Work it out

Exercise. Well, that's a loaded word. 

The 9th Principle of Intuitive Eating is "Exercise--Feel the Difference."

At the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, we were instructed to try "movement" instead when talking to clients because people have a lot of thoughts and feelings about exercise. Many people are perfectionists about it. 

Before I changed my relationship with exercise, here's something I might've said: 

"Well, I was supposed to get up at 5 am starting on Monday but then I didn't. Now, to make up for it, I have to run at least 40 minutes on Friday and then next week do Jillian Michaels 2x/wk and my diet really needs to be on point. Oh and also, I should probably swim after running because I'm planning on eating pasta for dinner on Thursday."

 I used to see intense exercise as a prerequisite for adequacy in my own life. I needed to exercise exorbitantly to feel good about myself. When I couldn't meet this unrealistic requirement, I use to amp up the quantity of exercise as a penance for my "bad behavior" around food and exercise. Eventually I worked myself up into such a tizzy, that exercise started to feel like a term paper that I procrastinated all semester on. 

Changing your relationship with food means also changing your relationship to exercise.

When shows like NBC's Biggest Loser exist, many Americans tend to believe that exercise is synonymous with weight loss. This idea is a whole other blog post. Exercise does not equal weight loss. 

The simple way to explain this whole idea is through my own story about exercise. I've been through enough ups and downs with exercise that I know this: 

When you hate your body, it's hard to exercise. When you're exercising to take care of yourself, exercise feels easy. 

Exercise is GOOD for you and it can be an enormous part of your self-care routine.  Exercise can also HURT you. It can mess up your hormones, joints, tendons, and muscles if you overdo it. 

 Exercise has felt very difficult for me when I'm motivated from a place of self-destruction. If I'm exercising because I'm trying to achieve some ideal weight or I'm working out for a "bikini body," it just doesn't happen. Sometimes, even unrelated to body image, I would feel like I "should" work out because I ate too much or I needed to achieve some kind of external validation. This immediately took all the joy out of it for me. 

Exercise needs to be a joyful and immediately gratifying experience in order for you to want to do it. That's just science or human nature or whatever. 

When I've been in "good shape" or exercising regularly, here are some reasons why: 

• I'm working inside a dark windowless room all day. I'd like to get up early to see the sun and yoga is easy to do early in the morning. 
• It's summer and swimming is fun. I'm going to get up early to swim at the local outdoor pool. Also, I can get some Vitamin D. 
• I'm super motivated to go below a 1:06 in my 100 butterfly this season.
• Doing yoga with my friends is a great way to catch up.
• It's nice that I get to spend quality time with my mom early in the morning doing weight training.
• I'm so excited to be on this beach. What are all the possible ways that I could explore it? 
• Exercise is an escape from this really busy and intense schedule. It's nice to not have to think for a little while. 
• I really enjoy playing water polo
• My summer club swim team is really fun. I love the community and the fun workouts my coach gives.
• Getting up early and exercising makes me more productive and calm at work. 
• Going for walks with my loved ones is quite enjoyable. Also, it's nice outside. 

I'm sure you savvy individuals reading this blog post know that exercise is good for you. 

So, here's the action item for this week:

In the comments on this blog post, tell me: What motivates you to get "moving?" When you've been consistently active, what do you notice about yourself? 

Love Your Body

The 8th principle of Intuitive Eating is "Respect Your Body."

It sounds simple enough but I have to tell you that it's not easy. This one principle is CRITICAL to becoming an intuitive eater. 

I'm probably going to write about 10 million more blog posts about this because believing your body is good enough is really hard. It's especially hard when there's tons of magazines, advertisements, and pictures everywhere reminding us that we need to buy wrinkle cream, botox, a fast car, or McDonalds to be good enough or in order to love life. 

In fact, they made a whole documentary about it. Our culture very much values appearance. This is especially true for women.  When we don't meet the standards, it can be hard to feel good enough. Even if you don't have a diagnosable eating disorder, managing food can be one way to cope with this very human and very normal feeling. 

For me, the process of coming to love my body came from learning to recognize that my body weight was NOT somehow an indicator of my worth or my health.

The idea that your body should look like the cover of some magazine is not only unattainable but not necessarily healthy for your body.  I would argue that the fallacy that we can all fit into one size is one of the worst myths out there. 

Here's the big thing: 

Weight doesn't really matter the most when it comes to your health. 

Socially, we  have conflated the two. And GURRRRRRRRRRRL, (or BOOOOOOOOOOIIIII) do I have some youtube videos for you to watch:

1.  You can be healthy at every size: http://www.bodylovewellness.com/speaking/ 

This video unpacks one of the largest nutrition studies in the world and shows how weight is not a significant factor in health and longevity when people exercise regularly, eat fruits and vegetables, don't smoke, and drink minimally. 

Stop stepping on the scale to measure your "health."  Focus instead on healthy habits. 

2.  BMI is bologna: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlXxoG98urc&noredirect=1

 BMI, or Body Mass Index, is a formula that takes your weight and divides it by your height squared. In this video, Laci Green unpacks how it evolved from a simple formula that was explicitly not to be used as an indicator for health to being co-opted by life insurance companies and the dieting industry. Now, BMI is the rallying cry of people fighting the "obesity epidemic."

I give you these videos because the conversation around weight has bled into the conversation about health and part of learning to love your body is learning to know the difference. Taking care of your body is about listening to it, not berating yourself for being "overweight." 

Because, c'mon, how well has hating your body worked so far?

Are you satisfied?

 I'm really happy that next week is Valentine's Day and that 50 Shades of Grey is coming out because........ 

The 6th principle of Intuitive Eating is "Discover Your Satisfaction Factor."

One of the most radical concepts of eating intuitively is learning to embrace how your body feels about food. This includes pleasure. 

No offense to puritans, but American puritanical beliefs around sexuality also extend to our overall experience of pleasure, including food. Many of my clients express a fear of overeating should they indulge in the food that they actually enjoy. They fear that they'll eat like some kind of voracious, wild animal that can't seem to stop when it's appropriate (ironically, many wild animals show wonderful control around their appetites). 

In Caroline Knapp's book, Appetite, she opens the book discussing the depiction of women in a Renoir painting. She writes,

"This is an image of bounty, a view of female physicality in which a woman's hungers are both celebrated and undifferentiated, as though all her appetites are of a piece, the physical and the emotional entwined and given equal weight. Food is love on this landscape, and love is sex, and sex is connection, and connection is food; appetites exist in a full circle, or in a sonata where eating and touching and making love and feeling close are all distinct chords that nonetheless meld with and complement one another." 

I could write a 10 page paper on this quote, but the essence of what Knapp is getting at is this: 

For Caroline Knapp, this an ideal.  Male or female (Knapp finds the female body especially relevant), our physical beings should be sanctified. One's connection to one's body interplays with one's relationship to food, to sex and other people. She emphasizes that by honoring our bodies,  we find more love and connection. That connection exposes a harmony in our lives. This idea is not that different from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition's philosophy on primary food (I will definitely have another blog post about this topic). My coaching practice aspires to bring people who have fought with their bodies and their desires for a long time to become connected again, to take care of their bodies again, and to listen to their bodies. 

Sexual appetite provides a mirror into understanding how we interact with our bodies with regard to food.

For some, sex is only a means to the end of making children but even the most devoutly religious often find pleasure in the process. Likewise, for chronic dieters, food is a means to an end: sustenance or weight loss. For most people, even chronic dieters, sex is mostly a means to the end of pleasure. When we give in to our desire for pleasure and reallllly enjoy it, we feel satisfied (unless we're not. That happens.) Sometimes that satisfaction is enough to keep us for a while - days, weeks, months. 

Married lovers tell us a tale about pleasure and satisfaction. When you first start to have sex with someone whom you find desirable, you might enjoy them in "excess."  Over time, the desire becomes less overwhelming and we either form a romantic connection with that person or we move on.

We can see this pattern, too, in food that we eat. The first time you eat cheesecake, it might be divine but have it every night for a week, and you'll likely get sick of it. If not, you might still love it so much that you don't want to get sick of it so you save it for special occasions or to make a Wednesday night a little more exciting.  Maybe you marry cheesecake but you want to make sure cheesecake has a life outside of you and you have a life outside of cheesecake so you also pick up racquetball. 

It's something I've mentioned before; habituation is programmed into your body. It's the reason that drug users need to up their dose to get the same high. 

If you're listening to your body and taking care of your body, I promise you will not die of an oreo overdose. 

Pleasure is not an enemy to be avoided. It is something to be fully experienced. It is something we need to pay attention to, especially when it comes to food. 

So, for now, I just want all of you to make plans to really enjoy Valentine's Day.

Respect Your Fullness

I know what you're thinking right now. 

What fullness? I don't ever feel full. If you've been on diets for a long time, I believe you. 

You've programmed yourself to "feel satisfied" when you've eaten 300 calories or a banana and 1 tbsp of peanut butter. Cantaloupe? Yes I can.... feel full on it (that link is for any Brooklyn 99 fans). 

But, when it's time to cheat, you are straight up plowing past "full" all way to stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey.

I could get all Rousseau on you about this but, effectively, modern society encourages us to stray from our natural inclinations. Living in NYC, I know this all too well. We are a city that never sleeps even though, biologically, we need to sleep to survive. 

Add in "Clean Plate" moralism, a compulsive need to finish everything on your plate, and you've got the reason why we never feel full. Here's the most important component of intuitive eating:

LISTEN TO YOUR BODY!

The 10 principles of intuitive eating are written in a specific order for a reason. You have to follow everything up to this point to be able to honor your fullness. 

You have to give yourself "unconditional permission to eat." You have to be done with dieting. You have to eat when you're hungry. You have to legalize all foods and challenge any rules, guilt or shame you have around food. 

Here's the action item this week: 

Become conscious again.

Pay attention to your body and cravings. Do a yoga class or meditation. Do something that helps you bring awareness back to your body. 

Take a break from your TPS reports, email, Facebook or Netflix binge and sit your ass down at your table and eat. 

Give yourself permission to just feel whatever you're going to feel when you're full. Maybe you will keep eating and get REALLY full. 

Whatever you do is fine. Remember this is not a "hunger and fullness diet."

Just listen to your body. See if you can hear your body say, "Hey dude. I'm full."

Then maybe, just maybe, the dude abides.

Like a Cop Car

Wee-ooh Wee-ooh Weee. Wee-ooh Wee-ooh wee. 

This week the 4th principle in the "10 principles of Intuitive Eating" is Challenge the Food Police. 

(For my thoughts on the 1st principle, 2nd principle, and 3rd principle, click on the corresponding links here)

Don't worry. You don't have to get out your umbrella for this one, go on a hunger strike or fly to Ferguson. Listening to Lil' Wayne, however, is strongly encouraged. 

1. Think of all of your food beliefs. Identify them. Write them down if you have to. 

The first step in challenging the food police is identifying where he or she lurks in your psyche. What are your beliefs around food? Is kale good? Are hamburgers bad? Think about all your "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts" when it comes to food and exercise.

A helpful way to start this process is to think of all the diets you've been on. For example, I once just didn't eat french fries for 40 days. I used to believe french fries were the worst. 

Feel like the list is too short or can't shake a feeling of the complex religion in your head of food and diet? 

What foods make you feel GUILTY? Those are likely to lead you down the rabbit hole of what you believe about food. 

2. Let it go! Let it go! That perfect girl/boy is gone!

Frozen lyrics aside, (have I mentioned I teach 3 year olds how to swim?), just drop those beliefs like a hot potato or like you're getting down on the dance floor. 

To do this DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) style, take that list that you just made and destroy it. If there's a safe way to do it, burn it. Cross out all those beliefs with a pen. Crumple it up. Shred it. Laugh maniacally while you rip it up into tiny little pieces. Flush it down the toilet. 

That's all for this week. Just allow yourself the freedom of an agnostic relationship to food.