Three Practices that Changed my Relationship with Food
When I worked for Centro (now Basis Technologies), we had some really incredible health and wellness resources available to us - an onsite Weight Watchers program, weekly guided meditations by live wellness experts, personal life coaches, and monthly health/wellness-related seminars. While taking advantage of these resources was optional, I found myself magnetized to them and the time I spent working with these experts changed my life.
In this short article, I wanted to share three extremely simple, yet life-changing practices I implemented nearly 10 years ago that have helped me maintain my weight, wellness, and lifestyle for nearly a decade, despite a lively social life and a slowing metabolism.
My mom always told me “abs are made in the kitchen” and the older I get the more wisdom I know there is in the short, but punchy insight.
Practice 1: The Pre-and-Post-Meal Body Check-In
This first rule, I owe to one of the seminars I attended nearly a decade ago, it’s the most basic rule and the biggest game-changer.
Before you eat or drink anything, check in with your body. How do you feel? Take note of these three things:
Quality of your body energy (are you awake? lethargic? or depleted?)
Your feelings of hunger (or lack thereof)
Your general mental state (are you stressed? anxious? excited? or buzzy?)
Now consume your meal.
About 30 minutes after you’ve completed your meal, check in with your body again. How do you feel? Take note of the same three energies:
What is the quality of your body’s energy? Do you feel more energized now or do you feel more lethargic?
What is the state of your hunger? Are you still hungry? Satisfied? Overly full?
What is your general mental state? Are you more relaxed? Grounded?
The point of this exercise isn’t to feel any certain way, the point is to take a moment to make note of how different foods (and their quantity) make your body feel. That said, here are some of the principles I try to stick to:
For daily eating: my goal is to consume foods, in quantities that are energy-giving, when I complete a meal I want to feel nourished, more like my grounded self, and satisfied. In general, if I am following this rule the majority of the time (coupled with the other two practices below), my weight, body shape, and objective health metrics stay consistent.
Practice 2: 80/20 Rule
This second rule I owe to my dear friend Lindsay who is raising a lovely little human and working hard to ensure only the best goes into the belly of this little one. I asked her once, what is one change I can make to embrace all of your philosophies as much as possible. We landed on something simple: at the grocery store, when looking at my full cart, observe one simple thing: Are the foods in my cart >80% single-ingredient foods? Meaning, is the majority of what will come into my house, onto my plate, and into my belly primarily foods that came directly from mother nature or one of her creatures?
The point of this exercise isn’t to make you feel any sort of way if your grocery cart or your plate isn’t full of single-ingredient foods, or foods made from single-ingredient foods combined together. The point is to make you aware of how easy it is to end up with processed food in your home and on your plate and through that awareness start figuring out changes that you can make here and there which add up over time.
Ronnie and I aren’t an earth-food-only home, but we consciously make an effort to be an earth-food-first one, celebrating little wins like a meal comprised entirely of single-ingredient foods combined together in delicious ways.
Re-defining your relationship with the weekend (and vacation).
This third rule, I owe to the woman who facilitated the Weight Watchers workshop I attended during my time at Centro. And as cringe as some of you may think WW is, for me it was a wonderful way to connect with a community of people who also valued their health and were taking an active part in improving their lives, so think what you want, but I think it served a wonderful purpose for me.
Our group was coming up on vacation season, Spring Break, Memorial Day Weekend, Summer, etc. the season of saying yes to golden hour apps and drinks, vacation-blessed-excuses to get a nightly dessert at dinner, vacation-blesssed-excuses to skip your daily movement routine etc. And our leader, a woman who’d lost over 200 lbs and kept it off for over a decade asked us a simple question: “Why does the types of foods you consume on vacation have to be any different than that which you’d consume at home? You love the foods you consume at home! Wouldn’t it be cool if you came back from vacation feeling even better than when you left?”
She was right! For me, there’s nothing better than fresh raspberries and peanut butter for breakfast, so why on vacation did I think I needed to reach for a bagel and cream cheese? For me, there’s nothing more fabulous than a salad for dinner, so why on vacation did I think I needed to reach for fried fish tacos?
Applying my practice #1 of doing body check-ins before and after meals + this practice #3 of disrupting the vacation norm of “healthy eating only happens at home” gradually gave way to both weekends and vacations where I don’t compromise my health or how good my body feels… well at least, the majority of the time.
This isn’t a perfect science, and these rules have a lot of gray area, but I hope they inspire you to take just one small step in the direction of your health today.
Xo
