Daily Eats + Talk on (Really) Making Peace With All Foods

Good morning lovelies! Sharing another daily eats post with you all from yesterday and talking about what it really means to make peace with all foods. This post is brought to you by the spontaneous and DELICIOUS oatmeal cookies I made yesterday in honor of the snow day...

Before we get into what I ate yesterday, know that if looking at what other people is triggering for you or causes you to compare, check out the other posts on intuitive eating and healing your relationship with food that I have here on the blog. I write these "daily eats" types of posts to simply help you identify what "normal eating" looks like (aka, eating without diet influence) and what intuitive eating looks like for me, personally. But like none of us look the same, none of us are designed to eat the exact same way!

Tuesdays are my business days. I typically am talking to women interested in working together through discovery sessions, meeting with clients, and doing some behind the scenes business work on this day. This day was a little special because we had a snow day! So work just felt a bit more magical.I woke up this morning and did some barre3...I'm currently really enjoying this type of movement. Then showered and got ready for the day. I did a little reading from "Dare to Lead" by Brene Brown (still on this one) while drinking some coffee. Then Paul and I had breakfast.

Breakfast was a few pieces of toast with avocado and Tjoes Everything But the Bagel seasoning. It'd been a while since enjoying avocado toast because I haven't seen many nice avocados in the store. So this was a treat! Paired it with two fried eggs as well.I started the morning listing out what I hoped to achieve for the day. I've learned, through doing this for a little while, what is doable for me in a day. This was definitely a learning curve. When I first started listing out my hopes for the day as far as tasks go, I totally would get overwhelmed and list out way more than was actually possible. I always make a list of business items that I need to address as well as just personal items. As I go through the day I check off the things I accomplish... it helps to see everything on paper, at least for me :)I worked on some current client work, sent a few emails, and prepped for a discovery session. I was really enjoying work this morning and, before I knew it it was 12:30 and I was hungry for lunch.

Lunch was some leftover soup (recipe from Cookie & Kate) I'd made over the weekend along with some raw cheddar cheese and an orange. After lunch I had a discovery session and it was just the most beautiful conversation! I love the work I get to do with women and am so blessed with a new client signing on for my 1:1 coaching program through this call!I'd felt like I'd gotten a bit done and wanted to do something a little different and stand up a bit, so I made some cookies. Plus, cookies on a snow day is a must! I made these spiced oatmeal cookies, again from Cookie & Kate, but modified by adding in chocolate chips which really took them to the next level in my opinion!

Dinner was a veggie recipe I'd been wanting to make for a while now. I made a lentil shepherds pie from Oh She Glows, but modified with real milk and real butter because dairy is not something I care to omit, personally. Drizzled with some sriracha and enjoyed it while watching some Brooklyn 99...favorite show lately :).

After dinner, enjoyed another cookie because ending a meal with something sweet is just the best! Ok, so let's talk about peace with food. Making peace with food is one of the first principles of intuitive eating. Basically, this concept is so foundational for changing your mindset around food and living in freedom from diet culture. Because diet culture, or the food-obsessed/health-obsessed world we live in right now, is constantly throwing out different things. It can be so confusing because it seems the information we receive about what "is" vs. "isn't" healthy is always changing!

Here's what's important to remember...you MUST stand firm in your understanding of your individual body. You don't need fear-mongering news headlines or documentaries to know what is best for your body. Learning to tune into your body and really knowing what makes you feel your best is the only thing that matters. You can trust your body to give you prompts for how it best wants and needs to be cared for.I love this definition of making peace with food from the intuitive eating workbook...

"Making peace with food is the process of making your food choices emotionally equal, without placing shame or judgment on them, whether you are eating green jelly beans or a piece of broccoli. Your dignity remains intact, regardless of your food choices. You are not a bad or good person based on what you eat."

Can you relate with feeling judgment or shame after eating certain things? Do you ever feel like a good person for eating one thing, or bad for eating something else?

If you're up to the challenge, I'd love to invite you to do a little exercise with me for the next 24 hours or so. Take note of your thoughts and words as well as how other people talk around food and notice them either being judgemental or as neutral. For example, someone saying, "I was bad over the weekend. I ate so much!" is a judgemental comment that does not lead to peace with food. Practice just noticing those phrases either stated out loud or even the thoughts that come into your head about food being either good or bad. Just noticing these thoughts and identifying the negative is a step towards making peace with food and cultivating a healthy relationship with food. If you try this exercise out, let me know! I'd love to hear how it went for you!

I want to tie this into the daily eats post above and how you can start to apply and see peace with food for yourself. Peace with food for me means being able to make cookies however I want to. Sometimes I enjoy making good ole chocolate chip cookies with white flour, butter, and sugar. Other times, I enjoy making cookies such as these with oats, coconut sugar, and whole wheat flour mixture. The lesson here is that you can enjoy either cookie, no matter how it's prepared or what it's ingredients are regardless and without judgment. And, on top of that, you can enjoy any amount of cookies without judgment. It's not the restriction we place on a food that keeps us away from it...actually, the opposite is often true. When we place restrictions or morality (a food being labeled either good or bad), we bring on a fight between us and that food. Psychologically, something that is off-limits has more appeal to it so that when you finally do allow yourself that food it is difficult to eat it with mindfulness.I hope this helps shed light on the topic of making peace with food.

I'd love to hear if you have any experience with making peace with food for yourself, what helped you with that, etc. Or if you're still not quite sure how to start making peace with food for yourself, I'd love to help you with this principle. Send me an email and we'll connect!