CABBAGE & KALE SALAD W/ FUJI APPLES, ROASTED SWEET POTATO, TOASTED PECANS & A ZIPPY TAHINI DRESSING

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It's no surprise that I am a salad fan. I love the way my body feels when I eat a ton a vegetables, and one of the things that makes it easier for me to get them inconsistently is having salads that keep well in the fridge. This is one of those salads. Even after putting the zippy tahini dressing on, it keeps well for up to 3 days. The one ingredient that doesnt hold as well is the apples, so if you plan to make a big batch and eat over a few days that might be something to cut up fresh.

Cabbage and kale are great ingredients for a salad because they are both nutrient-dense leafy greens. They are high in vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin K, vitamin C, vitamin A, and calcium. They also have a crispy texture and slightly bitter taste that contrasts nicely with sweeter salad ingredients - like these apples and sweet potatoes. Additionally, both cabbage and kale have a long shelf life, making them great options for preparing salads ahead of time.

Apples and sweet potatoes are often used in salads because they add a combination of sweet and savory flavors, as well as texture and color. The sweetness of the apples and sweet potatoes can balance out the bitterness of greens, while their texture adds a nice crunch. Additionally, they are both nutritious and can add a variety of vitamins and minerals to the salad.

Tahini, which is made from ground sesame seeds, is a great ingredient in salad dressings because it adds a rich, nutty flavor and creamy texture. It also provides healthy fats and protein. Additionally, tahini can act as an emulsifier, helping to blend the dressing ingredients together and make the dressing more stable.

INGREDIENTS

SALAD:

2 large sweet potatoes, cubed into 1-inch pieces

2 tbsp olive oil

garlic powder, smoked paprika, salt, and pepper

1/2 head of medium red cabbage, thinly shredded

1 bunch kale, destemmed and thinly shredded

2 fuji apples, thinly sliced into bite-size pieces

1 1/2 cups dry toasted/roasted pecans, roughly chopped

DRESSING:

1/2 cup olive oil

1/3 cup apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup tahini

1/4 cup coconut aminos

1 tsp garlic powder

1 pinch crushed red pepper

salt and pepper

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 425f. Add the sweet potatoes to a baking sheet, add the oil, garlic, smoked paprika, salt and pepper. Toss well. Roast for 18-20 minutes, tossing halfway through.

Make the dressing by combining all the olive oil, apple cider vinegar, tahini, coconut aminos, garlic powder, crushed red pepper, salt, and pepper in a blender. Blend until smooth.

Add the cabbage, kale, apples, sweet potatoes, and pecans in a bowl with the dressing and toss well.

EMOTIONALLY FULL VS PHYSICALLY FULL FROM FOOD

As you know, I lived in a diet mentality and dealt with an eating disorder for 10 years, and it was a real fucking ordeal.

Every day for a decade, my mind was consumed by the thought of food, calories, weight, and the way I looked. The insecurity, self-doubt, depression, shame, loneliness, and hunger, both physical and emotional.

It screws with you.

When your first and last thought of the day is what you ate, what you didn't eat, or whether you should eat at all for that extended period of time, it’s damn near impossible to know peace, joy, freedom, love, or happiness.

It’s a self-inflicted food prison with no window to the outside.

As a type-A personality by nature, my fixation and obsession with food was magnified. It took me out of life and made me a passenger in a self-driving car headed through a tunnel with no light at the end. It was isolating, and it wasn't any fun. And this girl likes to have fun.

I didn't know how to eat without feeling guilty. The only way I dealt with my emotions was either to eat so much that I would be in pain and throw up or to starve myself until I barely had the energy to use the bathroom. I coin-tossed between the two like it was a sport. And every new diet book that hit the market was my next team sponsor. I would tell myself that "this diet will be the one that works. It will finally end my abusive relationship with food."

But I'll let you in on a little secret: diets don't work. They will never, ever, lead to a healthy relationship with food.

As you can imagine, I didn't know how to feel emotionally full or physically full. To be honest, I didn't realize there was even a difference, but I now know it's pivotal to discover how to satisfy yourself emotionally and physically if you are dealing with any kind of unhealthy relationship with food, not just a full-blown eating disorder.

The distinction is life-changing, especially if you are a yo-yo dieter, restrict-binge cycler, emotional eater, or, in general, dealing with some kind of disordered eating.

Physical vs. Emotional Hunger

To understand how to be emotionally and physically full we must understand the difference between being emotionally hungry and physically hungry.

Physical Hunger is something that comes on gradually and occurs approx. 3-5 hours after having a balanced meal. You know you are physically hungry if your stomach feels empty, is growling or rumbling, or you are feeling tired.

We all know what true hunger feels like.

Sometimes, depending on your individuality and how long it has been since you have eaten, you might feel a little light-headed, have a headache, or be irritable. I become a bit of a bitch if my blood sugar gets too low, hangry, as they say.

When we do eat, slowing down can be really helpful in sensing levels of hunger and fullness. Meaning actually slowing down enough to enjoy each bite of food. That can be especially difficult, though, if you have been a chronic dieter for years. And I am assuming, if you're reading this, you have been.

Over time, as we restrict and binge, we can become numb to our natural hunger and satiety signals. If diets have caused you not to honor internal hunger knocks at the door, then the body might stop knocking. This often leads to emotional eating becoming our primary coping mechanism because we start to eat as a response to other stimuli like stress, sadness, intense feelings of restriction, boredom, and overwhelm.

Sound familiar?

What is Emotional Hunger?

It is the hunger for comfort and stems from the desire to meet some emotional need.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to have our emotional needs met. In fact, it's essential to living a happy and fulfilling life.

Emotional hunger can also occur if we do not allow ourselves to eat foods that we actually want, so we never truly feel satisfied. If you really want to have tacos but are "on a diet," so you eat a salad, it is highly unlikely that you will get the same satisfaction from the meal physically or mentally, which can lead to overeating (more on that here).

And if that salad was not balanced from a macronutrient standpoint, buckle up because you are about to get on a hunger hormone rollercoaster ride that’s headed straight for bingesville.

Look, I'm not shitting on salads, you guys know I love salads. And please don't get me wrong. Occasionally, using food as a reward, to celebrate, or to soothe feelings isn't a bad thing in and of itself.

Cake on birthdays and wedding days, drinks on a Friday after final exams, or a big work deadline are all good and part of a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

But using eating as the *primary* coping mechanism for the shit you are dealing with.... if your first response to anger, frustration, sadness, and stress is to hit the fridge or the drive-thru, then you might get stuck on the unhealthy hamster wheel of emotional binge eating and chronic yo-yo dieting.

This isn't just emotionally draining. It's taxing on your overall health and well-being.

And the worst part is the real feelings or problems don't get addressed.

So what do you do about it?

You have to figure out how to satisfy your physical and emotional hunger without adding layers of guilt and shame with every bite of food.

This is a huge part of what I do with my coaching clients. And it looks a little different for everyone.

How to Become Physically and Emotionally Full

Let's start with physical fullness because it is damn near impossible to work on our emotional needs with an empty stomach.

Connecting to our biological signals of hunger and satiety is a two-step process. It involves listening to our bodies and making sure our nutritional needs are met. This is really hard after years of letting diets or the clock tell you when and what to eat, but not impossible. You have to trust the process.

The standard advice I give to almost all my clients is this:

• Start eating a protein-rich breakfast, and if you are already eating a breakfast, increase the amount of food. *Most* binge eaters I've worked with eat very little in the morning and then binge eat all the things at night.

• Slow down while you are eating. Pay attention to the food, the taste, smell, texture, and so on.

• Increase the variety of foods you are eating. If you've been trying to eat "low fat," increase the fat by adding oil, avocados, nuts, or cheese. If you've been trying to eat "low carb," add some toast, rice, pasta, or fruit.

• Try to eat three adequate meals a day. This helps to balance your blood sugar, your mood, and your "hungry brain" that's always thinking about food.

• Give yourself permission to eat all types of food. Allow dessert, allow carbs, or allow fat.

When meeting your physical hunger you need enough nutrient-rich food plus some fun foods (free from shame and guilt). While making these behavior changes to help with physical hunger, you have to also make mindset changes and work to free yourself from The Diet Mentality as well. (More on that here).

On to the more challenging one - Emotional Fullness

Eating enough food and allowing ourselves to eat the foods we want without guilt, shame, or "trying to make up for it later" is key to no longer binge eating. But for most people I've worked with, it's only half the battle.

Dieting and binge eating are fundamentally coping mechanisms. They're an attempt to address the discomfort we feel in our lives.

Trying to control food to control our weight is an attempt to deal with living in a world that is obsessed with thinness and equates it to health, morality, value, worth, and status.

This makes us project the weight of our problems onto the weight of our bodies. If we have anxiety, stress, trauma, feelings of inadequacy, and so on, we make our body the problem because that seems easier to fix than having to address our internal emotional worlds.

We've all been taught to numb our emotions with food, dieting, and restriction. We've been taught to believe that losing weight and being smaller will solve our problems and protect us from experiencing discomfort.

And while some things might be solved by losing weight, there is no version of life, no matter your size, that's free from difficult experiences, emotions, or pain.

The only way to truly solve your emotional hunger is to address your internal emotional world head-on.

This means exploring your past experiences (trauma, inner child wounds), your beliefs about yourself and your body, the stories you tell yourself about the world and your place in it, how you talk to yourself, and how you take care of yourself - and working through all of that to the other side.

Emotional fullness is an inside job.

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Binge Eating Recovery Resources

To learn more about the non-diet approach to healing your relationship with food, check out my free video training series HERE.

You can also check out my podcast, Love Your Bod Pod, on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Lastly, you can also check out my books, or online course.

CREATING HEALTHY BOUNDARIES AROUND HEALTH AND FOOD WITH BRANDILYN TEBO

This post is for those that know their relationship with food and health could use some work.

I teamed up with Brandilyn Tebo, transformative af Life Coach to help you create healthy boundaries with food and health.

We want to describe what is "normal" and "not normal" in this area. And give you some tips to transform your relationship to food and health

Both of us are eating disorder survivors and have been on a swinging pendulum of obsessively healthy to no holds back, eating any and everything in sight. We want to help you find a healthy balance. SO without further ado lets dive in.

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I believe that the way we eat says a lot about us.

If we have fear of control or being controlled, or see ourselves as weak, or needing to prove that we’re strong and have it all together, that all comes out in how we feed ourselves.

When I was in high school, my home life was out of control. My parents were going through a divorce and my brothers and I were no longer living under the same roof. It was a lot for an insecure 15 year old to handle. My drug of choice to deal with it all was food. How, when and what I ate consumed my every thought.

I exhibited control and made it look like I had it all together by eating perfectly in front of people. I only had salads for lunch and an apple for a snack and drank diet soda because that was the "healthier" option in my head.

Then I would be so exhausted from having it all together and so angry with the world that I would rebel and secretly binge and purge the night away. I would swing from one extreme to other almost daily.

Two Archetypes

Often we find that for some people food can have a lot of charge. Its as if the way we eat is used to prove something or to show how together we have it or its a kind of rebellion.

Are you the type of person that eats whatever they want and has an attitude of “don’t tell me what to do? Watch me eat all this stuff?” "I am going to eat whatever I want, I am the boss of me."

Or

Are you the type that “has to be in control and has the attitude that food can’t tempt you?” "I am strong and perfect?"

In both situations the food isn't really about nourishing your body. And its trying to prove you have power in some form.

But, in both senariors food has the power.

Probing Questions

To ge to the bottom of it lets ask some Q's ok? Cool.

So what are you trying to convey by the way you eat? That you have it all together, that you give zero fucks?

Often what we say when we are talking about food is us actually asking for permission or wanting to be acknowledged.

have you ever said any of the following quotes below? Have you thought about what you might actually be saying?

“I ate so much!” Is this a way of getting out of eating?

“I forgot to eat all day.” Are you attention seeking because you are so “busy” and have so much going on in your life and want to be acknowledged?

“I’ve been so good or so bad?” Are you asking for permission to eat more or to not eat at all?

"I am so fat, I ate so much?" Do you need to be told how skinny and beautiful you are?

What response do you actually want, how are you looking to be percieved? What is the outside validation you are seeking?

When we talk about how we eat we often are putting on a show for the world when we have an extreme relationship with food. Its also a way to cover it up, hide or to deny that there is a lot of significance given to the way we eat.

We make eating a cookie so significant that we throw in the towel and eat all the cookies. Or because we ate it we now have to work out and be really "good" tomorrow and only eat salad.

We make eating healthy so significant that its the last thing we would do. That eating health means no fun so we say to hell with healthy food, its boring. I am going to eat what I want with reckless abandon.

When food has a lot of charge, when we give it so much significance in our lives it has all of the control. All the power. We obsess, we over think, we can't stop thinking about food, weight, health.

EXHUASTING.

NO FREEDOM.

NO POWER.

WTF?

So what do you do about it?

Brandylin and I have both been through this and reallllllly want to help you find FOOD FREEDOM and BODY WISDOM so below are our best tips and what helped us transform our relationship with food.

We used eating a cookie as an example but sub in whatever it is for you.

1. Change your vocabulary around food. Don't say "indulge" or "treat yourself"

Instead just ask yourself physcially and mentally are you in the mood for it? Don't make it something naughty or reward based. It creates a charge and it makes it seem like its a big deal that you are eating these things. Its not a big deal. Eliminate those words, if you want a cookie have the cookie and make it about fun and about relaxation. Give yourself space and permission to eat a cookie and not make it mean so much. Practice letting yourself have a cookie and have it mean NOTHING except that you ate a cookie. Its not special. You ate a cookie. No big deal.

2. Let it be a complete experience.

Eat the cookie and then put a "period" at the end of it. Don't eat the cookie and then think that you have to follow it with a salad or that you have to work out extra because you ate a cookie. Remove the extra baggage from the experience. Eat a cookie and move on with your life, don't let the cookie dictate how the rest of your day will go. Your body will know you ate a cookie and will tell you what it needs next which brings us to our next tip.

3. BODY WISDOM

Listen to the internal signals. When you eat something that is nutritionally void, your body knows it and will most likely follow up with cravings for healthier foods like a kale salad or vegetables. You do not need a reason or a justification to eat healthy or unhealthy foods, listen to what your body is telling you so its less of a mental game. Make it a physical one. Get out of your head and into your body. What will make my body feel good? You do not need to calculate or analyze what you ate, trust your body. Let it be intuitive and more free.

4. Stop justifying what you eat

You do not need a reason to eat the way you eat. Fight the urge to say I ate a cookie because...., or a pancake because..., or I finished my meal becuase... Stop the reasoning. It makes it significant, it causes unneccsary stress, and it puts you tooooooo much in your head. If you are in this type of relationship with food we need to bring awareness to your body and internal signals and not what your mind says or thinks. You do not need to rationalize what you ate.

5. Eat so you do not need to think about eating

Its important to eat well balanced meals so you are not constantly thinking about food inbetween meal times. I dive into this topic on this post but eating enough protien, fat, fiber and carbohydrates at meals will satisfy hunger and turn of your hunger hormones so you are not biologically hungry and can stop thinking about food constantly. The goal is to eat enough and what you enjoy so you do not need to keep thinking about it. You are satisfied.

6. No Stress. Stressing about how you ate leaves a net negative in your body

If we decide to eat a processed or unhealthy food and then beat ourselves up about it we make it worse. The excess stress and guilt that we create mentally has a physical impact. It slows digestion and makes it more difficult for our body to absorb nutrients. It also weakens our immune system, mentally leaves us strained and contributes to all illness. So if you eat an unhealthy food ENJOY IT. Let it be a soul nourishing, live fullfilling experience. I don't drink wine and then beat myself up about it. I enjoy the heck out of the experience and be done with it. If the food is not being eaten for nutrition then it is from an experiential standpoint, there is absolutely value in that soul/sprit nourishment. Holidays and events are surrounded with food for a reason, it enriches the experience and celebration.

7. Stop dieting.

its a four letter word, is intrinsically temporary and automatically has the idea of restriction and good vs bad built into it. Eating healthy is about feeling good and not to make us feel deprived or limited. It is not meant to be shameful but meant to provide value, enjoyment, experience, nourishment and FUN. Do not diet. Focus on how you can eat such that you are not obsessed with it.

I realllllllllly hope you liked this video, post and got a lot out of it. Isn't Brandylin awesome? In all realness, she is my Life Coach and has really helped me transform my business and my life. so boooom. I believe in coaching so much that I invest in my own coach. I mean duh. Why would I be a health coach if I didnt believe in coaching?

Makes sense right? She works with heart centered entreprenuers and I work with pepole who need to create an empowering, nourishing, healthy and fun relationship with themselves, food and health.

xo

C

Binge Eating Recovery Resources

• To learn more about the non-diet approach to healing your relationship with food, check out my free video training series HERE.

• You can also check out my podcast, Love Your Bod Pod, on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• Lastly, you can also check out my books, or online course.