How do you want to feel in your body?

No, not how do you want to feel once your body is the size you’ve been dreaming about.

In this current moment, what are the feelings that you want to feel, and truly experience, in your body 🙆🏻?

→Yes, even if you feel uncomfortable in it!

Let’s talk about willpower real quick.

Around this time of year food and body comments run rampant.

“It can't believe I’m eating these ____. It’s like I can’t stop!”
“You have so much self control! I can’t be around _____ without losing my sh*t.”
“Don’t judge me, but I’m going to eat ____.”
“If I can just make through these 30 days without ______ I’ll be golden.”

We rely on the idea of willpower, hoping it’ll help us follow restrictive diets. That it’ll help up control ourselves around food and lose those last ____ pounds this new year.

Although Thanksgiving has become a day for overindulgence and many times a built in day to get your eat on, I want to encourage you to take a macro view. Zoom way out to see your entire day. Yes, the appetizers and food will be aplenty, but what else will be going on? What is really important to you on this particular Holiday? How do you want to feel before, during and after your day?

The organizing, the prepping, the cooking, the entertaining, the perfecting (🙋🏻 ) and even the cleanup can be exhausting and so stressful. 

Oh, don’t worry, I didn’t forget about other serious sources of stress…

THE EATING. Potential weight gain. The pies taunting you from the back room. The diet talk, comments on your body size and fear of judgement about what you are/aren’t eating.

At the pits of the disorder I found myself in the all too similar place of I where I had been when I carried more physical weight- the anxiety and depression were still there. I was still hyper-focused on the way my body appeared, which continued to fuel the feelings of shame, worry of not being good enough and steepened the spiral and isolation of depression.

I was using the disorder to cope, and escape, to comfort and soothe.

Hello darkness, my old friend!

Let’s break down the word emotion real quick.

This is a great tool to call to mind when you feel like you just can’t deal with those tough feelings… those emotions that can be so overwhelming that you want to hide under the covers and never come out.

Emotion → E-motion → Energy in motion

5 tips to get started on your journey toward body acceptance.

Whose body rules are you living by?

Spoken rules and unspoken rules…

Without acknowledging and questioning them, they can dictate how we see and treat ourselves.

“Whoa, gaining a little weight there, aren’t ya?!” My brother asked me while poking my side after I had returned home for winter break after my first semester of my senior year in college.

Um, as if I hadn’t noticed my jean no longer fit 🤔.

That comment, although not intended to be malicious, reinforced a narrative that had been running rampant in my mind since I started school that year. That my weight was becoming a problem. It was all people saw. That to be the person I wanted to be, I had to get the weight off. ASAP.

Ever wonder why food can feel like the ultimate comfort?

It’s like nothing takes the edge off of a long, stressful day like (*insert your fave comfort food here*).

And sure, eating a cookie dough ice cream with abandon can certainly take the edge off... But, does eating in response to your emotions make you feel truly comforted?

Think 20, 30, 60 minutes later.

Break up with MyFitnessPal and take a Mindful Journal for a spin!

“How can you respond to your body with kindness and compassion?” is a question I ask many of my clients.

Most times, I get blank stares and shrugs in return, communicating, “I don’t have a clue!”

Do you know why that is?

This film is based on the story of a young woman struggling with anorexia.

On the heels of the release of Thirteen Reasons Why, there has been quite a bit of controversy around how this film will serve the community, people who are struggling with eating disorders.

As I planned the move I decided what I absolutely needed was a farmhouse table for the new space. After doing some research, Google and Pinterest told me that building a table wouldn’t be all that hard (ladies, why does Pinterest always do this to me!?).

Naturally, I set my mind on building one. I reassured my husband that it’d be a super quick project and that with our brains combined we could totally do it.

Well, we did it (enter fist pump here)!

“I LITERALLY CAN’T GO ONE MORE DAY JUST BEING WITH MYSELF!!”

I remember saying this more times than I can count.

And when we use food and exercise to cope, to feel better, to numb, we’re not able to actually work through the emotions. We simply mask them, cover them up and hide from them.

Which leads to them coming back with a vengeance.

Here’s the cycle that can result…

Feel—> Food—> Temporary Relief —>Feel —> Food... and on and on.

What’s at the very foundation of healing your relationship with food and your body?

Acceptance.

How long have you grappled with ‘emotional eating?’

Right.

A long time.

You’ve coped with stress, sadness, overwhelm and even celebrated your greatest victories with one common factor: food.

Food is your go to way of coping.

Because you’ve become accustomed to turning to food (it’s your comfort, your friend, your enemy, your secret love), you likely haven’t developed many other effective coping mechanisms.

If you suspect your daughter has an issue with food or her body image, it's important to reflect on the messages she has inadvertently been taught, your own experience with those messages and how they may be showing up in your own life. It's never too late to model a healthy and balanced relationship with food and your body.