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Posts tagged with “diet”

8 Compelling Reasons to Adopt a Whole Food Diet

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“The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.” ~Ann Wigmore

Why aren’t we taught optimal nutrition in school as adolescents?

I remember briefly learning about the food pyramid, which doesn’t even include water, by the way.

Do you want to know what I vividly remember? Growing up during the peak of diet culture, when models and actresses who were unrealistically skinny were the only ones who were considered pretty or good enough.

My dad died from a heart attack at age forty, and my single mother …

How I Ditched Alcohol (Again) and Lost 30 Pounds

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“Setbacks are simply reminders.” ~Alison Schuh Hawsey

The nightly wine was back. This time with a vengeance.

It began in late October, when I was happily organizing the bathroom of my new home. The phone rang, and everything changed. My beloved friend/soulmate/ex-boyfriend/twin flame was in the hospital. Three days later, he passed over the veil.

This was also the day I began completely giving up on any continuation of clean eating, drinking, and living. That evening, I downed three dirty martinis on an empty stomach after a long spell of not drinking. Throwing up in my driveway was a …

The Simple Lifestyle Changes That Healed My Mind and Body

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“If you don’t give your mind and body a break, you’ll break. Stop pushing yourself through pain and exhaustion and take care of your needs.” ~Lori Deschene 

When I collapsed that evening while fishing, I was fortunate not to land head-first into the water.

It was April 2018, a few weeks before my fiftieth birthday, and after work, I decided to walk to the local pond and spend the remaining hours of light fishing.

After a short time, though, I started to feel hot, a little lightheaded, and dizzy, and then the lights went out. I only blacked out for …

How My Wellness Passion Was Actually Destroying My Health

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“Your body holds deep wisdom. Trust in it. Learn from it. Nourish it. Watch your life transform and be healthy.” ~Bella Bleue

It didn’t fit. I zipped, tugged, and shimmied, but the zipper wouldn’t budge. I was twenty-three, it was my college graduation, and the dress I had bought a month ago would not zip.

As I stood there crying in the mirror, riddled with exhaustion, anxiety, vulnerability, and sheer overwhelm, I wondered what was happening to my body. In just one month I had gained thirty pounds. I was having one to three panic attacks a day. Everything …

How I Am Learning to Trust My Body More and Control It Less

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“I’m a beautiful mess of contradiction, a chaotic display of imperfection.” ~Sai Marie Johnson

I don’t identify as having an eating disorder. I don’t struggle with anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating.  Yet I exercise precise control of my weight, down to the pound. If I gain a mere two pounds, I can feel it. First in my stomach. Then in my face.

That’s when the self-loathing kicks in.

I beat myself up for gaining those two pounds.

I wear a shirt to sleep at night, instead of being naked like I am when I am two pounds lighter.

I …

Hungry and Panicked? The Link Between Food and Anxiety

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“Take care of your mind, your body will thank you. Take care of your body, your mind will thank you.” ~Debbie Hampton

4:00 p.m. I am suddenly aware of my heartbeat. It feels more insistent than normal. Is it faster? Is it jagged? Am I out of breath?

I try to reason with myself: I’ve just done a brisk walk pushing the stroller over some hills.

My anxiety responds: Those hills were awhile back… you wouldn’t be out of breath from that.

Anxiety sufferers have a heightened sense of, well, a lot of things. For me, I am acutely aware …

How Toast Changed My Life and Helped Me Stop Bingeing

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One day, toast changed my life.

It was many years ago, when I was working as a personal trainer and nutrition and wellness coach.

I spent my days helping people “get fit” and “eat healthy,” so of course I was always preaching about lifestyle changes, “healthy” eating, and “whole, clean, nutritious” food, while demonizing “processed” foods, as most others in those worlds do.

Toast, at the time, was a big no-no. Especially toast made with white bread.

That’s basically blasphemy in the “healthy eating” world, with two strikes against it. First, bread has carbs, which I learned, from Atkins in …

Thinner is Not Better – Healthy, Connected, and Happy Is

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“Standards of beauty are arbitrary. Body shame exists only to the extent that our physiques don’t match our own beliefs about how we should look.” ~Martha Beck

I have so many women around me right now—friends, mothers, clients that are on a diet—constantly talking about their weight and how their bodies look, struggling with body image.

I am profoundly sad about the frequency and theme of those discussions.

At the same time, I deeply get it; it is hard to detach from our conditioning.

I too struggled with body image at one point in my life, and for a very …

How Restrictive Diets Mess with Our Brains and Lead to Bingeing

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“Your body is precious. It is your vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.” ~Buddha

When I went on my first diet in my teens (low-carb, it was back in the Atkins days), I wasn’t even overweight. I weighed less than 120 pounds, but my jeans had started to get a little tight, so I thought I needed to lose five pounds or so. At the time, I didn’t have a bad relationship with food; I just ate like a typical teenager—not the best choices.

About two hours in, I remember starting to obsess over the things I couldn’t eat …

How I Got Healthy & Overcame My Food/Body Issues by Ignoring Conventional Advice

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I was an award-winning personal trainer and nutrition and wellness coach for over eight years.

I also spent close to three decades struggling with my own weight and food issues—trying to “stick to” diets and/or healthy eating and lifestyle goals. And many years struggling with binge eating, bulimia, and (what I thought at the time was) an uncontrollable sugar addiction.

During the years I was working in the fitness and nutrition industry, whenever I’d get new clients, I’d find out what their health and fitness goals were, and I’d give them the perfect plan to help them get there.

And …

The One Thought That Killed My Crippling Fear of Other People’s Opinions

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“Don’t worry if someone does not like you. Most people are struggling to like themselves.” ~Unknown

For as long as I can remember, I have been deathly afraid of what other people thought of me.

I remember looking at all the other girls in third grade and wondering why I didn’t have a flat stomach like them. I was ashamed of my body and didn’t want other people to look at me. This is not a thought that a ten-year-old girl should have, but unfortunately, it’s all too common.

Every single woman I know has voiced this same struggle. That …

How to Protect Our Kids from a Lifetime of Food, Weight, and Body Image Issues

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I went on my first diet when I was around fourteen or so because, as they often do in growing teens, my jeans started getting tight.

And because I grew up in the same anti-fat culture we all have, I hated myself for it.

Around the same time, an adult in my life who was always obsessed with “eating healthy” gave me a copy of the new book she was reading outlining the healthiest way to eat.

It was a book on the Atkins/low-carb diet.

The author spent the bulk of the book demonizing carbs, explaining in convincing-sounding …

How Weight and Food Obsessions Disconnect Us and Why This Is So Harmful

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“We are hard-wired to connect with others, it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it, there is suffering.” ~Brené Brown

I was inducted into diet culture in my early teens and then into the health and fitness industry in my early thirties, when my “fitness journey” had finally really taken off, and I ultimately became a personal trainer and nutrition and wellness coach.

Once we’ve given enough years of our life to diet culture, many of us begin to recognize the ways that it’s harming us and all the things it’s stealing from us.

Peace of …

Obsessed with Healthy Eating? 9 Things I’ve Learned Since Recovering from Orthorexia

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“Sending love to everyone who’s doing their best to heal from things they don’t discuss.” ~Unknown

I used to obsess over healthy eating, and I mean OB-SESSSSS. I spent virtually every waking moment thinking about food. What should I eat today? Is there too much sugar in that? What will I eat when we go out next week? Should I claim that I’m allergic to gluten?

Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was suffering from orthorexia (that is, an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating). Yes, I fully agree that eating nutritious food is good for you—there’s few …

The Surprising Strategy I Used to Stop Bingeing (and Why It Worked)

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“Sometimes the thing you’re most afraid of doing, is the very thing that will set you free.” ~Robert Tew

I recovered from binge eating and bulimia by giving myself permission to binge. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

My decades-long weight and food war started in my teens, immediately after reading my first diet book, about Atkins, to be exact. I spent the following two decades trying to lose weight (only to keep gaining) and struggling with food.

By my early thirties, I’d finally managed to lose weight, but it hadn’t end the war, it had just started a new one. The …

Freedom from Food – This Time for Good!

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“Nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe.” ~Eckhart Tolle

I cannot say that I didn’t struggle in my life. But there’s one area in which I have overcome the challenges I was facing with hardly an effort: letting go of the eating disorder I was suffering from, getting rid of the extra weight I was carrying, and maintaining the results easily for twenty-eight years.

How Did I Do That?

In a minute I’ll tell you exactly how I did that and how you can do it too. But first let me take a moment to explain …

Do You Remember When You Didn’t Worry About Your Weight?

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“We need to start focusing on what matters—on how we feel, and how we feel about ourselves.” ~Michelle Obama

Do you remember the little girl (or boy) in you? The kid who ran, jumped, danced, laughed anywhere and everywhere they felt like it—before someone told them to shush, that they were too big, too loud, too much.

The kid who didn’t even know what a scale was before someone told them their size was wrong.

The kid who just ate—before someone gave them a mile-long list of “bad” foods and made them scared of food and distrusting of themselves.

After …

Being Skinny Doesn’t Make You Fit or Healthy

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“Your body is precious. It is your vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.” ~Buddha

As a 5’4″ petite, half-Asian, people have always assumed that I’m fit. However, my slender figure hid the sins of a poor diet and exercise routine for a decade.

The truth is, being skinny doesn’t make you healthy. There are many hidden dangers of being so-called “skinny fat.” (Though this is a commonly used term for unhealthy skinny people, it’s worth noting that bigger doesn’t always mean unhealthy. So perhaps a more accurate term would be “skinny unhealthy.”)

Skinny fat, also known as “normal …

How to Listen to Your Body and Give It What It Needs

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“And I said to my body softly, ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath and replied, ‘I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.’” ~Nayyirah Waheed

For more than half my life, I took care of my body “by the numbers.” Every day, I walked a certain number of steps, no matter how sore, sick, or tired I was. I worked a certain number of hours, often going without sleep in order to finish my work and check off all the numbered items on my to-do list, no matter how my body begged for rest.

For …

How I Lost 30 Pounds by Meditating (and All the Things I Gained)

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“Clear your mind. Your heart is trying to tell you something.” ~Unknown

I recently lost thirty-plus pounds without trying or intending to. I remember excitedly sharing this news on social media one day, after stepping on a scale in my hotel room and being shocked. I don’t own a scale, so between the time when I had last weighed myself and this day, I’d lost over thirty pounds without being conscious of it.

After my public announcement, people from all directions contacted me asking me questions. Everyone wanted to know how I did it and what could they do to …