EMOTIONAL EATING IS OK

One more time fam:

Emotional eating is ok.

Someone slide into my DM's on Instagram asking how to stop eating emotionally...

First things first, you do not need to stop emotionally eating, in fact, all humans eat emotionally to some degree, some of the time, i.e. birthday cake or wedding cake to celebrate or ice cream when sad. It's all good.

Truthfully, trying to not eat emotionally is kinda the same thing as trying to not eat carbs.

The restriction eventually leads to rebellion and you will fall face first into the bread basket and eat your feelings.

The real problem is we are SO focused on not eating and losing weight that we completely neglect the underlying cause of our disordered behaviors around food in the first place... including:

Our internalized fatphobia and weight-bias,

Our unwillingness to work on body acceptance,

Our villainization of emotional eating in the first place,

Our lack of interest in dealing with our real & true emotional hungers and needs or,

Our avoidance of feeling our feelings all together.

NO.... we just want to stop emotionally eating and lose weight.

And when our main motivation for ending emotional eating is weight loss, we stay stuck in a loop of self-sabotage.

Our reliance on food in times of emotional duress is correlated with how obsessed we are with food, and our food obsession is correlated to how badly we want to manipulate our weight and body.

This means easing up on emotional eating requires us to ease up on our need to control our food, and in order to ease up on our need to control our food we have to ease up on our need to control our weight...,

Which requires us to do some serious inner work:

So our weight no longer influences our self-esteem and sense of self-worth,

so we respect our body and learn to trust it,

so we let go of our fear around food and honor our cravings,

so we have a genuine desire to care for ourselves emotionally to improve the quality of our life not just look nice on the outside.

When we do that, food is taken off of the pedestal and loses it's power.

We end up learning how to cope effectively without relying on food so much.

Essentially, when we decide emotional eating is OKAY, we end up no longer emotionally eating.

xo Cara

PS. if you want help getting to this place, I'd love to help you, click here to learn more about 1:1 coaching

THOUGHTS ON SUGAR ADDICTION PLUS A FRUITY YOGURT BOWL FEATURING DAIYA

*This post is brought to you by Daiya, all opinions are my own

Since healing my relationship with food and taking sugar off of a fear based pedestal, I have found that I don't crave sweet food nearly as much as I used to. I mean, I used to think I was addicted to sugar.

And I know I am not alone in that thinking.

So many of us think that sugar is addictive (after all, that's what were told by the *experts*) and so naturally, we fear it.

And while I truly believe the feeling of addiction is real..., based on research I've read, I no longer think physiologically we're actually addicted to the substance sugar itself.

Rather, when we find ourselves on one extreme side of the spectrum, eating allll the sugar, we think we need an equally extreme measure to make it stop, insert sugar detox and complete avoidance.

Then this "all or nothing" mentality with sugar makes most of us a little cray cray and influences the feeling of addiction.

As soon as we say we can't have sugar, all we seem to think about is sugar and that "once I pop, I can't stop" thing takes effect. After all, what you resist, persists.

But what if there was a third option?

Where you're allowed to have sugar in an amount that feels good to you and leaves you feeling satisfied. Sounds pretty good, right?

Well this third option is real. Its not all the sugar, or no sugar at all, there is a middle ground, I promise!

And since I no longer think I can't have sugar or that it's the devil and will probably lead to early death, I am pretty chill around it. I can eat some, enjoy it massively and then calmly move on with my day.

It's pretty great and I want this for you as well if it's something you're dealing with. Reach out for a discovery call if you'd like to make peace with sugar.

My point is..., I truly believe we can have sugar in our lives and have a normal relationship with food! It's not one or the other.

Anyways, recently I have found myself wanting something sweet in the afternoon, either after lunch or around that 3:00 pm mark and have been reaching for Daiya Yogurt Alternative.

While it is an alternative to dairy based yogurt, I don't see it as an "alternative" yogurt, it's just yogurt to me and it's actually freaking delicious.

Truthfully, dairy sensitivity or not, I believe I would prefer this, it's that good. Even my boyfriend, after having his first bite, said he was surprised by how good it was. Go figure!

SIDE NOTE: (click here to read my post on intuitive eating with food sensitives in case you're curious why I eat dairy free stuff and how I remain an intuitive eater)

The texture is so velvety, rich and creamy from the coconut base, and has just enough sweetness, it does not at all taste saccharine like so many yogurts I've tried in the past.

Nor does it have a weird after-taste like other dairy free yogurts or "sugar free" varieties that use artificial sweeteners.

Honestly, if I am going for something sweet, give me the real sugar instead of the fake stuff so my craving actually gets satisfied! Which is another thing I love about this yogurt, it's made with real sugar, but not overloaded, so it does not spike my blood sugar, and my energy levels stay steady through the end of the day! It's truly a product a love and confidently recommend if you're looking for a yogurt or a snack to bring some sweetness into your life.

For the bowl pictured, I used my favorites, their Peach and Blueberry, topped with with granola, fresh bluebs, rose petals, coconut flakes and chia seeds. All the flavors are delish, but I like these two the best!

xo C

STRUGGLING WITH NEGATIVE SELF-TALK? READ THIS...

I learned to hate my body, just like you learned to hate yours, too.

While this sucks, the beautiful thing is we have the ability to unlearn it.

A common and huge misconception of most women is that they believe they are the ones hating their bodies.

The truth is none of us came into this life thinking there was anything wrong with the way we looked until an outside force told us otherwise (kids at school, teacher, media, family etc.).

We heard the messages that fat was bad, cellulite was gross, stretchmarks are ugly, curves are only okay if they're in the right place and on and on and on.

And since we hear these messages over and over they become ingrained in our brains and then we start to repeat them to ourselves, knit-picking at every part of our body that doesn't look how were told it's supposed to.

Then we blame ourselves for being so hard on ourselves.

But that is simply not the case.

We've just taken on the voice of somebody from the outside. Typically someone who benefits financially and/or socially from our insecurities.

So separate yourself from these thoughts right now.

Instead of you looking at yourself in the mirror wondering why you hate yourself, you can actually see these thoughts objectively, as not your own.

Who you are at your core, your soul, loves your body and sees it as the beautiful vessel in which you show up in this life.

The real you would never hate your body, ever.

When we slow down enough to peel off all the layers of other peoples BS we can begin to see that who we are at our core knows that our body is inherently good, worthy of love and enough.

Stop believing other peoples BS is your own and watch the peace it brings you.