Ep. #120: How Katy Quit Dieting for Good

This episode is not what I had planned for today. Rather than go ahead with my regular recording schedule, I'm here to let you know that I'm going to be pressing pause on the show. This does not mean I'm closing my business! Intuitive eating is still the heart and soul of my practice, and I'll continue to see clients (and get ready to enroll more amazing women into my new membership program!). However, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed in my life at the moment (more on that below), and the podcast was on the list of things I don't "have" to be investing time into right now. If you've been feeling a little frazzled yourself, let this be your invitation to take a deep breath and see what you might be able to press pause on in your own life. Listen in to hear about: Life Update: The Boys Life Update: Lack of Freedom Pressing Pause Focusing On Growth Throw-Back Episodes Top 10 Teaching Podcasts & Top 5 Interviews Get the full show notes here: caitlinball.com/2021/04/pressing-pause Get my free training here: www.caitlinball.com/training  Connect with my on Instagram here: www.instagram.com/caitlinballhealth/ 

Holly Toronto is a body image coach and spiritual mentor who works with intuitive eating and spirituality. If you're curious, questioning, and or growing your own spirituality, this is a great episode for you! We discuss: The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back Giving Herself Time to Heal Intuitive Eating & Spirituality The Power of Knowing That Bodies Are Not Objects Starting The Spiritual Journey Trusting Your Body As Your Guide You can find the full show notes here: www.caitlinball.com/2021/04/intuitive-eating-spirituality I'm on Instagram here: www.instagram.com/caitlinballhealth/  Connect with Holly here: Free Body Gratitude Meditation: https://hollytorontocoaching.lpages.co/body-gratitude-meditation/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holly.toronto/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/143221746427796 Website: www.hollytoronto.com

This past year had plenty of emotions, and navigating uncharted territory while dealing with lots of emotions can result in using food as coping mechanism. From boredom (hello quarantine!) to frustration to loneliness to feeling celebratory; if you use food to deal with an emotion, that's emotional eating. We all do it, and only we can decide if it's working for us or not. On this episode, we'll dive in to: Why Emotional Eating Isn't "Good" or "Bad" When It's NOT Emotional Eating 3 Tips For When It IS Emotional Eating Choosing the BEST Solution For Yourself And more! Plus, here are the links I reference in the show: TRAINING: www.caitlinball.com/training  SHOW NOTES: www.caitlinball.com/2021/03/stop-emotional-eating/ DESERT EVERYDAY: www.caitlinball.com/2021/03/dessert-everyday/ FEEL YOUR FEELINGS: www.caitlinball.com/2019/03/episode-22-feel-your-feelings-instead-of-eating-them/  RELEASE RESTRICTIONS: www.caitlinball.com/2019/09/intuitive-eating-101-letting-go-restrictions/  IG: www.instagram.com/caitlinballhealth/

Wondering if you can eat dessert everyday? Experiment! Try some different kinds of desserts (I recently tried Oreos again, and realized I don't love them that much). Have them in different settings (your coffee shop patio, in the tub, at the table). Indulge with different people (your kids, while on the phone with your best friend, with your husband). What felt good? What did you enjoy most? At the end of the day, only you know what is right for you. You don't need to work off of some sense of "good" or "bad", and you don't need to get outside approval. This is a fun chance to get to know more about yourself and your body! Resources & Links Mentioned:  Show Notes: www.caitlinball.com/2021/03/dessert-everyday/ Free, on-demand training to help you ditch food guilt and shame and feel free: www.caitlinball.com/training  For those who might be wondering if they have a sugar addiction: www.caitlinball.com/2018/12/episode-11-are-you-addicted-to-sugar/  Instagram: www.instagram.com/caitlinballhealth/ 

So....my body isn't exactly "bouncing back" to what it was pre-baby. And you know what? That's okay! Part of my intuitive eating practice right now is really learning how to love and appreciate my body as it is. That's an ever-evolving journey, and I wanted to give you a sneak peak into how it's going. I also want to be honest about the reality that this is an adjustment, and there are struggles. I'm so glad this is a safe place to dive into those! We'll talk about: Not Weighing or Measuring Myself Bringing Whole Food Into Our Home Sleeping When Tanner Sleeps Decreasing Caffeine Increasing Movement Practicing Body Gratitude And more! SHOW NOTES: www.caitlinball.com/2021/03/bouncing-back-after-baby/ INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/caitlinballhealth/ 

Today, I’m sharing an interview with lactation consultant, registered dietician, and author Jaren Soloff. Her book, The Postnatal Cookbook, offers simple and nutritious recipes that really encompass a post-partum, gentle nutrition approach. This interview has so much valuable information for expecting moms, new moms, and honestly….pretty much any mom or caretaker out there! Listen in to hear about: Eating Disorders & Women’s Health Vulnerable Times Post-Partum Gentle Nutrition How to Take Dieting Off the Table Post-Partum Cravings The Postnatal Cookbook Children as a Mirror And more! Full show notes: https://caitlinball.com/2021/03/post-partum-gentle-nutrition/

Alissa Rumsey is a registered dietician. She’s been in the intuitive eating space for years, and I’ve been following her for a quite a while myself. It’s a huge honor to have her on the podcast today. Alissa has a weight-inclusive nutrition practice, and recently published a new book, Unapologetic Eating. In this interview we talked about the unlearning you have to do as part of leaving dieting behind. Alissa has an awesome process for helping people become unapologetic eaters, and we get into that as well! When you grab my latest offer, you can get started unlearning your old beliefs and kicking dieting to the curb! I’m offering two lost-cost, drop-in coaching calls. These are for women who are ready to start loving their bodies (Body Image Call) and stop emotional eating (Emotional Eating Call). If you’d like to see what coaching could be like, this offer is for you! Feel free to take advantage of whichever call topic resonated most with you (or grab them both if you’re ready to really dive deep)! Becoming a Nutrition Therapist Although she’s officially a registered dietitian, Alissa prefers to use the term nutrition therapist because she feels it better encapsulates what she does with her clients. She’s also a certified intuitive eating counselor. Her weight-inclusive nutrition practice is located virtually, and she offers 1:1 guidance for those looking to liberate themselves from dieting! As a young kid, Alissa didn’t have many external inputs around her eating and body size. She didn’t experience shifts (and increased stressors) around eating and body size until mid-way through high school. She stopped playing basketball as she was going through puberty, and gained weight. Looking back she can see that the transition of puberty and the decrease in movement would have clearly and naturally led to weight gain. Living through it, however, she was concerned and started dieting. She also got a job at a gym, and became fascinated in health and nutrition. Ultimately, her career as a dietitian started from a very disordered place of eating and exercising. Her thoughts were often consumed about guilt connected to eating and movement. She found her identity getting wrapped up in being the “healthy” person, and she felt pressured to maintain a certain image. Shifting Perspectives on Diet Culture When Alissa started working in the ICU of a local hospital, she found it an interesting change of speed. She was used to focusing on ways people could decrease calories or size, but in the ICU the focus was often on ways to get people to consume enough nutrients. Their more urgent physical needs shifted the dietary focus in a positive way. During this time Alissa was also lucky to be surrounded by roommates and co-workers who had healthy relationships with food. Slowly her own perspective changed, and she found herself migrating towards intuitive eating naturally. A few years later, she discovered the official intuitive eating framework. After a bit more learning, she was sold. Intuitive eating made so much natural sense, and she knew she needed to incorporate it into her work. Weight stigma, size bias, and misleading information about the connection between health and weight captured her interest, and she knew she couldn’t simply look away. Thankfully, Alissa notes that many programs now have more information about intuitive eating and the Health At Every Size (HAES) movement. No one was talking about those things when Alissa was going through school. Now, they’re becoming more recognized! Unapologetic Eating Alissa’s new book, Unapologetic Eating, is available now! When you’re ready to let go of dieting, there is a lot of unlearning that needs to happen. Ultimately, unlearning diet culture is a huge part of being able to become an unapologetic eater. Alissa notes that everything we think we know about food, nutrition, health, wellness, and body size is something we’re taught at one point or another. That means we have a LOT of deeply held beliefs about these things! Because our culture is very anti-fat, that means we’ve been programmed to elevate certain bodies and devalue others. These are considered implicit biases because we don’t really think about them. They’ve just been instilled within us, and it’s key that we take the time to unlearn them if we want to become free. Alissa also reminds us that growth is often uncomfortable! She recognizes that she holds a lot of body privilege as someone who is white, cis-gendered, heterosexual, and straight sized. Readers may find themselves learning new information that challenges their perceptions of how worthy, valuable, or superior some of these culturally privileged indicators really are – and that can be unsettling. Read with an open mind, and be willing to explore new ideas and ask the hard questions! Unlearning Diet Culture Alissa had built a whole identify around being “a healthy dieting”. As she started unlearning diet culture, she had to realize that those identity markers weren’t as important as she had once made them. Releasing them, however, meant that she had find new ways of thinking about and understanding herself. She also had to confront a lot of old beliefs in order to begin to reconnect with her own body, needs, and feelings. That might require questioning old beliefs. You need to be willing to consider where your current beliefs have come from, and the impact they may be having on the way you’re living. Eventually, you’ll find yourself wanting to know: What can I do about this? Alissa thinks of that as the opportunity to go even deeper! There is so much to delve into when it comes to raising awareness, and it’s an ongoing process. Unpacking your own history with dieting, nutrition, body-love, and more yields all sorts of amazing information about who you are, what beliefs you hold, and how dieting may have contributed to your life as coping mechanism. It’s Not Linear None of this is linear! Start where you are, and lean into what you’re learning. As you deepen your awareness, you’ll find continual areas that you want to continue shifting and changing. Once you recognize a thought pattern or belief that you want to change, Alissa recommends trying the opposite and seeing what happens! Self-compassion is key here, as well as paying attention to your body and listening to the signals that are being sent. You have to get comfortable with sitting in things as well! The answers you find in the process of unlearning diet culture are rarely black & white or binary. Instead, there are many shades of grey, many ways of being, and many paths to understanding. The more you learn about yourself, your body, and your mind, the more ability you’ll have to build new patterns and create change! Alissa’s Intuitive Eating Framework Unapologetic Eating is set up in four sections: Fixing, Allowing, Feeling, Growing. Those sections mirror her intuitive eating framework as well. In Fixing, the focus is on understanding the history of dieting, nutrition, and body-acceptance. Unlearning these parts of diet culture are really foundational. Clients (and readers) are asked to consider how that information plays into their own experiences and lived reality when it comes to food, body-confidence, and so on. Once that is understand, they can move into Allowing themselves to begin creating changes. What will it look like to do something different? To reconnect to the self? The changes that occur during Allowing lead naturally into Feeling. As you start feeling into your body, you’ll often start to feel other emotions. Often, this is really uncomfortable. Self-compassion, honoring and respecting your body, and sitting with hard things are all key parts of feeling. Finally, there is a chance to really start Growing. Once you’re done trying to fix yourself, begin to allow yourself to be, feel your feelings and reconnect to your body…. You get to grow into the fullest version of yourself. How do you want to eat? Who are you? What do you want to do? There is so much to dig into here – embodiment, self-expression, passion, desire – and it’s really powerful to explore it all! Food can be an amazing entry point to learning more about the Self! The journey is so powerful. You don’t need to fix yourself, and once you stop trying — so much in your life opens up!  

Let’s talk about ways to stop food guilt! I recently talked to a client who was ready to dive even deeper into releasing her own food guilt, and it got me thinking about ways we could all do this. Before we start, I just want to say... Continuing with your intuitive eating practice, in general, is going to be the most helpful way to stop food guilt. Going back to the basics is a big key! So if your overall practice has been lagging, or if you’ve gotten a little off track with intuitive eating, I’d encourage you to do a refresh there! In this episode, I do have some valuable tips for before, during, and after experiencing potential food guilt. I’m super excited to share them — just want to be sure you remember that ongoing practice is the key! Footnote: I have a new opportunity for new clients! I’m going to be doing two “drop-in” coaching calls, and you have the opportunity to drop in. Just like gyms and yoga classes let you sample a class or two before you commit, I’m going to let you sample my Quit Dieting for Good coaching program! The calls are just $37, and you can sample either one, or both. They’ll be Feb 28th at 11am PST and March 14th at 11am PST. I’d love to see you there! 5 Tips to Stop the Food Guilt Tip #1 — Before You Eat: Before you eat, consider what food will actually satisfy your wants and needs in that moment. When you make a conscious choice to eat a food you have a desire to eat, it’s easier to own that decision! You’re also more likely to choose a food that can satisfy both wants and needs. That includes how it tastes, as well as how it makes your body feels. You might also be able to recognize more clearly when you’re choosing “want” foods, and be more likely to balance them with “need” foods as well. I find that conscious choices decrease my guilt levels a lot! For instance, I’ve been having some guilt about my son’s screen time lately. I notice that if I consciously decide I’m going to let him watch during a certain time span, I can let him do so without feeling guilty. But if I let him start watching and I just let time pass while I’m doing other things, working on my business, or scrolling my phone, I tend to feel more guilty. I feel more empowered and less guilty when I know I’ve made a choice, versus feeling that it “just happened”. Tip #2 — Before & While You Eat Try a mantra either before you eat, or while you eat! Something like: + Food is food. + There is no good food, and no bad food. + I get to decide what I want to eat. We have so many food stories that we’ve internalized — it can be hard to NOT feel guilty when we go against them! Using a mantra that reminds you about your new food beliefs and stories can help you have more confidence and less guilt. Tip #3 — While You’re Eating Take the time to enjoy what you’ve decided to eat. Often we feel guilty when we just consume food with no real enjoyment or appreciation. When we consciously decide what we want to eat, and then allow ourself to really savor and enjoy that food, it’s easier to feel good while we eat. Taking that time to enjoy is a reminder that food can be really fun. And if guilty feelings pop up, knowing that you truly enjoyed it can give you the affirmation that eating it was a good choice that are empowered to make. Nothing to feel guilty about at all! Tip #4 — After You Eat If you feel guilt creeping in after you’ve eaten, ask yourself why. Is it because you don’t physically feel good after eating that food? Do you think you aren’t “supposed” to eat it? Are you afraid you’ll gain weight? All of those (and more) can be reasons that our minds trigger us to feel guilty about what we’ve eaten. Many women especially feel guilty about food because of the connection to gaining weight. If that’s you, I’d love to have you check out these two episodes: Body Acceptance and the Desire to Lose Weight and Three Tangible Ways to Love Your Body. Praciting body love can help you release the stress about losing weight, which is another big piece of the puzzle when it comes to releasing guilt! Tip #5: Before Next Time You can’t fail at intuitive eating. No matter how you feel before, during, or after eating, you can use that as feedback to help you next time you’re eating. And as for food guilt? When you feel it coming on, use it as a trigger to start the process of figuring out information can actually help you. Questions like: + What did you eat? + Why did you eat it? + How did it make your body feel? + What would you do differently next time? Can help you think through the kind of conscious choices you want to make when you’re eating. And remembering to really consider how your body feels is a chance to stay present and practice body-love, which is a super important component of intuitive eating! Asking these questions can also help you feel productive and channel your energy into something positive that feels good! Instead of wallowing in guilt or letting stress ruin your day, take positive action and reframe it as something you can use to know yourself even better! (Also, just a reminder that you can access this free training on-demand whenever you’d like: How to Ditch Food Guilt and Body Shame to Gain Confidence and Feel Free!) Intuitive Eating Questions? Have an intuitive eating question? You can connect with me on Facebook or Instagram, or send me an email at [email protected] and I’d be happy to connect you with a resource or previous podcast that might be of help. (Or maybe I’ll even end up making a new episode!)

Today’s interview is with one of my clients – Katy! I know everyone enjoys a good success story, and I also want you to hear what’s possible when you have the success and accountability you need to make your goals happen! Katy first started dieting as a young girl, and today you’ll hear about her whole journey. The results? Well…the title says it all! This is a celebration of how Katy quit dieting for good. This is an amazing interview for anyone who might be currently dieting, testing the intuitive eating waters, or considering working with a health coach. (And if you’d like to join the Quit Dieting for Good program yourself, you can find that info HERE. I 100% believe in your ability to quit dieting for good — just like Katy!) Let’s Meet Katy! Katy lives in Philadelphia, and is a singer and voice teacher. She found me on Instagram (shout out to my amazing IG community!) right at the start of Covid, and joined the program not too long after. Before intuitive eating, Katy shares that dieting had been part of her life for about as long as she could remember. She was eating Smart Ones and dieting food since elementary school. At the time, she remembers being a little embarrassed about it….but also that her house was filled with dieting-related food because that’s what her mom was eating. And Katy wanted to eat that special dieting food too. She also remembers that she was bigger than all her friends. When a neighbor that was 6 years older passed on some clothes that were already too small for her, it was the last straw! Katy begged her mom to let her start dieting so she could lose weight. Finally, her mom agreed. She started with Weight Watchers, and throughout the rest of her school career her weight fluctuated a lot. She lost a lot of weight…and she’d gain it back and start again. Intense Pressure As a dancer and performer, Katy put a lot of pressure on herself. Her teachers did as well. She was told that she was incredibly talented, and her freshmen year of college was even told she had the talent to perform on Broadway. She was also told that if she wanted to make that happen, she had to lose weight. Katy already knew that. After forcing herself into through more dieting cycles, she left the dance/performance part of the program to focus on singing alone. Eventually she took up running, and added in calorie counting as well. With the advent of fitness apps she started tracking every single calorie she put into her mouth, until she realized it was becoming an obsession. How to Stop Binge Eating Katy found intuitive eating after another bad night of binge eating. In fact, she ordered her first intuitive eating books after googling “how to stop binge eating”. Although the principles were amazing….Katy’s first approach to intuitive eating was still pretty diet-based. She still wanted to lose weight, and she approached it from a place of wanting to change her body. Gradually she cycled through other things: weight lifting, keto, macro counting. The desire to lose weight, and the idea that controlling food was going to make her life better, were constant companions. Katy even tried to tell herself that she could do intuitive eating AND count macros. She tried to listen to her body’s needs while also following diet-based plans. And honestly…it just wasn’t working. How Katy Quit Dieting for Good Then, she found me! Katy wanted to feel better. She wanted to be done binge eating, and she wanted to have a good relationship with food. Deep down, she also knew that her first go around with intuitive eating hadn’t been a true experience. (She had still been treating it like a diet, and she knew that.) Watching her mom still counting calories while in her 70’s also felt profoundly sad to Katy. She was starting to see that a dieting-mindset didn’t ever seem to just go away, and that she was going to have to change something in her life if she didn’t want to continue obsessing over food into old age. She had also starting following more body positive folks on Instagram, and through that she came across my account. After one final check-in, she knew she was ready to quit dieting for good! How Quit Dieting for Good Was Different The community connections and guidance were a huge part of Katy’s success! Having others to lean on, talk to, and turn to were helpful parts of the program that enabled her to really succeed. The first time she tried intuitive eating she had done it alone, and that solitude had let her dip a toe in without really going all the way. She had never really released her dieting mindset, and she hadn’t had accountability or support to guide her into doing so. When she joined the Quit Dieting for Good program, however, she had both of those things! She had also decided to fully trust the process, even when it uncomfortable. That was a pivotal part of how Katy quit dieting for good. She was ready to believe in herself, and to build a relationship with her own intution and body. One of Katy’s biggest lifestyle transformations during the program has been allowing herself to bring any and every food into her house. Intuitive eating has taught her that she can enjoy any food….and that some of those things she used to binge on aren’t even that enjoyable. She had only eaten them the way she had because she had them up on a pedestal in her mind…and once they were just food that she was free to eat if she wanted it…she didn’t need to binge. How Quit Dieting for Good Was Hard Katy gained weight on the program, and that was HARD. At one point she had a total meltdown, and worried that she was going to have to count calories for her entire life. After her “fit”, I had her make a list of why she was doing this in the first place. Katy made the list….and it reminded her of why she had wanted to quit dieting in the first place. As she relfected, she was able to take herself to that next level of acceptance. She knew she was more than just a “size”…and that she could learn to accept her body as it was, instead of for what she had been trying to make it be. Katy shares that she started doing a lot of meditation. She also did an Instagram “clean”, where she unfollowed a lot of people she had been following that often made her feel she needed to change things about herself. She sought out accounts of women that were her size, and women that inspired her for no reason related to looks, and women she just found authentically beautiful. She’s Come So Far Looking back at how she quit dieting for good, Katy loves how far she’s come! She’s started taking guitar lessons, and also sewing. (Now, she makes her own clothes, and they don’t have a size on the label since they are custom made for her!) Journaling and mediation are also parts of her ongoing journey. Katy’s also learned that food doesn’t scare her anymore. She eats a wide variety of things, including little fun treats like cookie butter that she loves to keep in her pantry! Another change is being able to keep easy meals on hand, and she also knows the foods that give her constant energy throughout the day. She has a favorite ice cream that she keeps in the house — something she couldn’t imagine ever doing in the past! With a laugh, Katy said: “I never thought I’d be where I am right now.” When it comes to movement, she’s been looking for fun ways to feel strong and powerful. (Her gym is closed so weight lifting isn’t an option, even though she loves that.) She’s also been hiking, doing yoga, and listening to whatever her body wants and needs. Sometimes that even means doing nothing at all. Katy’s Final Advice If you’re going to try intuitive eating, find a community! Intuitive eating is amazing…but it’s also not easy. It takes time, but it’s definitely worth doing. Being free from diets and being able to enjoy her life (and body and food) is amazing! As far as self-care goes, Katy advises you to do your best to get enough sleep. She finds it’s hard to get strong signals from her body when she’s lacking sleep, which makes intuitive eating practices more difficult.

Today is the third and final episode about my intuitive eating journey! This one features my last three years of intuitive eating, and I’ll pick up from where I left off last week: right after I hired my own life coach! Parenting Comparison-itis & My Intuitive Eating Journey My coach helped me realize how much mom guilt I had been feeling as I entered into my journey as mom. The same sort of shame and guilt I had used to feel about eating….I was now feeling about parenting. From sleep schedules to nursing struggles, to what kind of stroller we had and whether I was finding a rhythm: there were so many things to compare. I found myself often noticing what everyone else was doing, and experiencing guilt and shame over what I felt I wasn’t doing “right” myself. I realized that, rather than comparing my body to other women’s bodies, I was comparing the way I was as a mom. As glad as I was that I had worked through a lot of food and body things as an intuitive eater, it quickly became apparent that there were other areas I was still struggling. The principles and tools I learned from intuitive eating helped me worked through a lot of the challenges I faced as a new mom. That’s what I love about intuitive eating! It’s a journey that starts with food….but it carries over into all parts of your life. Self-knowledge is so powerful, and responding to yourself from a place of love and compassion is such a good feeling. Between working with my coach and practicing my intuitive eating principles, I was able to increase my confidence and decrease the shame and guilt that parenting seemed to be stirring up. I’m so glad I had those tools at the ready. That experience really proved to me that intuitive eating principles weren’t just a luxury better enjoyed by my child-free (less sleep-deprived) self! They truly worked in every area of my life, even as I was evolving and changing. Intuitive Eating Principles & Business Building Speaking of evolving… I was also still starting my business during this time! There were so many insecurities and fears I found myself having to work through as an entrepreneur in the online world. For instance, going live on video was so awkward for me. (One of my clients even mentioned I had looked really uncomfortable during my first ever live. Aghh….the struggle was real!) But I also knew that the only way to get better and build my business was to stick with it and keep trying. Being willing to practice (even when I knew it was less than perfect) improved my confidence and ability. Now, so many things that used to be major stressors are easy and natural. Did I have to push myself? Yes! But I also know that getting comfortable with the uncomfortable is an important part of life (and growth). The confidence I gained through intuitive eating enabled me to have a strong foundation for getting out of my comfort zone! I already had so many tools for building my confidence, overcoming shame and guilt, and offering myself self-care and compassion (while also growing through uncomfortable changes). All I had to was apply them to my business. New Vision For My Family We were able to visit the US shortly after Cooper was born, and it was HARD! There is a 12 hour flight and a 9 hour time change from Zurich….and the effort it took to get an infant back into some semblance of regular sleep was extremely challenging. Our time back home with friends and family, however, was more than just a long flight and sleepless nights. It also ignited a new desire in my heart: to raise our kids close to family. Seeing Cooper held by his grandparents and enjoyed by his cousins, and having a chance to be surrounded by family in a place we had both grown up in….it made me realize that I wanted this for our future. If I could have gotten my whole family to move to Europe with me, I would have brought them all to Zurich! But that wasn’t an option. Choosing to come back to the US permanently was a huge (and really hard) decision. However, my intuitive eating journey had instilled so much confidence in myself, and in my ability to know my own desires and tap into my own intuition, that I was able to have peace in our decision. (You can listen in to how living in Switzerland changed my eating habits HERE, and read a short Instagram post on some ways in which food is thought about differently in Europe HERE.) Tapping Into My Passion Around this time, the yoga studio I taught for went through some changes. As a result, I had to make some decisions about what my priorities were. Ultimately, I chose not to continue teaching. I knew that my true passion was intuitive eating and coaching. Parenting was also bringing about new time constraints….and it ended up making sense to transition away from the studio. A few months later, I could feel the difference in my body. When I was teaching I was spending an hour or two doing yoga every day. And as much as I had loved that….it was no longer necessary to invest that amount of time doing yoga when I wasn’t teaching (and preparing for teaching). As I noticed the changes in my body, I evaluated how they made me feel. I could have chosen to go back to practicing more regularly, but at the time, I realized that working on my business and having more family time was what I desired. That came with changes to my physical body, but I was okay with that. Once again, intuitive eating gave me the tools to process who I was, what I desired, and what I wanted to have happening in my life. Being empowered to prioritize what I most wanted and needed was important to me, and I’m so glad I had those tools at the ready! I’m also glad I didn’t have to feel guilty about my body changing. Intuitive Eating Tools & Major International Moves Moving internationally is stressful! Jon’s job was in flux, and we had a lot of uncertainty. In addition, we were trying to get in lots of last minute travel and nights out with friends we would be leaving behind. During this time, I relied heavily on the ability to ask myself: What do I need today? Rather than getting into a binge/restrict cycle where I ate heavily for 6 weeks of chaos and then went on some kind of wild cleanse, I was able to tend to my body and her needs throughout the entire transition. Sometimes that meant eating out, and other times that meant enjoying something light at home. It never meant having to restrict myself, though, and I credit my intuitive eating tools with that! Even so, I still had to go through the process of having compassion for myself as I got into new rhythms after the move. From finding new workout and meditation classes to looking for a co-working space and finding new friends and connections — moving definitely takes a lot out of you! I truly needed to practice self-care, be gentle with myself, and stay in tune with what I needed on a day-to-day basis. (I also had to learn all about letting go of restrictions again as we transitioned to US culture!) Pregnancy #2 & Intuitive Eating I found out we were expecting on the first day of our Covid quarantine. I’ve already done a few episodes on the pregnancy, so we won’t go too deep on that here! (Pregnancy and intuitive eating actually have lots of similarities, which I talked about HERE.) Some of my biggest takeaways, as an intuitive eater: + Don’t stress about changing dietary needs. If you can only eat bread and pasta (that happened to me for a bit), then enjoy them! Eventually your taste for other foods will return. Listen to your body, and give her what she needs. (Read about my first trimester eating experience HERE.) + Get clothes that fit your body for whatever stage she is in. If you’re not feeling ready for maternity clothes quite yet, you can still size up in your favorite jeans. Wearing clothes that feel really good on your body is important, and there’s no need to force yourself into items that are too small, too tight, or too constricting! + The best thing you can do for yourself is to honor your needs and your body. If she tells you she needs something, do your best to provide it. You might have new hunger and thirst needs, new sleep-related needs, or all manner of other new changes. Check in with yourself often, and do what you can to take care of yourself! + You might still have difficult body image days. Intuitive eating doesn’t mean everything is easy and perfect all the time. It does, however, give you the tools to process what’s happening. My Intuitive Eating Journey Wrap-Up Intuitive eating about so much more than *just* food. It’s a progression of confidence, in both your body and your life. It’s a way of getting to know yourself, your desires, and your patterns. There is so much to learn about who you are, and intuitive eating is a way of honoring that process. You CAN feel good, find food freedom, and gain total confidence. I promise you that you can take care of yourself in a way that feels right for you; no shame or guilt attached! Intuitive eating is a process and a practice. It can push you out of your comfort zone, but in my experience….it never takes you anywhere that doesn’t ultimately serve your highest good. No diet could ever give you that! If you want to learn more, quit dieting, or get some support for your own journey — reach out! I’ve been there, and now I’m here for you. My clients get amazing results, and they report truly finding food freedom by the end our time together. They’re able to enjoy food, be more confident in themselves and their bodies, and consistency use tools that honor their ongoing needs. Intuitive eating works (whatever is happening in your life), and I’d love to see you grow your practice! Ready? Let’s go!