(Haven’t we all been doing that since March?)
I haven’t conducted any formal surveys, but my guess is at least 70% of us feel OFF in our bodies. Things haven’t been normal for some time, the stress of various situations such as homeschooling, working from home, or worse, loss of a job or closure of your business…. We feel OFF.
Now the Holidays come in with their stuffing, gravy, fudge, sugar cookies and booze…. What are we supposed to do?
Food can be the best comfort we give ourselves. It can also totally fuck us up…
How can we enjoy the Holidays without feeling like a bag of overstuffed hot garbage??
We need to pay attention.
We need to be IN our bodies. Which is hard, because so many of us have spent so many years actively trying not to listen to our bodies. We have restricted. Dieted. Overate. Restricted again…
it’s a cycle, and once your in in, you are IN IT.
Pay Attention is GOOD advice, but it is also lazy advice.
How TF can you pay attention to something you have spent over half of your life trying to change, ignore, and trick….
You start by getting curious.
Asking yourself often what you really want and how you are feeling.
Being so completely annoying with yourself, bugging yourself before every meal, during every craving, after every bite.
Ask yourself almost obsessively; is this what I want, how is this making me feel and is this serving me?
This is what I like to call the pause. A painfully simple concept that can feel incredibly weird to do (at first).
Before every meal, before you even make your plate, ask yourself what you want.
Ideally you have a fridge full of meal prepped food you feel good about eating. Maybe you even have a menu and a plan….
That is great.
But do you really want it??
Or are you eating it because you feel like you need to eat it? Because it is the “good”, healthy, or
right thing to do. Be careful being too strict, this can easily slide into restrictive and diet like behaviors which is the start of the whole jacked up circle.
Ask yourself what you want before every single meal.
Then listen.
Then HONOR.
If your body tells you it wants carbs, give it some carbs.
If your body tells you it needs a huge salad with full fat dressing, give it the salad and don’t do a two millisecond pour of dressing. Eat.
If your body reminds you that you haven’t had protein all day, eat it.
And if your body says I would really enjoy a bagel with cream cheese; eat that too.
Then listen again. Closely.
How do you feel? What feedback are you getting?
Are you still hungry 20 minutes later? That is important, it means you haven’t eaten enough which will lead to big cravings or overeating later (or both…good times😶).
Are you overly full? That can happen too. We are programed to finish our plates OR we are eating with one hand while the other scrolls through social media, so we have no actual idea
when
we are full. We eat until the food is gone, assuming what is on our own plates is what we need.
SLOW DOWN.
This isn’t groundbreaking stuff, and I am far from the first one to say it. Eat slowly. Put your forks down between bites.
Be present.
2020 has been jacked up, but it has taught us we really have no where pressing to be. We have nothing but time, even when it doesn’t feel like it…
Pay attention to how your body is feeling after each meal or snack.
Most folks know pushing a diet isn’t smart, so the diet/wellness industry pushes other things now: Fear of gluten. Dairy will kill you and give you zits on your chin. Soy makes you fart….
There is some truth there,
but the other truth is MOST of us can get away with eating MOST things. Will 8 pounds of gluten destroy your gut? Yes! So will 8 pounds of broccoli.
It is rarely the FOOD that is the issue. It is the quantities. (read that again)
Eating a disproportionate amount of carbs, of fat, of protein, of ANYTHING is not good. Use common sense, balance your plate MOST of the time and you will be OK.
Tune out what someone told you was bad for YOUR body. And tune into YOUR body.
What is it telling you? How do you feel? We want to be able to blame cheese for our love handles and shitty mood. We want a bad guy. AND when we read about how some foods can be bad FOR SOME PEOPLE it is easy to believe the same foods can be bad for us.
Confirmation bias in action. The BEST thing you can do to TUNE IN to your body is TUNE EVERYTHING ELSE OUT. Maybe there is something happening, but someone else's experience will not help you navigate what is going on in YOUR gut. Throw out what you heard, pay attention to YOU.
Go back to self-questioning: is this really making me feel bad OR is my thinking about it making me feel bad.
For years I thought if I ate certain foods, I would get bloated, break out and my mood would go to shit. And that is exactly what happened. Then I tried a wild idea. I tried my best to not give those foods power, to treat them the same as I treated (and thought about) “good” foods… I focused energy on the idea that they would have no ill effect on me. And largely, that is what happened.
Think about this in a different context; imagine walking into a party thinking it is going to be awful. You will be bored; the people suck and your going to have a shitty time. What is going to happen?? Exactly what you thought. You will have a horrible time and it is largely your doing… great job! 😶🙄
To a large extent,
our thoughts create our reality.
Tune in to yourself by clearing out what you think you know. Tell yourself you will feel fine and watch what happens. (obviously if you have a diagnosed food allergy this doesn’t apply. If you are self-diagnosing because you read something on Instagram, this applies)
Pause. Question. And Honor.
Sometimes we are indulging because of habit, not because of true want. Having wine every Thursday because it is what we have always done instead of asking if it is really serving us or making us feel good.
Same with big holiday meals…. have whatever you want, just make sure you want it. No one LOVES dinner rolls or handfuls of pre-holiday meal chips…. we eat them because we they are there. Actions like that are why we end up feeling guilty post meal, consuming food we do not even find joy in. Try to fill your plate (and bellies) with food you really love and that are special to the holiday, not Ritz crackers and precut cheese….
After you have it, let it go. You were not bad, it will not ruin your progress or make you a bloated mess, just let it go.
Pause. Question. Honor. Release all judgment.
The only thing you do not need on your plate this year is guilt. That tastes like shit and does more damage than all the
glutencornsoysugar
in the world.
Sometimes the simplest thing is not simple at all. It is work. It is tuning in and constant questioning of ourselves, which
most of us have never done.
I believe deeply it is the only way we will ever get ahead and stop fighting with our bodies.
Pausing.
How cool would it be to get in tune with our bodies NOW, before the New Year. Slow down this season friends…. we have nowhere to go….
Pausing, questioning, paying attention, letting go of guilt and judgement…. It is work, and it can be challenging to navigate alone.
My January group will help you travel through the bullshit of past dieting while setting you up with lifelong habits and practices that will keep you feeling good in your body.
You can read all about it here and sign up with pre-Thanksgiving discount (valid until 11/28). If you are over fighting with your body this program is for you.