Daily Eats + What It Really Means to Eat For Satisfaction

Hey! Hope you've had a wonderful weekend! Ours was pretty packed, but in a good way. Yesterday my hubs and I spent the day in the city at a Young Life event. If you're not familiar with Young Life, it's an organization that helps kids form relationships with older mentors and also helps them hear about and learn about Jesus. Then today we went to church and are getting together with some friends this afternoon. So like I said, all good things!

I wanted to share my daily eats from a couple of days ago. I intended on writing this a little bit sooner, but just didn't have time...as stated above :) But I thought it'd be helpful to show you my eats as well as talk through one of the principles of intuitive eating...eating for satisfaction.

This principle is probably one of my favorites! It was so eye-opening to experience eating for satisfaction for myself and was one of those things that once it clicked for me, everything seemed to fall into place!

If you're not familiar with intuitive eating, it's a way of eating that revolves around listening to your body, learning your body's cues regarding eating, & viewing food as a non-judgemental and all-inclusive approach. The thought behind the creation of intuitive eating, and actual research that has gone into supporting the practice, is that when our bodies are deprived of food as is the case with diets and eating disorders/disordered eating, food becomes what our minds think about often and can lead to poor mental health as well as even binge eating. Deprivation leads to feeling uncontrolled around food, which, if you've had any experience with dieting in the past you know what that feels like. It's why you feel like you can't keep ice cream in the freezer without eating the whole 1/2 gal at once or why you're at a restaurant and allow yourself one piece of bread which inevitably turns into eating a whole basket of bread. If you feel uncontrolled around food, I challenge you to ask yourself..."Am I restricting in some way, shape, or form?"

But intuitive eating is also so helpful for those who have found themselves caught up in the wellness space, following people on social media who claim to be experts in nutrition and look to be eating "healthy" 24/7...it gives the image that HEALTH = PERFECTION. The truth, being well doesn't mean never eating dessert. And the mental stress that comes with restriction can be more harmful, actually, on your body than going ahead and enjoying the dessert. You can read more about intuitive eating HERE if that's something you're interested in learning more about! Or, if you're looking for someone to coach you in food freedom and becoming an intuitive eater, I'd love to talk with you!

Back to satisfaction...

Like I said, satisfaction is probably my favorite principle of intuitive eating. Because I feel like it's like the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae! Without it, food is ok, but just that...ok.

What satisfaction does is it helps you finish a meal. When you're satisfied, you can push yourself away from the table and be able to go on with your day without thinking about food. It gives you mental clarity because, well, you're SATISFIED!

So let me share a little #intuitiveeatinginreallife for ya and how eating for satisfaction works.I'm writing this on Sunday, but these eats are from Friday...whoops! Again, didn't have time to share on Friday so here we are today!

So Fridays are my day for business work. One thing I've been practicing lately is waking up early and having a steady morning routine. I mentioned this a few posts ago and I'm proud to say...still going on strong!

I really try to stick with it even when I'm not working my nursing job and try to stay diligent even though I technically am home all day. I've been waking up around 5:15 and then I do a little workout to get the blood pumping and help me wake up. I'm loving the workouts by Nourish Move Love lately! They're challenging but not too crazy. I also like that they get my heart rate up, but don't have me keeled over dying out of breath! Also, most of the workouts include weights which is something I've been really enjoying lately. I feel so strong and powerful doing them! :)

Last week I started taking some supplements which I'd never really done before regularly. I very much believe you don't need supplements in order to be healthy. But I did feel that my body needed some lately. I've been craving green juice lately and wonder if it's because in the winter I don't love eating greens because they're cold. So, I got a green powder I've been adding to water and drinking in the mornings. I'm also experimenting with seed cycling for hormone balance which I'll maybe share more of in a future post. We'll see. For the place I'm at in my cycle I've been adding in a tablespoon of both sesame seeds and sunflower seeds to my green juice, blending them up, and lastly stirring in a scoop of collagen powder. It's quite the concoction. I take evening primrose oil tabs also for hormones as well as a women's multi. Phew...this is definitely the most I've ever done in the realm of supplements, so we'll see how it goes! Let me know in the comments if a post on this stuff would interest you!After drinking my green juice I'll shower, then make breakfast.

Breakfast this morning was something I've been craving a lot lately...sourdough toast with butter and strawberry jam paired with two fried eggs and, of course, coffee.The morning involved finalizing some things with the new face of the website and working on perfecting my 1:1 coaching page (which has also gotten a new look!).

Breakfast got me all the way to lunch where I had a bowl of leftover chili I'd made a few days before and a salad. Salads lately have been what I call "lazy salads" and are just spring mix, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. It does the job for some greenery and freshness in my meal and tastes good in my opinion. Simple.

But, after eating, I just was not satisfied! I still had thoughts about wanting to eat. Without judgment, I thought to myself, "What would quench this need for satisfaction?" A banana and peanut butter sounded good so I went with that. Sure thing, I was satisfied after that and able to get on with working!

In the afternoon I met my husband, Paul, at a local coffee shop and did some more work. We each got a coffee and then saw that they had some good looking scones in the window. I wasn't really hungry since I'd had a full lunch not long before. But that scone just looked good! So we split it and it was definitely a good decision!

That evening I had my book club meeting. A few months ago some girl friends and I all decided to get together and start a book club. We're on our 4th book now, our last one being Michelle Obama's "Becoming". I love that being in a book club has gotten me to read books I normally wouldn't have chosen to read! Up next is the book, "You" which is what the Netflix series is based on. Have any of you read it? Thoughts?

At book club we had pizza, I made and brought a salad, and of course wine. A friend also brought a delicious peanut butter chocolate cake which was delicious!

Well, that was the day of eats! Do you like reading these types of posts? What's an area of intuitive eating that you feel you want to work on?Love you guys!Victoria