Coaches Blog
Win Your Fight with Food for Good
Imagine waking up one day having no more food fear. Unwanted thoughts around food or your body no longer linger in your mind. You can eat what you desire without obsessive, excessive planning… without attachment. YES. It’s POSSIBLE! I don’t remember the last time I woke up having my very first thoughts be on food. Maybe this sounds familiar to you… What can I eat today? I’m so mad at myself for what I ate […]
Food: From Fear to Freedom
For so long I searched for the “right” way to eat in hopes of totally healing my mind & body. I truly believed I found it several years ago when I began to experience better health in many ways after making big changes in my diet. I was thrilled. Also, I was convicted it was the right way for anyone who might need healing. And then my body and needs changed; and I found my […]
Time to JUST BE
For as long as I can remember, my life has been built around what foods I “should” or “shouldn’t” eat. This would flow into so many daily decisions and often looking back, it would ruin my enjoyment of many moments. Dinners out with friends staring at the menu and deciding if I would be “good” that night or if I would choose to indulge and then likely spend the rest of the dinner feeling guilty […]
The Importance of Intention
When I first went to college (quite some time ago) having heard you can be whatever you want to be…I took many different prerequisites and I looked into a lot of career paths but I never did finish any programs in that phase of my life. (I didn’t have a focus so I didn’t reach any particular goal) If you’re thinking, I hear you…that’s me too. You may be curious about what I’m doing differently […]
Helping Others I Helped Myself
My inner peace and sense of fulfillment is my most precious treasure right now. When I started the program I was struggling. I wanted to help others. I wanted to help the most vulnerable populations I had been studying for more than 30 years. I was feeling guilty, confused, and powerless because as a cultural anthropologist I had used the holistic approach to study, understand and explain human behavior, but not to help humans heal […]
Imperfectly Perfect
It’s 4 o’clock in the morning, and I can’t sleep. My eyes won’t close, and I am hungry. Actually, I am starving. But why does it matter? My body doesn’t deserve food. I turn over onto my belly to try to silence the grumbling of my stomach; silence its desperate cry for help. I don’t want to awaken my sister sleeping next to me. I don’t want to reveal my weakness. I am not supposed […]
My Personal Journey to Intuitive Eating
As long as I can remember, my body was something that needed to change – it was not ok the way it was. I had antagonizing thoughts running through my head all day about what and when to eat and exercise. I would get upset with myself if I had a piece of bread or craved something sweet. I would feel stressed if I realized I hadn’t eaten vegetables at every meal or hadn’t done […]
Connecting with Myself
What I find meaningful at this stage of my life when it comes to food and body is my newfound ability (that I learned from IPE) to connect with myself when I am feeling negative emotions from stress and overwhelm in my everyday work and personal life. In my past, without even a blink of an eye, when life got challenging or overwhelming (pretty often) I would secretly gorge on donut holes or other sweets […]
In search for meaning and appreciation
I appreciate every moment life has given me to pursue this journey. This is a life-long journey where I have come to appreciate every day I feel good. Now I know there is no destination, it is only the journey that counts, only today, only the here and the now. I have gained more perspective throughout the years and when I was younger, I expected things to work the way I wanted them. I expected […]
Honest Open Willing
How do I stop this? How do I control my eating? How do I lose weight and then maintain it? How do I know what I want to do and be in the world? These were the questions running on a continual loop just below the level of my everyday consciousness. Monitoring and calculating everything I ate; doing ‘well’ for 2 to 3 weeks at a time and then stopping at the supermarket on the […]
Be the Change
At the moment what is most meaningful to me is to keep evolving to the be the best version of myself. In every decision, every thought or action, I try to consider the effects it is going to cause to those around me. I believe in my heart to be the change I want to see in my children. It all starts here within me. I often ask myself the question, “What am I putting […]
From Frustration to Freedom
For me, slavery to dieting began in puberty. I went thru a chubby stage as I began to mature, so I started dieting. If only I could actually get to that “magical” number, is what i thought for over 2 decades. But what I since have realized is – the problem was never my weight. I actually felt I didn’t fit in with peers. And I tried to fix that by dieting. I thought if […]
Some Unhealthy Baggage of Healthy Eating
Having worked in this field (nutrition/eating psychology) for over 10 years now, I stand both as an insider and an onlooker into the nutritional world and see a culture fascinated, infatuated, obsessed, conflicted, dogmatic, undernourished, asleep, righteous, and neurotic around food on many different levels and, I do believe, for many good reasons. Even as health and nutritional coaching continue to take first world countries around the world by storm, admirable in their pursuits to […]
Ideas are not changed by will, but by new ideas
When I was 20 years old, I gained nearly 20 pounds in under three months. I believed it was all because of the food I was eating at the time. When I was 21 years old, I lost nearly 20 pounds in under three months. I believed it was all because of the food I was eating at the time. For the next 5 years, the pattern repeated over and over again. I was in […]
A Personal Story
You know the feeling that all your pants are too tight!? None of your clothes fit right ???? It’s hard to ignore the fact that the kids keep you so busy you aren’t actually eating what you meant to eat nor are you getting to the gym. Ahhh! No wonder nothing is fitting right. Gosh, i feel you. What is wrong with me? If i was just more disciplined I’d stick to my diet and […]
Food Chaos During Chronic Illness
During chronic illness many of us will refine our diets attempting to regain health. Seems quite logical and necessary, and it is. Yet it can pull us into a whole new set of food issues with the “right” way to eat while ill and the all the “wrong” and “bad” foods for one’s health. That food chaos during illness quickly becomes a contributing factor to staying ill. It simply is too much stress and we […]
Do you always need an answer?
If you take pride in being a self-aware and highly-reflective person, you’re probably in the habit of trying to constantly pay close attention to your behaviors, thought patterns, and habits. You also probably ask yourself tons of questions. Why did I just do that? Where are the root causes of this trauma? Who was the person that brought up this topic for me for the first time? What can I do to make a lasting […]
The Darkest Hour Is Always Before the Dawn – the Gift of Total Despair
It’s amazing how a conversation with someone close to us, or a random text message can make our whole world come crushing down to the point that life no longer seems like an attractive option to entertain. I found myself in that space in summer 2013, after my then husband told me about his cancer diagnosis and then accidentally sent me a text message intended for somebody he was having an affair with. I was […]
Metamorphosis
Compassion with self is so important in the different changes we may go through in personal transformation. When I first gave up dieting (before I met the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, I had been on a diet for over 20 years) I felt more secure about my change in mindset. Sure, when I initially reached that “magical” number through a weight loss program I was on a temporary high. But I soon found […]
Loving Myself Is The Greatest Gift
I had always thought that I loved myself and then I truly fell in love with myself. About six years ago I was unhappy. Actually, I was pretty miserable and I didn’t realize it. I was going through a lot of things at the time. I was about 60 pounds heavier, had serious knee pain and was working constantly which included a lot of travel. I also wasn’t truly happy in my marriage. I didn’t […]
Chasing the perfect body? You’re not alone, and there’s a better way!
I wish it weren’t true… but we are indeed surrounded by conflicting messages about food, body image & health. I’ve personally lost precious time, energy and love chasing the perfect body. I’ve experienced anxiety and fear related to weight obsessing, striving to eat “healthy” food all the time, compulsive/binge eating, and emotional isolation. In other words, I empathize with those who can’t picture a life without worrying about food, stressing into resistance with food, and […]
Why liking food too much is not the problem — it’s the solution
I used to feel like enjoying food too much was a bad thing. Like if I let myself relish chocolate, or pizza, or pasta with abandon, I would lose control and not be able to stop eating. As you might imagine, this manifested in lots of challenging ways, from calorie counting to ever-present interest in the latest diet trends. I never suspected that allowing myself to actually feel JOY around food is what would, ironically, […]
My story of transformation in my mindset toward dieting
I am so grateful for the freedom I am experiencing in my relationship with food since I found the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. I discovered this work when I was deep in my struggle with food. I had spent 25 years looking for the answer to which diet would bring me to that magical number. Introducing the Jenny Craig program…I got there but it was such a struggle to stay there. That feeling […]
How Surrender Fuels Me
I’ve been a professional counselor / healer for 19 years, and what fascinates me is that the concerns my clients present and the concepts I find useful for true transformation continue to mirror and shape my own relationship with food, my body and soul growth. There is a myth floating around that says once a person starts to work with a subject professionally, their own personal journey around that subject is completely “healed” or “over.” […]
Fad Diets: Where The World of Healthy Eating and Fashion Meet
We spend our entire lives searching. Searching for ourselves. Searching for the perfect mate. Searching for the best job. Searching for happiness. Searching for the perfect diet. Unfortunately, we rarely search within ourselves. From the moment we’re born, we fall prey to social conditioning. We start getting influenced by family and friends, by our environment, by the world. We are taught to believe certain things and think certain thoughts, and have certain opinions, and feel […]