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.

Please don't resolve to start another diet

Happy New Year's Eve!

If you're anything like me, you're waking up from the past few days feeling a little groggy, a little bloated, and with a little anxiety about the holidays being over. Maybe you're feeling a little guilty for eating too much, drinking too much, or spending too much. If not, you're prepared to have your last hurrah tonight. ; )

The way many of us rationalize our way out of the holiday guilt is anticipating the penance of January 1. This means that everybody and their brother will likely resolve to lose 30 pounds, stop eating wheat, or hit the gym hard 6 days a week.

This year I am calling for an end to this paradigm. 

Why? 

1. Diets don't work.

Studies have shown that 95% diets don't work. That means even if you lose 25 pounds, you're likely to gain more back. In fact, weight gain is "significantly related" to dieting. This means independent of genetics, dieting has been shown to actually CAUSE weight gain. Here's a great video with lots more juicy info on this topic. 

2. We have more important things to do! 

Like watch this video!

This AWESOME video from Melissa A. Fabello, writer for Everyday Feminism, is one of my inspirations for this particular call to action.

In this video, Fabello notes that women spend 21 minutes a day body shaming and thinking about dieting. That's two hours a week! 

I encourage you to invest your time and money this year in causes and goals that really matter, like existentially matter. 

3. Participating in the diet industrial complex solidifies structural inequality. 

Fabello talks about this in her video, too. Obsessing about food and spending money on our bodies is one way in which females experience inequality. Make-up is expensive and so are diet pills. Women spend a lot of time and money on their "body projects" as Fabello calls them. That's time and money that could be spent closing the pay gap. 

Also, what lies behind our desire to be thinner? Who are the beautiful people? Many times beautiful people are white and upper middle class. In learning to love all bodies, we can learn to love a more pluralistic society. 

So, unless you'd like to gain weight,waste your time, and contribute to the patriarchy, please don't resolve to lose weight.      

 

Halloween

Halloween is a weird holiday, right?

People dress up as people they’re not and go gallivanting around town.

Wait.

 Isn’t that what we do every day?

Pretend that we’re something that we’re not and run around the city acting like a crazy person? Halloween caricatures our daily lives in this totally awesome way. For one day, people recognize that they want to be something else.

This is a jack o' lantern I made last year. It has nothing to do with this blog post except for it's relationship to Halloween

I am always trying to be a better or stronger version of myself on Halloween.

Last year, I dressed up as Rosie the Riveter because I wanted to be an iconic figure for women to be fierce and feel like they can do anything. This year, I was thinking about being Mrs. Officer from Lil Wayne’s song because whenever I listen to that song, it makes me feel really strong and powerful. I think it’s so cool that Lil Wayne is really into this authoritative and independent woman.

Women are changing the way they approach their image.

 Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In made a big splash this past year. While admittedly, I didn’t read it, I feel its reverberations in the way women come into the workplace. We’re experimenting with being bossy, with pantsuits, with emoticons in emails, and with new businesses.

It makes me think about the whole concept of body image and who we think we are versus who we want to be and why we want to be those things.

What if we could just be what we want to be? What if we were already enough? How can we be who we want to be today, every day and this year, on Halloween?

Be honest. What’s really holding you back?

 Use this Halloween to explore the person that you’ve held back on being even if it’s just the girl who wears bright red lipstick, short shorts, and the sign that says sexy banana stand***

Happy Halloween!

***That’s right. You can be a sexy pop culture reference to Arrested Development. Because, then, you’ll have it. ; )***

Why I'm happy for wrinkles.

I kind of have a few wrinkles in this picture.

I'll say it. I'm grateful for my wrinkles. 

At a towering 5'1, with baby face cheeks, and a high-pitched feminine voice, people often confuse me for being younger than I am. 

One time, someone came up to me while I was working at a grocery store concerned that said grocery store was breaking child labor laws. They weren't. I was 23. 

A lot of women think this a compliment. 

I don't. 

The problem with this whole way of thinking is that women are valued as objects.

So, why do people say, "You look young. No. It's a good thing."

Why would it be a good thing? I already have a relationship with a significant other who I love and adore. Why do I need to attract anyone else? Why is my youth so important? Why bring it up? 

Look, if you accidentally get my age wrong, I'm not going to be really mad at you but if you start making assumptions about what I know because I look young, I'm going to be pissed. 

Even worse, if you think that I'm not as capable. 

The truth is that I love my body. I'm grateful for it but pretty regularly, people perceive me to be less capable because of my height and my appearance. These things are beyond my control. 

If you make assumptions about me because of my appearance, well, that's discrimination. 

And while I wish the world could recognize short baby-faced women as being capable, I also am grateful to have another year on me. 

Happy Birthday to me!

Are you ready boots? Start walkin'!

Women and shoes. Carrie Bradshaw has spent many a pun negotiating this volatile relationship. In some cultures, shoes have been used as a form of oppression. People talk about foot binding and how high heels were designed to slow the modern woman down. And honestly, I'm the first to admit that shoes are not something I'd dip into my savings to purchase. But, thanks to a new pair of boots I own, I have some fresh ideas about shoes:

1. Nobody expects you to lose weight to fit into a pair of shoes.

Shoes are weight neutral (patent pending. When people are done talking gender neutrality, it's going to be all about weight neutrality.) Girl, you can get those fab shoes now. 

2. Feel taller

My new pair of boots I would argue have changed my life. The second I slipped those babies on, something in me changed.  I felt more professional. I felt older. I was excited to walk around. These boots I own just have a little heel which makes a huge difference for someone who is 5'1''. I've just felt more capable. When you feel a little taller, you act a little taller. 

3. Fashion is a double edged sword but you can absolutely use it to boost your self esteem.

Fashion magazines are a large source of the bad body image among women. I mean, just watch one of these videos from Upworthy. The barrage of stick skinny models and clothes that cost more money than a down payment on a pretty nice house are certainly part of what keeps women spending their cash and their minds on things other than empowerment. However, I have to say, these boots gave me a boost. And having watched a few too many episodes of TLC's What Not to Wear, I tend to think that putting a new pair of shoes on or a new dress can help us make that not so subtle shift in our brains from thinking we look terrible to thinking we look pretty damn hot. 

Let's be honest ladies. Is that really so bad?