WHen you’re ready to stop yo-yo dieting
Here are 3 of the top reasons that Thanksgiving through the holidays are the perfect recipe for a January 1st crash diet:
1. Holiday treats are only around ONCE A YEAR (scarcity mentality).
2. It’s so cold we have to drink warm drinks all day long (which oftentimes are full of caffeine, sugar, or both).
3. If you work traditional hours, it’s always dark in your free time (other than Christmas lights), so it may not be safe to run or walk in your neighborhood, and the gym sucks even more than usual because it’s virus season and you’re more likely to pick up an airborne respiratory virus there than most other places (since people are breathing harder).
No wonder you feel like crap and feel the need to have food rules, or do something extreme like go on a “cleanse”.
But how did your last diet go? Why did it end?
Instead of some extreme diet, what can we do instead?
Focus on balance and moderation by dialing into your internal cues year-round, which includes giving yourself unconditional permission to eat ✨
How do we do this?
Through Intuitive Eating! Intuitive Eating is outlined by a set of 10 principles:
Reject the Diet Mentality
Honor Your Hunger
Make Peace with Food
Challenge the Food Police
Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Feel Your Fullness
Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness
Respect Your Body
Movement - Feel the Difference
Honor Your Health - Gentle Nutrition
We are all born intuitive eaters, but over time, diet culture, friends, and family members have affected this ability and caused many of us to fear calories, carbs, or instilled more subtle food rules (such as: don’t eat after a certain time of night, or only allow yourself to have a specific thing if you worked out that day).
Fun fact: I am actually working on becoming a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, which entails working directly with the authors and founders of Intuitive Eating!
It takes time, practice, and persistence, but I fully believe it is the only sustainable way to eat and live.