WEEK 1: Reflection

If you are currently tracking your intakes daily, you may continue to do so, and this module will guide you through how to track less and less. However, you need to make sure you are eating your maintenance calorie amount. 

This is because one of the best ways to get a good grasp on intuitive eating is to first make sure that you are not constantly dieting. Learning to give your body what it actually needs to maintain weight, hormone levels, healthy lab work, energy levels, proper sleep, and brain function is so important. If you’re still eating in a calorie deficit, you will likely feel more hunger than what you typically should, and that will make it very hard to know when to listen to your hunger cues and when not to.

Next for week 1, we want you to start reflecting on how your current eating habits have impacted your health, mindset, and experiences around your nutrition. We want you to think about this in detail, such as:

• Have you experienced weight loss from dieting?
• Do/did you have extreme food cravings?
• Do/did you emotionally eat?
• Have you created unhealthy habits around food?
• Do/did you experience constant hunger or fatigue?
• Was it sustainable for you or something you stopped because it felt impossible?

If you answered yes to any or all of these, make it your goal to change at least ONE of these things. Our goal is to help you move past these patterns and into a healthier, more positive routine related to food and your habits that surround your nutrition. 

Good nutrition is simply based on that: your habits. Habits create your routine and as we know, habits can be both positive and negative. Our focus now is to create new, long-lasting, positive habits.

We must start by getting rid of your current habits that reflect previous dieting cycles. This includes getting rid of food tracking apps, and lessening how much you let social media influence your food choices and how we feel about ourselves. Unfollowing, deleting or taking a break from anything and everything that makes you question yourself, or influences your behaviors related to nutrition. 

Each day we want you to start actively getting rid of the things that negatively impact your mindset or stop you from achieving your ultimate goal of mindful eating.


FOR WEEK ONE

• In a journal, start to loosely write down habits (current and past) that have influenced how you eat. You can also include emotions, thoughts, stressors, people – any outside or internal influence related to food.
  • For example: “I weigh myself every day (doesn’t always feel good to)” or “My mom has always dieting and always makes comments on my weight, so I am always watching what I eat around her” or “I competed in the past and have never stopped tracking my macros, but it doesn’t serve me anymore.”
• Next, write down all the things that influence your thoughts on food and nutrition. Write down things that affect the way you feel about your body and eating patterns. For this, again consider food tracking apps, social media, family, friends, diet culture etc. We want you to think about these things so that you can then start to move away from them and leave them in the past.

• Next, you have to actually get rid of things that are tying you to past self-destructive habits. Sometimes, this takes acceptance and planning. At some point during this first week, specifically write out what you feel you are able to easily let go of, and what you are less enthusiastic about getting rid of.
  • Some examples:
    • Unfollow people who make you reflect poorly on yourself, or influence your nutrition habits
    • Create boundaries around friends and family if needed
      • Do they make you feel good, do they support you?
• For things you feel you can easily let go of, do it this week!
• For things you feel you’ll have a harder time letting go of, write down the REASONS you’re having a hard time letting go.
  • Are you afraid of what will happen?
  • Are you afraid of what someone will think?
  • Are you afraid of the unknown?

END OF WEEK ONE

At the end of this first week, you should have a few overall things to act on. One thing we want you to add to that list is NO LONGER weighing yourself. If you are someone who has a body scale in the house, it’s time to put it away, give it away, or throw it away.

Here’s why:

If you are weighing yourself every day, do you know why you’re doing it? Are you in control of the feelings you have when you see a particular number? 

Are you aware that the number on the scale is a made up number that allows us to quantify gravitational pull? If you take up more space (greater mass) and/or your body has more in it like muscle bone fat stool blood fluid (greater volume/density), then the number you see will be higher. Someone with a high body fat % could weigh the same as someone who has a lot of muscle with a lower body fat %. If that’s the case, that’s proof that you can’t get an idea of what a body looks like or is made up of from just the number on the scale. 

So why are you still using it to measure progress? Or letting it control your level of happiness?

There are better ways to measure progress, but you first must determine what progress means to you. What are you trying to accomplish?

Goal = change how heavy your body is in relation the the earth’s core
Way to measure progress = scale

Goal = lower body fat or increase muscle
Way to measure progress = measure inches; body scan (like a DEXA)

Your relationship with food and your ability to succeed long term is pretty directly correlated to how you see yourself, so stop letting the scale squash your potential. Seeing your weight should not be a factor in determining how you eat for the day. Period.