Share Provided by Rachel Buechler, MS, CNS, LDN
(She/Her) - Clinical, Community and Culinary Nutritionist

Share provided by Rachel Buechler, MS, CNS, LDN
(She/Her) - Clinical, Community and Culinary Nutritionist

Humans are social creatures, and we have an innate need within us to share and bond with other humans. This inter-social dialogue is what our brains require to properly process our thoughts and build resilience to keep surviving.

This means that in order to stay mentally well, we need to process (and talk about) our feelings.

If you have a trusted friend, family member, or partner who has expressed interest in hearing about your life and your well-being, talk to them about your feelings.

If you don’t feel as though you have anyone in your life who can take on the emotional labor of talking through your thoughts, consider reaching out to a counselor, therapist, support group, or wellness specialist who can provide you with professional support and guidance.

In addition, or as a first step, try journal writing. Write down your thoughts when you’re feeling overwhelmed, anxious, afraid, unworthy, or anything else. Our thoughts will bottle up and knock around our minds unless we find ways to release them and allow them to come full circle; writing these thoughts down is a great way to help this process move along

Share provided by Linnette Johnson, MS, MA, CNS, RALC, LDN

When we have an emotional relationship with food, it’s easy to use that food as a tool for coping with stress.

For some of us, that might mean restricting certain foods to feel a sense of control.
For some of us, that might mean turning to food to bring you pleasure.
For some of us, it might be both these things, neither, or something in between.

Here’s the bottom line. We all have stress, and we all need to find ways of dealing with that stress that doesn’t involve interrupting the way we feed our bodies.

Currently, what’s your way of coping with stress? For example, when you have a bad day at work, what do you do about it

Share provided by Linnette Johnson, MS, MA, CNS, RALC, LDN
(She/Her) - Nutrition Coach, Educator, Researcher, Registered Ayurveda Lifestyle Consultant, Mindfulness Meditation Coach and Herbalist.

We all have health goals, and we each set those goals for different reasons. However, all too often people set their health goals with the explicit hope of losing weight, and that’s where they go wrong.

Think of the last health goal you had, whether it was an exercise routine you wanted to try, a diet, or something else. Did you stick with it? Or did you stop because you didn’t see results fast enough?

Most likely, it was the latter.

We’re obsessed with instant gratification, making it easy for us to fall for gimmicky diets and challenges. Unfortunately, there is no magic workout routine, supplement, diet plan, or industry secret that will effectively and sustainably slim our bodies and get us feeling better. It takes time, and it takes strategy.

One of the best ways to create a plan that works for you is to work in step with a wellness professional who can assess your current lifestyle habits and help you create a strategy for moving forward toward goals that make sense and are realistic for you

Share provided by Linnette Johnson, MS, MA, CNS, RALC, LDN
(She/Her) - Nutrition Coach, Educator, Researcher, Registered Ayurveda Lifestyle Consultant, Mindfulness Mediation Coach and Herbalist.

If you’re in the habit of weighing yourself every morning and hyper-focusing on the number that pops up in front of you, your eating habits will certainly be affected.

Say that you hop on your scale, and you’re five pounds heavier than you were the last time you weighed yourself - what’s the first thought or feeling that might come to mind?

“I’m a failure.”
“I need to go on a diet.”
“How did I let this happen?”

Sound familiar? If so, these feelings will likely result in behaviors like restrictive eating, skipping meals, counting calories, or creating other arbitrary rules for ourselves that just makes us unhappy and stressed out.

When was the last time you weighed yourself? How did that number on the scale make you feel?

Share provided by Linnette Johnson, MS, MA, CNS, RALC, LDN
(She/Her) - Nutrition Coach, Educator, Researcher, Registered Ayurveda Lifestyle Consultant, Mindfulness Meditation Coach and Herbalist.

Remember that what you scroll through your social media feed, it is a highlight reel of the most flattering, best lit, sometimes photoshopped, always filtered, and heavily crafted versions of people’s reality.

What you don’t see is people sucking their belly in, twisting their bodies, and taking a hundred photos to find the perfect angle.

You don’t see those same people having a bad day, getting bloated, feeling stressed, and breaking down.

Because we’re only exposed to the highlight reel, it’s easy to compare ourselves to the images we see, and quickly start to feel bad about ourselves. In time, we try to take measures into our own hands to “fix” what’s wrong with us in order to better compete with these “perfect” people we see.

To break this cycle, purge your social media so that you’re no longer following people or accounts that make you feel “less than.” Instead, look up body-positive accounts that celebrate intuitive eating, body acceptance, and diversity.

Share provided by Linnette Johnson, MS, MA, CNS, RALC, LDN
(She/Her) -  Nutrition Coach, Educator, Registered Ayurveda Lifestyle Consultant,
Mindfulness Meditation Coach and Herbalist.

You probably don’t realize how often you talk down to yourself. Whether it’s a little dig at your weight when you see your reflection as you walk by a mirror, or a full-blown breakdown you have in the dressing room when you no longer fit into your usual size of jeans, every piece of negative talk adds up and builds unhealthy thought patterns in your mind.

If I were to ask you right now, “What do you think about your body?” What would you say?

Share provided by Linnette Johnson MS, MA, CNS, RALC, LDN
(She/Her) - Nutrition Coach, Educator, Registered Ayurveda Lifestyle Consultant,
Mindfulness Meditation, and Herbalist.

Share provided by Rachel Buechler, MS, CNS, LDN
(She/Her) -  Clinical, Community and Culinary Nutritionist

In order to heal your relationship with food, you need to begin internalizing the fact that your weight cannot measure your worth as a person. In other words, if you live in a larger body, you aren’t any less lovable, valuable, or worthy of happiness than a person in a smaller body.

Think about the people you look up to and respect, is one of your favorite traits about them their weight?

Share provided by Linnette Johnson, MS, MS, CNS, RALC, LDN
(She/Her) - Nutrition Coach and Educator, Registered Ayurveda Lifestyle Consultant,
Mindfulness Meditation Coach and Herbalist.