Intuitive Eating Tips for Work and Travel

Greetings from snowy Geneva where we received almost a foot of snow in the past 24 hours!  

I had no idea that due to the geography  heavy snow is quite rare here and therefore has put the city into a tailspin. My run outside turned into an awesome 30 minute Strong Arm & Back workout followed by a long day in our Geneva office. It’s incredible to spend time in this office as it is truly a global office where people speak Italian, French, German, and English just to name a few! I knew that I wouldn’t have time to post today based on my workload and therefore reached out to one of my New York City friends for help. Jamie and I are going to work together during the month of March as I continue to make headway on my intuitive eating  In advance of that partnership, we thought it would be fun to share her journey and knowledge with you all along with new of her next challenge! 

Enjoy and catch you guys tomorrow!

Hi there! My name is Jamie and I blog over at StudioEats. I have my own Health Coaching business and specialize in working with people on becoming more Intuitive Eaters- ditching the diets and learning to listen to their own bodies.

I’ve been running a 21 Day Intuitive Eating Challenge with 45 people during the month of February and am going to be running the program again in March. More details on that at the end!

I am so excited to be posting on Ashley’s blog today. I’ve been reading it for a long time now, and was SO excited when I read her post a couple weeks ago titled “Turning Point”. This quote that she wrote literally made me grin from ear to ear:

“I decided that I was tired of trying and figured that I’d take some time post marathon just to see what my body wanted to do naturally.  I’ve been eating what I crave, enjoying wine, and working out consistently. The trick is all about intuitive eating and drinking. When I’m craving something, I eat it but in a small portion.”  -Ashley

Ahhh… music to my ears! A little about my story… After trying every single diet in the book during college, I finally began my own Intuitive Eating journey a few years ago. I was desperate, I was at an all time low in terms of my body image and weight, and I knew that diets just weren’t working. There had to be a better way. I ended up finding a Health Coach who changed my life—she helped me look inward instead of outward, get back in touch with my body, and learn how to deal with emotional eating. I was finally able to shed the college weight but more importantly, find the freedom and liberation I was so desperate for in terms of my relationship to food.

Ashley asked me to talk to you guys about how to become more Intuitive Eaters while working crazy hours and living busy lives. Before leaving my job to start my Health Coaching business, I worked full time in Finance for 3.5 years. For 2.5 of those years, I traveled almost every week all over the Southeast. So I know how challenging these environments can be and am excited to give you a few of my top tips that I learned over the years. So here goes!

 

My Top Three Tips for Being a More Intuitive Eater While You’re at the Office:

1. Ditch the notion that you have to stick to meal times: Part of becoming an Intuitive Eater is eating when you’re actually hungry. I’ve noticed that a lot of people are really stuck on eating their breakfast/lunch at a certain time each day at the office. Play around with meal times and focus on eating your meals when you’re actually hungry. The more in sync you are with your hunger and your body, the more satisfied you will feel when you actually eat. Try pushing your lunch back an hour, or up an hour. It’s all about experimenting!
2. Rethink your lunch: If you bring your lunch to work, it is slightly harder to be Intuitive about your lunch choice because you already packed your lunch that morning or the night before, but my suggestion here is to bring some options for yourself, and make those options varied. This way, you can give yourself something you’re actually craving at lunchtime. Bring some cut up veggies or a salad, something more carb-heavy like a sandwich, maybe some yogurt/granola in case you’re in the mood for that, some chocolate or other sweet options, a piece of fruit or two, etc. When it comes to be lunchtime, choose from your options. Anything leftover can just be used the next day or brought home. If you buy lunch at work, take a minute before you go to lunch to REALLY ask yourself what you’re in the mood for. Get exactly that, enjoy every bite of it, and try as hard as you can to stop eating when you’re full
3. Take some time for yourself: I focus on finding pleasure in the day-to-day with my clients. Take a lunch break- even if it just for 5 minutes. Focus on your food, not your computer screen. If you can, get out and walk around with your ipod or a friend. Every now and then, take yourself down the street to a cute café if you can. Treat yourself—you deserve it. The more pleasure we have in our lives, the less we need to use food to fill that pleasure void.

My Top Three Tips for Being a More Intuitive Eater While Traveling:

1.     Give up control: I know, this is SO hard for most of us. I coach a few clients who travel frequently for work and I just tell them to go with the flow and ENJOY IT. Just like Ashley gave up control while she was recently traveling, try to do the same. Don’t plan out your meals, fight the fear that there won’t be enough “healthy” food available, just use it as a time to practice giving up control. Flow through your days eating exactly what looks good when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. If you follow this guideline, it will help you survive your travels without gaining an ounce.

2.     Bring whatever snacks you can: Intuitive Eating means honing in on your actual cravings and hunger. Since traveling is so unpredictable, have snacks on you so that you can eat when you’re hungry and also so that you don’t feel the need to load up/stuff yourself at a certain meal because you’re not sure when you’re going to see food again. I ALWAYS have almonds and dark chocolate bars on me when I travel, and I also used to bring cut up raw veggies for my plane rides there.

3.     Self Care and Comfort are SO important: When we travel, we are out of our element. We are in a world of unknown, in strange cities and airports, we don’t have the right clothes, our flights get cancelled, we don’t know our food options, etc. When we are in situations like this, it’s important to up our self-care BIG TIME. Give yourself any comforts that you can. When I traveled every week for work, I used to make sure all of my work clothes were as comfortable as possible, that I always had flats on me to change into, that I had tea bags with me because I was constantly cold, that I had my own snacks with me, that I took a few minutes to myself whenever I could, that I had interesting magazines and books to read, etc. Self-care is so crucial to our health AND our weight because when we are uncomfortable for any reason, we often times try to stuff down/eliminate that feeling with food. The more comfortable and relaxed we can make ourselves, the less we will turn to food.

 I hope you find these tips helpful! Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions.

And now for the March challenge:

During the Intuitive Eating Challenge, you will learn how to break free from the Diet Mentality, listen to your body and your actual cravings, give yourself permission to eat exactly what you want, tune back in to your hunger and fullness, and re-learn what makes you satisfied. I’m telling you… working toward becoming a more Intuitive Eater was the smartest thing I ever did in my life. It made me WAY more in touch with not only my body and what it needed, but what I needed in every single area of my life. Not to mention it helped me easily shed the college weight in a way that worked with my body instead of against it.

You can read two additional posts that I did about Intuitive Eating and how much it has impacted me:

Intuitive Eating: What Does This Mean, Anyway?

The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

I will be your guide and your coach during the 21 days of the challenge and will be devoted to helping you grasp the concepts and implement them into your personal life. This is what the challenge entails:

–          Two 15 minute one-on-one coaching calls with me. One is at the beginning of the challenge to help me understand your current situation and help you formulate goals for the challenge and one call is at the end to recap with you and answer any remaining questions specific to you. 

–          Daily newsletters in your inbox at 6am, each with a different topic related to Intuitive Eating and a “task” for you to try out that day going forward

–          Unlimited email one-on-one email coaching with me during the 21 days

–          Access to the Private Intuitive Eating Facebook Group (the Feb group has been super active! They post pics of their food, questions, “ah-ha” moments, and successes)

For additional information about the challenge, head over to my main Intuitive Eating Challenge page.

The cost of the program is $49 but I am happy to offer it for the price of $39 to any of Ashley’s readers because I know you guys are serious about learning. In order to get signed up and the $39 rate, simply email me at jamiemendell@gmail.com and put “IE Challenge- Ashley” in the subject line. I’ll then get your payment information and we’ll be on our way.

I can’t wait to have you be a part of it and to have the honor of guiding you toward something that I am so passionate about.

And I’d like to just leave you with a little tid-bit from an email I got this morning from one of the people participating in the February Intuitive Eating Challenge. She wrote me this in an email:

“Just some quick feedback to let you know how much I look forward to “chatting/connecting with a dear friend” (you) everyday!  For the first time in my life I am paying attention to MY well-being and not thinking it’s self-centered.” – Kathy Skinner