Be Nourished

Invest in yourself

By Dana  Sturtevant, MS, RD

With the holidays here and the New Year just around the corner, we are inundated with tips about how to manage our weight during the holidays and ads for weight loss products.  It is said that over 50% of New Year resolutions pertain to weight loss.  A recent blog titled A Year of Dieting states, “In the year 2012, Americans will likely spend more than sixty billion dollars on diets.  95% of those diets will result in people being as heavy or heavier than they started, with the medical dangers involved with weight cycling, and having taken the self-esteem hit of trying and failing at a diet.”  The author goes on to discuss the good this amount of money could do for the world.

In 2012, instead of pouring money into an industry that has to include the phrase “results not typical” anytime they suggest that their product might actually work, consider making a true investment in your overall wellbeing.  Instead of spending money on another weight loss program or a gym membership you are likely not going to use, consider these ideas:

• Clean out your closets. Give or throw away everything that doesn’t fit, is uncomfortable, or that you haven’t worn in years. Fill your closets with beautiful, comfortable clothing in your present size. If you need help, consider hiring a stylist that won’t tell you to lose weight to look good.  They’ll help you find clothes that flatter your body and make you feel great.  Imagine what kind of choices you might make for yourself when you feel so good in the body you have today.
• Find forms of movement that bring a smile to your face.  Let go of rules about what counts and identify joyful ways to move your body.  Look for dance classes, hiking groups, or other ways to spend your time.
• Take time on a day you don’t have to work to find a few recipes and make a plan for two or three meals each week.  Buy the ingredients on your day off so when you get home from work, you don’t have to think about what you are going to make.  You can pick the recipe that sounds the best and spend your time making a delicious meal.
• Make an appointment for a massage, facial or mani/pedi.
• Take a walk with a friend.
• Stop weighing yourself. Shift your focus from weight & body fat to healthy behaviors & fitness.
• Take a class you’ve always been interested in – photography, foreign language, gardening, stained glass making, etc.
• Seek support.  Consider finding a weekly support group that isn’t focused on dieting and weight loss.
• Take yourself out to your favorite restaurant for a romantic meal for one. 
• Take a trip to the Chinese or Japanese Gardens and journal/draw.
• Spend five minutes each morning and evening and write down at least three things you are grateful for.
• Start an art project.
• Buy art and gifts that celebrate your body.
• Plan a trip that you’ve always dreamed of taking.

There are many different ways you can invest in your health this year.  "The scale can only give you a numerical reflection of your relationship with gravity. That’s it. It cannot measure beauty, talent, purpose, life force, possibility, strength, or love. Don’t give the scale more power than it has earned. Get off the scale and live your life. You are beautiful!" (From a post on the NEDA Walk page)

So, how might you invest in yourself this year?

 

The Stages of Intuitive Eating, Part 1

By Hilary Kinavey, MS, LPC

The beginning stages of intuitive eating often require us to hold opposite experiences as truth at the same time. We can feel relieved and excited to have found something that finally feels right, new, and sane. We can also feel confused, alone and as if we are stumbling down an overgrown path with little information about what is to come.

Becoming trusting of and intuitive about your body’s signals and wisdom is a tall order when your body has been the place you have directed blame and self-hatred. Often, in order to get all that feels out-of-control back in line, the mind wants to make Intuitive Eating into the new Plan. Plans generally have to be done ‘just so’ and they are largely outcome (or weight loss) focused. When we are navigating the beginning stages of intuitive eating, the dieting mind/inner critic is always lurking, waiting for an “in”.

This challenge calls for a firm belief (that comes from you) about really and truly being done with dieting. This often involves reminding yourself over and over again of all the reasons you came to intuitive eating that don’t have to do with weight loss. What have you given up in pursuit of the thin ideal – joy, flexibility, spontaneity, friendships, a sense of self worth? Why are you truly seeking change for yourself right now?

The early stages of intuitive eating also call for you to investigate permission and pleasure with food. This can be truly scary if you have spent time trying to do food “right” (i.e. restricting) and then over-indulging in a flurry of self-blame and hatred (i.e. overeating or binging). People assume that “overeating” is about pleasure and indulgence. If we look a little bit deeper, we often find it is not. If you have used food to numb difficult emotions, then you have numbed ALL your emotions. You don’t get to be selective about this. Learning to heal your relationship with food to become an intuitive eater means learning to feel joy and pleasure again too.

Intuitive eating invites you to eat what you want. Even you if you have judgments about the food that you want. You then want to couple that desire with permission to eat and enjoy your food so you can actually have the eating experience instead of being distracted by shame and self-hatred every time you eat. It is here that you begin to connect with an internal voice that has been waiting to be allowed choice. This choice involves becoming more honest with yourself about whether or not you truly like the food you choose, and if you are really hungry for it and satisfied by it.

We will continue to explore how intuitive eating unfolds in real lives in future posts. In the meantime, tell us, what are the real reasons (other than weight loss) that brought you to intuitive eating?

Navigating Holiday and Winter Stress with Acupuncture

By Susan Buhler, MSOM, LAc

According to the wisdom of Chinese medicine, the cold months of winter are an essential time to conserve as well as generate vital energy – so that you may live and feel your best in all seasons…

The ancient Chinese believed that human beings should live in harmony with the natural cycles of the universe and their environment. The cold, quiet, stillness and darkness of the winter season urges us to slow down. This is the time of year to self-reflect, replenish energy and conserve strength. It is the time to integrate the life-harvest of this particular year, in preparation for a new cycle of life that begins each spring. It is also a season to go to sleep early, rest well, stay warm, eat nourishing foods, and expend a minimum of energy.

In Chinese medicine it is said that winter is ruled by the Water element, and is associated with the Kidneys, Bladder and adrenal glands of the human body. The Kidneys are considered the foundational source of all energy or “Qi” within the body. Once the daily energetic demands of the body have been met, if there is any Qi that is in surplus, it is stored by the Kidneys so that it can be used in times of stress and change, to heal, to prevent illness, and to age healthfully and gracefully.

While optimal health and well-being in the winter season calls for rest, nourishment and energy conservation for revitalization of body and spirit, your holiday activities may have a different agenda.

We have all felt the realities of holiday stress. The holidays can be filled with a dizzying array of demands: visitors, travel, frantic shopping trips and financial concerns. For many people it is also a time filled with sadness, loneliness, anxiety or even anger. Even under the best of circumstances, with all of these stressors on top of the ordinary and extraordinary demands of daily life, and you may find this to be one of the most emotionally trying times of the year.

Stress, anxiety and depression are our subjective experience in our bodies that energy is not harmonious and balanced. Such mental/emotional states can lead to a disruption in the flow of vital energy throughout the body. These energetic imbalances in turn can weaken the immune system, and cause symptoms including physical pain, sleep disturbances, abnormal digestion, headaches, and even menstrual irregularities. Over time, more serious illnesses may develop.

Chinese medicine offers safe and effective treatment to help smooth and balance our responses to what can be a challenging time of year. It can help correct energetic imbalances and directly affect the way your body manages stress. Thus enhancing the body, mind and spirit, one may face the demands of life and the holidays, with grace and vitality.

When the body’s energy is harmonious, the mind and heart are peaceful, and life is health.

For more information or to schedule an acupuncture appointment at Be Nourished contact:
Susan Buhler, MSOM, LAc
971-216-9913

Also, check out Susan's December Stress Release Acupuncture Special! For more info, click here.

The Honeymoon Phase

By Dana Sturtevant, MA, RD

I spent last week in Gainesville, Florida and had the great honor of meeting with Karin Kratina, author of Moving Away from Diets, a must read for any helping professional working with people to resolve their obsession with food, body and weight. I didn’t know about Karin’s work when I went to graduate school at the University of Florida in the late 1990s. I’ve always wanted to meet with her, and this trip turned out to be the perfect time.

We talked about all of the people who have influenced our work - Evelyn Tribole, Elyse Resch, Linda Bacon, Deb Burgard, Glenn Gaesser , Kristin Neff, and Brene Brown to name a few. When we got to Geneen Roth, Karin asked what I thought about Geneen’s recommendation to stop eating when you are at a 5 on the hunger scale. For those of you who are not familiar with our hunger scale (Hilary and I use Karin’s hunger scale), it is a 0 to 10 point scale with 0 being starving and 10 being stuffed. So eating until a 5 means you eat until you are at a neutral place (not hungry, not full). We both stated how surprised we were when we heard about this. Five doesn’t seem to be a very satisfying place to be at the end of a meal and we wondered how long people could really do this. She made the comment that anyone can undereat for a few weeks during the honeymoon phase, but after that, it has to get difficult for most of us.

Ah yes, the honeymoon phase. You might recognize that phase – the one when the diet is off to a great start, life seems grand, and we have renewed faith in our ability to lose the weight. Modern Family recently had a hilarious episode about the various phases Cameron goes through while on a juice fast to lose weight (watch the two minute clip). With any weight loss plan or program, there is the wedding, a honeymoon and then the real work begins – the marriage. And the farther we get from the wedding date (diet start date), the harder it is to keep the marriage (diet) going. People eventually cave and old behaviors and patterns are resumed. Sound familiar?  

Karin went on to say that in doing hunger work with clients for over 20 years, she’s found that everyone needs to eat until an 8 sometimes. For her, she’s noticed that she needs to eat until an 8 at least four times a week to feel satisfied and maintain a healthy relationship with food. A colleague of hers says she needs to eat until an 8 on the hunger scale once a day. This was interesting to me because most of our clients think eating until an 8 is something they should rarely, if ever, do. This information might encourage you to get curious about the hunger scale again. Maybe you’ll notice a pattern that seems to work for you too. After all, every body is different!

Nurturing Emotional Wellness with Acupuncture

By Susan Buhler, MOSM, LAc

 

At some point in life everyone deals with major upheavals or emotional distress. These events can trigger a host of unexpected feelings and behaviors - from depression and panic attacks, to major disruptions in sleeping and eating. The holidays in particular can be very challenging for many people who are striving to maintain emotional and physical balance.

 

From an Oriental medicine perspective, mental and emotional stress can cause a disruption in the flow of vital energy, or qi, through the body. This in turn may cause symptoms of depression, anxiety, pain, sleep disturbance, abnormal digestion, headaches, menstrual irregularities, and many more.  Additionally these energetic imbalances can weaken the immune system -- triggering frequent illnesses, or if under prolonged stress, more serious illnesses may develop. 

 

Chinese medicine is a powerful healthcare system that can alleviate and reverse symptoms associated with mental and emotional stress.  Acupuncture, of course, cannot remove the stressors that are inherent in our daily existence, but it can help moderate our response to various events and triggers by helping the body's energy be in greater balance. By doing so, the manifestations of stress and anxiety are lessened, and one feels calmer and has greater capacity for coping with the ordinary and extraordinary demands of daily life. When the body's energy is harmonious, the mind and heart are peaceful -- even during the holidays!

 

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As an expression of her continued commitment 

to sharing the benefits of Chinese medicine, 

Susan would like to extend a special offer to the Be Nourished community during the months of November and December in the hopes of bringing greater health and harmony to all of you.

For more information, click here. 

 

Susan Buhler, MSOM, LAc has been involved in holistic healthcare for over 18 years and is a practitioner of Chinese medicine at Be Nourished.  She incorporates acupuncture and herbal medicine, and has a specialized focus in women's health care.

Finding Your Voice

By Hilary Kinavey, MA, LPC

The process of becoming an intuitive eater can act as a powerful metaphor for understanding the places in us that scare us the most. When we learn to say “yes” or “no” to foods in response to a connection to what we know in our bodies, that same knowing begins to be available in other areas of our lives. These areas may have been long ignored, or under-explored simply due to the amount of time and space your worry and obsessive thoughts about food took up in your life. It’s a time when we begin to really see ourselves as whole for the first time in a long time.

When we are struggling to set boundaries in our lives and relationships, we are challenged to have boundaries with food. It just seems to work like that. When we begin to understand our body's requests and begin to have permission to enjoy food and stop eating food, then all of a sudden, we begin to seek and require boundaries in other parts of our lives.

The challenge here may be that eating and food have always stepped in when assertiveness and boundaries were actually what was needed. Many of us never really learned how to state our limits to the people around us, and food (or spending, drinking, etc, etc) supported us by creating a reliable, albeit temporary buffer between us and our discomfort in our relationships.

Learning to ask for what you need and feeling entitled to do so can be very intimidating because it may not be something you have had to do before. Many have stated that “it feels easier” not to, although it is clear that not having an authentic voice for many years has been far from easy. When our voices are diminished we lose connection to our innate joy, talents, wisdom and sense of place in ourselves.

In “The Dance of Connection” author Harriet Lerner suggests that the challenge “in conversations is not just to be our self, but to be the self we want to be. That’s why we don’t discover who we are by sitting alone on a mountaintop and meditating, or by being introspective and going deeper, as valuable as these disciplines might be. The royal road for discovering and reinventing the self is through our relationships with other people and the conversations we engage in.”

Not engaging authentically with the world from behind the mask of disordered eating is a powerful and creative coping method that was developed when needed the most. Stepping out from behind the mask of poor body image and dysmorphic ideas about your self is the way to heal all the way through. Brene Brown, a researcher who studies the impacts of shame, uses the following mantra to stay true to her authentic voice. “Don’t shrink. Don’t puff up. Just stand your sacred ground.” We are all entitled to take up space and use our voices to secure that space. It takes practice to really know this is true.

Love Your Body Day

By Dana Sturtevant, MA, RD

Today is Love Your Body day - a day when women of all sizes, colors, ages and abilities come together to celebrate self-acceptance and to promote positive body image. Every day should be love your body day because what sustainable self care practices come from body hatred?

Most of our clients come to us after years of using body hatred as the primary motivation for ‘eating better’ and ‘exercising more.’ I put these phrases in quotes because these behaviors are often far from healthy or sustainable. People restrict entire groups of food or eat such a small amount of food in a given day that it sets them up for overeating or bingeing. And the types of activities people engage in are often not pleasurable and are solely viewed as a way to ‘make up for’ eating or for getting rid of a handful of insert body part.

So how can we improve our health and hate our bodies at the same time? Is it really possible? I don’t think so.

When you love something, you take care of it. If you hated your dog, would you take it out for walks? Would you care if it got fed? Would you play with it? Give it the attention it so desires? Buy it cute collars, new toys and fun treats? Of course not! So how is it possible to do these exact same things for a body you don’t like? How has body hatred as a source of motivation worked for you so far?

Here are some tips to help you feel better about the body you have today.

• Spend less time body checking – weighing, mirror gazing, feeling your body for fat and/or bones, and comparing your body to others.
• Notice what your body lets you do. When we are so focused on what we look like, we forget that our body does AMAZING things for us every day.
• Dress your body in beautiful, comfortable clothing today. Stop waiting (or weighting) for your body to change to wear clothing that you like and that fits you well.
• Exercise for the joy of feeling your body move and function effectively, not to purge fat from your body or compensate for calories eaten.
• Pay attention to what your body tells you it needs and desires – joyful movement, food that tastes great and makes you feel good, sensual pleasures, and relaxation.

If you wait for the day that you like your body, chances are it will never come. That magic number or size seems to change as often as the weather.

Love Your Body Day

Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival

Can I love my body and still want to lose weight?

End Fat Talk

When I practice Intuitive Eating I am...

When I Practice Intuitive Eating I Am…

• Trying to go slow with my thoughts about food and my body.  Intuitive Eating is not a “plan” for weight loss. It is a way of being connected with what is really happening in my life and my body today.  This connection is what puts an end to the obsessive thinking about food and body image and allows me to live more freely.

• Choosing food based on what I really want.  I am taking inventory of the many, many voices and hungers in my body and choosing nourishment that will satisfy my desires but will allow for me to stay connected to my body and myself.

• Working on flexibility. I am recognizing that each day will afford me many opportunities to eat and I will let each meal be separate from the last.  My needs and desires for specific foods change as the day goes on.  I try to practice openness to this and sit with disappointment about not having what I “thought” I wanted.

• Fighting back against my tricky inner critic.  That voice is the ultimate manipulator.  It will use any tactic to separate me from my connection with myself and distract from my inner wisdom.  I know that I need to repeat my chosen mantra of “Stop it” to get that sucker to back off.  When that voice retreats, I seem to have no trouble knowing what I want and what is truly enough. 

• Recognizing the distinct voice of deprivation in my head.  This one tht believes that nothing is ever enough and wants to keep me on the hamster wheel of getting more, more, more.  If I try to fill myself with food to quiet deeper sadness, anger or longing, I will only be temporarily numbing myself, and it will not support truly knowing myself. 

• Listening to my hunger.  I feed myself when I am hungry even though “it’s not time to eat” or “I shouldn’t be hungry yet”. Sometimes it means having to wait for hunger to arrive at all.  Hunger changes day to day.

• Keeping food nearby.  I am planning for hunger, so it is not a last minute scramble or an inconvenience to feed myself.

• Practicing saying yes and no myself.  Intuitive eating is a practice of legalizing food, shutting down the food police and truly eating food you enjoy.  Intuitive eating is also knowing when is too much, knowing that honoring my metabolism, and my body’s boundaries will reward me with increasing my trust in my body and myself.

• Reminding myself that it doesn’t have to be perfect to keep doing it.  Intuitive eating is a meal by meal practice for me.  No problem if I have an eating experience that is less than attuned.  Another opportunity is always around the corner.  Knowing my true hunger is a practice to be continually explored, not a plan to be mastered.

Eating is an Opportunity

by Kate Suddes, MA

Food is everywhere.  Have you noticed this?  And with it comes the opportunity for choice, reflection, self-care.  These opportunities are ubiquitous and relentless.  I had a death in my family this month and I still had to make decisions about food.  I made decisions about food the day I ran a marathon, the day I graduated from college, the day I was married and the day my daughter was born.  There have been millions of minutes in between these events, most of them mundane.  But all of them have been punctuated with decisions about eating.  We come from many walks of life, but the need for food is something we all have in common.  For those of us that struggle in our relationship to food and body, the journey is even more intense.  I believe that food acts on a symbolic level in our lives.  The foods we choose or don't choose can tell us something about where we are, how we're feeling, what we're struggling with at any given moment.  Eating gives us a way to know ourselves - separate from judgement, criticism, health mandates. 

At the core of this eating journey is you.  It's not about the food.  The food is a doorway.  Eating is an opportunity.  Oprah Winfrey was once quoted as saying "I don't have a weight problem - I have a self-care problem that manifests through weight.".  Does this ring true for you?  How do you (or don't you) take care of yourself through eating? The bad news is you have a lifetime to work through your eating journey.  The good news is you have a lifetime to work through your eating journey.    The food is not going away.  Neither are your moments for opportunity.  Your ability to care for yourself.  The pauses in your day to reflect.  I invite you to join next month's Body Trust Network based on Geneen Roth's book, "Women, Food and God".  You will have to make many eating decisions between now and then.  I hope to see you on this particular day in your journey.  In the meantime, may you be gentle and fierce in caring for yourself.

We're excited to invite Kate Suddes to facilitate October's Body Trust Network "Women, Food and God". Kate is the founder of Cage Free, a space for conversation and connection. To learn more about her work, please visit www.cagefreepdx.com.

"Freedom's just another word"

Janice Joplin immortalized the line "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose". How does that apply when we're talking about being thin? Dr. Deah Schwartz discusses freedom and being thin in America.

http://www.leftoverstogo.com/2011/08/17/what-would-janice-do/