WHAT IS BODY WISDOM?

This is a question that I have spent the last couple years thinking about and formulating an answer to.

What is Body Wisdom? What does it mean and encompass?

Body Wisdom, to me, is this idea that the answers already lie within. Each of us can cultivate an intimate and unshakable connection with our bodies and the information they send us about how best to live our lives.

However, the world we live in makes it so hard for us to hear, let alone decipher what it is saying to us. We are constantly bombarded with marketing messages, opinions from “experts” and what seem like authoritative sources, so we are left in a state of persistent confusion, always looking for the perfect way to eat and live. Conflicting science is the norm and radically opposing “truths” about health are everywhere.

Like many, I spent years trying every diet under the sun always trying to find the answers for the "right" way to eat without ever considering that the answers already lie within.

On top of the confusion, the pressure our society puts on us to look a certain way is suffocating. From a young age we are taught to instill our self-worth and value in our exterior, leaving many in a never-ending pursuit of physical perfection.

Ultimately this dims our inner light, diminishes our trust with ourselves and our bodies while paving the way for self-loathing and self-doubt to fester often leading to disordered eating.

Along the way, I hand tangled up the pursuit of health with the pursuit of weight loss which lead to a decade long battle with an eating disorder that nearly took my life from me.

Eventually I started to learn about health outside of the world of weight loss and it changed everything. I learned about our food system and all that was involved with it.

Like many, my trust in the outside world on how to nourish myself started to decrease as its become clear that so many large companies and powerful individuals do not have the greater good in mind.

The blessing of this reality is that I started to trust my body more then any other external influence which has changed every facet of my life. I started to develop "media literacy" and decide for myself if the information I was ingesting was true for me.

Ultimately it made eating about something other than weight loss.

My book, Body Wisdom, is about the journey.

It lays out the information that made a difference for me in how I treated myself and my body.

Its how I learned how to eat for me and also for the world I wanted to live in. Within its pages are the lessons that guided me to becoming my own health expert and finally coming to a place of love and trust with my body.

It’s a book about food, health, nutrition, diet culture, weight-loss, eating disorders, politics, society, peace, happiness and my commitment to freeing women up from the oppression we face each day.

I truly hope that you love it and that it makes a difference for you.

You can find the book HERE

all of my love :)

xo C

DO YOU EAT REGULAR VERSIONS OF FOOD?

After posting up a picture of some Banza Pasta with Cashew Alfredo Sauce I recieved the following question on Instagram and I wanted to answer it more indepth here on the blog because I think it brings up several things that so any of us deal with.

This is truly an amazing question, and I want to thank the women who asked it. I know that others have this same question because I have been asked it more then once.

First things first: I am constantly challenging the belief that weight contributes to disease as much as we are told.

Over the last year I have started to change my opinion on weight and believe that weight stigma and discrimination contributes to disease more than the weight itself. (hello stress)

I am not denying the role that behavioral and lifestyle choices play in disease development (what we eat and how much we move our bodies), but blaming the weight misses the mark. In order to get healthier, weight loss does not have to be part of the equation.

Pursuing health is not the same pursuit as weight loss.

I truly believe, especially after reading this book, that our medical community and society has got it a little (read a lot) wrong.

Second: I want to bring awareness to the choice of language used to describe "regular" versions of these foods (Cheesy Pizza/ Creamy Cheesy Pasta) as "cheat foods" or "fat foods"

Calling food "cheat food" automatically implies something negative like cheating on your partner or cheating on a test.

The word cheat infuses a sense of wrong doing or breaking of the rules.

As someone who has spent a decade dieting and having an eating disorder, food rules contribute to the yo-yoing and the diet-binge cycle that so many of us get stuck in. It infuses guilt and shame into the act of eating which is not helpful at all in having a healthy relationship with food.

Calling food “fat food” automatically makes it about your weight. As a culture of people we have collectively made “fat” a bad word and as a result have stigmatized the majority of the human population.

When we make food about gaining or losing weight we give food so much power and it is no longer about truly nourishing your body or receiving pleasure and satisfaction from your meal.

I have said this many times but, dieting is not about the foods you eat, its about what you think about the foods you eat, or in this case, how you describe the foods you eat.

At the end of the day, what I eat doesn’t necessarily matter for you, rather what’s important is that you eat what you want to eat so you feel most nourished and alive.

That said, I don’t look at the versions of pasta and pizza that I eat as not "regular" versions.

That type of thinking- that’s exactly what I mean by dieting is about what you think about the foods you eat.

This means that you likely see the "versions" of the pasta and pizza I eat as “diet versions” or versions that are less likely to make you gain weight or the “clean eating” versions or whatever.

This is the type of thinking that results in disordered eating.

While I have strong opinions on modern day agriculture and food processing, which I describe in depth in my upcoming book Body Wisdom, I don’t look at pizza or pasta made with cheese from cows as "regular versions," "fat food," or "cheat food."

To me, they are just pizza and pasta made with different ingredients. That’s it.

The type of ingredients I use to make pasta and pizza is a choice I make for myself because it taste good and it nourishes my body, mind and soul.

I am not trying to avoid the "regular" versions at all.

If I wanted to eat food with cheese from cows I would eat it. I have truly given myself unconditional permission to eat whatever I want. There is nothing that is off-limits in my head. I mean that. If I want something I will eat it.

There is a HUGE difference between trying to avoid something and consciously choosing not to have something. One is self-control, the other is self-care. Very important distinction.

Lastly, of course I care about my health which influences my food choices, but I don’t make food choices based on my weight which is a point of differenation with how I relate to food now.

Again, the pursuit of health is not the same pursuit as weight loss or weight management or whatever the fuck with weight.

Not eating pasta or pizza made with cheese from dairy cows or white flour is my choice, not something I am avoiding.

I talk extensively in my book about why I eat the way I eat and how I learned what my body needs to thrive. I listen to my body for guidance on what to eat.

In short, I eat because I want to feel good physically but also because the foods I choose bring me joy, pleasure, satisfaction, happiness, passion and purpose- things that extend outside of my personal health.

My food choices are bigger than just me and my body.

So I invite you to explore how you think about food and the types of language you use to describe what you are eating and why you choose to eat what you eat.

It is likely contributing to whatever relationship you have with food.

xo C

HOW DO I ACCEPT MY POST BABY BODY

I recently recieved the following question from a reader:

"I was wondering about losing weight and being okay with your body image. I want to lose weight because I gained weight after my kids were born. But I obviously want to have a healthy body image as well. I was wondering how to make both possible because I tend to binge eat."

Here is my tough love answer:

Wanting to lose weight, have a healthy body image and stop binge eating can not all happen at once.

As I've mentioned before, the number one barrier to healing our relationship with food, aka stop binge eating, is also wanting to lose weight or fear of gaining weight

(as well as restricting our food which I talk about HERE)

It's almost impossible to recover from binge eating while also wanting to shrink your body. You have to want to heal more then you want to lose weight.

Wanting to change your body means that eating is no longer about nourishing yourself, its about wanting fix something you see as wrong and "not ok" about the way you look which often is not good for our self-esteem.... and typically just triggers more binge eating because now food has all the power.

I know- its a shitty cycle.

In order to stop binge eating, not only do we have to stop restricting and controlling our food but...,

We have to stop prioritizing weight loss.

The goal of weight loss is what fuels the binge eating which means wanting a smaller body is taking away your inner peace.

That means that losing weight is not going to help with the binge eating, rather no longer trying to lose weight will.

Furthermore , true BODY ACCEPTANCE is what we have to work towards in order to have a healthy body image and stop binge eating.

Body acceptance means truly getting that this is your body today.

The one you have right now- this is it. Take or leave it- it is YOUR BODY. Tomorrow you could be hit by a bus and then you have an entirely new body to work with.

Having poor body image does not have anything to do with what you look like per say, rather it is the result of not accepting your body right now and having a negative perception of it.

It's living in reaction to it.

Its likely that you see the body you have in the mirror and your reaction is something like... “its not ok, its too big, it needs to shrink” - which makes almost all of us feel like crap.

It also means that you have not accepted your body, so it has the power over how you feel each day. Your reaction to your body makes or breaks how your mood and that sucks.

I know because I've been there.

Rather body acceptance means you look in the mirror, you see your body, and you are like "ok this is the way it looks today... and how do I want to feel and live right now so I am happy and fulfilled?"

By not accepting our body as it is right now then our reaction determines our state of mine each day.

It effects how we feel about ourselves, our happiness, peace, joy, ease, and feelings of respect.

It makes eating a matter of life or death- because your happiness is dependent on external circumstances aka having your body look a certain way.

This makes me think about the suicide of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade. These people, who from the outside, looked like they had it all: careers, money, family, notoriety, and yet, not fulfilled, not happy. Ending their own life.

Thinking that you have to lose weight and shrink your body in order to feel good about yourself, is like saying all you need to be happy is to have a fancy car and a big house.

"As long as it looks good on the outside we will be good on the inside."

We all know deep down that it does not work that way.

In order for you to feel good about yourself and this new body, you have to work on the internal stuff- in your heart and soul- not work on fixing the outside aka losing weight.

Your body just went through one of the most challenging and amazing things on the planet, your body helped you bring life into this world.

It gave you your beautiful children. And now you're struggling to love your body because it doesn’t look a certain way.

I am not denying our society puts pressure on women’s bodies, that oppression that we all feel, that pressure to look a certain way to prove our value, is absolutely real.

It is sooo real, its why I do what I do because is absolute bullshit that our society does this to us.

But I have to ask, what would you rather have, a smaller body or true inner peace?

I do not know everything but I do know this: true inner peace does not come from having a shiny exterior.

Just like a fancy car does not lead to true long-term happiness.

If inner peace matters more to you, sign up for a discovery call with me. I'd love to help you cultivate it.

xo C