In our lifetime we have never before seen supermarket shelves empty. We may emotionally react to the perception of scarcity by hoarding food and binge eating. And, working from home so close to your refrigerator can be daunting. To discover how we can have a positive relationship with food during this pandemic Marni welcomes Registered Dietician/Nutritionist, Paige Smathers to the Den. Paige helps people heal their relationship with food and their body. She specializes in chronic dieting addiction recovery, eating disorders, and the family eating dynamic. Her approach to nutrition and health is grounded in mindfulness and is rooted in intuitive eating and health at every size. Paige is the owner of Positive Nutrition where she offers mentorship and coaching.
Key takeaways from this episode:
Overcoming the urge to hoard and binge eat Giving yourself permission to take pleasure in eating How to listen to your body and eat intuitively Making the most out of the family sitting down to a meal Why it’s not productive to micromanage your meals A Sense of Scarcity [2:09]What a shock it is to our system when we go to a grocery store only to find the shelves empty. We are not accustomed to not having enough food. We respond to these things by hoarding or buying in bulk. It has triggered a fear of scarcity in our entire society.
And in our dieting culture, we make self-imposed cycles of trying to manipulate our bodies when it comes to food but during this pandemic, we are not in control of it.
Paige reminds us that nothing about what is going on right now is normal. So, how do we shift? If we can make our eating as normalized as possible it will give us the best chance at nourishing our bodies so we stay healthy and function properly. She recommends staying within a normal diet as much as possible.
There is some room for enjoying food and tasting new things. We don't have to be ashamed to get pleasure or joy from food.
It's time to stop that and accept that cooking can connect us to our culture and our families. We need that now more than ever.
And, one of the biggest mistakes we make is to believe that it is wrong to enjoy food. We should enjoy preparing it, light a candle, play some music. Make it an enjoyable experience.
The Intuitive Eating Framework [9:34]
There is a lot to Intuitive Eating. It can be tricky to understand what it means. especially if you come from a diet mindset. It is nuanced but it is about deciding how you want to feel and how you want to function.
Having a happy, healthy relationship with food is less about following rules; it's more about finding a way to approach food that works for you.
There is freedom in waking up to the fact that your body is wise. You will get the carbs your body needs. Your body will get it whether you give it to it in consistent, balanced meals or through bingeing at night. There is real wisdom in liberalizing your rules about food. We just need to tune in. Paige warns against micromanaging eating. It is the micromanaging that leads to bingeing, overeating, or dysfunction.
Tapping into your self-compassion is the key to intuitive eating. Ask yourself these questions to move forward with a peaceful relationship with your body and food:
What has been true about you as a soul? How would you feed someone you love and care about? And, why?
Asking yourself these questions makes it easy to separate the manipulative way you may approach food and help to ground yourself into a reasonable. intuitive, kind, gentle, balanced approach. It can strip away that negative, punitive thought process we often have about feeding ourselves.
Working with the Fridge in the Next Room [23:08]
Many people are now working from home and they are not accustomed to having their food so close. A lot of women are concerned about their families, their work, and what will happen tomorrow so they find themselves emotionally eating.
Paige says not to worry emotional eating is a normal human thing. Food is inherently emotional. It does bring joy, connection, and goodness into our lives. The more we try to deprive ourselves of that the more disconnected we will be to the things that really matter.
She adds, “One big mistake people make is approaching emotional eating from a place of never doing it and if they do it they feel they must feel super guilty about it. All that ends up doing is perpetuating the cycle of 'I better get it all in because I will be better tomorrow. I will never do it again.’ That thinking is what pushes them toward bingeing every time.”
It sounds counter-intuitive but the paradox here is that the more you give yourself permission to enjoy the yumminess of life the more reasonable you can be around those foods.
Emotional eating can bring a moment of joy into your world so it's ok to sit down and have some of what you love.
Be gentle with yourself when you work from home. It's a different transition. Check-in with your self-compassion. Give yourself permission to have a bit of structure. Block off time in your day to eat meals. and eat satisfying, full, legitimate meals. Not just a quick handful of something.
Having a routine and structure around eating is important for you to function optimally especially during the pandemic.
Satisfaction and satiation are part of this philosophy. Paige recommends putting food on a plate and eating it. It works from a physiological and psychological perspective.
If you are sitting down to boring food that makes you want to barf it's not sustainable and you will pendulum swing into binging.
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