is: “I choose not to have that because it does not serve my health and wellness goals.” This mindset demonstrates a form of self-respect.

This is how you build your Inner Strength over time and prepare yourself to manage your emotions in another, healthier more empowered manner. You can read about this on my blog post: 5 Stages of Awareness. Emotions offer incredibly valuable information about your experience of the present moment. When you learn to become present with them, food can be just food, and this is where your power lies!

One way to begin practicing healthy eating as a form of self-respect is to go through these questions each time you make a choice surrounding food. Allow yourself to make empowered choices, listen to your intuition and your body and you will feel uplifted by your food choices.

If you are in need of support for your emotional eating, know that you are not alone. I encourage you to reach out. I have a workbook and expressive journal titled Wholistic Food Therapy: A Mindful Approach to Making Peace with Food. It is place to explore your relationship with food, emotional eating patterns, while offering exercises and practices to help heal and create a healthy and peaceful relationship with food. I also created the online course, Freedom from Emotional Eating, which is also designed to help you get to the root of your emotional eating and offers a step-by-step approach to heal your relationship with food as well as yourself.

Transitioning into Fall by Eating with the Seasons: Creating a Healthy Mind and Body

***Delicious Soup Recipe Included!***

Any transition in life can be difficult. The changing of the seasons is no exception. Often the transition from one season to the next comes with changes that we experience physically, mentally and emotionally. The cooler temperatures, increased wind, and the diminishing daylight that accompany fall have an impact on our mind, body, energy and spirit.

As the sun begins to shift, you may notice your energy beginning to shift. By utilizing certain wellness, lifestyle and health practices, you can reduce any discomfort that you may experience with the seasonal changes. Foods and nutrition in particular can help to ease this transition and prepare your body for these changes.

When you eat according to what’s in season you can assist in this process to create more physical, digestive, energetic and emotional comfort. Certain foods and spices provide more grounding to offset the wind and others provide warmth to offset the cooler temperatures and diminishing daylight.

What do you love most about fall? I love warm sweaters and blankets, fall foliage, brisk walks and most of all-- I love Soup!

In my book, Wholistic Food Therapy: A Mindful Approach to Making Peace with Food, I introduce the 4 S’s of cooking as way to incorporate more vegetables into your daily meals. No matter what season, getting in a wide range of colorful vegetables and fruits helps to create optimal health and wellness.

The 4 S’s are: Soup, Salad, Stir Fry and Smoothies. During the summer, I love to eat and create flavorful, nutritious recipes for salad and smoothies to ensure a wide range of colorful vegetables and fruits make it into my daily diet. Now that fall has arrived, it is full-on SOUP season! 

Soups are such a great way to incorporate more vegetables into your daily meals. The fall provides more root vegetables and gourds and they are a simple and delicious addition to soups! Butternut squash, pumpkins and sweet potatoes are all fun to pack into hearty, warming, and nourishing soups!

Here is one of my favorite fall soup recipes: 

Creamy Curried Cauliflower and Butternut Squash Soup 

Ingredients:

·      1 large butternut squash, peeled, seeded and diced into about 1-inch cubes

·      1 large cauliflower crown chopped

·      1 medium yellow onion chopped

·      2 medium carrots chopped

·      2 stalks celery chopped

·      6 cloves garlic chopped

·      1 tablespoon curry powder

·      1 teaspoon cumin powder

·      1 tablespoon peeled and chopped fresh ginger root

·      3 inches peeled and chopped fresh turmeric root

·      2 teaspoons sea salt

·      2 tablespoons coconut oil

·      Pepper to taste

·      1 can unsweetened full fat coconut milk

·      4 cups organic chicken or vegetable broth

·      Pumpkin seeds, goat cheese and diced apple for garnish (optional)

Preparation:

1.    In a large soup pot, heat coconut oil over medium heat

2.    Add onion and sauté for 5 minutes

3.    Add carrots, celery, butternut squash, cauliflower and garlic, sauté for 8-10 minutes, stirring occasionally

4.    Add all seasoning and broth and bring to a light boil

5.    Add coconut milk, stir, turn heat to low, cover and simmer together for 15-20 minutes

6.    Turn off burner, let stand for another 10 minutes

7.    In small batches, transfer to a blender and blend until smooth

8.    Serve with pumpkin seeds, goat cheese and diced apple

Enjoy!

When you try it, let me know your thoughts! For more recipes, go to www.wholisticfoodtherapy.com Thank you for reading!

How to Reset Your Mindset in 5 Days

Remember those plans you had to improve your health? Remember the desire to exercise more, eat more vegetables and drink more water? Remember how you were going to get more sleep, spend more time doing something creative or practice more self-care? The difficult thing with creating a new goal is sticking with it. This is where mindset is vitally important. When you have something well prepared in your mindset, you are far more likely to make it happen than if you don’t. Are you ready to reset your mindset but you aren’t sure as to where to begin? Here’s a plan to create a healthy mindset reset in just five days.

Mindset is focusing on what you want with determination and making each and every choice based on what you want. You decide to choose your desired outcome. This is a commitment to yourself and your future goal. To begin, get your calendar out and mark in it right now where you will devote 15-20 minutes to this practice for five days to reset your mindset.

Now that you have decided, planned and prepared for the reset, commit to following this plan for the next five days.

Day 1: What Do You Want?

What is the health-related goal that you have been meaning to do, you have been putting off or fantasizing about but have not yet made it happen? Ask yourself if there is a reason for this? Now, set a timer for 5 minutes and bring to mind what you want. Visualize it and stay with the imagery for the full 5 minutes. When the timer goes off, use this affirmation: “Today, I will focus my mindset on what I want.” Spend a few minutes reflectively journaling about your experience.

Day 2: Strengthening Your Desire

Day 2 day is about expanding and internalizing and strengthening your desire. Begin by visualizing what you want and while it is becoming stronger in your mindset, allow it to sink into your heart. Ask yourself: why do I want this? Allow yourself to tune into your inner desire and allow it to rest in your heart. Set a timer for 5 minutes and focus on how it feels to hold what you want in your heart center. Breathe and stay as focused as possible on your heart. Once the timer goes off, use this affirmation: “My mindset is becoming stronger with the strength of my desire in my heart.” Spend a few minutes reflectively journaling about your experience.

Day 3: Make it Happen!

Now that you have established what you want, you have felt the desire for what you want, now believe that you have the ability to make it happen. For the meditation, visualize yourself actively doing or achieving your goals. Set a timer for 5 minutes and hold this belief within yourself that you will maintain action towards your goals. You will make this commitment to yourself and believe in your ability to follow through. Once the timer goes off, use the affirmation: “I believe in my ability to achieve my goals.” Spend a few minutes reflectively journaling about your experience.

Day 4: Take Consistent Action

Action is the difference between wanting and creating. Action can cure any fears you have surrounding achieving your goals. Today, choose to take decisive action towards you goal. What you have in your mindset is focusing on action and the mindful meditation will be reflecting on the action you did take today. As you are ready for the meditation, reflect on the action you did take towards your goals. How does this reflection on your action make you feel emotionally, physically, energetically? Set your timer for 5 minutes and reflect on how it felt to take decisive action. Once the timer goes off, use the affirmation: “I create what I want through taking consistent, decisive action.” Spend time reflectively journaling about your experience.

Day 5: Maintaining a Focused Mindset

When you focus more on what you have accomplished and less on what you haven’t, you are more likely to feel accomplished and motivated. When you only focus on what you haven’t accomplished, it depletes your energy and will cause your mindset to waiver. Stay focused on what you want! Any time your mindset begins to waiver, check in with yourself. Remind yourself of what you want, reflect on your commitment to yourself daily. Set a timer for 5 minutes and visualize yourself pushing through any obstacle or challenge to achieving what you want. Notice how it feels to remain focused and to maintain this mindset of determination and overcoming obstacles. Once the timer goes off, use the affirmation, “I am committed to myself and what I want.” Spend time reflectively journaling about your experience.  

Shifting your mindset is difficult. Often, we get stuck in old patterns and habits and can be hard to change. When you create a daily practice with devoted time to reflect and search inward, you will bring what you want into focus. When you are focused, you are more likely to maintain the positive yet challenging journey to continue the hard work. Showing up for yourself, showing up for your life, your experiences and choosing to keep your focus on what you want will help you maintain the ability to consistently make the decision to choose what you want. Set your mindset daily, take decisive action and you will find that what you want it on its way.

Want a guided support to reset your mindset? I created a 7-day guided mindset reset practice to help do just that, you can find it HERE!