Renew Your Relationship With Food

Ever been around a toddler? Or better yet, tried telling them what they should or shouldn’t do?

We have a running joke in our house. It goes like this, If I tell my 2 year old to go to the bathroom he 100% of the time stubbornly tells me, “I don’t want to go to the bathroom.” Even if he clearly needs to pee. But then my husband or my father-in-law chime in, telling him “Judah can’t go Mom, but I’ll go.” Instantly my son rises up and runs with vengeance to the bathroom screaming, “No, I’ll go potty.”

We attribute this little happening to reverse psychology, but the same principle is also called a paradoxical injunction in psychology and restriction mindset in intuitive eating.

This is the first post in a series of posts titled IE (intuitive eating) + scripture.

I asked what you guys needed/wanted on instagram and you voted first, for a series on the bible and eating, and a close second, for a series on the 10 intuitive eating principles—So I’m giving you both!

This series will look at each of the 10 principles of intuitive eating from a biblical view point. Where they don’t align perfectly, scripture will always take precedence!

Here’s principle number one: reject the diet mentality.

There's been so much written about digestion lately, I've hesitated to add my voice to the noise, lest I provoke the often angry opinions of the masses, but recently something shifted my perspective on this.

I was speaking with a group of women about digestion and elimination diets, sharing the same simple truths I do with my clients, and several of the women messaged me later to tell me how freeing those nuggets of information were. Honestly, their words caught me off guard. Of all the things we'd discussed that evening, I was surprised it was the two cents about digestion that really helped these women.

So it's been a while (1 whole month to be exact) since I've written a blog post. I haven't forgotten about it, I promise. We've just been a little busy this summer between potty training, birthday parties and 3 trips back and forth to Indiana planning my sister's wedding.

On top of that, God's been teaching me through his word, but mainly through people, about the value of cutting away some good, but maybe unnecessary things in order to make room for the new thing he's doing in THIS season. 

Confession time, I find it incredibly hard to do nothing, to be bored. Even more, I find it difficult to just do one thing at a time. 

I know I'm not the only one. Unless you've been hiding under a rock recently, you've probably noticed the surge of discussion around being present, mindful, and still. Why do we struggle with this so much? 

Yesterday I did an Instagram experiment. I asked people what their ten favorite foods/ingredients were. One, because I was just curious and two, because I wanted people to think about this.For so many people today this is a super hard question. Between our culture telling us what we can and can't eat and the mixed messages we receive about some of our favorite foods, a lot of us have completely stopped eating for enjoyment.

Is It wrong to want to lose weight? I find a lot of people asking this question after they learn about the non-diet approach. In an effort to eradicate the message that you HAVE to lose X lbs to be healthier or look a certain way to be accepted, the anti-diet messaging may make people feel guilty for wanting to lose weight.