Do you have food rules? You know the ones you tell yourself you need to follow, so you can be “good”. A lot of people I have met have some type of food rule. You may see these food rules as a way to keep yourself from overeating or gaining weight. Food rules are frustrating/ineffective, because they are hard to follow and they do not work over the long term. Some food rules I have heard are:No candy or chocolate in the house. This rule is used to help you not eat sweets, because you have the idea sweets are bad.No eating after 8pm, even if you are hungry.This rule is used to help you not eat in the nighttime for fear of …

In Self Acceptance Step 4: Get Connected we discussed listening to your body by taking a moment to pause and pay attention to the signals it sends you regarding your true needs. Honor your true needs by taking steps today to nurture your body. Do nice things for yourself such as getting a great haircut, using yummy lotions, having a massage, or learning a new skill. Treating yourself this way shows yourself and others that you are cared for and leads you to experience your body in more positive ways. Care for yourself because you love and accept yourself, not so you’ll love and accept yourself. What are some simple ways you can take care of your body? Comment below or share with us on our Facebook page. …

Happy Valentine’s Day! What did you do to nurture your body in step 5? I hope these small steps have you led you to the conclusion that you can love the one you’re with! What’s the alternative? If you are unable to accept and love yourself as you are now, it is unlikely that you will ever be satisfied with yourself no matter what changes you make. Consider this: Have you ever seen an old picture of yourself and realized that you really were beautiful but just couldn’t see it at the time? Instead of putting your life on hold until you reach some arbitrary definition of beauty or success, remind yourself that this is your life and you deserve to live it fully. Wear clothes that make …

I recently wrote an article about an inspiring talk titled “Well-being is a Skill” by well-known neuroscientist Richard Davidson. In this talk, Davidson summarizes the latest research on what he calls the Four Constituents of Well-being: resilience, positive outlook, attention, and generosity. There were several things about this talk that resonated with me, including the refreshing emphasis on mental, emotional, and spiritual components of well-being instead of just the physical. If you’re interested in neuroscience, mindfulness, or what makes people “well”, this 13-minute talk will be well worth your time. As you might guess from the title, the main point of Davidson’s talk is that well-being is a skill. Or maybe, more accurately, a set of skills. Like all skills, the components…

Do you sometimes have cravings that you can’t explain yet feel pulled to give in to? Do you then feel defeated and out of control? What if your cravings are an invitation to come home to yourself? An Unexpected Invite When we have a craving and notice we aren’t hungry, it’s really not about the thing we crave. It is an invitation to explore and to find out what it is that we feel we do not already have: connection, companionship, love, acceptance, choice, freedom, and so on. When we give in to a craving without exploring first, we may miss an opportunity to have what it is we truly desire. (And the only person that can give that to us is ourselves! We can’t receive a …

National Eating Disorders Awareness Week (NEDAwareness Week) is an annual campaign to bring public attention to the needs of people with eating disorders and their families. The focus of this year’s campaign is early detection and intervention. In the US, 20 million women and 10 million men will struggle with an eating disorder at some point in their life. Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is the most common eating disorder. Read about the symptoms of Binge Eating Disorder and take this survey to see if you may have BED. While the diagnostic criteria focus on the binge part of the cycle, many people don’t realize that Binge Eating Disorder and restrictive dieting often co-exist. And while it may seem that dieting is a result of binge eating, it …

Recently, I came face to face with my Restrictive Eating Cycle and was one teetering step away from diving right back into my old habits and patterns. Thankfully, I have this practice of mindful eating in my toolbox and was able to redirect myself back to an Instinctive Eating Cycle after I had taken healthy eating too far. But I’m not kidding you, it was a very close call! I had to laugh when I returned to work on Monday, and sitting in my inbox was Michelle May’s article, A Diet by Any Other Name is Still a Diet! I couldn’t believe Michelle had written about the exact experience I had just had! Here’s what happened using the seven questions Michelle suggested in A Diet by Any …

I’m preparing for a 2-day workshop at the Art & Science of Health Promotion Conference this April where I’ll have the opportunity to introduce health and wellness professionals to the Am I Hungry? concepts. Specifically, we’ll be focusing on the Mindful Eating Cycle which, as you may already know from personal experience, is a practical and powerful model for recognizing and resolving the drivers of problematic eating and sedentary lifestyles. I’m particularly excited about this workshop because we’ll have time together to explore the application of this model not only to eating, but to other aspects of our lives as well, such as work and relationships. One example of the wide application of mindfulness-based strategies occurred to me recently as I was feeling fragmented and stressed …

How many calories do you need to burn to eat ________? None. You already have the right to eat it. Based on a recent media frenzy about an article in The BMJ1 titled “Food should be labelled with the exercise needed to expend its calories,” you’d think that the idea of labeling food with how many minutes you’d have to exercise to burn it off is a new one. It’s not, and in fact, much of the media coverage pointed out the many problems with this idea: Food labeling is a complex science. It hasn’t been studied or proven to have any effect. Studies on calorie labeling on menus does not consistently lead consumers to order lower-calorie items, so why would this? …