The Balanced Kitchen

Time for food. Time for Life.

How I Survived Stress Eating And How You Can Too

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I don’t know about any of you but on Tuesday night, in the midst of my anxiety about the unknown, I resorted to stress eating. Crackers, chocolate chips, and dried mango were my foods of choice. And here’s the thing: in the past I would have hated myself for doing it. I would have negotiated with myself for “one more” of this or that, and then would have ended up having five more. I would have eaten until I felt sick, and then possibly even eaten some more. But on Tuesday night I approached the situation differently than I would have done in the past in a couple of ways and the end result was a less guilt-ridden, overfull self.

I thought this would be a timely post because not only are some of us still feeling very stressed and anxious about what is to come, but we are also entering a time of year (holiday season) when old habits show up, when emotional buttons get pushed, and when we often lose track of our own self-care. So if stress eating and/or “eating your feelings” tend to be a fall back for you, maybe hearing how I handled it differently this time will help….

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3 Ways I Let Go of Hating My Body and Learned to Love It (at least a little bit)

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On Tuesday night I went to see the new movie Embrace which is an incredibly powerful documentary about the struggles that so many of us face around body image. It discussed the ways in which women are sent messages that their bodies are not good enough and the cycles of self-loathing and shame that build up over our lifetimes. And yet it was also an incredibly hopeful and empowering movie because it really made the case for another way. It set out a new approach for how we should honor and love our bodies as vehicles for life rather than objects to be judged by those around us (and ourselves).

As I was sitting there, I was thinking about all of the conversations I have had in the course of my work with clients, workshop participants, and friends about the anxieties that so many of us have about how our bodies look and how much shame and worry we experience around food, which we see as our Achilles heal. We believe that if we were just more controlled about what we ate, everything would be better. I say “we” here because this used to be my life. I lived in a constant state of obsession about what I was eating. I would negotiate with myself, deprive myself, count calories, workout to “earn” calories back, and not even enjoy the food I did eat because I was either anxious about whether or not I had made the “right” choice or I was wolfing it down because I was so hungry. In short, I was miserable. In the past few years, though, things have gotten much better for me. I no longer track what I eat or feel guilty when I have “junk food.” Sure, I still have days when I am not happy with my body or feel like I have overeaten, but those are now short lived, and often hormonal, which I’m cool with.

I am so grateful that this shift has happened for me and I wanted to share with you a couple of things that I truly believe have helped me to find this path:…

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4 Ways This Health Coach Is Not Healthy as You Think I Am and Why I Am OK with That

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“Oh! Well then I shouldn’t tell you what I had for dinner last night!”

Is a response I often get when people find out what I do for a living and it always makes me a tiny bit sad and just a smidge self-conscious. Why? Because it shows that people worry that I am going to judge them for their food choices. It betrays the shame people feel about what they are eating. It is yet another reminder that in our culture food and morality sometimes go hand-in-hand. More and more the message seems to be: if you aren’t eating “healthy,” then there is something wrong with you—if you still eat sugar, drink soda, have chips, buy fast food, or depend on processed foods, you are poisoning yourself and anyone else you might be feeding.

The more that I work as a health and cooking coach, the more I believe that this sort of thinking about food and eating is more damaging than eating any of those “bad” foods.

When I first started trying to change my own diet to eat healthier I was completely overwhelmed by all of the messages I was getting: don’t eat wheat; sugar is poison; don’t eat dairy; only eat organic; include x, y, and z superfoods in your daily diet; drink one glass of red wine a day; never drink wine; drink 1 cup of coffee a day; coffee will destroy your adrenal gland and you’ll never have energy again, etc. It got to a point where I would go food shopping and feel paralyzed, even in a health food store!

And then I realized it was too much. I was reverting back to my days of disordered eating. I had lost touch with why I had gone into this work I the first place—that I wanted to share my passion for food and show people how accessible and life changing simple cooking can truly be. So I made a conscious decision to let go. Yes, I was going to continue to find fun ways to make my diet healthier. Yes, I was going to include more fruits and vegetables. Yes, I was going to cook mostly from whole ingredients. But I was not going to deprive myself (or my family) of foods that we truly enjoyed and I was not going to feel guilt when it came to food. In other words, I found a balance….

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Store-Bought Popsicles for My Son’s Birthday: A story of letting go of perfection

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My eldest son turned 7 this past Monday and so there was a birthday celebration for him at school. Last year I brought in watermelon “pizza” topped with fresh fruit and shredded coconut, it was beautiful and the kids loved it. This past week, however, was very hectic including weekend travel, a car that died, and house guests and I just did not have time to make something special from scratch, so I brought in store-bought popsicles and I don’t feel guilty about it….

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