I want to challenge something right now.
It might be uncomfortable. I want to challenge the idea that portion control is a healthy way to eat. Because I understand, as a total control freak my self, the temptation to try to control what I eat. (The funny thing is that I used to consider my self "Type B." I actually thought I was super laid back, didn't worry too much about things, could go with the flow. However, having children made me realize that I'm actually extremely controlling! It's just that before kids I was successfully controlling most of my world... and then I had kids and have been basically white-knuckling the edge of the table since they were born, staring in amazement because my mind is blown that I am so unable to control things now. Sooooo.... it was more like I could be all relaxed and "Type B" because I was so damn good at being Type A that I didn't even know it!) Also, I used to try to control what I ate. And, interestingly, for a long time that was also out of my control. And it was a real challenge in my life. The things in my life that felt shitty (in hindsight, basically all the things I could not control), made me want to eat sugar. I'd try to NOT eat sugar, fail, and then just eat more sugar. And in my business now I connect with many women who share that they feel that way about many other types of food as well, sometimes all food. Sometimes they find that portion control has helped them maintain a healthy weight. However, there are two ways to go about portion control. The first way, the more common way, is that some external measurement determines the portion. Whether calories, volume/weight, carbs, points, or whatever, this can backfire. It's useful to learn what an average portion might be. But if you are hungry, you may need more than average, and if you are not hungry, you may need less than average. The second, more empowering, way is to trust your body as the guide. When your body is telling you what the portion should be, it will be just the right amount. And the beautiful thing is that when your body is able to get exactly what it needs to be satisfied, you are able to ENJOY the portions, not simply control them. It is my mission to help women create this holistic whole body connection in a playful, non-judgmental, and supportive environment, so they can enjoy all the foods they love.
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There are many things in life in which I like to take a very very big picture, cosmos kind of look at things.
The way I eat is one of those things. For a long time, I thought about the environmental impact in a strictly numbers kind of way. How do I minimize impact? I became vegetarian at 15 (though, admittedly, in the beginning that was more of whim). I had been an environmentalist since a young age. Encouraged by my school, and a natural tree hugger, I understood that eating plants took less of toll on the environment. Eating lots of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains was good for my health AND good for the earth! There is a lot of science to back this up. I also had a vegan stint in college. (But then I also had a no onions and no garlic stint in college.) And at the time all of this seemed very "big picture." But, as you likely know, I struggled for a long time with eating sugar, lots of sugar, and in an unhealthy way. I also had a lot of guilt and judgement around food - both towards myself for "failing" to "quit" sugar, but also towards others for "failing" to be as "big picture" with their diets. (Wow, that was a lot of quotes.) That year I was vegan? It's seriously a wonder that I have any friends that knew me before that lasted through that year. I try to block it from my mind, so I can mostly only imagine how self righteous I was. Plus, being so strict was alienating. It made parties and family gatherings hard. BLESS my mom for being so accommodating and catering to my various diets over the years!!! I mean she used to cook me whatever she was cooking minus whatever it was I was not eating!!!! It took a lot of self discovery and letting go of rigid perspectives for me to move beyond the rules that were not actually serving me. Also, suffering through 7 months of nausea and vomiting in my first pregnancy was enough to make me realize I'd eat ANYTHING to make it stop. I mean I would have hunted a deer and painted my face with its blood if it would have gotten rid of the NVP. Meat, unfortunately, did not help, because nothing helped. None the less, the experience cracked the door open much wider. I had actually already decided that a bit of quality meat was probably the healthiest, especially for me, since I don't tend to crave much protein. Meat is nutrient dense and very nourishing. The whole chicken noodle soup effect is real. I had read a bit of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and they tout the same: modest, quality meat consumption as part of a plant based diet is often the most healthful. Still, I didn't want to eat animals. (Except for the one time at my friend's wedding in Ohio, and I had WAY too much champagne. Back at the magical farm house where all her friends were staying, with a kitchen packed with all kinds of things to nosh on... the only thing that looked at all appealing was a giant roasted turkey!! That was the real beginning, and to this day the only meat that I honestly enjoy eating a "chunk" of is roasted turkey! A new traditiona i nthe life of the mostly vegetarian was to eat turkey on Thanksgiving day.) Roll forward to my current life. Today was Thanksgiving. My mom made a turkey, I made a vegetarian "Neatloaf." We had mashed potatoes, tempeh gravy, sweet potatoes, root vegetables, grains and greens salad, Brussels sprouts, two kinds of cranberry sauce, corn bread stuffing, and a pickle tray. Everyone loved the Neatloaf! But, of course, I ate some turkey, too :) And my dad, who eats healthy mostly because of my mom, told me after dinner, "I think being vegetarian is really the healthiest way to eat." And I told him, "Maybe only 90% vegetarian." And he said, "You're right. You've lightened up in your old age." First of all LOL!!! Love it that my dad is calling me old! And second, what a nice middle ground, for the more meat and potatoes guy to be admiring me and for me to be meeting him in the middle! Looking at the big picture, though, what I mean is this: Yes, it's really good to eat lots of fruit and vegetables. But that is not something that surprises most people. Eating a plant based diet is good for your health AND the health of the environment. However, if you eat ANY diet with rigid rules and lots of judgement towards ANYONE, that actually is NOT healthy for you. So, sure, aim for a lot of plants in your diet. It will make you feel good, help you live a healthier life, maybe even allow you to live longer, and certainly can help you lose weight. But choose the fruits and vegetables you really love. Have fun with whole grains. And enjoy meat and sugar! The last piece of the puzzle is that I believe that taking the absolute best care of yourself you can will naturally lend itself to taking good care of the earth. Because people who eat well and feel well naturally gravitate towards choices in their life that uplift the world, and the truth is there are MANY ways to do that. (Oh, and since we are talking environmentalism, also VOTING for strong environmental protections & protectors is essential!)
My kids stress me out. It's just a fact of my life.
Why am I writing about this on my blog about emotional eating? Because stress is an incredibly common trigger of emotional eating. We all have stress in different forms. Maybe it's what's going on at your work. Maybe it's something happening in your relationship... Maybe it's your kids. I spend a lot of time trying to understand my life and make it better. It may not be something everybody does, but it's what I do. And in researching what to do when your kids stress you out... I have to admit I wasn't happy with much of the advice! While there is of course a time and a place for prescriptions drugs/medicine, I was surprised at how many people talking about parenthood causing them stress or anxiety or depression or anger felt okay with taking drugs. Some people have biochemical imbalances, and drugs are amazing to help resolve something that would be a lifelong issue, or even in extreme short term cases. I know for a fact that I wasn't angry or bitter or resentful or anxious or nearly as stressed out as I am now before I had kids. And I also know that it's not just my kids. Yes, it's the fact that I am a parent, but it is this life-shattering paradigm shift that I have experienced going from not a parent to a parent. And it is the absolute bullshit pressure that's put on a woman and/or the primary caregiver of a family's children! This is the bullshit of patriarchy being lived out in my day-to-day family life. Because, of course, biology is sexist. The women make the baby; the women make the milk. Therefore the women are usually the primary caregivers. And yet there's this whole group of us who don't want to be in the traditional nine-to-five situation never see our kids --- and also don't want to have our brains rot from doing nothing but wiping butts all day. Enter the mom entrepreneur. I love my business. I love my clients. I literally love doing the work that I do helping women change how they eat and how they feel in their bodies. It's amazing! And yet raising a business is kind of like raising a child. It takes a lot of time and energy and patience. So now I have my two kids and my business and... My husband. And unfortunately he just really doesn't understand what I'm doing and so I don't always feel that I have full support. So there's this juggling act going on now. He's ambitious; he's generous; he's kind; he loves reading to our kids. But holy shit, if I have to tell him where the fucking mustard is one more time I'm going to blow!!!! And that is the stress and anxiety that I'm speaking about. It manifests itself as an inconsequential detail that I feel like I want to scream about. And you add this up over and over and over and no wonder women are stressed out. No wonder back in the day they had their breakdowns. Even if you're not trying to raise a business, just trying to raise a family is such an immense amount of emotional burden that is unbearable. And for me it was worse without the support of other professionals who share interests outside of raising the kids. I'm not saying no one should be happy being a stay-at-home mom. I have dear friends who are deeply fulfilled by raising their kids. I'm not. I love my kids. I take parenting seriously. I probably take it too seriously and that's part of my problem. And I need more. I need something else. I need the rest of my identity intact. Men don't understand that because they still have their identity. I'm not speaking for stay-at-home fathers; I don't know enough of them well enough; that's somebody else's blog post. Most of the time the men keep working, and guess what? The men is still an engineer or a salesperson or a chef or whatever. The woman is the mother. And that is an emotional burden that can't be explained. And I think it's almost worse in this modern modern world because we can microwave dinner if we need to.... we can send our kids to practice in an Uber if we need to... and yet we can't outsource somebody expecting us to know where the mustard is. I hate to leave my thoughts unactionable. So I'm going to tell you the most basic and simple thing that I'm doing. It's incredibly hard. And I think it's the only solution is to stop. Just stop. And it is insidiously difficult to do! Because I feel like an asshole when I tell my husband that I can't help him find the mustard. It's just finding the mustard. How much time can finding the mustard take? What could I possibly be doing that's more important than finding the mustard? Oh wait. That's just it. You add up all these little inconveniences and actually nothing that's important to me is getting done. I know I'm giving the example of my husband even though this blog post is actually about my kids. That's because with little kids more than half of my interactions are instances like these: "Mommy where the Crayons?" "Mommy get me a water." "Mommy I'm hungry." Maybe you can relate. I'm a doer. I'm a Problem Solver. It is incredibly hard for me to not DO. So whether or not you have kids, you probably have circumstances like this. Oh, I can stay late and file that last paper. Oh, I enjoy that part of my work; I can do a little more of it. Oh, I'll do that project better than anyone else; I might as well sign up for it. And I just want to say that these are all remarkable traits!!! I'm not disparaging my ambition or my compassion for my family or your passion for your work or any of that. I'm just acknowledging that I need better boundaries and a lot of other women do too. Because that's the answer to reducing stress. It's simply not doing the things that are stressing you out. For me I literally can't draw this line when I'm home. If my husband asks me where the mustard is it's incredibly difficult for me to not help him find it. If my kids ask me for a glass of water I actually sometimes try to say no but then I have someone crying half the time which, again, is difficult. So I have to find times to get out of the house. It's the only way I can change these patterns. With my business it's the other side. I love my business. I want to do my business. I want to have it grow and get more clients and help more people. And yet... Sometimes I just have to say no. So when my kids stress me out (or I scream at my husband about the mustard), I actually know that it means there's just too much on my shoulders. It means I have to get out from underneath all this patriarchal bullshit and learn how to simply say No. I've felt "ungrounded" for about 6 weeks... since I took my extended road trip (which did deplete me), and yet I also returned on the day of the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville. This was followed quickly by breathtaking news on what seems to be almost daily. Hurricane after hurricane, earthquakes, bills being signed regularly (in a way that feels secretive and undercutting), failed attempts at other more loud legislation, the ongoing wreckage that follows each natural disaster and needs attention lost in the slew of the next disaster, the equifax hack that puts half the country at risk of identify theft (possibly kids as well). Oh yeah, and then the Colin Kaepernik protest suddenly being coopted by the NFL to make CK irrelevant and the NFL somehow the hero??? I'm no sports fan but CK still has no job at the time as far as I'm aware of. And more quietly, I'm reading about the battle for net neutrality (I support this) but also the Communications Deceny Act, a more complicated issue that is somehow a battleground for where we draw the line between free speech and pornography AND amazing the way that huge non-traditional media formats like Facebook escape any responsibility for who they sell ads to or what purpose the ads may be for. Read up on this if you haven't yet. I'm not sure where I stand, but I think we need to have the voice of the people speaking out more than the largest tech giants. And then on top of it all there is my regular life, which somehow seems simultaneously both petty and entirely unmanageable in the context of all that is happening right now. So everyday I try to focus on living my regular life while integrating what I value into it. I've gone through my kids books and gotten rid of some of the old, outdated 50s books that are racist or sexist. I've purchased additional books for our library showed greater diversity. I went through their books and changed skin color with colored pencils, to give them greater diversity because sadly, they were not that diverse. I've downloaded movies (what few I could find) with diverse lead characters. I"ve started frequently different farmer's markets in neighborhood with people of different skin tone than ours. My kids are a big part of what I'm doing in my day to day and I want to make sure they grow up aware that diversity is beautiful and that we need to use our voices to speak out for equality. I also struggle each day to maintain my self care rituals. It's a fight to do it in all honesty. To put a few minutes of self massage on the to do list, which means leaving the dirty dishes in the sink sometimes. To make sure I shower regularly even when...well...the dishes are staring me down. To get myself dressed before the kids have started asking repeatedly for breakfast. But I do it as best I can, every day, and I forgive myself when the laundry or dishes take precedence. And yet I feel the need to do more. I honestly want to GO. I want to BE where people need the help. And I can't - my day to day is too intertwined with little guys. So I give. I give small monthly contributions to Sierra Club, KPBS, and Planned Parenthood...and in the past few months I've given much more than the monthly amount - MORE to sierra club for post hurricane relief and planning for further climate change affects - I've also donated to The Color of Change bringing awareness to racism in our country and fighting for equality - to the Foundation Fighting Blindness in honor of my neighbor and my grandfather who lost their sight - to my son's school for their hurricane donations. And that's CASH. I also continue to up my donation of service for charitable fundraisers because the world has SO MUCH NEED right now and I have to do what I can, ALL that I can. I also have to put my business into forward mode - booking talks, networking, speaking with clients. And I'll admit it's not easy to do when the world feels like it has so many pressing needs!!! But when I think about putting it off, I also know that's not right. My passion is for helping people live a healthy, aligned life, losing weight and truly feeling GREAT about what they are eating, helping them KNOW each bite is the right bite, whether it's a steak, an ice cream, or a delicious and gourmet salad. So I know it's another part of what I HAVE to do for the world. Because the world needs SO MUCH, and I'm going to give the world the best of me. What are your favorite self-care practices? And if you need ideas, sign up to get your sparkle back. I am so excited for the second in a series of guest posts from my fellow Boss Moms! What I love about Lauren is that she is very honest about how the same struggles affect ALL of us, and giving clear examples and steps to overcome them. Like this post on perfectionism... who hasn't fallen into this trap before? I hope you enjoy her insights!
PERFECTIONISM: ONE LIE & A TRUTH - BY LAUREN COPELAND Perfection is a bad boss. As in, a micromanaging boss that is always breathing down your neck. I remember when I first considered becoming a Life Coach, and a thought that crossed my mind was, ‘I’m too introverted, why even try?’. There was NO way I had all the traits that a perfect coach needed. I mean seriously, what does a ‘perfect’ coach even look like? I didn’t know. However, my inner critic was whispering that it was anything but me. Perfection is lying to us. The lie? That we can and have to ‘obtain’ it (perfection). But there is a truth. The truth? Perfection is not something we obtain. It is a PERCEPTION. A perfect workout looks different for you than it does for your best friend. A perfect dinner looks one way for me, a different way for you. Maybe yours is a frozen lasagna, hot out of the oven with no kids whining over the chunky tomatoes; while mine might look like a 4-course meal with an epic dessert. The truth is, is doesn’t really matter! We beat ourselves up over perceptions, and sometimes we let it scare us enough that we never even get started in the first place. I can think of a million conversations that never started because I was fearful of sounding ‘foolish’. I can think of a thousand workouts that never began because I didn’t have ‘enough’ time. I can think of hundreds of projects that were never finished because they were not turning out ‘right’. Do you have some things coming to mind, too? Perfection makes life HARD. It eats at us. And it wears us down until we give up, walk away, or stress ourselves out never being able to get things good enough. But what if perfection didn’t have to be our boss? What if we chose, right now, what side of the perfection perception we want to be on? (That’s a tongue twister, huh?) What would it look like? What would you choose? Life CAN be perfectly imperfect. What if we let go of the lie, and started chasing the truth? Send that email you still think isn’t good enough (even though you’ve tweaked it 10 times). Start that project you’ve been putting off because you don’t have ‘all’ the supplies. Wear that shirt you love, even if Sally at work probably won’t like it. Do that workout even though you only have 10 minutes instead of 30, today. To help you quickly discover what perfectly imperfect means for you and your life, I put together this simple guide sheet, so that you can get started chasing the truth, right now! Grab it HERE! There is power in answering the tough questions and digging deeper. And there is unmeasurable power and peace that comes from finding perfect imperfection for yourself. I’ll see you on the other side of perfection! (And don’t forget your guide sheet!) XOXO – Lauren www.laurenecopeland.com www.facebook.com/lecopeland Whether you binge on sugar or you "Just" chronically overeat it... sugar "addiction" is simply an extreme version of a habit.
And you can look at that habit and say "I don't have a problem" and keep on doing what you are doing, and that might be fine for you. For many people it is. Or you can look at that habit and say "I QUIT." and try to give it up forever. Unfortunately "abstaining" doesn't work for most people when it comes to sugar. On all this speak from personal experience. I had many years in my early 20s when I both chronically overate sugar AND binged on it AND denied having a problem AND tried to abstain!!!!!! Guess what. NONE of that was okay for me. I was gaining weight (not that much, I was in my 20s, but enough that I wasn't feeling good in my body). I also developed chronic lung and throat problems that I denied left and right and anything to do with sugar! And yet it was the gentle but constant urging of a holistic health care provider that I was seeing that made me realize that I DID have a problem, and that sugar was CAUSING problems, too! But I knew "abstinence" didn't work. And so I began the long journey of discovering what DID work. The good news is that your journey doesn't have to be as long. I've compressed that journey into a short program to give up ALL guilt and lay a solid foundation to turn your sugar "problem" into a normal, everyday relationship that allows you to enjoy celebrations without ever binging again. Learn my 5 secrets to overcoming emotional eating here! I just want to clarify something a lot of people have been asking me lately: "So, do you ever eat sugar?" Oh my heavens, YES! I actually eat sugar almost every day. Refined sugar. Processed sugar. Treats. Chocolate, cookies, cake, candy, whatever I feel like. I actually LOVE sugar. And that is the whole reason why trying to "quit" sugar simply never worked for me. Instead, "quitting" sugar just sent me down a path of guilt, self punishment, self loathing, and, of course, MORE sugar! It was a toxic cycle that I"m super grateful I learned to stop! And that is EXACTLY what my program is designed to do: help YOU stop the cycle of trying to "quit" sugar, feeling bad about "failing", and ending up eating MORE. I GET how overwhelming it can feel to think you can actually eat sugar and not binge on it. I get that sugar feels like a powerful force. I've been through that. And, at the same time, sometimes embracing that truth is the answer. Finding the right amount of sugar for YOU, the amount that allows you to ENJOY the treats, but does not make you feel bad - emotionally or physically, is a beautiful thing. Book a time to chat with me, I'd love to tell you more about it. alegra.acuityscheduling.com |
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