Body in Balance Nutrition Counseling

02/18/2023

First "Share" in a long time. It's worth it! Have a read...!

03/09/2022

A hero~

The Cancer Chronicles, 115: The cancer consultant kept urging me to fast. He said that after eighteen hours stem cells get released. Bodies get strengthened. One day, he said, that’s all. I told him I didn’t like fasting, not even on Yom Kippur. Then the internist agreed. Told me he fasts every week for one day. My neighbor told me he did the same after which a writer friend told me she did too. And so, once again, seduced by stem cells and everyone’s doing it, I decided to fast for one day. Not one day a week, just one day. Also, I’d been eating a lot of parmesan cheese since my friend brought me back a chunk from Italy. And added a little, then more, dark chocolate since my husband told me about the talk he heard in which a doctor said it is loaded in antioxidants and possibly can prevent heart disease. And this might have been my imagination, but I felt as if both the cheese and chocolate were adding a bit of heft to my belly and thighs.

Here’s what I found out. Again.

I spent too many years obsessed with food and weight, most especially the almost-two years I spent starving myself down to 82 pounds followed by the two months in which I doubled my weight by bingeing until I was nauseated then stopping until the nausea passed then bingeing again, to fast. Because like a soft wind, the fear starts whispering that I’ll be out of control if I don’t clamp down. That I’ll never stop eating. That I’ll gain fifty, a hundred pounds. And although it’s been forty years since I’ve acted out with food, fasting brings up the fear again.

Last night, after a day of bodily discomfort from fasting — heart beating too fast and nausea and headaches — I turned towards the fear because I know that it’s not about the weight. It is never about the weight. Underneath the fear of gaining weight is the fear of what will happen if that weight is gained. Whose love will be lost. The fear of being alone and unloved.

I remembered myself as a child with crooked bangs and chubby legs and a gorgeous mother who told me that ice milk had too many calories and that my face was like a moon. I wanted her love more than I wanted anything but she, of her own admission, wanted her own kind of love, the kind she never got from her mother, and couldn’t give what she didn’t have. And so, being fat became associated with being unloved, rejected, thrown out of the tribe.

Being unkind to myself about my body and weight became a way for me to stay close to my mother and her (unkind) voice — in that way, we were both on the same side — while simultaneously trying to lose weight and be the dream girl a mother could love.

And here we are. What a day of fasting brings up. That girl with the crooked bangs. What’s left to say is “Oh sweetheart, I’m so sorry” to whatever vestiges of the crooked-bangs-girl is left and to the mother, now 93, who never felt loved.

Last night I said to Matt: if days of being miserable and nauseated from fasting prolong my life, then I chose a shorter life. Because if I fasted once a week for the rest of my life, I would have “lost” more than a thousand days when I could have been loving the taste of my matcha latte. Reveling in a chunk of parmesan cheese, dark chocolate and not missing this life.

08/13/2021

Mmmm, yep!

Yes, it tastes great, but it's not a drug

06/10/2021

As we slowly emerge from the pandemic, I find myself trying to figure out who I am & how my purpose has been altered. Lately, I've tried to figure if the changes I’m experiencing are from turning 60 or from enduring a global pandemic. And then I realized it doesn't matter—change is change!
Here’s what I’ve learned/remembered:
🧡 Life is precious, so letting go of the small stuff is important. With consciousness & daily practice, my brain is changing the way it reacts to the stuff that used to bug me.

🧡 Sometimes all we can do in a day is cry & carry on.

🧡 I am intensely grateful for my body, just as it is. I compare this emergence from COVID to the time just after I ended my 6 year struggle w/ bulimia & had gained weight. Instead of panicking, I played with finding fun styles for my new curves & honored the fact that I was/am a survivor.

🧡 This past year has heightened my awareness of my privileges. I am more fully committed to learning & growing & sharing resources w/ others. I know I still have a lot to do and learn, and doing so is my pledge to myself and the world.

🧡 My commitment to my work to help people have peace with and feel love for their bodies has increased exponentially. It makes me incredibly sad to know how many people are suffering over their "COVID bodies" and are scared to be seen as they emerge into the world. My hope is for everyone to remember that… YOUR BODY HELPED YOU SURVIVE A GLOBAL PANDEMIC!

I recognize that healing from body hatred is not easy. With commitment & practice we become unplugged from Diet Culture, and the glorious reward is freedom! Life still has its challenges, but there is so much more joy on the other side of the matrix!

And to you, dear reader, may you, too, be liberated from any pressures you may feel to "fix" your body as you emerge back into the world. Let's give love to our bodies for keeping us alive as a way to honor those whose lives were lost to the COVID pandemic.

06/08/2021

Suffering with body insecurity as swimsuit season approaches?

Summertime and the living is full of body anxiety! The opening of pools and beaches coinciding with post-pandemic winter body changes is sending worries about body size and shape to an all time high.

New blog post up with practices that help you find more ease in your body before , during, and after you try on your swimsuit.

https://bodyinmindnutrition.com/post-pandemic-body-anxiety-goes-to-the-beach/

05/28/2021

This young woman has important words, a powerful message to those that suffer! Thank you, Rachel Luba for your clear voice!!🙏❤️

Gymnast-turned-agent Rachel Luba asked for help with her disordered eating when she was in high school. She went on to compete at UCLA. Today she is an advocate for positive body image.

02/26/2021

Love, love, love!!

In-Between Bi***esA Comedy for Zoom, Proposed, Written and Directed by Abigail C. OnwunaliBody image expectations for womxn of color are unattainable, yet we...

02/04/2021

I love this guy!

12/31/2020

WORD.

Repost from
•
Here is a clip of the anti-diet piece I publish every year just before New Year’s Day (full piece on my page). And this year is especially hard because of Covid—the isolation, the comfort food. But a diet is never the answer. Ever. Try radical self-love and take very gentle care of your baby self, and watch the goddamn self-talk! It is lying to you: you are perfect, as is.

We need to talk.

I know you are planning to start a diet. I used to start diets, too. I hated to mention this to my then-therapist. She would say cheerfully, "Oh, that's great, honey. How much weight are you hoping to gain?"

I got rid of her sorry ass. No one talks to ME that way.

Well, okay, maybe it was ten years later, after she had helped lead me back home, to myself, to radical self-care, gentle Self-Talk, to a jungly glade that had always existed deep inside me, but that I'd avoided by achieving, dieting, people-pleasing, multi-talking, and so on.

Now when I decide to go on a diet, I say it to myself: "Great, honey. How much are you hoping to gain?"

I was able to successfully put on weight on book tour by eating room service meals in a gobbly trance in 13 different hotels. So that was exhilarating, to make myself feel like Jabba the Hut.

And then I accidentally forgot to starve myself in December, or to go back to the gym, which I've been meaning to do since I had a child, 24 years ago.
So I am at least five pounds up — but praise be to God, I do not currently have a scale, because as I've said before, getting on a scale is like asking Dick Cheney to give you a sense of your own self-worth.

I can still get my jeans on, for one reason: I wear forgiving pants. The world is too hard as it is, without letting your pants have an opinion on how you are doing. I struggle with enough self-esteem issues without letting my jeans get in on the act.

By the same token, it feels great to be healthy. Some of you need to be under a doctor's care. None of you need to join Jenny Craig. It won't work. Some of you need to get outside and walk for half an hour a day. I do love walking, so that is not a problem for me, but I hav

11/19/2020