It's not necessarily weight gain

BLARGH. OOF. 

You know when you've just eaten something and you feel like you've transformed from a human being into a manatee. And not a calming manatee.

It seems like you have a little food baby inside you that is quickly taking over your cells a la Prometheus. And here's the sentence that comes out of your mouth:

"Ugh. I'm fat."

Being uncomfortably full does not mean you've ruined your life, that you're having an alien baby or that you are slowly turning into a large sea mammal. Although that might be pretty cute. Before I found intuitive eating, this uncomfortable feeling of being really, really, really full was synonymous with guilt. But it doesn't have to be.

Here's what it could be instead: 

1. Feeling too full doesn't necessarily mean that you ate "too many" calories. 

Sometimes, you eat rice, drink too much water and the rice expands in your stomach. Sometimes, you're digging into a large helping of Brussels Sprouts and the fiber makes you bloated and gassy. Sometimes, you eat something spicy and the water you drink to wash it down fills you up.Sometimes, if you're voraciously hungry for Grandma's famous holiday recipe and you eat it all without chewing, your stomach reacts badly because it has to do the extra digestion that your mouth and saliva were supposed to do. 

This is why many ayurvedics  recommend that you drink water prior to eating or drink small sips instead of gulping it down. Rice expands in water, fiber fills you up and gulping down a drink instead of chewing your food can cause a back-up in your stomach. According to webMD, soluble fiber increases digestive flora in your intestines which creates more gas in your tummy, too.

If you've filled up on water or fiber, chances are you didn't eat "too many" calories as most fibrous foods and water actually don't have a lot of calories.

2.  Your body likes homeostasis AKA staying the same. 

The main reason people say diets don't work is due to set point theory. This is the idea that your body has a genetic blueprint for what is a healthy weight range for you. That means if you start to fall below that number, you body slows down its metabolism and works really hard to maintain the weight that your DNA is telling it to maintain. Ergo, you keep eating less but you "hit a plateau" in terms of weight loss. 

Really, restriction is what sets you up for weight gain because it slows down your metabolism thinking your body believes it's caught in a famine. So, as long as you're eating regularly leading up to a big meal, your body will likely do the same set-point thing it does to protect you from weight loss and speed up metabolism to accommodate that extra food. 

3. Maybe you needed more food. 

The Ancel-Keys study showed how restricting food can actually lead to a binge. If all you ate in a day was an egg and lite salad, you might be starving by 6 PM. If you go to dinner hungry, you will probably leave super full. 

Eating more at night is really just your body getting its daily calorie intake. Holiday shopping or house cleaning or just being in the hustle and bustle of living your life can distract you from your body's natural hunger signals so you might have some extra calories to make up for when it's time to hit the feast.

4. Overeating once may not lead to permanent weight gain.

I'll admit that the perfectionist inside of me really struggled with writing that last sentence. I was totally there with you, dear reader. I think the question that used to pop into my head was, "What if it does, though?" I have been scare-mongered for years by women's magazines about how the 1-2 pounds that I gain during Christmas will slowly add up over the years.

In fact, your weight fluctuates for lots of reasons on a daily, weekly, monthly and even quarterly basis that may not be even related to the quantity of food you consumed. Your body might simply be doing the work of surviving, adding and subtracting water and other fluids and particles. 

In the past few years, I've practiced intuitive eating and my weight has felt more stable than ever. I can't say for certain because I don't weigh myself much any more. When I do, I find it hasn't changed much. It definitely helps that I don't check very often. ; )

So enjoy the bacon-wrapped dates and jump into the pool of holiday feasts without worrying about turning into a manatee. 

What if we just didn't worry so much about "being healthy" (part 2)

What if we just didn't worry so much about "being healthy"? 

So, let's say you've been reading this blog for a while and you're just NOT convinced. 

You think diets work. You can always run more. You shouldn't listen to your body because it will betray you. Your shame helps you eat better now. This blog post is for you. 

Let's say a highly regimented diet and exercise routine is what it takes to be healthy and live a long life, but everything else about life still held true. For today, I'm setting aside facts and figures because I want to appeal to you on a human level. 

People always say, "life is what happens while you're busy making plans." Well life is what happens when you're busy meal planning, reading ingredient lists, counting calories, binging on "bad foods" anyway, and spending time feeling guilty and paying penance at the gym. 

I want you to think about how much of your life you spend thinking about, planning and working on your "body project." Now think about all the other crap you have to do in your life that you're not particularly thrilled about but have to do anyway. For example, you might work 40+ hours a week. You might have to buy groceries, clean out your car, do your taxes, get stuck in traffic, or track down your package at some ridiculously far away pickup location because most postal services don't understand geography.

Now, I want you to think about all the things in your life that you wish you had more time for. For me, it's my family, sunshine, yoga, writing more and creating more for this business. 

And the simple question is: what do you want to be doing with your life? 

There are already so many things that can take you away from enjoying your precious time on this planet. My guess is that you won't be on your deathbed wishing you just hit the gym one more time every week.

It's more likely that you'll wish you skipped your run to spend the morning talking with your grandfather. You might wish you weren't trying out being "gluten-free" when your Italian aunt finally gave her secret recipe for her famous spaghetti bolognese. You'll probably wish you stayed out late on New Year's Eve with your friends in your 20s instead of heading in early to do 2,015 crossfit push-up jumping jack snatches upside down. 

Maybe it's because A Christmas Carol was such a big part of my childhood, but I feel like Scrooge took some time during the holidays to assess how he wanted to live his life. And, this holiday season, I'm recommending the same for you

Sometimes eating doesn't have to be about being healthy. Sometimes it's just about pleasure and being present with your loved ones. Drinking wine, eating stuffing, roasting ham, baking cookies are not about health. But maybe that's not the most important thing all the time. 

Be present this year for the holidays. Choose what YOU want to do in your life instead of dieting. 

(sarah jenks thinks so too... )

Deep Economy: why locavores should love the body positive movement

Do you ever go to places just because there's pizza? 

This time last year I had the awesome opportunity to go to a party hosted by Heritage Radio Network in the super hipster super cool backyard of Roberta's Pizza in Bushwick Brooklyn. It was a sunny day and I got to eat pizza and feel good about myself. 

Carlo Petrini, founder of the international Slow Food movement, spoke. I was worried it was going to be a lot of fat-shaming "obesity epidemic" bologna but there it was: the intersection of my passion for the local food movement and my fairly newly discovered interest in the body positive movement said in one perfect sentence. 

"We spend more money getting thin than nourishing ourselves."

Carlo Petrini hit the nail on the head. I honestly can't remember if I heard this in Italian translated to English or if Mr. Petrini was actually so pissed off about it that he knew how to say in English. 

We waste our time, our resources, our thoughts. Many women spend these precious commodities wanting to destroy their bodies and hating their bodies. Instead of learning to love our bodies and actually take care of them, humans have learned how to get six-pack abs in 6 days. 

I have spoken before in my posts about how companies stand to profit from women's low self-esteem. And, if you knew me in college, you would also know that companies are also making big money from making less nutritious food. This less nutritious food isn't even always more pleasurable. I'm looking at you, Dominos. Your pizza doesn't taste good. 

In my own journey toward learning how to eat intuitively, I had to shut off the Michael Pollan documentary in my head.  

In reality, loving and accepting all bodies and making good food available are two sides of the same coin. 

I'm really big fan of the story of stuff and Bill Mckibben's book, Deep Economy. Look I read the book but for simplicity's sake, wikipedia defines deep economy as:

 "one that cares less about quantity than about quality; that takes as its goal the production of human satisfaction as much as surplus material;that is focused on the idea that it might endure and considers durability as least as important as increases in size."

Supporting organic and locally grown foods is all about trying to "vote with your fork." It's about supporting the kind of world you would like to live in economically. Supporting health at every size is similar.

When you support this movement, you are supporting a world where women don't feel like they need to be thin. It supports a world that cares about helping people have quality lives instead of thinner lives.

Locavores see delicious and nutritious food as high priorities for society.  Quality and variety foods are promoted in lieu of corn subsidies for high fructose corn syrup, a well known hamburglar of health. 

The body positive movement similarly cares about creating sustainable healthy lives for people that aren't just quick weight-loss products that don't last in the long term. 

The body positive movement sees happiness and satisfaction as its end goal. Weight-loss products and the diet industry often emphasize short-term solutions that are unsustainable. Even the cookie diet is hard to stick to. 

Sustainability is a priority for the locavore. We can't continue with a monoculture. All the methane that all the cows we're eating are releasing has long-term effects on global warming. 

I'm not just bringing all this up because I want to justify my really expensive college education in which I watched a bunch of food documentaries on Netflix for research papers, but maybe, a little bit. 

Pollanistas, meet the body positive movement. I think we're going to be friends. 

A Quest for Immortality

There can only be one highlander. 

Sometimes, studying nutrition feels like searching for immortality. I know I'm guilty of pursuing a way out of my inevitable fate. 

I REALLY struggled with this in my more "disordered" days with food. I have always considered myself to be a smart person, so it always really frustrated me that I couldn't just FIGURE it out. I used to spend hours hopping around the internet to every article I could find about "what to eat to live to be 100". Can cantaloupes keep you from aging? Can avoiding butter keep my heart safe? If I get enough Vitamin C, can I prevent cancer? 

This a rough part of being human. We want so badly to be in control. We want a say in how many years we get. 

This makes nutrition is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, research has shown that managing your diet can prevent and reverse heart disease, and decrease risk for cancer.  

On the other hand, nutrition is a "fledgling science" and for every study that proves that one food or nutrient is good for you, there seems to be another that says otherwise. When I attended the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN), I experienced this time and time again, learning over 100 different dietary theories from some of the most renowned nutrition researchers in the world. 

This is why I have found great solace in intuitive eating.

Intuitive eating has shown me HOW to make sense of all the different information out there about food. 

Intuitive eating has taught me (along with lots of research) that restriction and dieting can really hurt me in the long run. It's taught me that over-exercising and stressing about how many french fries I've eaten is not particularly great for my physiology. It's taught me that I can be healthy at any size and that every body is different. Intuitive eating has taught me how to LISTEN to my body and honor my body. 

So, when fear of death makes you want to sign up for yet another diet, here's what I recommend: 

1. Know that restriction is actually bad for you.

This is something that I talk about all the time. Calorie restriction slows down your metabolism and can physiologically set your body up for a binge of the very foods you're trying to restrict. This puts stress on your body.

Vacillating between following your meal plan 100% and 0% is actually worse for you than following it pretty well 60% of the time. Recognize that life ebbs and flows. Your diet, “lifestyle," or eating plan should learn how to roll with the punches too. 

2. Stress is bad for you too. 

I’m not going to spend a long time explaining this one. We know stress is bad. Bad for your heart, bad for your immune system, bad for your sex life, bad for your relationships, bad for your teeth, bad for your hormones. 

Stressing about whether or not that cheeseburger could kill you could kill you. So, let it go. 

3. Accept your body. 

Shame will not make you healthier. Actually, in my personal experience, it's pretty terrible motivation.

So what if your healthiest weight happens to be 100 pounds heavier than Gisele's? It's YOUR body and you deserve to be loved and taken care of your whole life. If you have limited control on how long you have on planet earth, at least you should be grateful for the sculpture of cells that is you.

4. Accept your differences. 

 Joshua Rosenthal, the founder of Institute for Integrative Nutrition, is a big fan of the concept of "bio-individuality." This concept suggests that each person needs different nutrition. Certain foods work better with different bodies. 

Tuning in to your body's individual responses to food and how it makes you feel is an important part of taking care of yourself and a powerful tool for figuring out whether or not certain foods are really the right ones for you.

5. Be grateful for today. 

Gratitude cultivates presence. Presence nourishes mindfulness. Mindfulness is AWESOME for your health. But, it's also awesome for helping you maintain a sense of self. It can help you decide what you want to spend your time doing, how you want to feel and what you want to eat. 

You are living your life right now, so instead of focusing sooo much on securing another 5-10 years at the end of your life, focus on being happy about today and really savor the present. 

YOLO