Daily Eats + Something To Try For Practicing Unconditional Permission With Food

This is my third blog post this week! This is more than I've done in a week in a while! And I've really been enjoying it! I'm feeling a pull to do less (but still be present) on social media and more here. This just feels like a space where I can be more myself and feel less of the stress of social media. I know something so many of us are working on these days is social media boundaries. And while I definitely want to still hang out with you there, I think for all of our sanity, it's important to have regular conversations with ourselves about our relationship with social media. Anyways, I hope you'll enjoy reading more here, and if you're not on my email list already, a great way to stay up to date on new posts plus get a little extra support with intuitive eating, body image, and self-care is to join!I'm not talking about social media boundaries here today, though. Today I wanted to share with you a "day in the life of intuitive eating" as well as share something with you that I think will really help you practice something called unconditional permission to eat. Ready to dive into good food and more!?This morning was, probably, my current "ideal morning". I woke up around 6:30 (when Graham woke up) and fed him. Then we all had breakfast as a family. This is something Paul and I have done from the beginning and I just love it! I had a pumpkin bagel, seasonal from Trader Joes, with peanut butter and banana as well as a glass of milk. Milk's not a typical part of my mornings, but today it sounded good!After breakfast, I played with Graham some and then he started to get cranky...meaning sleepy for his first nap. I laid him down and thankfully he went straight to sleep. Any other moms know that beautiful thing that is catching that sleep window right on! While he slept I picked up the house, something that doesn't always happen right away but that always makes me feel better. Then I took time to do a 45-minute Barre3 online workout, showered, got dressed and ready and ahhh...my ideal start to the day!Graham woke up and we went to the grocery store. I had to get some things for a little lake trip we're taking this weekend. So we headed to Trader Joes where I also found some other yummy treats and things to try, one being these Truffle Potato Chips!I snacked on some of these chips while making Graham and myself some lunch. I heated some chicken and zucchini for Graham, which he ended up not being so interested in and we did a lot of pumpkin with cinnamon instead. And I made a salad I made earlier in the week that I loved for myself. The salad felt like all things fall, with baby lettuce, quinoa, acorn squash, chicken, cranberries, and tossed with balsamic dressing and olive oil with some salt and pepper (I call it the lazy person salad dressing, but it really is so good!).After lunch I wanted to try another goodie I found at Trader Joes...their Pumpkin Joe Joe's. So good and such a fun festive treat! Some may have called these an impulse buy...they always put the most delicious things right by the checkout, right!?...but I'm so glad I picked them up! Actually, I wanted to share a little way to start practicing what's called "unconditional permission to eat". With intuitive eating it's really important to practice this unconditional permission to eat mentality, but I know how challenging it can be. This mindset of no foods being "off-limits" like they were when you were dieting or restricting, helps prove to your body that food can be trusted. What dieting, and all the rules that come along with it, does is it puts you in this scarcity mentality with food and that's oftentimes why you feel out of control. It's why you feel like if you were, say, to buy the cookies at checkout that you'd eat the whole box. So because you're afraid of eating the whole box, you just don't allow yourself to buy them.But what if you didn't have the back and forth at the grocery store with, "should I buy them or should I not", what if you had the mentality of "it's just food and I can buy these again whenever I want", what does that instantly do? Instantly food doesn't have the same power over you and you're more able to eat until you're satisfied and then leave the rest for another day.So an exercise I use with my 1:1 clients when they're working on this mindset shift is to have them literally go for whatever their first instinct is and not question. If they're done with dinner and the thought, "ice cream sounds good", comes into their mind, they go for it. If they're at the store and they think, "ooh, those chips sound exciting and delicious", they buy them. This practice, little by little, takes away food's power and leaves you feeling more at peace and calm when deciding how much and whether to eat certain foods. So after lunch, Katherine and I had a podcast interview for The Embracing Balance Podcast with Phoebe Lapine of feedmephoebe.com and we picked her brain on all things SIBO (small intestine bacterial overgrowth) as well as heard her personal story of healing her gut. I can't wait to share it with you guys in a couple of weeks!Once we were done Paul and I decided to take a spontaneous trip downtown and walk around. It was so nice because Paul had a half-day of work today. We walked around the park, split a little snack I thankfully had in our bag, and then headed back.Another spontaneous trip...there is a Mediterranean restaurant near our house that I'd seen a lot of people coming in and out of since we moved but we hadn't tried it yet. So we decided to get dinner there. And it was so nice out so we sat outside to eat. I got one of their bowls with rice, meatballs, lentils, chickpeas, hummus, and a whole lot of other things that I can't remember. It was delicious and so filling! Plus had a few french fries off of Paul's plate. After dinner, I felt a little overfull, but something I've learned with the whole practice of intuitive eating is that when I eat "too much" it usually all balances out and I may not eat as much later or will be satisfied for longer. So it's not something I try to worry about too much. I'm not always perfect at it, I'm still learning myself, but that's what this is all about! That was today's eats! As always, I hope you feel encouraged and inspired to make some yummy food or go get yummy food, yourself.