The Juicy Woman

What'cha Eatin' for Breakfast Today?

On July 3, I rolled by the Fitness Magazine Online Community and I answered the question, "What do you typically eat for breakfast?" My answer was a bit different from the other responses which were more like 1/2 cup of cereal, tea, yogurt, or dry toast, oatmeal, all that kind of diet-y stuff.

It made me think of when I used to be on Weight Watchers and I had all these rules about what to eat and when I should/could have breakfast.

I remember that if I woke up too early, I'd agonize watching the clock, praying for the time to come when I would normally have breakfast, because I couldn't possibly stand having more hours in the day when I had to wait to eat. That meant that I would feel deprived longer than if my day were shorter. Ha, I even remember going to sleep early as a strategy on the night before weigh in at Weight Watchers in an effort to curb my appetite and avoid craving foods that would show up on the scale the next day. Yessirre, I played all the games. I invented them. Now thankfully that craziness is over. Now I eat what I want, when I want it, and I'm no longer governed by what I should be eating. No more dieting for me. How about you? Would you dare to have a bowl of spinach linguine with butter and cheese for breakfast. I did! - And that day the next time that I got hungry or even thought about food was about 10 hours later. I didn't want the dinner that my husband had made. I just wanted a small dish of Baskin Robbins Mint Chip ice cream.

So how about you? What will you be eating for breakfast today? It's nearly 9:30 in the morning now, and I'm not even really hungry yet. How do you decide what you want to eat? Leave a comment and let me know.. and if you're a gal wanting to ditch the diet and learn how to get slimmer without dieting and love the skin you're in, then come and join my Juicy Woman Forum.

A Test of Strength: It's When Things Seem Worst that You Mustn't Quit

I’ve been out of the loop for awhile. For those of you who know me, you know that I’m facing some personal stuff that drags on my coat tails and threatens to pull me back in the past, a place where I was once a very disempowered and easily intimidated gal, not at all The Juicy Woman I’ve become.

The situation that I face is not unlike many of you who have learned how to assert yourselves and know that we teach people how to treat us so that means sometimes we need to reteach old dogs new tricks. The problem is that some people in your life can’t and won’t accept you in any way other than how they want to see you. That often means either breaking that tie or continuing to push the square peg into the round hole.

I’m tired of pushing my peg and hoping for those corners to round themselves out. It’s too much work so it’s time to let go of parts of my past.

I’ve decided that it’s in my best interest to sever the tie and accept the loss. I won’t kid you, it hurts like hell and parts of me feel lost and so sad, but I have made the right decision. My heart tells me so.

I’m so blessed in that I have my husband and kids to support me in moving forward and celebrating my new juicy self.

Recently I wrote an email to my list, called, “When it feels like your heart is breaking.” I shared a poem that my mother once gave me called, “Don’t Quit.” It’s my gift to you on this Independence Day. Remember according to the poem, it’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit!

Making Peace with the Nutrition Information on Fast Food Restaurant Menus

About a month ago I did my first photo shoot in New York City for the magazine First for Women on the Go. I’ll be one of the women featured on the body confidence page in the July 23 issue. I was interviewed as a coach and body image expert and asked to share my experience and secrets on how making peace with food and lovin’ the skin I’m in has led to a breakthrough in my 19 year relationship with my husband, Angel.

I was on the way back home from the photo shoot and I stood waiting in the Port Authority Bus Terminal for my bus to arrive when I realized that I was pretty hungry. I hadn’t eaten since early morning. At the photo shoot, they had a lovely buffet, but I wasn’t really hungry. That’s become pretty regular with me. I’m happy to say that food doesn’t have much of an emotional tug over me anymore.

As I stood on the line at Jamba Juice, I noticed that each of the shakes and smoothies had nutritional information prominently posted next to the items on the menu. Up until reading Anna Dubrovsky's Holistic Girl blog today, I didn't realize that this was now being done in accordance with a new citywide regulation that went into effect several weeks ago, stating that fast food chains with 15 or more outlets must display calorie counts alongside menu items. 

For a moment, upon reading that the 16 oz. small size of the Orange Dream Machine that I wanted had 340 calories, I got side tracked and started thinking in the old way about food. Should I? Shouldn’t I? Is this too many calories? How can I slurp up this amount of calories instead of eating a real meal?

Then I dismissed all the chatter and asked myself, “Andrea, what do you really want?"
I realized that I really wanted to taste a Jamba Juice smoothie. I’d always seen them in New York, but never considered drinking calories if I could eat them instead. Now I feel differently about food. I just eat and drink what satisfies me. That way I don’t overindulge and fall into the trap of gluttony that comes with dieting and watching your weight.

Diets Don’t Work, Reason #3 - Diets Inhibit Your Ability to Tune into Your Hunger

Hunger! What in the heck is it? If you're a woman who is struggling with dieting, most of the time you're walking around convinced that you're always hungry. After all, you may say, "There's always room for more" That's because we have become so detached from our bodies and live our lives surrounding so much drama and busyness that we're just not aware of how it affects our bodies.

The idea of eating in response to your hunger may seem absolutely ridiculous. This is because the voices in your brain are always screaming, urging, egging you on to eat that cupcake, dive into the open bag of Cheetos, have an extra helping at dinner or supersize it at the drive thru.  You begin to think of yourself as a bottomless pit of hunger, fearing that if you wouldn't have the diet to keep you under control, you'd lose your mind and never stop binging.

The diet organization feeds on that fear by telling you never to get too hungry. You’ve been cautioned to ignore or fear your hunger and fill up on foods that block your awareness of being hungry.

There are so many reasons that we have the urge to eat that have nothing to do with satisfying our physical hunger. These are some of the culprits that have been pushing your hungry buttons:

• habits or conditioning makes you think that you are hungry
• programmed eating like breakfast, lunch and dinner keeps you focused on food
• seeing others eating around you
• seeing food on television, looking at pictures in magazines
• driving down the highway and passing all the fast food restaurants
• being in a supermarket surrounded by food
• smelling popcorn at the movies

These are all examples of triggers that push you to want to eat when you're not hungry. Diets don't effectively teach you how to deal with this kind of constant temptation, so you're left alone to begin the tightrope rope walk between wanting to eat all the time and feeling deprived and frustrated. It feels to you like you have an emptiness inside and it makes sense to fill it with food.

Diets Don’t Work, Reason #2 - Diets Focus on Food, Not Feelings

Dieting has directed you to focus solely on the foods you’ve been eating. The problem is not what you’ve been eating, but what’s been eating you! When you diet, you throw your body into conflict and you wage war on yourself.

For people who are emotional eaters, food holds an extraordinarily powerful and important meaning, connecting with love and acceptance, comfort and peace. If you have happy memories of eating and food, your brain has created an association that food=comfort. You may have heard people joke around and say that they are on a See food diet. That means that when they see food, they automatically want to eat it.

Now here’s where things get interesting. Your experience with trying to lose weight and dieting has led you to accept many conflicting beliefs about yourself and food.

As a dieter and a woman raised in a society where thin is considered beautiful and fat is ugly, you’ve been unconsciously collecting a whole bunch of limiting beliefs that keep you stuck and afraid of food, trying to grab the brass ring of beauty and become that thin version of you. With the focus and emphasis on the importance of being thin, diets reinforce the message that deprivation is the road to success.

Our culture worships thinness and condemns fat. We are living in a fat phobic society where it’s not okay to be okay with being fat. According to our society’s double standard, if you’re fat, then you have to resign yourself to eating carrots and celery and eating lean until you become a thin person and then you can eat what you want. Diet organizations have turned food into the enemy.

Imagine what kind of pressure that puts on you as a dieter. There are two conflicting thought patterns going on inside of you. First you’re thinking about how good food tastes, how much you love it and all the happy memories that come from eating. At the same time, your brain is battling with thoughts and judgments that come from years of dieting that has labeled your beloved food as bad for you, fattening, tempting, forbidden, poison and many other labels that lead you to fear it and want it at the same time.

It’s no wonder that your head doesn’t just explode from the stress!You've got to end the conflict that keeps you in unhappy patterns of dieting and binging. Freedom from food and weight obsession starts by making peace with food, saying goodbye to dieting and self acceptance. Get started on the road to ending the war on food and calling a truce with your body. Grab a free copy of my Lovin' the Skin You're in Sampler.