On Feeling Crazy Around Food - the Wagon Metaphor

Have you ever felt crazy around food? Like a mix between needing it all in your stomach right now and having cravings that you can't even explain? Many people do. Sometimes it just feels necessary - like some primal force that you aren't even in control of anymore. It happens a LOT when you're dieting and trying to be "good." This is when problems start, a lot of the time. By denying your body nutrients it needs, it will latch out and, in trying to get the nutrition it vitally deserves, will make you eat food you didn't even want in the first place. And then there's also the fact that a lot of people's guts (microbiomes) are completely messed up, and there are bacteria in there that are super hungry and will try to get you to eat lots of bad fat or bad sugar or bad carbs (in general, "bad" means "refined," or not coming directly from a plant.)

A beautiful quote by Marc David of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, based in Boulder, Colorado. He's been working with people who feel like they've lost their lives to worrying about food and body image, and gets to the root of the problem with them - it's pretty badass stuff. Check him (and his partner in crime Emily Rosen) out at psychologyofeating.com and on Facebook and Instagram.

Our tastebuds have been hi-jacked by the industrial food system. We're not eating enough of what we need, and we're eating too much of what we don't need. It's a crisis, actually, because we are feeding into a system that is simultaneously destroying our planet. If we could cut out all the bullshit and focus on what our bodies really want, this world would be an exponentially better place. This goes beyond body-image and even health - this is the entire planet and human population we're talking about.

I have three great resources for you if you feel crazy around food, or at least don't feel like you have a healthy relationship with it. Sometimes it's hard to admit that you have issues with food because we, especially womyn, are taught that they should just BE thin - without any problems attaining or maintaining that. It's not true! So many people are struggling.
Here are my two favorite websites for helping to not feel crazy around food:
https://sixmonthstosanity.com/- Six Months to Sanity: stop dieting and take your sanity back!
http://psychologyofeating.com/ - (as mentioned above) The Psychology of Eating - the leading think-tank on nutritional psychology
http://isabelfoxenduke.com/- Isabel Foxen Duke - stop feeling crazy around food!

I just wanted to share a really beautiful excerpt from Isabel Foxen Duke's blog:

"The only time a person EVER “falls off a wagon”
is when there’s a wagon to fall off of; 
a set of rules, ideals, or beliefs around food that we let determine how we feel about ourselves.
“I was sooo good with food yesterday, and today, I SUCK.”
sound familiar?
and I’m guessing that when you go into the place of “I suck,”
when you “fall off the wagon,”
you fall hard. Like knee-deep-in-brownie-batter-hard. 
Not fun, and so avoidable. 
If you want to make peace with food, and stop shame-eating cookies in the middle of the night,
Ask yourself,
what “wagons” am I trying not to fall off of?
Where am I judging my performance with food? 
Where did I draw an imaginary line of “not okay?”
AND GET RID OF THAT SHIZ.
Because as long as there’s a wagon to fall off of, you WILL fall off of it eventually.
You see,
“Falling off” is not your problem. Your wagon is your problem."

Sometimes it brings me to tears! This can apply to ANY area of your life, not just food and weight and maintaining your figure or whatever. This can apply to getting good grades to the point of doing yourself in, toxic friendships out of fear of letting go, staying at a job you hate, etc. etc. etc. The list goes on an on. Remember this wagon metaphor next time you feel stuck.

Sending much love :)

Okay, But What IS Mindfulness?

The term mindfulness has kind of a bad rep in the modern world. It conjures up images of hippies and introversion and vegans and all that stuff that US pop culture isn't an enormous fan of. Basically, mindfulness is simply about being hyper-present, which is a great way of not letting time escape you and fully enjoying your life. That sounds pretty great, right? Yeah, it is! Here's a definition:

"Mindfulness is the psychological process of bringing one's attention to the internal and external experiences occurring in the present moment, which can be developed through the practice of meditation and other training. The term "mindfulness" is a translation of the Pali term sati, which is a significant element of some Buddhist traditions." - http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/mindfulness/definition

 I like this second definition a lot, because it's about withholding judgment on ourselves. If you truly realized how often you judged yourself negatively throughout the day, whether that be subconsciously in the form of not letting yourself wear a sleeveless shirt on a hot day, or louder as in telling yourself in the mirror that you're too fat, too thin, too ugly, or whatever it is, as we all do, you would fall at your own feet. Mindfulness allows you to let go of judgment and just BE.

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/mindfulness/definition

Being in the present is something we rarely do in modern day society anymore. We are constantly worried about the future, dwelling on the past, and forget that life is made up of consecutive present moments, and that's all we have. It's limited.

And here's another one from Mandy Hale, a great thinker on mindfulness and happiness:

livelifehappy.com

See how these quotes tie in with body acceptance and food/eating too? If you're constantly wishing you had a different body, a different face, ANYTHING, you're living in the past or future. It's not fair to yourself. Learn to let yourself be.

Let go of shoulds. Let go of judgment. Learn to just exist. That way, you can learn the sound of your own intuition, which is your best friend you haven't met yet. Your intuition will guide you to all the places you want to go and reintroduce you to yourself.

Onward!

My Grandmother's Story

When I was eight years old, I watched my grandmother on my mom's side be diagnosed with spleen cancer and quickly deteriorate. She decided she wasn't interested in chemotherapy or radiation, and remembered a time when she had been living in New York City across from a doctor she thought was crazy at the time. He was healing cancer by putting people on a strict nutritarian diet, where you only allow foods to enter your body that contain the maximum nutrition possible. That means their ANDI (Aggregate Nutrient Density Index) score is in the first column . Check out this chart to see what foods make the cut:

ANDI scores table: http://www.nutritionnutontherun.com/2014/03/20/nutrient-density-andi-superfoods/

It's essentially vegan, though NOT totally, and it's about getting rid of all the bullshit around food and diet and subtracting, which is what most people's mindsets about food are based on, and instead focusing on ADDING the good stuff, to the point where you just naturally don't have room anymore for the bad.

Anyway. My grandma remembered this and got in contact with the doctor. His name was Dr. Max Gerson, from Germany. I don't know the full story, and neither does my grandma, but apparently he was banned in the United States, because his therapy would have put the entire cancer industry out of business. She started on the treatment, and soon after, her cancer was GONE. Read her full story here:
http://gerson.org/gerpress/joyce-stage-4-non-hodgkins-lymphoma-recovery/

My Grandma, Joyce Forsythe, at age 74, after surviving cancer on Dr. Gerson's therapy

It was a miracle. Often, people don't believe me when I tell them. But sometimes, sometimes, it sparks interest and inspires them to eat better, connect more with family, and live a healthier life. Dr. Gerson doesn't have all the answers, but it's important to remember that nobody else does either. And this - eating food with maximum nutrition - makes a heck of a lot more sense to me than poisoning your body with chemicals.

This drastically changed the way my family ate. My Mom, the most important person in my life, changed her diet a lot but also didn't want to mess up her life, and didn't want to force it on us either. She had had serious health issues in the past, and around 12 years later, was worried she had liver disease from years of pushing herself too hard (she's a psychiatrist at Harvard University, attended the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and Columbia before that. She's a hard worker if I've every known one). Anyway, all that prestigious education only got her so far in terms of her own health. The adventurous woman that she is, she spent one month in Nepal after doing a test to see if she had liver disease. Her thought process was, "If I don't have liver disease, I'm going on this trip. If I DO have liver disease, I'm going on this trip." That still makes me shiver a little.

My diet started to change during this time. I realized that gluten made me feel really sick and heavy, and that dairy didn't agree with my system either. I dappled in vegetarianism and veganism here and there, but nothing was extremely exciting or easy to stick with until I really started thinking about nutritarianism.

DISCLAIMER this blog DOES NOT promote any one kind of eating besides mindful eating! It's just a way of letting you know what's out there and my story. The WHOLE POINT is everyone's different and I encourage you to know your body enough to know what that is.

That's it for now! Thanks for reading!

Cooking as Meditation

In this incredibly fucked up world we live in, cooking, for me, is one of the few things that makes sense. It offers a sense of control yet also freedom that we as humans so desperately look for. This want for control yet freedom usually manifests in unhealthy ways, whether in eating disorders, alcoholism, drug addictions, or self-harm, and more. Cooking is definitely not going to solve these issues, but it does offer a beautiful connection to ourselves that we (and I) thought died a long time ago. It's a way of giving yourself over to the universe, and stepping out of control and simultaneously back into it.

Cooking is a way of setting yourself free of the industrial food system, which is responsible for so much suffering in this world. When we cook for ourselves, we are able to gain back our independence - to not be so dependent on industry and companies to feed us. It's a pretty cool thing too break free of this modern craze, while also being healthier in the meantime.

This blog does not advocate for any particular diet, but it is true that if you cut out certain food groups, cooking becomes more necessary and also more fun and creative.

Use cooking as alone time if you're an introvert, or use cooking as a group activity to spend time with family and friends if you're extroverted. Either way, cooking can become one of your favorite parts of the day.

Michael Pollan, a great mind in the food world, said that you can eat anything you want, under one condition: if you make it yourself. Wanna eat bread? Go for it! Just be sure to make it from scratch. It's a really awesome way to take a step back and understand what you are actually eating when you eat - since YOU made it! It's a really empowering feeling.

This is a beautiful #bowlofgoodness from Nina Olsson, author of Bowls of Goodness, an incredible cookbook. Follow her on Instagram at @nourish_atelier

A Happy Thought for your Thursday :)

Eat Food.

This pretty much sums it up.

Dieting vs. Intuitive Eating

Intuitive eating is another way of saying mindful eating. It's about eating what and when your body needs - not when you are bored or angry or frustrated or anxious.

This is a helpful and very powerful infographic that sums up the difference between the two. And I'd just like to say: you have one life. Would you rather spend it in the left or the right column?

This is a big deal, because it puts the agency back into you and, especially your BODY. You have a living, breathing body, and you must treat it as such. Abusing it isn't fair.