Ever wonder why a plate full of vibrant veggies can make you feel like a superhero, while a sugar-laden snack leaves you crashing faster than a toddler’s temper tantrum? As a therapist and mom, I’ve seen firsthand how the dinner table can become a powerful tool for shaping not only our children’s health but our emotional resilience as well. This episode peels back the layers of how proper nutrition can be a game-changer for your mood and mental well-being. From the four essential pillars of self-care to the sneaky ways hunger can hijack our happiness, we journey through the landscape of eating with intention and understanding. We’ll tap into why a balanced diet isn’t just for keeping our waistlines in check, but for fostering a stable and positive mental state. Listen as we discuss the surprising links between food and feelings, and how simple changes in our pantry could lead to profound shifts in our daily emotional climate.
Embrace a love affair with food as we discuss how to foster a positive relationship with eating, using affirmations and self-compassion to guide the way. This journey is about adding joy to your diet rather than restricting it, allowing your body’s intuition to lead you to choices that enhance both your physical and mental states. Together, we’ll explore how embracing a whole-foods-based lifestyle can be a transformative experience that goes far beyond the plate, with lasting impacts on our emotional resilience and the way we lead our families. Join me, and let’s eat our way to a more vibrant, emotionally balanced life.
What you will learn on this episode:
- The four pillars that sustain mental health: sleep, soothe, fuel, and move
- How eating habits can influence mood and behavior
- The role of nutrition in managing emotions and building resilience
- The impact of high sugar intake on symptoms of depression and anxiety
- The concept of adding joy to your diet and letting body intuition guide food choices –
- The relationship between gut health and mental health
Resources mentioned on the episode:
Mental Health America (Nutrition and Mental Health) https://www.mhanational.org/nutrition-and-mental-health
Mental Health America provides resources discussing the link between nutrition and mental health. Moms can find tips on how specific nutrients affect mood and mental health, as well as suggestions for incorporating these nutrients into their family’s diet.
Harvard Medical School
https://www.health.harvard.edu/topics/diet-and-weight-loss
The nutrition section of Harvard Health offers articles and insights from medical professionals on how diet impacts physical and emotional health. Moms can access research-based advice on how to eat for better emotional balance.
Mediterranean Diet 101: A Meal Plan and Beginner’s Guide https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/mediterranean-diet-meal-plan
TRANSCRIPT
*This transcription below was provided for you or your convenience; please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.
Hello there, friends, I am back with you today to talk about feeling good as we take on our role as being a mom and leader to our families, and how hard it can really be to take care of ourselves too.
01:13
I was talking with a woman a couple of months ago about her mood. We’ve been working on her feelings of anxiety and discouragement, and sometimes she gets overwhelmed by all that’s going on, and then she’ll get anxious and then irritable. Now therapists use the word irritable in a clinical, nice way to say we’re getting grumpy and snappy and so irritated. It’s probably one of the most common symptoms women are dealing with and the one that we criticize ourselves the most for experiencing, because when we are irritable, we’re just not ourselves. It’s that feeling like a force deep within us is bubbling to the surface and it’s kind of a volcano. Either it’s just rumbling under the surface or it can possibly explode and it can feel alien to us, not how we want to show up every day. So this is what I’ve been working on with this woman for a couple of sessions and we talked about the importance of her self care and her sleep and soothing her body. She learned the CBT model, understood that her thoughts create her feelings and she had started to work with those thoughts. So she had been working really hard to apply all those things we talked about, but still she found she was losing her cool and feeling so frustrated by it.
02:23
And when we talked last week she was really excited to tell me that she’d figured out part of that volcanic irritability. We’d actually been tracking her irritability. I’d had her writing it down at the end of the day when she’d lost her temper and even when she noticed the more subtle signs that she was starting to bubble and boil beneath the surface. And after about a week of tracking her feelings, she’d noticed that every time she’d not eaten much or not eaten well that day. I think it has to do with my eating. Of course, I thought, as she was explaining what she’d discovered, the thing we kind of overlooked was what she’d eaten or not eaten during the day. And so it was this great revelation for her one that was kind of a turning point, because once she could see the connection between her nutrition and her mood and her resulting actions, all that irritability and kind of snapping and yelling she could also see a place where she could do something about it, that she could consciously act on her behalf to feel better and then show up better in the way that she wanted to as a mom.
03:28
So I got off the call with her and I felt a little sheepish, like I thought I should have thought to bring it up to her sooner, all of that discussion about food and eating. I mean, I touched on it as I explained to her the four pillars of self-care that sleep, soothe, fuel and move. But then we went right on to other topics, other places where we could kind of strengthen her and try to figure out the solution for what she was trying to work on. So I find that when I bring in the self-care pillars, most of us don’t get really excited talking about the fuel part. And why is it that talking about food what we eat, what we don’t eat it’s often complicated and kind of tender right. You know, no one really talks to us about food, at least not in the educational and empowering way I think can really help us. Instead, I think there’s a lot of judgment around food and really set ideas of how maybe we should or shouldn’t eat, and sometimes a lot of shame. So it doesn’t get brought up a lot and I notice sometimes I even shy away from it because I want to be really respectful of every individual’s kind of personal way of looking at food. But what I think we all need to know is how much the human body is interconnected with the brain and how much our moods and that ability to think clearly and problem solve and even regulate our emotions how much it’s linked to the stability of our physical bodies.
04:58
Very few people talk about this and we don’t learn much about it in school. Maybe a week is spent on nutrition in health class and maybe in ninth grade, but beyond that, most of us know very little about how our bodies work and especially what they need to function properly. Even physicians, in their training, get very little information on nutrition. According to a 2021 survey of medical schools in the US and UK, researchers found that most medical students receive, on average, 11 hours of nutrition training throughout an entire medical program. So it’s not surprising that doctors are not even talking with their patients about how to manage their health through nutrition.
05:40
In the mental health world, there has been so much more research and discussion about the connection between what we eat and how we feel emotionally, and so I’m seeing a lot of things just even in the last year coming across my email in training opportunities, where we’re talking about how what we eat can help us as clinicians for me as a therapist to be able to help the people that we’re working with feel better emotionally. We’ve got some studies where researchers are looking at sugar intake and how it affects and kind of contributes to what they call common mental disorders, or basically depression and anxiety, and finding that the more people eat sugar, higher sugar food, the more that they’re going to experience depression and anxiety and the inversion of that. Those that are feeling depressed and anxious will often crave and consume higher sugar foods. And they not only looked at the foods that we all know are obviously high in sugar, like sodas and candies and cookies, but also at the foods that break down into glucose after digestion, things like breads and pastas and starches, those simple carbs that the body doesn’t have to work very hard to digest. But they also found that it’s not that simple like. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just say, oh, direct correlation between simple carbohydrates and depression and anxiety? Well, it rarely is that simple, and even if it were, you can’t just cut out all carbs, because your brain and your body need glucose to function and too little glucose can give you brain fog and also cause depression and that jitteriness and that anxious feeling. So we know that there is some kind of interaction between glucose and sugar. If you don’t have enough, you have a problem, and if you have too much, you have a problem.
07:30
But this is pretty much new information, a way to apply nutrition to treating mental and emotional wellness, like. That’s not something that I learned in school and not something that we’re familiar with, especially in our families. These building blocks of nutrition that we have in our bodies are actually there for a purpose. For instance, the amino acids in protein are the building blocks of brain neurotransmitters, which is how your cells communicate messages about sleep and mood and, in general, that good sense of general well-being. So we know that you need plenty of protein Beans, legumes, nuts, seeds, meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy products all those are great sources of protein. And we know we need fats. Fat is essential in maintaining the cell structure of the brain’s communication network, so your brain needs healthy fat, the kind you find in fish, olive oil, avocados and nuts.
08:30
The more we learn about the body, the more we understand that nutrition is going to help our organs work in the way that they need to, so that we have this high-functioning machine for our body that’s able to process all the things we have to do. But also we’re learning that our brain and our emotional centers in our brain and our body require certain amounts of nutrients. There’s a 2023 study looking at deficiencies in nutrients such as protein, b vitamins, vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, selenium, iron, calcium and, especially, omega-3 fatty acids, that when we’re deficient in these, there’s significant impact on the brain and nervous system functioning, which can affect our mood and even bring on depressive symptoms. Another study reviewed literature looking at using food to treat depression. Really interesting, right? We’ve spent a lot of time looking at CBT to treat depression, which is talk therapy and walking through our thoughts and feelings. And also medication, looking at antidepressants for depression treatment. But this literature review looked at support for whole diet and whole food interventions as an adjunctive treatment to improve depression symptomology.
09:49
Okay, I barely touched on what is a mountain of literature on the power of nutrition to both harm us and help us in all areas of our health, and especially where we’re concerned, as we’re talking together, with our emotional wellness. So why are we not better understanding all of this? And I think the answer is that it’s confusing. There’s a lot of information out there. I said mountains of information. There are mountains of information, and they’re in big words, with lots of kind of scientific experiments and applications, and unless it gets translated into something that we can digest without a lot of extra study, it’s going to be hard for us to access it because we don’t learn it in school, our doctors don’t learn it in school and we have the whole food industry marketing to us, trying to get us to buy products that may be okay for us but also maybe actually harming us. So no wonder I don’t spend very much time on it.
10:50
In my work with women, I feel the overwhelm for myself sometimes. But here’s the thing I don’t think we can ignore it. It really does make sense that what you eat is your fuel. What you put into your body either gives you what you need or it doesn’t, and often it can have a negative effect. So I’ve started to talk more about it with the women I work with and with you, because I do think it’s really important. Take the woman I just mentioned. She was working her tail off to get better sleep and work with her thoughts and her hunger, not just for food, but for those nutrients, the deep nutrition that supported her. That hunger was undermining her and for her it was the missing piece in her wellness journey, and once she knew to look at it, she could start to feel that she was finally making the progress she was hoping for. Now, nutrition may not be your missing piece, but it definitely is a piece and I think we should be aware of it because it’s part of our self-care.
11:58
In previous episodes we’ve talked all about what self-care is right, why it matters and how it can lay the foundation for other, even more transformational changes in your life. I’ve laid out the four pillars of self-care Sleep, soothe, fuel and move. It’s a little sing-songy way I like to use to remember what I need on a daily basis to be well. These things all help my body work the way it’s supposed to, and when I don’t get them, I struggle. I don’t feel good, not in my body and not in my mind and not in my emotions.
12:34
I just met with a couple last week and we were talking about the stressors that they have raising children, working, managing a life that’s gotten big over the years and how hard it is to stay connected and how hard it is to stay calm and how hard it is to feel joy in their lives. And as we were talking about all of this, as I was listening to them and we were kind of becoming detectives and looking at where is the lever we can pull, what is our low-hanging fruit, what are the things that we can do to be able to empower and strengthen and really help feel better in this relationship and in this family? One of the things that we discovered was that they’re not getting enough sleep. Do you know how hard it is to manage your thinking, how hard it is to regulate emotions when we are very tired? Our brain just doesn’t have the capacity, it doesn’t have kind of the resources it needs to be able to do that big job, which is to sort through emotions and really make choices that help us show up the way that we want to show up. I’m a therapist. I’m not a sleep scientist. I’m not a doctor. Why would I be talking about sleep and nutrition and exercise? Well, it’s because it undermines us if we don’t.
13:53
I have struggled with this episode. I’ll be honest how to approach it, how to bring it up, how deep to go, because whenever I talk about something as personal as our physical health, I’m very mindful of the many different circumstances that you are all in and your unique backgrounds and situations. I always want to be sharing information that’s helpful to lift you up and encourage you to take good care of yourselves. And talking about food how we eat, how we feed our bodies well, that can be a tender subject. There are so many opinions on how we should eat and what we should eat, so I want to be mindful of where each of you are in your personal journeys with food, and I am not going to tell you today what I think you should specifically be eating. I don’t think that’s possible for me to know each of your situations, your body types and where you’re at nutritionally, but I don’t have to know this. This is your body and your journey to wellness. You get to be the one that discovers your best practices in regards to nutrition. What I can do is give you a framework to get you thinking and hopefully, offer you some food for thought. Get that pun so that you will find inspiration to take loving care of your body.
15:05
So let’s talk about food for a little bit. Food is literally the fuel of life and it is a way that you show love to your body. From birth, it was the first way you interacted with the world. You cried when you were hungry, when you were a baby, and when your mother fed you. That food not only filled the emptiness in your stomach, it began to fill the need you had to be listened to, attended to and nurtured. Food and nutrition are the first ways that we experience comfort and safety and attachment.
15:38
So I want you to take a minute and think about how you feel about the words food and eating and nourishment. What’s your visceral response? Does eating come easily to you? Is it connected to worries about weight? Does food serve as a comfort and annoyance, or does it even maybe feel like a threat? We all have a history with food and I wonder what yours is. Is food kind of a celebration, an obligation, or is it stressful for you? Whatever the answers to these questions, I hope we can make a new start and how you think about nourishing your body.
16:16
The first step in this process is to allow yourself to be mindful of your body and the messages of hunger that it will send to you. Those messages may be familiar and easily recognizable, or kind of foreign and hard to discern. This is because we do have a history with food. We do have a history with working with our own hunger. What I want you to consider is that learning to honor and listen to your hunger is a way that you take care of yourself, learning how your body feels when it gets hungry.
16:48
Sometimes our hunger manifests through irritability and moodiness that’s like what happened with a woman I was working with or getting foggy thinking, or just that general sense of blah or apathy. Sometimes we’ve learned to go without for so long that we’ve lost touch with what our body needs when it’s asking to be fed. So I invite you to pay attention to your moods and check in and ask yourself are you hungry? And get curious about what your body needs and start to be more aware of your whole digestive system. Sounds funny, doesn’t it? I’m asking you to pay attention to that digestive system. Well, that’s because, whether we realize it or not, we are one huge system, and what happens in our brain is connected to what’s happening in our gut. In fact, your gut is called your second brain. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that, but researchers have discovered that deep in the lining of your gut there is a complicated and sophisticated network of nerves and receptors that stretch from your brain all the way through your intestines. The same neurotransmitters that send hormonal signals from your brain exist in your gut, and research shows that we can experience feelings like butterflies or dread in our guts because we have sensors there that are responding to the things we’re thinking.
18:06
Our appetite is controlled by our hypothalamus, which is in your brain, sending signals and receiving signals from our stomachs. So when we have stress or sadness, the change in hormones and neurotransmitters is felt by both of your brains, in your head and in your belly. This is why appetite disturbance is often a symptom of depression. So sometimes, when you’re feeling stressed or sad, you may have no appetite, or it could go the other way. You might be constantly hungry, needing to eat all the time and craving comfort foods that feel like they soothe you. So I think what’s helpful for me to know is that this isn’t a character flaw.
18:45
When I’m craving sugar, it’s really probably more of a body chemistry thing. My stress might be high and my body, under stress, will need more fuel or glucose, which it looks for in foods that have high amounts of it. Thus the sugar craving rather than beat ourselves up for this, what if we dialed into the clues that we’re probably feeling stressed and craving sugar can be a sign we need soothing rather than a sign we don’t have any willpower. This is the kind of connection that can really help us in the long run, where we’re really listening to our bodies and we’re having compassion and not just getting critical and blaming ourselves for something that’s probably quite connected to the bigger system. This also goes for that feeling of no appetite. Whenever I’m talking with someone who’s going through a really hard time, I’ll often ask them if they’ve eaten anything, and most often they’ll tell me no, I’m just not hungry. No, I’m just not hungry.
19:40
Here’s another example, something for us to dial in, to clue in to the fact that we are experiencing something big something big in our emotions and one of the signs is showing up in our appetite, and in this case it would be to not have much of an appetite. And, of course, you can watch out for some of these signs in the people that you love, with your spouse or your children, when they’re not very hungry. It might be that they’re dealing with something emotionally and that can be a clue that they need some more support. What we’re learning is that the more that we’re aware of and take care of our thoughts and our moods through our own choice and self care, the more we protect the health and wellness of our gut and vice versa, taking care of our bodies, getting those nutrients that allow the body to work well, can influence the wellness in our moods and in our emotions. So the biggest thing that we could do is become aware and educated specific to what you need, and the first step in that is noticing how food can influence your mood, and maybe even start with how not having food can influence your mood.
20:52
Have you ever found yourself in the middle of the day, shaky, irritable, anxious? Chances are high that if you do, the brain in your gut is telling the brain in your head through complex chemical messages that you are hungry. And as you stop being mindful of your appetite messages like we’re ignoring those messages your brain starts to give you other signals of discomfort to get your attention. Because when the body is unempty, it will crave anything that gives it energy the fastest. So that’s why we get irritable, because we are operating on a very low amount of fuel and that causes us to feel threatened. That makes our body feel tight and the tension is there and we get that kind of almost aggressive feeling because we don’t have enough fuel to run the processes in our body. That is also why we crave something really sweet, really fast, kind of quick, high doses of sugar, glucose, that chocolate chip cookie, instead of maybe a plate of steamed broccoli. Now, I love steamed broccoli, but I can’t remember the last time that I craved broccoli when I was feeling stressed or anxious or I was just absolutely starving. What I want more than anything is a big dose of sugar.
22:09
Understanding how your body works is vital to understanding why eating regularly and in a balanced way is so vitally important, because you need that energy to function and it will take whatever you give it and break it down as fast as it can and burn it in your body’s furnace. And eating high sugar foods and simple carbohydrates is like putting dried grass in the furnace. They burn very hot, very fast and then they’re gone, and this can leave you feeling great for the few minutes you’re eating, but soon after leave you feeling drained or lethargic or exhausted, and a cycle is formed of quick bursts followed by drops of energy, which causes to ride that roller coaster of insulin spikes, thrilling surges and screaming plunges that leave us worn out and frazzled and oftentimes is the formula for feeling depressed. So, though I may not tell you exactly what to eat, I can tell you that you need to keep your blood sugar levels stable and at a similar level throughout the day. We talk about complex carbohydrates, like fruits and vegetables and healthy grains as complex, because what it means is that they take longer to break down by the body, so they’re like a longer burning log in your furnace, in your body, rather than dry grass. It makes your body do that digestive and chemical work it’s supposed to, because your body will have a longer and more sustained amount of energy. No more roller coaster action means you feel stable and not shaky and able to control your moods with more ease.
23:44
Okay, so maybe everybody knows this. Well, why don’t we do it? Sometimes the most basic things are the hardest to master, aren’t they? So let’s spend a few minutes talking about some very specific steps and actions you can take now to begin building your self care and specifically your nutritional foundation. Number one make eating a regular part of your day.
24:10
I can’t tell you how many people I work with that just don’t think about their eating. They don’t think about eating in any planned way, and maybe they only think about it when they’re absolutely starving. So they’re caught off guard and if you were to track how often they eat and when they eat, they’re quite erratic. And I think this is very much part of our busy lives, especially as parents, and especially as the priority tends to go to taking care of our kids. We end up oftentimes not paying attention to what our needs are. So taking time to feed yourself at the start of your waking hours is important.
24:47
You’re breaking a fast that has lasted, hopefully, at least seven hours that’s my plug hoping that you’re at least sleeping seven hours and your body needs fuel for the day. I know some of us are practicing intermittent fasting. That’s considered time restricted eating, and there’s some really great research on the positive effects of fasting. So, whether that’s what you’re doing or not, what I want to point out is that it is planned when you’re going to eat. It’s coming from an educated place where you’re very consciously are choosing to feed your body everything it needs within whatever window of time you’re choosing to eat. It’s not just haphazardly deciding to eat only when you’re hungry, because by the time you get those really strong hunger cues, you’ve probably been hungry for a while. So we want to plan on feeding your body.
25:36
Our goal is to keep your body’s storehouse of nutrients and energy full throughout the day and, with this in mind, I want you to consider planning the meals for your day, maybe even the night before. Pack a snack or two or three. Prepack them in individual serving so that you can grab them and go, so that you don’t have to put your body off when you’re really hungry. Put alerts on your phone reminding you to eat before you get frantic. And add meal times into your schedule. Put it on your calendar and schedule around it.
26:06
As I see clients throughout the day, I make a break and I write in there eat, so that I remember. It seems crazy that I would have to do that, but the more I do that, the more I remember. Hmm, I have more to do today. I really need this fuel. The best way I know how to help myself do this is by imagining I’m feeding myself like I would feed my child. When I’m standing in the refrigerator and I have choices to make, I think what do I need right now and what would I feed my kids if I were making the decision for them? It always kind of surprises me that I do better when I think about how I would take care of my kids than when I would take care of me. But when did we ever stop needing that kind of quality of care? As moms, we are notoriously going without, and I think that has to start with us. We need to stop reducing our needs to being last on the list and start putting ourselves right up there with the care that we give our kids.
27:00
So, number two when it comes to what we eat, let’s stock up on the things that give you the deep nutrition you need, and the basics of healthy food are this I keep using that word healthy, and I’ll give you my version of it, and, once again, I’m mindful that everyone’s going to have their own take on this, but since I’ve got the mic right now, I’ll share with you what I think are those healthy foods Fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, lean meats. These are what nutrition scientists are telling us are the building blocks of powerful nutrition. If you’re brand new to this, take it slow, ask questions, find a book that looks interesting to you, and the right place to start is by looking up something like the Mediterranean diet, which basically helps you start to front load your nutrition with whole foods. You can learn about nutrition from podcasts and websites, and even the National Institute of Health has some good ideas, and I’ll put some links to these in the show notes. But the goal is to plan for your nutrition each and every day. Remember that every little step contributes to the overall goal.
28:09
So let’s talk, finally, about the mindset around eating. This is something that I do feel like I have a lot of experience with. Even though I’m not a nutritionist, I do know how to work with the mind, and research shows that when we add self-compassion to any of our goals, anything we’re working on, we are going to be so much more successful. I think this is vital for how we look at our nutrition. I think it’s really important that we give up our black and white thinking about food and embrace the fact that healthy eating is flexible. It can include a wide variety of foods. Let’s pay attention to how we talk to ourselves about our eating. Do you have a negative track running in your head that tells you not to eat too much or not to eat certain kinds of food, or that you’re a failure? If you do, it’s important to pay attention and respond to some of this criticism that we might find we have in our thinking. We can think about how we might talk to our kids about food and practice talking to ourselves that way. You might even want to put some of those phrases on a card that you keep on your fridge.
29:11
Here’s some ideas of some affirmations for eating. I’m nourishing my body with the food it loves. Eating is a natural part of life and I’m allowed to enjoy it. My worth is not determined by what I eat. I’m more than my food choices. It’s okay to indulge. Balance is the key. I’m learning to listen to my body’s signals and respond with kindness. Food is a source of pleasure and enjoying it is part of how I take care of myself. I choose foods that make me feel good physically and mentally. Every meal is a new opportunity to nourish and appreciate my body. I’m breaking free from guilt and having a positive relationship with food. It’s about my progress, not perfection. We’re looking to nourish, not punish.
30:03
So, as you’re making your decisions, I want you to really think about that concept of replacement rather than elimination. I would never tell you to go through your pantry and throw everything out that you cannot have. I know that is often a common word of advice when people are making dietary changes, but I think that falls into that black and white thinking and I think it starts us on that negative thought cycle where things are being withheld from us and it becomes this scarcity mentality. So, rather than eliminate, I would say let’s add. Add to your diet, add to your menu, add to your eating plan something that you think would fuel and really benefit you, and start small. If you’d prefer a cookie to steam broccoli, like me, then adding steam broccoli to your diet at some point in the week would be a big win. You don’t have to take the cookie away. In fact, some of the best research we have on changing long-term eating patterns is this slow and steady replacement.
31:08
I kind of see it like learning to fall in love the more you’re with someone, the more you get accustomed to them, the more familiar they are and the more you desire to be close to them. This is how we fall in love with our partners and this is how we can fall in love with food that feeds and nourishes our bodies. Also, add a few things and start that love affair with nutrition that is going to support you and heal you and help you feel the joy that you long to feel. I want to really point out that we have wisdom in our bodies and I want us to start to listen to that wisdom. Of course, we’re going to notice the noise and the pressure to look a certain way, weigh a certain number on the scale and all the hype about food and the goodness and the badness of it, and I want you to feel free to let that stuff go and reach inside yourself for the direction on what you should do, educate your mind on what your body needs. You can find this information in many places and I’ve given you some foundational pieces of information, but mostly go by that basic common sense that’s within you. Sometimes it feels like we can’t find it because we’re really not used to looking for it or listening to it, but if you invite that wisdom to speak up, you’ll start to hear her and she will guide you through this. So we’re starting this relationship, this loving, positive, sweet relationship with food.
32:38
Go on some dates with some food in their most natural state. Give things a try that you never thought you would Know that there’s no pressure, there’s no threat, there’s no punishment associated. This is an opportunity to get to know food that might serve you really well. Listen to that body of yours and pay attention to how you feel when you eat the food, not just at the moment that you’re consuming it, but also after. How does it help you feel with energy? Does it sustain you or drop you? Notice if you feel calm and well inside or not, because not every person’s body responds the same to every food, which is why I can’t tell you exactly what to do.
33:21
This is the meaning behind intuitive eating. It’s your intuition, your sense of wellness that matters, and this is what we’re hoping to instill in our children Helping them start to get a sense of what it feels like to be connected to their bodies, to listen to their hunger, to be able to make choices, to try different foods, and they’re going to be on their own journey with food. We can’t really command that. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that already with your children trying to get them to eat just what you think they should be eating. They’re going to push back against that because this is a very private relationship, a personal relationship that we have with food. But we can set examples for them as we’re doing it ourselves and not guilting ourselves when we’re not doing it perfectly, but even just trying new things and letting them know that we are loving our bodies and we’re taking the shame and the guilt out of our eating. I’m hoping to inspire you with renewed commitment to love your body through feeding it well, whatever that looks like for you, and hopefully you’ll add this skill, this way of caring for yourself, to your resiliency plan so you can feel good both in mind and in body. Thank you so much again for your time today and I will talk to you all next week.
34:40
Take care, the Leadership Parenting Podcast is for general information purposes only. It is not therapy and should not take the place of meeting with a qualified mental health professional. The information on this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition, illness or disease. It’s also not intended to be legal medical or therapeutic advice. Please consult your doctor or mental health professional for your individual circumstances. Thanks again and take care.