4/27/2022 0 Comments Get off your butNo, that isn't a typo. I mean "but" not "butt."
Think about some things that you tell yourself or say about yourself that include the word "but". I'll start. I really want to qualify for USPA Nationals but I can't get a qualifying total. Do you have your "but" statement? Great. Now, let's repeat it, replacing "but" with "and". I really want to qualify for USPA Nationals and I haven't got a qualifying total. This way of thinking is called dialectical thinking. It is the concept of holding two ideas that seem to be at odds with each other at the same time. It can be really uncomfortable because our minds love things that are really neat and tidy, and dialectical thinking can be a bit more messy. However, thinking dialectically can be a powerful way to be less judgmental towards yourself and others. It also can be the impetus for a profound shift from having a lot of limiting beliefs (the part that comes after the word "but") to allowing yourself space for change and growth. When we use the word "but", it often has the feeling of cancelling whatever was said before it. Think about when someone apologized to you, and then throws in the word "but" in the middle. It has that feeling of "you didn't even mean that at all." This kind of thinking is a cornerstone of DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy), and we can incorporate it into our everyday life by just noticing those times when we're talking to or about ourselves with a lot of "buts". If you notice that happening, experiment with replacing the word but with and. An important note that if your statement includes something that is a judgment rather than a fact, it won't really work. Consider the following statement: I want to get this work done but I'm a lazy asshole. Swapping "but" to "and" just isn't going to cut it here. You'll need to revise the statement until it is something that is closer to a fact and less of a judgment. Maybe the fact is that I haven't done as much as I'd like, so the revision could be: I want to get this work done and I haven't done as much as I'd like. There are many ways to use this kind of thinking in your fitness and intuitive eating journey. If you're struggling with judging yourself for your current behaviors, how might you use "and" thinking to reframe some of those judgments? Do those reframed thoughts feel different when you say them aloud to yourself?
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3/15/2022 0 Comments Axes of PrivilegeIt took me an embarrassingly long time to really grasp the concept of privilege. I think that positions me well to help explain it to other folks who struggle to feel like they have privilege. An interesting thing about privilege is that it varies depending on where you are, what you're doing, and that since we all hold multiple identities, it is possible to have some identities that hold a lot of privilege, and others might be more marginalized.
Recently, within the HAES community, Lindo Bacon (author of "Health at Every Size", but not the original developer of the concept of health at every size) has been called out for engaging in tokenizing and other shitty behaviors all rooted in white supremacist culture. I'm not going to attempt to summarize the concerns, but will instead link you directly to the accounts shared by Marquisele Mercedes, Veronica from ASDAH, and Lindley Ashline. It's quite a bit of reading, but I think it is important. I said at the start that I didn't understand privilege for a long time. I'm a white person who grew up pretty poor and I had to struggle a lot to get myself to a better place. To tell me that I had privilege as I was working my ass off through college felt like a slap in the face. What I didn't understand was that saying I had privilege didn't mean that I wasn't working hard to overcome a lot of shit. It just meant that I didn't also have to overcome the obstacles of racism, religious intolerance, or anti LGBTQ bias (not an exhaustive list, just a few of the top hitters). I currently sit at a place where I have some pretty privileged identities: white, cishet, middle class. And some that are a bit more muddy: I describe myself as smallfat, a term often used to describe people who are at the lower end of "plus size". As a smallfat person, the amount of privilege my body has varies quite a bit depending on the circumstances. I can generally fit into standard size seating, and I also encounter fat stigma in healthcare. I do not frequently experience antifat street harassment, and I also have been treated really shittily in fitness jobs because of my body. I share this to illustrate the way that privilege can vary, and that it's not a thing that you either have or do not have. Most of us move through some experiences where we are privileged, and others where we're treated like crap because of our identity. I grew up around some pretty racist family members, and some who were trying to be better -- I'll likely share more on this in the near future... I haven't because (I told myself) I didn't want to center myself, but I'm coming to realize that maybe I was actually just ashamed. Anyway, I've made fumbling, error-filled steps towards being actively anti-racist and more broadly body liberationist, and accepting that I do benefit from privilege. Since our nation's 2020 wake-up call, I have taken a lot of steps to move further towards being actively anti-racist. I have not been publicly sharing these actions, because I didn't want it to be something I did for display. I wanted to engage in behaviors that might not be of particular personal benefit to myself, but were useful to BIPOC communities. A few of the things that I did were to intentionally seek out and support Black owned businesses. I also sought training from Black experts (some specifically on DEI related issues, but I also got some training about stuff nothing to do with race). After seeing the ways in which Lindo Bacon's behavior has been harmful, I plan to expand my body liberation library. It has never sat right with me that some of the primary texts I recommend to people interested in HAES or intuitive eating are authored by thin white or white passing people. I definitely need to seek out more resources written by fat and/or BIPOC people. I'm also seeking some professional consultation to help me better present information in a way that isn't harmful to marginalized people. I have also signed up for an ASDAH membership, and if you're interested in HAES, I encourage you to do the same. They offer sliding scale and equity based membership options, so you might find it more affordable than you expect. Returning to the subject of Lindo Bacon, I really wish they would respond to the concerns being raised. Being called out doesn't feel great, but it's an opportunity to self assess and do better. When we think of it as an opportunity rather than just having a knee jerk "I'm being cancelled" kind of freak out, we can really dig in and find ways to actually make the world better. So you've started on a body positive fitness journey, and you're setting goals that aren't related to shrinking yourself! Congratu-freaking-lations! That is heckin rad, and I'm super proud of you. It's hard as hell to break out of the mainstream fitness and diet culture that pushes you to endlessly try to shrink. Now that you've started moving your body and are trying to make it about feeling good, it might be hard to figure out how to set goals. Here's a few ideas to get you started.
2/16/2022 0 Comments It's Official!I've completed training with Evelyn Tribole to become a certified intuitive eating counselor! I'm really psyched for this addition to my qualifications, and I can't wait to be offering some new intuitive eating services through Enlighten Well. The training process was pretty long, and I learned a lot from it. I actually got to do part of my training with Evelyn, and I totally had some fangirl moments. I also completed some supervision sessions, which were very informative.
I started practicing intuitive eating for myself about three years ago, after my last diet left me feeling crazy, deprived, constipated, and malcontented. It had been a long road to that point, and I hope to never revisit it. Intuitive eating changed my life, and I an really proud of myself for taking this step towards being able to offer this to you. Subtitle: Do I overthink shit? Yes, yes I do. I'm currently training for a powerlifting meet, and I've been noticing my legs and shoulders getting more muscular and defined, and liking the change. It got me to thinking, can you be "body neutral" and like changes that come to your body from working out? Like many things, the answer is a bit nuanced, so I answer with a "Yes, AND...."
Like I said, maybe this is overthinking. If you think I'm overthinking, that's fine, but I KNOW that some of you are worse overthinkers than I am. I know because I've talked to some of you. When I find myself getting stuck on a weird thought like, "Oh no, is it okay to like how my legs are looking?", I find it helpful to explore it a bit with more questions. All the questions. Starting a fitness routine can feel daunting, overwhelming, and a bit intimidating. Trying to start a fitness journey outside of mainstream fitness culture can be all of that plus feeling like you're swimming upstream. If you're trying to start working out and want to keep it weight neutral, here are some top tips for getting moving!
1/14/2022 2 Comments Deadlifts are life!I effing love deadlifts. All kinds of deadlifts -- barbell deadlifts, kettlebell deadlifts, Romanian dumbbell deadlifts, single leg deadlifts... there are so many options! I program some variation of a deadlift for nearly every client I work with, and here's why.
1/10/2022 0 Comments On Body Image and BoundariesIn my early 20s, I was in therapy with a phenomenal therapist who helped me work through a lot of family issues and trauma. I was also struggling with some body image issues. She was an older woman who was fat (this is relevant information to the story). One day in session, I was ranting kind of tearing my body apart, how much I hated it, hated my belly, thought I was fat. She interrupted my body disparaging spiral to tell me that it was pointless to just endlessly rip my body apart, and I either had to work to accept it, or make a choice to do something about it. I was sort of stunned into silence, and I remember feeling a bit annoyed, like this was my session and if I wanted to use it to bash my body, that she should have some better solution for me other than accept my body or decide to change it. In hindsight, I really respect her for setting that boundary. It was unfair of me to use a fat woman as the sounding board for my boundless body loathing, whether she was paid for that role or not. I've recently heard Aubrey Gordan (@yrfatfriend on Instagram, cohost of the Maintenance Phase podcast, and author of "What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat") talk on Maintenance Phase about this phenomenon -- thin/smaller bodied people using fat people as a sounding board to resolve their body image issues. It is a weird but common phenomenon, and surely not fair to do to fat people. I share this to let you know a few things: growth happens. Nobody is perfect, and we all can (and should!) grow and evolve. The other thing I want all of us to learn from this is that you don't need to be the punching bag for someone else's body image issues. It it totally fine to set a boundary that we aren't just going to sit here and listen to a person tear their body apart. Even if you're being paid to be there. There isn't usually really a point to just scorning the shit out of your own body, so if someone comes to you trying to do that, it's okay to say, hey friend, we're not doing that today. This post contains an affilliate link to bookshop.org. If you order through my link, I will be compensated.
Intuitive eating was first defined by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in their seminal work, “Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works.” Intuitive eating is NOT a weight loss plan. In fact, the first principle of intuitive eating is to ditch the diet mentality and get rid of the notion of intentional weight loss. Improving your mindfulness when eating will help you along your intuitive eating journey. This is not enough information to truly embark on an intuitive eating journey, but if your curiosity is piqued, I would be delighted to talk with you about it more. Before we dive in, we should define mindfulness. While mindfulness has come to mean a lot of different things, it is, very simply, bringing your attention to the current moment without judgment of what that current moment holds. We can apply this kind of intentional attention paying to eating in several ways that support an intuitive eating journey. 1. Take a pause to tune in to what you really want. Sometimes, a person will start eating without pausing to decide what they really want and will end up eating a bunch of different things and feeling unsatisfied. I have been working with a client recently who was struggling with feeling like she was snacking mindlessly. We worked to apply this principle, and to tune in a bit to what she really wanted, and then eat that thing mindfully until she was satisfied. This only works if you have given yourself permission to eat what you want and do not have any off-limits foods. My client found that she was able to apply this skill and eat what she really wanted without feeling bad about it and without making herself overstuffed from what I have come to call eating around the food you really want. 2. Be attentive to your hunger and satiety cues. Your body will let you know when it needs food and when it has had enough! Notice it. Part of this principle for me involves eating mindfully, without distractions, and slowly if possible. If I eat while I’m working or doing something else, I am less likely to notice my body’s satiety signals and will instead just clear my plate. Also be attentive to how your body lets you know it is time to eat. There are many ways your body may signal hunger, and it might not always be a growling belly. 3. Use mindfulness to find the satisfaction factor. I alluded to this in talking about my client who was struggling with mindlessly raiding the pantry. Enjoy what you eat! Eat good food that tastes good, from a plate while seated, and preferably with company you enjoy. Maybe dinner music helps you enjoy your meals. Tuning in to what you really want and then eating it with enjoyment helps you find satisfaction. 4. Cope with your emotions without using food. Look, some emotional eating is normal. We eat for joy as much as we eat for sadness, anger, or anxiety. However, I like to see folks have a number of different options for coping with emotions. I recently came home after a particularly tough day at work and was about to hit up the snack drawer. Instead, I ate my dinner, and thought about what would really help me cope with my emotions. I used my mindfulness skills to tune in to what was going on inside myself in the moment. I realized snacking wasn’t really going to make me feel better, but would just distract me for a bit. Instead, I talked to a friend and did some yoga and felt much better. If you often cope with your emotions using food, you may find that it is difficult to find satisfaction. That is because the food won’t fix the feelings, so you just go unsatisfied. I’m not suggesting you NEVER emotionally eat, just be sure you’re tuned in when you do it. Intuitive eating is a radical change if you’ve been dieting and struggling with your weight for a lot of your life, but you can rediscover yourself as an intuitive eater, learn to respect your body, and find food freedom! Applying mindfulness to the principles of intuitive eating is a powerful way to connect in the moment and be able to effectively apply the principles. This post contains an affiliate link to Bookshop.org. I will receive compensation if you purchase through my link.
The first time I remember talking about going on a diet, I was about nine years old. I can remember where I was standing, in my grandmother’s house, and saying that I was fat and wanted to go on a diet. I was the oldest of four, and somehow, the only chubby one out of my siblings. My brother used to have this “trick” where he would suck his belly in so hard it seemed like there couldn’t be anything inside him, and you could count all his ribs. I, by contrast, had thighs that always touched, and a wiggly belly.
I grew into a young adult who turned to fitness and dieting to try to control my weight. Having been “overweight” on the BMI chart since my teen years, and eventually starting to move into “ob*se” range, I thought the sensible thing to do was to try to lose weight through diet and exercise. This is the message we hear all the time, and so that is what I did. I started out counting calories, and working out at the gym at my university. I didn’t know what to do there, and after a few embarrassing incidents in classes there, I switched to jogging on the indoor track. That became my thing, and eventually I started running outside, and later did a triathlon. Yet, I remained “overweight.” (Over what weight? I don't know.) Having babies put my weight loss aspirations on the back burner for a while, though I still worked out when I could. I am sad to say that I spent a significant part of my postpartum period hating my body, and feeling frustrated with myself for looking how I did. Instead of being able to marvel at all my body had done, I was frustrated with how my belly looked, what it didn’t do, and what I thought were my body’s myriad of failures. As my babies got a bit older, I got back to the battle of the bulge, and ran through a number of different diets. Some were packaged as lifestyle changes, or nutrition plans, but no matter what you call it, if the point is to shrink your body, it is a diet. I tried things that involved shakes, things that were whole foods, things that were highly detailed and had me counting almonds, things that were less restrictive but had me recording every single thing I ate. I tried things that were inexpensive, and things that cost big bucks, including MLM supplements meant to kickstart my metabolism and increase my body’s basal metabolic rate. Most worked in the short term. A few worked in the medium term. But no matter what I did, I could not get my weight into that “normal” range. I could get into the low end of overweight. But never “normal.” My last diet was about three years ago. It was a bikini body bootcamp with a coach who gave me a very strict meal plan together with MLM supplements and workouts. I followed it, but got so sick of alternating chicken and broccoli and fish and broccoli, while also cooking separate meals for my kids. Then, once a week, I had a “free” meal. During that free meal, I would make myself ill from overeating. Why? Why was I doing this? I started to think I had a binge eating disorder. After a lot of research on binge eating disorders, I picked up a book called “Reclaiming Yourself from Binge Eating” by Leora Fulvio. She starts with a discussion of her own struggles with binge eating, and went on to explain that binges are caused by restriction. It is the act of restricting foods that causes cravings that are so powerful that you end up binging. She talked about intuitive eating as the solution to this problem. It was the first time I had been exposed to the actual principles of intuitive eating. I next got the original “Intuitive Eating” book by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. In it, Tribole and Resch lay out ten principles to help you quit dieting, make peace with food, reclaim your health, and end the battle. I’m going to explain a bit about the ten principles of intuitive eating. This is not enough information to use to truly embark on an intuitive eating journey, but if your curiosity is piqued, I would be delighted to talk with you about it more. The Ten Principles of Intuitive Eating 1. Reject the diet mentality. To really rediscover my ability to eat intuitively, as I had before I started dieting at all, I had to fully squash the idea of losing weight. I couldn’t find real food freedom while still hanging on to the idea that I might lose weight doing this. I had to get angry at the culture that told me my perfectly strong and healthy body was flawed. I had to get angry at the diet industry (worth $72 billion USD in the US alone) that is quite satisfied selling all of us temporary fixes. They know that it is only a short-term solution, and that we will be back, again, throwing more money at them. The greatest predictor of future weight gain is going on a diet. I had to fully reject the idea of intentional weight loss to be able to rediscover myself as an intuitive eater. 2. Honor your hunger. I had to eat when I was hungry. This seems simple, but years of dieting had screwed up my ability to really understand when I was hungry, and had taught me that ignoring my hunger was “good” and to feel proud of not eating when I was hungry. I had to start feeding my body. 3. Make peace with food. I had to give myself permission to eat every and anything (if you have legitimate food allergies, clearly that is an exception!). I have been working with a client recently who was struggling with feeling like she was snacking mindlessly. We worked to apply this principle, and to tune in a bit to what she really wanted, and then eat that thing mindfully until she was satisfied. This only works if you have a good base on the previous principles. She found that she was able to apply this skill and eat what she really wanted without feeling bad about it and without making herself overstuffed from what I have come to call eating around the food you really want. 4. Challenge the food police. Who are the food police? The internal and external voices that tell you that you are “good” for eating certain things or “bad” for eating others. This language is all around us, when we describe desserts as “sinful”. The food police can be your mom asking “Do you really need another helping of potatoes?” or your internal voice suggesting that you’re naughty for eating cookies right before bed. I have a client who was recently able to connect some of her food police thoughts to athletic coaches from her youth who wanted her to maintain a small body. Being able to ignore and shut down these food police is key in rediscovering intuitive eating. 5. Feel your fullness. Notice that this principle doesn’t say you have to always stop eating when full. It simply says to feel your fullness. Notice it. Part of this principle for me involves eating mindfully, without distractions, and slowly if possible. Some of us may have food police who say we must clear our plates (I know I’m not the only one who heard about the starving children), and being able to shut down those food police is also important to being able to feel our fullness. 6. Discover the satisfaction factor. I alluded to this in talking about my client who was struggling with mindlessly raiding the pantry. Enjoy what you eat! Eat good food that tastes good, from a plate while seated, and preferably with company you enjoy. Maybe dinner music helps you enjoy your meals. Tuning in to what you really want and then eating it with enjoyment helps you find satisfaction. 7. Cope with your emotions without using food. Look, some emotional eating is normal. We eat for joy as much as we eat for sadness, anger, or anxiety. However, I like to see folks have a number of different options for coping with emotions. I recently came home after a particularly tough day at work and was about to hit up the snack drawer. Instead, I ate my dinner, and thought about what would really help me cope with my emotions. I realized snacking wasn’t really going to make me feel better, but would just distract me for a bit. Instead, I talked to a friend and did some yoga and felt much better. If you often cope with food, you may find that it is more difficult to find satisfaction. That is because the food won’t fix the feelings, so you just go unsatisfied. I’m not suggesting you NEVER emotionally eat, just be sure you’re tuned in when you do it. 8. Respect your body. You have a body, but you are more than your body! I had some clients work on thinking of their bodies as “containers” for themselves. And while having a pretty container is cool, having a functioning container that holds some really awesome joyful stuff inside it is probably cooler. My teen years were in the nineties - the thigh gap, Kate Moss, heroin chic years for those who don’t remember them. Part of respecting my body is respecting that is not the shape that my body wants to take. Even while eating a very low calorie diet and working out multiple times a day, I did not get that small. My body just doesn’t want to be that small, and that is okay. Some people have bodies that remain smaller. Even if we all ate the same and exercised the same, we would still have different shapes. It has become kind of vogue in recent years to talk about loving your body, and I think loving your body is great, but not always necessary. Just respect it, and treat it with respect, and see how that changes your thinking. 9. Move your body and feel the difference. As a personal trainer, this is my favorite principle! That being said, moving your body doesn’t have to take the form of defined exercise. There are so many ways to move your body, and it might happen in a gym, or maybe it is outdoors, or at home. So many of us have attached movement to losing weight that we never really explored movement for fun, joy, for the multitude of health benefits that have nothing to do with changing the size of your body. Notice how it feels to move your body without focusing on weight. What kind of exercise would you do if you were not trying to change the size of your body? 10. Honor your health - gentle nutrition. Some folks think that intuitive eating throws away nutrition. However, I find the opposite. It returns us to common sense nutrition that is sustainable and logical. Eliminating large groups of foods is neither logical nor sustainable. Gentle nutrition encourages a focus on eating foods in as close to their natural state as possible, while also seeking enjoyment and satisfaction from our foods. Eat a variety of foods, incorporate a lot of plants, make sure you’re getting good sources of protein. People often want a magic bullet, when the real magic bullet is literally that simple. Intuitive eating is a radical change if you’ve been dieting and struggling with your weight for a lot of your life, but you can rediscover yourself as an intuitive eater, learn to respect your body, and find food freedom! |
Jess Brock-PittsMom in charge at Enlighten Well. I do body positive fitness, intuitive eating, and whatever else I feel called to do. Get to know me here. Archives
April 2022
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