I love the way my son's old football coach encouraged his players to be present.
There are so many enticing thoughts that grab our mind’s attention.
We plan for the future; the day ahead, the week ahead, the year ahead. I love to plan, so I find that my mind enjoys fast-forwarding.
I also notice how I worry. If you're like me, worrying can sweep you up and take you away, if you're not mindful around it. Each concern can build energy and take up more and more space in your head.
Worrying can feel addicting when you don't realize you have a choice to worry or not.
I also notice how sometimes I rehash old events and ask myself, “How could that have gone better?”
There is nothing wrong when our mind is somewhere else.
But, it just means we aren't tuned into what's happening at the moment. Our thoughts are just thoughts, an interpretation or narrative.
When our mind is focused on the moment, we get to engage all of our senses and experience the moment fully. We can listen to sounds, smell the air, and connect with sensations in our bodies. This is the sweet spot where we can be most in tune to ourselves and our inner wisdom and creativity.
My best ideas come when I'm present and grounded. It's also when I naturally feel the most relaxed.
As a leader, you're juggling an overwhelming amount of ideas and responsibilities.
How do you use mindfulness to help you become more effective? Or to simply enjoy the moment you’re in?
Is Your Mind Crowded with Negative Self-talk?
What’s going on inside of your head?
Is it crowded with negative self-talk?
❗️ I can't do this.
❗️I need to try harder.
❓ What’s wrong with me?
⛔️ They can't see me (or my work).
❗️They think I’m …. (dumb, wrong, an idiot, bad).
We’ve all heard our fair share about positive thinking and all of its benefits.
Before you even try to think positively, are you noticing the thoughts you’re having?
There is a good chance you’re not. And even if you are, you may not feel how hurtful the words are.
There are a few reasons for this.
1️⃣ These words are familiar to you because you’ve been speaking to yourself like this for a long time.
2️⃣ You try not to dwell on these thoughts and work to move past them quickly.
3️⃣ You try to be a positive person and don’t want to acknowledge that these thoughts fill your mind.
There is a part of you that doesn’t like it when you speak to yourself so harshly. Rightfully so.
But you can’t change something you don’t know is there.
So first, I invite you to pay attention. Get curious. How do you speak to yourself? This isn’t meant to be an exercise for you to judge your thoughts. Just notice the conversations you’re having. It may be interesting to write them down.
Over the next few posts, I’m going to offer you some insight into what your negative self-talk is all about, how it works, the purpose it serves, and most importantly, what to do about it (it’s not the advice you’ve already read).
This is Why Positive Body Talk Isn’t Working for You..... try this instead
Body shame is so painful. And most people are experiencing it. It can feel like a heavy blanket that’s just hard to take off. You feel it when you see a picture of yourself from your recent weekend away. When you catch a glimpse of yourself in a reflection in a window. When you’re getting dressed in the morning. When you see a picture of a younger version of yourself. Or you notice a friend or co-worker that has a smaller body.
It’s nearly impossible to escape when you hate your body and wish it were smaller, leaner and fitter.
Of course you want to think positively about yourself. You wish you could say something like: I love my body just as it is. But saying that doesn’t feel true to you. Your whole being likely objects and your mind starts to negotiate with that statement. You may think, I’ll love my body when I lose x pounds. I’ll love my body when I can fit into those jeans.
This is one of the reasons positive body talk doesn’t work for you. You don’t believe it.
You may think, well, if I say enough positive things about my body, will I eventually believe that my body is worth loving?
I’ll let you answer that. If you’ve tried it, has it improved your body image? Or, is it really hard to talk to yourself that way?
In my experience, the most effective approach to working with negative self talk is to be a gentle witness to your thoughts.
The reason this is effective:
It takes much less effort and energy and therefore it’s easier to practice.
You’re not creating an internal battle within yourself.
Where your focus goes, energy grows. When you become a gentle witness to these thoughts, you’re no longer fueling the painful thoughts. You can allow them to be just as they are.
As if you're standing on a sidewalk and watching a car drive by, you notice these thoughts without any judgment of them.
As you become a gentle witness, these thoughts no longer become personal. Saying “my body is disgusting.” can feel like a personal attack. But when you simply notice that thought, with the knowledge that every thought is not true, you can just let that thought be. It can feel the same as saying to yourself, “my shoe is untied” or “my hands are cold”. Thoughts can be neutral. And when they are neutral, they have no painful power over you.
Thoughts only have power when we give them meaning. When you’re a gentle witness of your negative body talk, these thoughts can come to the surface, you can notice them, and then they pass.
As you practice this over time, you’ll find that being a gentle witness takes less energy and time.
The result:
How you think and feel about your body changes, without your body changing at all.
Why Community, Unlearning and Mindfulness Are So Important on Your Intuitive Eating Journey
Note: I want to share why I’m offering my upcoming small Food Freedom Group Coaching program. This program will begin in the middle of April. You can find out more information here.
I was always a secret dieter. My mind was always filled with ideas of how to lose weight, but I rarely shared those plans with friends or family. So when I overate, ate the wrong foods, or binged, I just assumed that I was the only one failing so miserably.
Believing it was “just me” that couldn’t lose weight and keep it off was pretty crazy-making. I’d often reflect on what it was about me that was so wrong. Was it genetics? Was I not disciplined enough? Was it my childhood? Was I an addict?
On one hand, assuming I was wrongly unique made me feel like nothing could fix me and my eating issues. On the other hand, I couldn't stop trying to find a solution. I didn't want to believe that I had to live with my eating struggles for the rest of my life.
Juicing hadn’t worked, even though Kris Carr promised it would. Smoothie fasts didn’t work, even though wellness warriors told me I’d feel cleansed, clear, and energized.
When I found Intuitive Eating, I didn’t share that with anyone either. Quite honestly, I didn’t realize the incredible gift I had stumbled upon at the time. But, since I was trying anything and everything to stop feeling so out of control around food, Intuitive Eating was the next obvious choice.
I can only best describe my early intuitive eating journey as having one foot in and one foot out. Although I’ve never shared this with anyone, I even picked up a Keto diet book and started to follow the high protein low carb lifestyle while I was practicing intuitive eating. Just a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a home blood sugar monitor in my bathroom closet that I bought at the time to determine if I was In ketosis or not! That was a fun item to toss in the trash can.
I know now that if I had hired someone that knew about intuitive eating to help me along, my journey to food freedom would likely have been smoother and quicker. But, I also know that if I had, I may not have picked up all of the other tools and insights like transformational principles, yoga, energy healing, and mindfulness that I needed to help me along the way. My process was perfect because it led me to where I am now.
Which is why I can reflect back on my own journey and see what someone like you, who may be in the early stages of your food freedom journey, needs and could benefit from so you can move along your process with more grace and ease.
One of the most important things I believe folks need is a sense of community. We're steeped in diet culture, where dieting, restricted eating, wellness = weight loss, and intermittent fasting is normalized. Intuitive eating is a non-diet approach that allows you to tune into the sensations of your body to eat to the lovely feeling of satisfaction. While you’re practicing intuitive eating, you’ll likely hear co-workers talk about their latest diet, you’ll see calories on menus when you go out to eat, and you’ll see weight loss before and after ads in your Instagram feed. It’s so important that you surround yourself with people that are on the same journey you're on. You’ll find strength and solace in a safe group setting.
The other thing I think people need is space to practice and experiment in real-time. We live in a world with access to SO much information. If you have a question, you can find the answer within seconds on your phone. But, does information really move you to action? I often hear, "I know what to do, but I just can’t do it". You’re saturated with way too much information on food, nutrition, how to lose weight, and exercise. You need to unlearn what’s not helpful and take the time to practice.
And lastly, when it comes to food and your body, you need more space. When I was struggling with food, I was moving a million miles an hour. I wasn’t paying attention to my body, how I was feeling and what I was eating. Most of what I was doing felt like I was checking a box on my to-do list. This is really common among my clients too. We all have busy lives. Yet, most folks aren’t prioritizing how they care for their bodies. All of their other responsibilities like family and work come before their own basic needs.
In my upcoming Food Freedom Group Coaching program, I’m designing each of the 90-minute calls to include these three necessities; connecting with other people through sharing and supporting, real-time experiential practices, and mindfulness and grounding exercises.
If this program is coming to you at the right time on your food freedom journey, I’d love for you to join me. I’m accepting a maximum of 8 people. We start on Tuesday, April 12th. The cost is $250 a month for three months. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at tara@tara-whitney.com.
Do You Stop Eating When You’re Full?
Why this matters
You and I can both relate to operating on autopilot. This is when you’re going through the motions in your life without even realizing or paying attention to what's happening on the inside (body sensations, thoughts, etc.) and outside (your environment, conversations, etc.).
It can be so easy to do this when you're eating. You may have a plate of food in front of you and only stop eating when you’ve eaten everything on the plate. Or you may have a snack bag of chips or baby carrots, and not stop eating until the bag is empty.
This isn’t wrong or bad. You’re just missing an opportunity to tune into the information your body is sharing with you around how much food would be satisfying.
Why this may be hard
Just like any new practice, being mindful and noticing fullness takes some extra energy on your part. At least, at first. It will become easier over time.
Honoring your fullness will be really hard if you're dieting or food restricting. I know this may sound counterintuitive. For example, if you're eating a food that you consider to be unhealthy or bad and you tell yourself that you can’t have it tomorrow, you may engage in the last supper mentality and eat more of that food because you can’t have it later. It won’t matter how full you are.
The same goes if you’re not getting enough calories. If you’ve been in a state of deprivation, your body will demand more food when you finally allow yourself to eat. To honor your fullness, you need to honor your hunger.
And, if you let yourself get too hungry, it may be hard for you to slow down and notice fullness. You may feel too urgent around food and may naturally eat really fast.
One thing to practice that may help
Start by choosing a meal or snack where you give eating all of your attention. If you often eat in front of your phone, laptop or TV, this may be challenging. Choose the easiest meal and take it slowly.
Remind yourself that you’re not trying to limit how much you eat, but instead, you're interested in what kind of sensations your body shares with you around fullness.
Allow this to be a discovery process.
Here are some signals your body may share with you when you’re full:
Your belly may no longer have an empty or void feeling. (I know this is obvious).
You may start to lose interest in eating more food. Food may not look or smell as good as it did when you first started to eat.
The food you’re eating may not taste as flavorful.
The opportunity
Eating can be a pleasurable experience, especially when you’re eating foods that you enjoy.
When on autopilot, you will miss the taste, smell, texture of foods, and how the sensations in your body change while eating.
Just like going outside and feeling the cool (or warm) fresh air can be a savory experience, we can miss these bounties if we aren’t tuning in and paying attention.
By practicing honoring your hunger, you’ll be expanding and noticing even more opportunities to be filled and nourished by everyday experiences. Ones that do and don’t involve food.
How To Feel Emotions
An essential practice when you want to overcome emotional eating
Emotions are like gas. They pass.
I heard this from a yoga teacher forever ago.
It’s so consoling, isn’t it? Knowing that we can feel the swell of anger, sadness, fear and even happiness and that eventually, inevitably, they will pass through us.
Emotions don’t sit and stay stuck.
If you are anything like me, there was a time in my life when I had a hard time feeling feelings. I didn’t know what to do with the heat of my anger or the weight of my sadness.
Quite honestly, my emotions scared the shit out of me. I had a vision of a faucet. Once I turned the handle and emotions started to flow that they would never stop. I was afraid that I’d be overtaken by them. I believed they would leave me curled up in a ball on a cold floor, unable to move.
This was one of the reasons I turned to food for comfort.
I started to eat emotionally when I was 13. I didn’t have the tools or the support to recognize what to do with my discomfort. Over the years, I would even eat emotionally when I anticipated an uncomfortable emotion.
It took me decades to understand what we really going on with my emotional eating patterns. I had many layers to pull back. I knew that dealing with my emotions, whatever that meant, was a pivotal part of my recovery.
The idea that emotions pass gave me a bit of courage.
I never considered that I could feel my feelings and go on living my life. I welcomed the idea that I didn’t need to put my life on hold to process all of my past hurts and traumas.
This was the start of me embracing my humanness. I opened myself to feel in my mind. Yet, understanding something in theory and having an experience of something are two very different things.
Not surprisingly, it didn’t take long for the opportunity to be with my emotions to present themselves.
One afternoon, I was scrolling through my social media when I saw a post by a friend that was at an outdoor yoga festival. She was there with a few of my other yogi friends. This was the first I’d heard about the event. My first reaction was to wonder why I hadn’t been invited.
My mind started to run wild. I’d been excluded. I was left behind. I wondered what I had done wrong. I wondered why my friends left me out.
In a few short moments, I made the choice that I was going to be with my hurt. I didn’t know what would come next, but I was ready to find out.
Instead of focusing on my thoughts, I put all of my attention on my body.
I felt a big weight on my chest that moved down to my belly. Tears immediately poured out of my eyes. I let them flow. I allowed the heaves of pain to move through me. My body shook and I could barely breathe.
And then, something amazing happened. As quickly as the emotions came, they left. This intense experience only lasted a few short minutes. I felt what needed to be felt, and then the energy of the emotions disappeared, like a bubble. It popped and dissolved.
My body felt relief, lightness and some fatigue.
This one experience was just the beginning of something big for me.
I was also proud of myself and my body. I partnered with her, I trusted her, I allowed her space to do what she’s designed to do; process emotions.
As I was teaching myself how to be with my feelings, I was also teaching myself how to be in my body. When I was afraid of my feelings, it was my mind that was afraid. My body was saying, “I’m here for this. Come what may. Bring it!” But I wasn’t aware of her capacity to feel yet. I hadn’t yet recognized her power.
When you’re ready to feel your emotions, start with these practices:
1.Know the truth about emotions.
Emotions are energy that are meant to move through your body. Our bodies are designed to process emotions. Emotions aren’t good or bad, they just are.
2. Practice tuning into the sensations of your body.
Sometimes your body knows the emotion before your mind does. Check in with your body regularly throughout the day and notice what signals your body is sharing with you.
3. When an emotion arises, give it space.
When we make room for something, we stop judging. That’s all your emotions want from you. Acceptance.
4. Just be and get curious.
You won’t know how your body will process the variety and intensities of your emotions until you experience it.
I’ve been able to take my practice into my healing of emotional eating. I guide my client’s to do the same. It was okay that I didn’t know how to feel. It’s okay that you may have no idea what to do with your emotions.
But know this. When you let them arrive. And give them space to be. They will likely leave as quickly as they came.
You Know You’re Not Hungry, So Why Do You Want to Keep Eating?
You’ve just finished dinner. Your belly is filled. Yet, your mind is filled with thoughts of what else to eat. Crackers, cookies, more dinner, ice cream.
It defies all logic. Your body doesn’t want food, but another part of you, a loud and clear part, does. You’re wondering, how can I be hungry and full at the same time?
I know how confusing and frustrating this internal battle is. You don’t want to eat when you’re not hungry. Your body doesn’t want to eat when you’re not hungry. But you want more food.
What the hell is going on?
Let’s explore just a few reasons this could be happening for you.
Did you miss something?
Eating for pleasure is a birthright. But that may not be your experience. Eating may feel like a chore, something you just need to check off the to-do list.
Or, you may not even take the time or slow down enough to even enjoy the pleasure of eating. Sitting together with loved ones can feel nourishing, no matter what food is on the table.
When you finished your meal, were you able to receive what was offered? Did you feel connected to the tastes, smells and textures of the food you ate? Did you feel connected to the conversations and people you were breaking bread with?
If you didn’t, this isn’t something to feel guilty or ashamed about. If you were like me growing up, we sat around the coffee table in front of the TV for most of our family meals. Mindful eating wasn’t a thing, and my mind was on a few other things besides the food in front of me.
You may want more because you’re craving the contentment from finishing a satisfying meal.
Did you eat what you wanted to eat?
Diet culture tells us what foods are “good” and what foods are “bad”. It’s common to choose to eat things we think we SHOULD be eating instead of eating foods we know we will enjoy eating.
Before I practiced Intuitive Eating, I’d always choose the lowest calorie or “healthiest” food. This is one of the many gifts of Intuitive Eating. I learned to let go of those food labels, ask myself and give myself permission to eat food that I would enjoy eating and would satisfy me.
If you want to eat a grilled cheese sandwich, no amount of baby carrots and hummus will satisfy you. It will only leave you wanting more.
Is there a rebel voice living within you?
“I deserve to eat this.” “Screw this, I can eat what I want.” “I need to eat this now because I can’t eat it tomorrow.”
Our internal voices are powerful. You may be noticing a rebellious voice, one that doesn’t want to be controlled. This voice is our response to someone or something trying to tell us how to eat and what to eat. It’s a reaction to diet trauma.
This voice is trying to maintain your own freedom and autonomy around food choices. It may sound like a young child stomping their feet and saying, you can’t be the boss of me. Or, it may be angry and determined to let the world know that you decide what to do with your body.
This voice is trying to protect you, but it doesn’t serve your desire to listen to the signals your body is sharing.
What is your body asking for?
You may be bone tired and need energy. You may be confronted with a problem at work and just don’t want to deal with it. You may feel overwhelmed by life, a pandemic, vaccines, school at home, on and on.
Food can offer you some temporary energy, distraction, and comfort.
You may also need to feel safe. You may want the weight and certainty of food in your belly so you can feel secure. Sometimes overfilling gives you this physical experience.
It’s okay that you’re seeking food for other reasons than physical hunger. It doesn’t make you a bad, out of control, or crazy person. It just makes you human.