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Category: Health

Social Media Body Positive Feeds to Follow

Posted on by tmAdmin

Support a healthy body image by following these body positive social media feeds. Fill your feed with realistic and positive images of bodies and health.

The messages that you see and hear everyday matter and influence how you feel about your own human body.

Pick the ones that speak to you and resonate with you and make YOU feel good, now.

BEAUTY REDEFINED

Twins, Lexie Kite, PhD and Lindsay Kite, PhD have become leading experts in the work of body image resilience through research-backed online education available on their website, social media, and through speaking events to tens of thousands across the US. Beauty Redefined changes the conversation about body image by telling girls and women they are more than beautiful. Lexie and Lindsay assert positive body image is about feeling positively toward your body overall, not just what it looks like. Check out their book More Than a Body.

THE BODY POSITIVE

The Body Positive is a nonprofit organization that teaches people to listen to their bodies, learn and thrive. Our ultimate goal is to end the harmful consequences of negative body image: eating disorders, depression, anxiety, cutting, suicide, substance abuse, and relationship violence. Check out Connie Sobczak, co-founder of The Body Positive’s book Embody.

CHRISSY KING

From author and Instagram personality Chrissy King, an exciting, genre-redefining narrative mix of memoir, inspiration, and specific exercises and prompts, with timely messages about social and racial justice, and how the world needs to move beyond body positivity to something even more exciting and revolutionary—body liberation. Check out Chrissy’s book The Body Liberation Project.

THE EMBRACE MOVEMENT

Started by founder Taryn Brumfitt, the Body Image Movement (BIM) is on a mission to change the belief that your body is not an ornament, it’s the vehicle to your dreams. BIM is on a quest to end the global body-hating epidemic and believes that everyone has the right to love and embrace their body, regardless of shape, size, ethnicity and ability.

AMY PENCE-BROWN

Amy Pence-Brown is a fat feminist mother, writer, artist and body image activist for the past nine years who became internationally know for her radical stand for self-love at the Capitol City Public Market on August 29, 2015, in Boise, Idaho, which was documented in a blog post, photographs and a video viewed over 200 million times. Her message about the value of all bodies no matter what their size, has been covered by numerous media outlets, including CNN, USA Today, Cosmopolitan, People, TODAY, Huffington Post, Upworthy, HLN, the Dr. Oz Show, SHAPE, xo Jane and Fitness magazine. Amy’s radical stand for self-love is the inspiration for my column Radical Acceptance, in the Jackson Hole News and Guide, which focuses on promoting positive body image and redefining health.

SUMMER INNANEN

Summer is a Body Image Coach, author of Body Image Remix and host of one of my favorite podcasts, Eat The Rules which is dedicated to body image, body positivity, self-worth, anti-dieting and feminism.

ASHLEE BENNETT

Ashlee is a body image therapist whose mission is to help you develop a healing relationship with your body, which involves mental, emotional, physical, social and spiritual domains of life.

SONYA RENEE TAYLOR

NYT Bestselling Author & founder of The Body is Not An Apology committed to radical self-love as a path to liberation.

DR. COLLEEN REICHMANN

Colleen is a licensed clinical psychologist, eating disorders specialist, and body positive activist.

CENTER4BODYTRUST

Confronting a weight and health-obsessed world, Hilary Kinavey, MS, LPC and Dana Sturtevant, MS, RD are a therapist-dietitian team who’ve been co-creating their Body Trust approach for over 17 years. Body Trust is scientifically grounded and greatly informed by social justice movements, liberatory frameworks, and embodiment theory. Like to read? Check out their book Reclaiming Body Trust.

TANYA MARK

Last but not least! My social media pages share positive messages about non diet nutrition, body image, intuitive eating and eating psychology to help you make peace with food and your body (and if you haven’t read my FREE GUIDE yet, you can grab it here).

Have a favorite body positive social media account that you love and would like to share it with me? I’d love to hear from you!

  • Tanya

Intuitive Eating: do you need to re-learn how to eat?

Posted on by tmAdmin

When we were born, we instinctively knew how to eat. But as we move through life, we are impacted by the messages from the world around us. We’re taught over and over again about what to eat. And the “what” we should eat shifts year after year.

These lessons come from family members (more often than not with good intentions), the latest clean eating book, social media and more. And that finger wagging at us telling us we shouldn’t eat this or that, comes from our own thoughts and self-judgement about food and our bodies that we’ve learned from living in diet culture.

Intuitive Eating

Most of us need to relearn how to eat. Learning how to eat again through a self-care framework called Intuitive Eating (IE) developed by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. IE teaches us to let good of food rules, to develop body trust and finally have the healthy relationship with food and our bodies that we desire.

Tapping into intuitive eating practices can help us with perceived eating challenges such as:

  • over-eating, believing we need portion control
  • mindless eating, “emotional” eating, eating when not physically hungry
  • craving, sneaking or “bingeing” on “bad” or “forbidden” foods

These perceived eating challenges are often symptoms of disconnected eating and diet culture restrictions. So many of us struggle with them. I did. And that’s what led me to study and support clients through the process of Intuitive Eating.

So, what is Intuitive Eating?

First things first, Intuitive Eating isn’t another goal to accomplish. There is no success or failure. It’s a lifelong journey of reconnecting with yourself and nourishing yourself. For many of us, it’s a relearning.

The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating include:

Rejecting the Diet Mentality

If we don’t “diet” then what should we do? There is no “quick fix” for our underlying challenges with food. Every year there is the latest greatest eating plan. Yes, you might have “success” with one or more, but how long does it last? And at what cost – as “diets” are called the “life thief” by Christy Harrison, author, Anti-Diet.

Our challenges with food are often symptoms asking us to look deeper. And the messages will get louder and louder (over the years) until we finally listen and do the deeper work.

I can hear you now…“but I HAVE to control my eating so I must be on an eating plan or diet.” While the focus of Intuitive Eating isn’t on weight loss, it’s absolutely about honoring your whole health – physically, mentally and emotionally.

The focus of IE is on our relationship with food and body and the rewards are great.

So, what’s driving our unwanted behaviors with food? This is the bigger question. This is the question we should be asking and addressing. After the diet or eating plan is over, we are still left with our unique selves and our unique relationship with food. Some of us have been on and off eating plans for most of our lives that we don’t know how to eat without a set of rules to follow. So let’s learn to eat again. It’s a practice.

Honor Your Hunger

Your body knows when it needs food, and it will tell you so. In fact, if you’re depriving your body of certain macronutrients and/or overall calories, it will eventually drive you to “overeat” which is really just primal hunger. This drive may even feel like a “binge” when in fact it may be purely a physical need for, well, more food that you’re feeding your body.

Everyone is unique, but for some, it may be helpful to have a regular eating rhythm or feed yourself when feeling gentle hunger so that you don’t get to the breaking point of “OMG I’m so hungry I’m going to eat everything in sight.” In order to do so, we must connect with gentle hunger, by listening for our unique internal physical body cues, interoceptive awareness, which is foundational to the practice of Intuitive Eating.

Peace ☮️ Out

Make peace with food. It’s not out to get you. You may have fear of food making you “fat” or certain foods will “kill” you. But they key to developing a healthy relationship with food is to give yourself unconditional permission to eat.

WHATTTT!!!! I know this concept sounds scary but if you constantly tell yourself you can’t or shouldn’t eat certain foods, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that can lead to uncontrollable cravings and “binge” eating, which then can lead to guilt.

Intuitive eating has a strategy called habituation that is designed to help you make peace with your list of “forbidden” or “bad” foods. This practice has created powerful shifts in the eating mindset for many of my clients (and no, you won’t want to eat oreos all day, every day).

Challenge your inner Food Police

Are you “good” (follow the rules) or “bad” (breaking the rules)? Do you identify with being “bad” for eating too many cookies, or “good” for eating a salad when you really hunger for a sandwich? The Food Police have rules that have been drilled into our brains for years. Intuitive Eating works to break down the power they hold over you.

This doesn’t mean that you throw caution to the wind and let your inner rebel eat whatever you want. Instead it’s about not having to live by outside rules and having to control yourself all the time. Let’s soften. There’s a middle ground that’s more easeful.

Listen for Fullness Clues

Your body will tell you when it’s satiated. You just need to listen. Bringing awareness to the plate is essential to feel satiety. Mindless, distracted, fast eating, which is so common these days, mutes the signal for satiety. See food and the eating experience as nourishment for not just your body, but your mind and soul (not just as fuel).

Embrace Satisfaction

In our desire to fit culture’s ideals, we may stray from one important nutritional element – pleasure. Enjoyment needs to be a part of the eating process in order to feel satisfied.

The next time you eat, notice, are you satisfied with what you’re eating? I remember distinctly when I was a teenager trying to “be good” by eating fat free food after fat free food and overall eating a lot because I never received any satisfaction from my list of “good” foods. Why? Because my desire for smaller thighs spoke louder than receiving satisfaction from my food. At first. Eventually, I dove into the Alfredo pasta.

Now I eat foods that satisfy me without deprivation and it’s just no big deal (and no longer the “forbidden, guilt-ridden” pasta.

Honor Your Feelings With Kindness

We’re all emotional eaters. It’s useful to find ways to comfort yourself in difficult times that don’t involve food. For example, find an outlet to cure boredom that doesn’t involve eating. Food won’t change any of those feelings even though it might distract or soothe in the short term.

Identifying the underlying emotion is a fantastic step if feeding your emotions has become your habit. Remember eating for emotions reasons is normal. It’s not “bad”. If it becomes your “go-to,” we can help you explore new ways to feel and cope beyond food.

Respect and Accept Your Body

Learn to respect your human body. Accept your unique genetic blueprint. Consider if you were constantly trying to make your size 8 foot fit into a size 6 shoe.

Being overcritical of yourself makes it extremely challenging to reject the diet mentality. As a Body Image Movement Global Ambassador, I help clients practice body neutrality, which means that you don’t have to “love” every aspect of your body rather you practice having more compassion towards yourself as a human being.

All bodies deserve respect. Period.

I help you put your health in perspective and soften the habit of constantly comparing yourself to ideal body images that less than 5% of us naturally possess. It’s time for a reality check!

Move Your Body

Give up the rigorous weight-loss focused workout programs and, instead, move your body in ways that bring you joy and make you feel good. I love exercise, yet, I’ve shifted to movement that feels good not just physically but movement that also feeds my mind and spirit.

And remember, more isn’t necessarily better. Tune in and become more aware of the signals that your body is sending. Are you still tired and feel like you have to drag yourself to your next workout? Or do you look forward to your next yoga class because it allows you to slow down, breathe and press the pause button?

Honor Your Health with Gentle Nutrition

Remember that you don't have to eat "perfectly" in order to be healthy. It's what you eat consistently, over long periods of time that matter. The key term is "for the most part." Honoring your health by eating healthy foods most of the time can come naturally when you reclaim intuitive eating. It's an important concept of intuitive eating.

Keep In Mind

Your diet is not only what you eat. It’s what you watch, what you listen to, what you read, the people you hang around…be mindful of the things you put into your body emotionally, physically and spiritually.

  • Tiny Buddha

While these are the 10 principles to consider to help you reconnect to self nourishment, make sure this list doesn’t become a check-list, a “to-do” list where you accomplish it or not, succeed or fail. Because then again, intuitive eating can become another kind of “diet” or eating plan, full of “rules.”

Intuitive Eating…

  • It’s about reconnecting with yourself and nourishment.
  • It’s about tuning in to your unique body’s needs, instead of tuning out.
  • It’s about slowing down with food and with life, trying to fit it all in.
  • It’s about saying “yes” to yourself, making self-nourishment a priority…so that you can take care of others and feel and BE your best self.
  • And again, it’s not another list of rules or an item to add to your “to-do” list!

Doesn’t that sound lovely? I invite you to relearn how to eat again.

Have a question, comment or would love support and guidance through the Intuitive Eating journey? Reach out!

  • Tanya

Are You On A High Fact “Diet”?

Posted on by tmAdmin

The High-Fact Diet

Do you ever feel burdened by the fact that you know so much about nutrition? This is what is called a “high-fact diet”.

Many of us are almost too well educated about what we eat, and this is actually creating stress in our bodies. And yes, I am speaking from personal experience. If we overthink every morsel we eat, we can be causing more harm than good.

Knowledge can nourish us. It can open our minds and make us feel empowered. But as with anything we consume, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. (Source)

Take me for example…

There are these peanut butter crackers. I love them. They’re just so delicious! BUT they have high fructose corn syrup in them. I used to eat them occasionally and really enjoyed them. However, when I learned how to read nutrition labels and learned that HFCS is “bad”, I started to avoid them altogether.

One day while I was still in nutrition school, I went on long hike in the middle of nowhere and didn’t bring enough snacks. I was, however, near a gas station where I saw my beloved peanut butter crackers. I was starving, and they were taunting me. But I got so stressed about eating a package that after devouring them, I was consumed by guilt because I knowingly ate something that wasn’t health promoting.

I believed the saying “you are what you eat” and so I believed that I was choosing to “poison” myself with HFCS. Of course, I now know that this is ridiculous. But when your mind is full of nutrition facts about how certain foods affect you, you begin to believe that you shouldn’t ever have these foods.

I can’t stress this enough – all foods can fit into a healthy diet.

We Don’t Need to be Perfect

No matter what the media or your nutritionist says (as I used to practice this way), we don’t need to be “perfect” eaters. Today, I focus on eating healthy foods for the most part – but I no longer categorize foods as either good or bad. I am more aware of how I am nourished by how I am living my whole life.

Right now, I am on vacation with my sister’s family and their three kids. I eat what I am served. Period. I am relaxed. I don’t have to cook. Instead, I focus on the joy of being around my family. I am nourished by far more than the food. Our metabolisms are fired up by more than what we eat. It’s also affected by what we think and how we feel about our food (and life).

If you missed my blog post about how your mindset affects your metabolism, you can check it out here.

Do You Have a High-Fact Diet?

  • So, how do you look at ______? (Insert your gas station peanut butter crackers equivalent.)
  • Can you eat _______ without a side of guilt or self-judgement?

Your answer to this question will tell you whether or not you’re living a high-fact “diet.”

If you are indeed way too knowledgable to approach your plate without guilt, then please – breathe. Take that weight off your shoulders.

Nutrition facts are everywhere (and my head is full of them) but we need to remember what we’re not reading on the internet and magazines, and hearing on podcasts and other media. There are many people who have less healthy food and exercise habits but somehow avoid getting diseases and live to ripe old ages. How is this possible? Our metabolisms and health are affected by far more than what we put in our mouths.

Eating healthy food is wonderful and is part of good health. But what you eat doesn’t define your whole health. Notice if you’re on a high fact diet and how it’s affecting the health of your mind and spirit.

Need some support in becoming a more relaxed, flexible healthy eater? I would love to chat!

  • Tanya

What is Body Positive Fitness?

Posted on by tmAdmin

I love fitness. I loved it so much that I made it my career as a former Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist.

While I still love moving my body, my perspective on fitness has changed.

Fitness has gotten entangled with diet culture. We’re told to:

  • Get a beach body. 
  • Earn and burn your food.

These statements seem benign because we’re so used to hearing them yet they can be incredibly harmful for both men and women. They make us feel ashamed of our bodies unless we have “shredded abs” and X percent body fat.

Needless to say, there’s a lot wrong with this picture.

Shift How You View Fitness

I used to be part of the problem. I used to buy into this harmful messaging. At the beginning of my career as an exercise professional, I believed that if clients just worked harder and smarter, they could achieve the “perfect” body. If they did the “work” and weren’t getting results, then I assumed it must be due to poor nutrition.

But nutrition messaging can prey on our self-worth too, with the terms “good foods” and “bad foods.” It’s no wonder so many of us think healthy eating has to be stressful and restrictive. Many of us don’t know how to eat “normally.”

Every body deserves fitness

After working with hundreds of clients in both fitness and nutrition, I’ve find that both of these strategies are wonderful ways to nourish our bodies.

But they don’t guarantee an “ideal” body.

Did you know that less than 5% of women naturally possess the body type that media portrays as ideal?

Fitness and nutrition are two self-care choices we can choose to engage in to feel good.

Not because our bodies aren’t enough.

Not because we don’t have a flat belly or a thigh gap.

Many of us want to feel better but we’re tired of the seemingly never-ending struggle to maintain or attain this unrealistic ideal body type. We’re tired of having to avoid “forbidden” foods that bring us pleasure in order to change our bodies. We’re tired of trying to live up to culture’s standard of being fit, and what toxic diet and fitness culture has determined all of our bodies should look like.

One way we can create a cultural shift is to take the focus off exercise as a means to change our bodies appearance and instead exercise for the ways it makes our bodies feel.

Boyd positive fitness

 

Body Positive Fitness

Body positive fitness promotes fitness as one way to care for our bodies. It promotes health, not needing to change your body size or shape. It does not use shame tactics and language that preys on our insecurities.

As a culture, we can shift to a body positive fitness perspective by changing the language around fitness.

Instead of believing we should “shred our abs” or we have to “earn and burn our food,” we can value exercise as something that is adding to the quality of our lives.

If you want to change your body, I want it to be your choice instead of feeling like you must in order to be accepted, by yourself and others.

Interested in supporting a shift to body positive fitness?

3 Tips to Support Body Positive Fitness

  1. Start noticing how toxic fitness messages make you feel. It starts with awareness. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it!
  2. Show your support for fitness businesses that promote with positive health and body messaging – with your wallet and your voice.
  3. Focus on the many benefits of exercise: stress reduction, improved sleep, increased energy, improved mental health, reduced and improved self confidence, brain power, increased strength, flexibility, balance, coordination, agility, and heart health.

As a Wellness and Personal Growth Coach, I’ve witnessed too many tears and too much stress around how we perceive our own bodies. The messages that we hear and see every single day are producing an epidemic of body dissatisfaction. But, we have the power to change that!

  • Tanya

Are you a Normal Eater?

Posted on by tmAdmin

There is so much stress and confusion around what to eat these days that many of us have no idea what normal eating is anymore.

You may even be suffering from disordered eating or an eating disorder and not even know it as it’s becoming increasingly more common in younger girls and middle-aged+ women because of perfectionistic food and body ideals from diet culture.

Why? Because…

Disordered eating and the pursuit of thinness is so normalized in our culture that it’s often dismissed and even encouraged within health and wellness fields.

  • Sarah Herstich, LCSW, Signs Your Client May Be Suffering From An Eating Disorder

(Learn more about treating eating disorders here, by Jared Levenson)

Health and fitness magazines are filled with articles about what to eat in order to attain a perfect size. Popular social media posts claim you should eat this, not that, and talk of clean eating in a way that insinuates everything else is dirty. All of this fuels our insecurities about what we eat.

We may have grown up in households where we heard things like, “I’m so bad! I just ate ___“. Or maybe we heard the word fat being thrown around as a negative term. Maybe everything in the fridge was labeled Fat Free or Low Calorie. And maybe our mothers loved baking cookies for us, yet the talk around the house about “good” and “bad” foods left you feeling so guilty about eating those lovingly prepared cookies.

Of all the things we learned growing up, the lesson so many of us didn’t learn was the fact that the food we eat doesn’t make us good or bad → it has no inherent moral value.

Yes, there’s a nutritional difference between apple pie and an apple, but morally, there’s no difference. But in our current culture, diet culture, we feel guilty for simply enjoying a slice of pie because it contains processed sugar, gluten, dairy etc.

After finishing nutrition school in 2012, I avoided all these “bad” foods because I feared the health consequences from eating them. I restricted my eating so much that I would avoid certain social situations (because I couldn’t control the food and worried about my willpower to resist tempting foods) and was obsessed with avoiding anything “bad.”

When I “faltered,” I felt like I wasn’t walking the talk and that I was totally inauthentic as a nutrition professional. I was obsessed with eating only things that are considered “healthy” to be “healthy.”

Obsessing about ‘wellness’ can actually make you quite unwell. – Jennifer Rollin, MSW, LCSW-C

Eating Psychology, Intuitive Eating

Thankfully I discovered Dynamic Eating Psychology and studied to become a coach when I learned that my restrictive, seemingly perfect “healthful” eating was actually not so healthy – it would have been considered “disordered.”

I returned to normal healthful eating, “gentle nutrition,” when I became professionally certified in Intuitive Eating.

I let go of the supposed “healthy” restrictive food behaviors and learned to tune back into my own body’s cues and needs.

What I love about Intuitive Eating is that it’s not just focused on food. It’s a self-care eating framework that focuses on our WHOLE health – physical, mental and emotional because our health is more complex than what you eat and how you exercise (and what your body looks like – as fit doesn’t have a look despite what diet culture tells us).

So what is Disordered Eating?

Disordered eating is different than an eating disorder. It lies between normal eating and an eating disorder and according to survey results conducted by Self Magazine and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 75% of women regularly engage in disordered eating and exercise patterns.

Oh wow. I was shocked when I discovered this fact.

According to National Eating Disorders Collaboration, examples of disordered eating include:

  • Fasting or chronic restrained eating
  • Skipping meals
  • Binge eating
  • Self-induced vomiting
  • Restrictive dieting
  • Unbalanced eating (e.g. restricting a major food group such as carbohydrates)
  • Laxative, diuretic, enema misuse
  • Steroid and creatine use – supplements designed to enhance athletic performance and alter physical appearance
  • Using diet pills

And “dieting” is one of the most common forms of disordered eating.

“Dieting is the number one cause of the onset of an eating disorder and seeking help early is the best preventative measure.” – NEDC

What is Normal Eating?

According to the Ellyn Satter Institute, Normal eating:

  • is going to the table hungry, and eating until you are satisfied.
  • is being able to choose food you enjoy and to eat it and truly get enough of it – not just stop eating because you think you should.
  • is being able to give some thought to your food selection so you get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food.
  • is giving yourself permission to eat because you are happy, sad, or bored or just because it feels good.
  • is mostly three meals a day – or four or five – or it can be choosing to much along the way.
  • is leaving cookies on the plate because you will let yourself have cookies again tomorrow, or eating more now because they taste so great!
  • is overeating at times and feeling stuffed and uncomfortable…and under eating at times, and wishing you had more.
  • is trusting your body to make up for (what you feel are) “mistakes” in eating.
  • takes up some of your time and attention, but keeps its place as only one important area in your life.
  • © 2018 Ellyn Statter Institute

In short, normal eating is flexible... it varies in response to your hunger, your schedule, your food and your feelings and so much more. It’s time to return for our physical, mental and emotional whole health.

In order to help you return to normal eating, I teach you how to eat again using a self-care framework called Intuitive Eating. Want to learn more about it, click here.

To your happiness and health,

  • Tanya

Eating Psychology Coaching for Everyone Who Eats

Posted on by tmAdmin

Do you or someone you love struggle with health, self-esteem or body image?

Perhaps this has gone on for years and you (or, they) have finally had enough of feeling anything less than fantastic.

I encounter this every day! People are fed up with feeling sick and tired, and they’re ready to enjoy life to the fullest and overcome their struggles with food, health and body. They’ve tried everything – the diets, clean eating challenges, cleanses, detoxes, supplements, teas and exercise programs all promising major results.

It’s time for a new approach.

5 Reasons Dynamic Eating Psychology Coaching could be for you

  1. You’re tired of the same old same old health and wellness strategies eat better, exercise more – punishing your body at the gym or depriving yourself any longer.

The problem with all of the diet and exercise programs on the market is that the two supposed magical strategies of eating well and exercising only make up half your calorie burning potential. Yup, you heard me correctly…HALF. Metabolism is SO much more than just what you eat and the amount of calories you burn. When I learned that, my whole outlook on health and weight shifted completely! I was finally able to serve my community in effective, sustainable ways.

Dynamic Eating Psychology is the most holistic approach you can take to feeling good and reaching your goals. It brings together nutrition and mindset while taking into account your lifestyle, goals and, most importantly, YOU. No two clients are the same. You are uniquely YOU. I customize my coaching for every client based on who they are and how they live. 2. You have stubborn eating challenges that have plagued you for far too long.

You just want to be free from these challenges. They are creating a huge energy suck and they’re holding you back from being your best self. As an eating psychology coach, I know that unwanted food habits like overeating, emotional eating and binge eating are behaviors that are driven from a much bigger cause. They’re often not the problem itself. Instead, they’re symptoms asking us to look deeper. I help clients explore these challenges to find answers in a safe and supportive environment. 3. You know in your gut that your challenges stem from something deeper than surface problems like cravings.

Did you know that these gut feelings are actually coming from a second brain in your belly? The Enteric Nervous System is that internal voice that gives rise to your intuition. When you sense that something isn’t right or that you don’t have the complete story, your Enteric Nervous System is what’s sending you those signals. And it’s extremely important to listen! When your body is telling you that something is off kilter, an eating psychology coach will help you tune in to those signals to figure out how to best nourish your body and meet its needs. And this nourishment may have nothing to do with eating better or exercising more. 4. You want to improve your relationship with food, your body and yourself.

An eating psychology coach helps facilitate this more harmonious relationship by helping you learn to treat yourself with unconditional love and respect. Undoing decades of harmful thought patterns takes a trained professional with the right tools to get to the root. It’s so common for women and men to be in a battle with how their body looks for a reason. Culture and media tells us we’re not enough unless we are a certain size, shape, or weight. Your body isn’t the problem. It’s the messages from media that are the problem. It’s time to re-train your brain. 5. You’re tired of your inner voice dictating how you feel about yourself.

How you talk to yourself matters. Many of us spend years being too dang hard on ourselves and telling ourselves that we’re not good enough. I help my clients transform that inner dialogue to one that empowers and supports them. Yes, this often starts with how we feel about our appearance but you will learn that you are far more than your body and how it looks. Explore what this means for you.

QUIZ: Is Dynamic Eating Psychology for you?

  • You eat well and exercise but still don’t feel the way you desire. You’re doing everything “right” so why the heck aren’t you seeing results? You’re frustrated. You may be dealing with health concerns such as digestion, immunity, energy, mood challenges or dissatisfaction with body weight.
  • You know what you are “supposed to do” to get healthier but can’t make it happen. It’s just too dang hard. You don’t have the time or energy to make it happen.
  • You’ve had success with improving your health through eating better and/or moving more, but you haven’t been able to sustain it. You feel like you need more “willpower.”

If you answered YES to any one of these 3 questions and you’re looking for a fresh, new approach to your health and well-being, reach out.

I am going to be fully upfront with you. This isn’t “magic pill” work.

Coaching is for you if you’re ready to take your relationship to food, body and your whole self to the next level. This work is for you if you’re open to new ideas, tired of feeling stuck, and you want an approach that’s positive and up-lifting.

Dynamic Eating Psychology Coaching is valuable for anyone who eats (yes, I know that’s everyone!) who wants a more harmonious relationship with food, body and self. Why are these strategies so important? Because life is too dang short. It’s time for a new approach.

  • Tanya

3 Mind Body Nutrition Tips for Fertility

Posted on by tmAdmin

3 Mind Body Nutrition strategies to help you conceive a healthy baby

When it comes to fertility, diet and how you nourish yourself matters. Eating good quality food is a part of nourishment but how you and your partner nourish your whole selves is another critical ingredient of good nutrition and the ability to conceive. I recommend couples spend three months working on their own Mind Body health before trying to conceive. Why? A healthy egg and sperm create a healthy baby.

1. Food quality matters!

Eat Healthy Fats

Healthy fats are critical to your hormonal health. They provide long-term sustainable energy throughout your day. When trying to conceive, steer away from low-fat or no fat. Add in quality fats such as avocado, raw (not roasted in oils) nuts and seeds such as chia, hemp, flax, walnuts. Cook with organic cold pressed coconut oil. Dress your salads with high quality olive oil. And if you digest dairy well, choose full fat, organic pasture-raised dairy products or raw dairy.

Avoid trans fats which are chemically created fake fats that cause damage to your body. Don’t be fooled by food labels that read 0 trans fats as manufacturers aren’t required to include this toxic fat if the product contains 0.5 or less. No amount of trans fats is healthy. To ensure there are no trans fats in your food, check the ingredient list for “partially hydrogenated oils.” They’re a hidden source of trans fats. Trans fats can be found in fried foods, baked goods, microwave popcorn, frozen pizza, crackers and more.

BONUS TIP: One of my favorite recommendations to balance hormones which increases your chances of fertility is Seed Cycling

Eat Healthy Carbohydrates

Low-carb is popular these days but many of us forget that vegetables and fruits are carbs. Carbohydrates are an important macronutrient because they provide us with quick energy.

Prioritize eating lots of vegetables which are packed full of nutrients (leafy greens are my favorite), as well as whole fruit (instead of juices), beans, 100% whole grains such as quinoa and amaranth. If you have difficulty digesting beans or grains, skip them or learn how to soak them to increase digestibility.

Minimize or avoid refined carbohydrates like white flour products such as breads, pastas, crackers etc. and excess poor quality sugar. For women, keep your sugars to 24 grams or less per a day; for men, 32 grams or less.

Buy the best quality produce that you can afford. To reduce your exposure to toxic pesticides found in produce, visit Enviornmental Working Group’s Clean 15, Dirty Dozen. EWG has an app that you can download on your smartphone for easy reference while grocery shopping.

Pesticides in produce can include chemicals that are xenoestrogens which mimic the functions of natural estrogens (endocrine disruptors). As a result, both women and men are dealing with excess poor quality, estrogen like substances that can lead to estrogen dominance. According to Natural Fertility Info., “estrogen dominance is a major cause of the fertility issues women face today”. What is so bad about estrogen dominance?

It is the root cause of a myriad of illnesses. Conditions associated with this include fibrocystic breast disease, PMS, uterine fibroids, breast cancer, endometriosis, infertility problems, endometrial polyps, PCOS, auto-immune disorders, low blood sugar problems, and menstrual pain, among many others.

Xenoestrogens can also be found in commercially raised beef, chicken, pork, dairy products as well as tap water. Also be aware of toxins in your cleaning and beauty products. Environmental Working Group has excellent substitutes for these products on their website.

Eat Healthy Proteins

Quality protein is important yet many of us tend to under-eat protein in the mornings (when it’s important to begin our day with balanced blood sugar) and over-eat it at dinner.

Be sure to evenly distribute your protein throughout your day. How much protein should you get at each meal? To figure out your own needs you divide your weight in pounds by 2.2, then multiply by 0.25. This will give you an estimate of how much protein you can absorb per a meal.

If you’re a meat eater, buy organic pasture-raised meats which means that the animal was raised on grass increasing the level of healthy omega-3 fats. For fish, choose wild fish that’s low in mercury and high in selenium: http://healthybabycode.com/5-myths-about-pregnancy-nutrition-3-pregnant-women-shouldnt-eat-fish

For vegetarians/vegans, make sure you are getting complete protein by eating a variety of foods that include the 9 essential amino acids. Try quinoa, buckwheat, rice, beans, lentils and more.

Minimize or avoid conventionally raised beef, poultry and pork that contain hormones and antibiotics as well as farm-raised fish high in mercury.

Healthy Hydration

Drink filtered water as your main source of hydration. Water is critical to our health. Our bodies contain 70% water. Without proper hydration, the body can’t perform tasks correctly (such as producing energy, hormones, or repair) nor can it expel toxins trapped inside the body due to lack of water.

Practice increasing your daily water intake to drink about 1⁄2 your body weight in ounces. Try drinking 16 ounces of water to start your day, before eating breakfast. It’s a wonderful way to detox.

Minimize: Alcoholic and caffeinated drinks. According to this article in the New York Times, moderate drinking does not appear to affect fertility though alcohol is known to affect sperm quality. One morning cup of coffee does not appear to affect fertility though it’s probably a good idea to pass on seconds according to Verywellfamily.com.

Avoid: Drinking out of plastic water bottles even if they say BPA free. Plastic bottles can contain harmful chemicals such as xenoestrogens which I’ve mentioned previously. They can seep into your bottled water when they’ve been sitting around for a long time or exposed to heat (which is common). Instead choose glass or stainless steel bottles and fill your bottles with filtered water.

2. A Healthy Lifestyle Matters

Consider Your Current Lifestyle

Is it grounded, calm and relaxed? Or is it hectic, erratic and sorely lacking in Vitamin T = Time?

Of course lifestyle changes aren’t quick fixes. That’s why I recommend taking three months prior to trying to conceive to take a look at your lifestyle and learn to slow down and prioritize what matters most.

Put yourself into your future babies shoes. What kind of environment would you like to be introduced to? Is your current lifestyle nurturing? Is there space for self-care?

It can be difficult to add in self-care strategies such as eating well or exercise when there’s just not room for it, mentally or physically.

One side note on exercise: Movement is wonderful for our chi (energy) and enhances our vitality and overall health. Yet beware of too much exercise. Excessive exercise can actually increase the overall stress on your body.

What’s On Your Plate?

Here’s a journal exercise to explore to create room for a healthier lifestyle: Write out your daily/weekly schedule and take a long hard look at it. What needs to stay and what needs to go? If it’s not a heck yes it’s a no. Stop doing so you can start doing!

The key point of this exercise is to reduce excess stress. Stress is a normal part of our lives as the sympathetic nervous system was designed to produce cortisol in times of emergency. Unfortunately many of us are stuck in a chronic low (or high) level of stress day after day and the stress response never turns off.

Remember that stress is any real or perceived threat (yes thoughts are included here!) to the body. The brain can’t differentiate between the two and as a result will turn on the stress response even when we perceive life as stressful.

How does the stress response impact hormonal balance?

First things first. Your body will always prioritize protecting itself. This means that digestion, growth and yes, conception have to wait in line. Unfortunately, when we’re under constant stress, the hormone cortisol can take a hit. It can be difficult for the body to keep up with the demands for constant cortisol. As a result, according to Dr. Claudia Welch, author of Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life, the body can borrow from our sex hormones, specifically progesterone. The body can make cortisol from progesterone. When progesterone stores take a hit, this creates an imbalance as one of progesterone’s jobs is to keep estrogen in check. “One of the main actions of progesterone with fertility is to help support a developing embryo,” says Hethir Rodriguez C.H., C.M.T. of Natural Fertility Info.

Want more information on the connection between stress and fertility? I highly recommend reading this article by Dr. Alice Domar of the Domar Center for mind/body health.

Slowly work on decreasing the major stresses in your life. Take the time as you prepare to conceive to pause and create physical and mental space to bring a new life into the world.

3. Let Go Of Control

While making a conscious effort to slow down and create space for healthy eating, movement and relaxation are important, consider allowing the universe to have your back. One of my mentors, Gabrielle Bernstein #1 New York Times Best Selling Author, International Speaker, and “Spirit Junkie,” did a wonderful talk on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday about spiritual surrender. Life doesn’t always go according to our plan, on our timeline. We can prepare and plan but it’s truly up to the universe to bring forth the miracle of life. Have faith and surrender to a power far greater than your own.

To your happiness and health,

  • Tanya

Breakfast – To Eat or Not?

Posted on by tmAdmin

Should you eat breakfast?

In a nutshell, yes.

But there are a host of reasons you might skip breakfast. Maybe you’re rushing to get out the door, maybe you don’t feel hungry in the mornings, maybe you’re fasting, or trying to save calories for later on in the day.

What you might not realize is that skipping meals can be counter-intuitive to your health.

Your body prefers a steady source of fuel throughout the day to stabilize your blood sugar. When it doesn’t get the nourishment it needs, your body is stressed, wondering when the next meal is coming.

What Happens When Your Body is Stressed?

  • It holds onto fat stores as a protective mechanism.
  • It stops allowing you to build muscle.
  • It doesn’t absorb and assimilate nutrients properly.
  • It shunts digestion.
  • And, of course, your body keeps searching for that food source, so later in the day, it can create cravings and cause you to do what feels like overeating.

So, do your body a favor and stop skipping breakfast or lunch, or dinner.

And remember, when you eat a big dinner late in the evening no wonder you’re not hungry in the morning. Set yourself up to feel hunger in the morning. Try and have an earlier and lighter dinner.

Your Body Prefers Rhythm

A steady fuel source throughout the day initiates the parasympathetic response (relaxation). On the other hand, erratic eating initiates the sympathetic response (stress).

When you wake up in the morning, your body has just finished repairing and rebuilding. It’s worked hard! It needs some nutrition to keep you going throughout the day. And remember that what you eat at breakfast matters too: focus on a protein, fat and fiber breakfast in place of the typical sugar and refined carbohydrate dense breakfast.

Start the day off by keeping your body calm because the optimal state for your health and digestion is under relaxation. Have a question? Post below!

  • Tanya

The New Midlife Crisis for Women

Posted on by tmAdmin

The New Epidemic

Lately, I’ve noticed a new epidemic happening for women. They’re experiencing a laundry list of symptoms: fatigue, forgetfulness, brain-fog, mood swings, insomnia and so on. Basically, they’re incredibly overwhelmed.

This has been, typically, spread through Generation X (those born approximately between the years 1965 and 1984), but I also see it happening in women beyond this age range.

In today’s world, women are stressed to the gills because we feel like we need to be “super women” and do it all. Interestingly enough, most of us are doing it all.

When I start working with clients who are experiencing this epidemic of overwhelm, I have them examine their weekly calendars. It doesn’t take long for them to realize that they have no unscheduled time, which is leading them to feel completely spent. I ask them, “How long can you keep doing this?” and there’s always a pause followed by “Well, I can do it…”

But just because we can do it doesn’t mean it’s actually working for us. These women come to my office because they just don’t feel good and what they come to realize is that the best form of self-care is simplification.

Less is More

So, instead of doing more, we have to work on doing less in order to safeguard that precious energy that we never seem to have enough of. Many us can really struggle with that because we’re so used to doing it all. We’ve gotten used to having a packed schedule from the moment we get up in the morning to the time we finally get to bed at night.

I recently worked with a client who wanted help putting together a basic plan to get through the rest of this year. So, we looked at what’s going on during the holiday season and what she and her family typically do. We talked about how to shift her normally packed schedule so she can have a bit more time to herself.

These decisions weren’t difficult to make once she got going. She’s a teacher so she decided she’d make her lesson plans as simple as possible. Next, she decided to simplify Thanksgiving. She and her family usually have a very elaborate dinner. But this year, she decided they would go out to eat (and she made a pact with herself not to feel badly about it). These two small decisions will allow her body the downtime it needs so that she can begin to restore her health.

As you can see, mind body nutrition is about far more than just what you’re eating. It also encompasses how you live your daily life. Practice simplification, practice doing less.

Realize that we can be super women without being Super Woman. We don’t have to do it all. Unscheduled time where you can tune out and rest will help restore your wellbeing.

So, with this busy holiday season, what is one step you’re going to take to simplify and allow more space for your body and mind to rejuvenate?

  • Tanya