Meals. What on earth are we doing if we’re not eating meals? I will tell you: We're doing things like… bingeing grazingfastingpickingsnackingdietingstarvingand eating all day long Fifteen thousand years ago (or thereabouts) our ancestors stopped grazing all day as they roamed. They settled down, sowed crops, and developed a pleasant schedule of getting together regularly to eat. We went from eating all day long, berry after berry, to sitting down to lunch. Regular, repeated mealtimes is a human design pattern that stayed in place until kids had to get up at 4am for swim practice, and bagels or Pop Tarts were consumed while driving. Until we were forced to take jobs that don't even allow us bathroom … [Read more...] about Eating With Structure + Freedom
Weight Loss Coaching
The REAL Reason Healthy Eating is Hard (and how to do it anyway)
The benefits of good nutrition and maintaining a healthy weight are clear. There’s no need to provide yet another list. With so many compelling reasons to eat a healthy diet, why is it so difficult to actually do? Hint: the answer is not more willpower or greater motivation. One of the MAIN reasons eating a healthy diet is difficult is because JUNK FOOD IS DELICIOUS (+ widely available + inexpensive). Steven Witherly is a food scientist who has spent the last 20 years studying what makes certain foods more addictive (and tasty) than others. Much of the science that follows is from his brilliant report, Why Humans Like Junk Food. According to Witherly, when you eat tasty food, there are two factors that make the experience … [Read more...] about The REAL Reason Healthy Eating is Hard (and how to do it anyway)
Beauty Sick Book Review
I sometimes struggle with reconciling my advocacy of body acceptance with the fact that I help women lose weight. Can you respect your body and want to change it? My answer is a resounding yes. More than ever. If I didn’t believe this to be true, there is no way I could do this work with integrity. Unwinding beauty sickness and appreciating what our bodies do FOR us is an essential component of well-being. In her book, Beauty Sick, Renee Englen, a professor at Northwestern University and head of the Body and Media Lab, very clearly and in a very compelling manner exposes the cultural epidemic of beauty sickness, the obsession with appearance, and how it affects or has affected most women in America. Using scientific … [Read more...] about Beauty Sick Book Review
Change Strategies For Perfectionists
Most of my clients are self-described perfectionists. So is their coach. We tend to have high expectations and can be brutally hard on ourselves when we don’t meet our expectations. Whenever you’re trying to change your behavior or establish a new habit, you will absolutely fail to do it perfectly. As perfectionists, this is hard to accept. Perfectionists are strongly motivated to avoid mistakes. Because mistakes lead to worry + overthinking + ruminating. And this behavior intensifies our emotional pain to the point it’s out of proportion to the situation. We want to feel absolutely ready before taking on new challenges. So we plan and prepare and think about taking action, instead of taking action. Change Strategies … [Read more...] about Change Strategies For Perfectionists