The New York minute seems like it has been condensed to 10 seconds and I find myself eating on the go while balancing little Luca on my hip – unaware that I’m nourishing my body. This morning I slowed down for breakfast and it felt sooo good.  While I always intend to eat all meals with Yo Yo Ma playing in the background, it often isn’t reality – but just few seconds before eating a granola bar can shift your mindset [and quality of your digestion].

A mini pause will will allow you to be present with your food and feel satisfied + energized. So try something sweet before you eat:

• take 3 breaths
• light a candle
• say grace
• use beautiful dishes
• make a toast
• put devices away

Bonus points for sitting down with your food – away from your desk.

Oh NY – how very fast you move! I’m still marveling at your speed.

I Promise To:

• Honor you as the temple of my soul
• Offer you healthy foods and drinks
• Realize that you deserve to be healthy
• Overcome the addictions that hurt you
• Love and appreciate you for what you do
• Accept that I have the power to heal you
• Adorn you with nice, comfortable clothes and shoes
• Realize that laughter, play, and rest help you feel good
• Exercise regularly and appropriately for my body type
• Accept you and be grateful for you just the way you are
• Listen to messages you are sending me when you are hurt or sick
• Understand my unexpressed emotions and thoughts effect you

Love,

Me   xoxo

I am grateful my health coach shared this letter with me.  I posted it on the fridge and read it every day.  I enrolled at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and became a health coach.  I share this poem with my clients and I do my best to create a sweet connection to myself daily.

What words guide you?

We all have a pretty good sense about what we should and shouldn’t eat for our health and wellness.  Eat more vegetables, eat less potato chips.  Drink water, forget the soda.   Cook real food, forget the packaged stuff.  So then why is it so hard?

Maybe we need more information, or to look more closely at our habits and what they are telling us, or maybe there is something bigger in our life that is calling for our attention and disguising as overeating, undereating, etc.  There can be a lot of reasons, and as a health coach I work with my clients to get to the root of what’s working and what’s not working.

A few months ago I was featured on bSmart and had my very first video interview.  Skip ahead to 3:22 to hear about primary foods and how they can impact the choices you are making with your food.

You’ll see my eyes are blue, I permanently tilt my head (because that’s just the way I was made), and I had a pimple – blast!  But I hope you gain some insight as to what it means to be well fed.

My husband thinks I am a food snob, and perhaps I am.

Mussels on Monday

Or maybe I am aware enough to demand an increase in the quality of the food that is served in this world.

It is easy to have my ‘food snob’ preferences met while living in Brooklyn, but when I travel (which I have been doing recently) I’m not as in control of the choices I have to eat and my food snobbiness begins to surface.  Here are some recent examples:

• We go out for barbecue and I genuinely wonder where the meat came from.  I wished with all my might that it was local, grass fed, and hormone free.  Pretty sure that wasn’t the case so I turned a blind eye and ate it anyway.

• I saw hot chocolate advertised outside a cafe, and dreamed of drinking a mug of thick, creamy, and rich hot chocolate made of real ingredients only to find out it was made with nesquik and milk – I politely declined, and was thankful I inquired.

• While at brunch the waiter asked if I wanted orange juice.  I asked if it was freshly squeezed, he replied yes, no sugar added, and poured the orange liquid from the carafe – it was from a carton.  Who knows when those oranges were actually squeezed.

I’m disillusioned by supermarkets, I’m disenchanted by the dwindling quality of what can be called and referred to as food.  I want to eat real food, made by real people, with real ingredients – because that is the equation for GOOD FOOD, which is what I’m all about.

Food Mantra

I’m starting to wonder if that is really such a preposterous request?  Is it absurd to desire local apples that are minimally treated if not straight up organic, real chocolate made with cacao +  sugar – nothing else, bread made from flour, yeast, and water  – that’s it.

When these things aren’t available I eat crap and then I just end up wanting and eating more crap. I grab a bag of peanut m&ms for that 4:00 pick me up and crave more, because I’m not satisfied.  My body isn’t full of real ingredients & nutrients – just fake stuff trying to appear as real food, made by machines & labs rather than people.

So if you find yourself making ‘bad’ choices, give yourself a break.  With all the chemicals and additives it’s very hard not to be addicted to all this junk.  Instead add in some real food (veggies, fruits, beans, grains, etc), and see what happens.  Your body will begin to crave REAL food and it will feel so good.

vibrant veggies

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
(just remember to love food that loves you too!)

– George Bernard Shaw

So go ahead and be a food snob.  Your body will thank you.

I realized a pattern.  Two awesome contests appeared encouraging particpants to create content and enter to win the prize.  My immediate reaction was… ‘yeah that is cool – but I’ll never win so I’m not even going to bother’. Really?  Well at first it made perfectly good sense until I started hearing that line twice.  I was giving myself this underlying message, you don’t really matter, so just take a seat and stay quiet.  Ha!  Well I decided to show myself and start acting like I mattered – because I certainly do. So I got to work – I made a video for a contest hosted by my school – Institute of Integrative Nutrition that shared my process of getting to where I am now.  The quality isn’t great – but I am proud of the content that flowed out of my mouth.  You can take a blurry look here.  Then I entered a contest hosted by Kathryn Budig – challenging participants to replicate this picture and share what yoga means to them. Again first thought – cool – but I’m not that creative and I will just be wasting my time.  But then I acted like I was worth it.

And there you go.  Am I attached to win? No.  But I am thrilled I took a few minutes from my day to show myself that I rock – even though some of the first thoughts that come into my brain might tell me otherwise.  The beauty is I get to choose.

Do these same limiting beliefs keep you safe & quiet?  I’d love to hear.