Intuitive Eating: A Case Study

In case you missed my tweet earlier this week, I want to direct your attention to an important piece from Elyse Resch, co-author of Intuitive Eating. In The Sadness of Saying “Enough,” Elyse takes us through a case study of how intuitive eating was used to help one teenager acknowledge and heal from emotional eating.

If you have questions about how intuitive eating "works," or just want to learn more about it, I urge you to read this thoughtful piece. When you're done, let me know what you think.

Mommy Knows Best (and so do you)

Pregnancy taught me a lot. Not just about my life and goals, my emotions, fears and joys, but yes, about food too. As I wrote about in Cry When You’re Hungry, when I was pregnant food didn’t taste particularly good to me. The nausea subsided after about 3-4 months, but until July 16 when my daughter was born, eating was a bit of a chore, and one that often made me feel at least slightly sick to my stomach.

Then a fabulous thing happened – I gave birth.

In addition to meeting and subsequently falling in love with my daughter, I also got reacquainted with my taste buds. Since this blog is about food and not about motherhood (though I guess it’s becoming more about both these days), I’ll stick with the food lessons here.

As soon as I was allowed to eat real food after the birth of Emily I did, and it tasted DELICIOUS WITH A CAPITAL D. The only way I can describe it is to say that my taste buds blossomed after being in hibernation for 10 months. When I say food tasted delicious (and it still does!), I mean every morsel that went into my mouth gave each taste bud a big, fat hug on the way down.

In the first days and weeks after delivering Emily, I had intense cravings for cranberry juice. I have no idea why, but I drank it by the bucket-full it seemed, and enjoyed every sip (and gulp). As soon as that craving mellowed out, I recognized – and have been honoring ever since – a very hearty appetite for meat.

Just last week my mother-in-law prepared the most delicious Julie & Julia inspired beef bourguignon with roasted potatoes I’ve ever had (actually, I think it’s the only time I’ve had the dish, but I’ll gladly eat it again). I enjoyed every mouthful. While I never used to order roast beef sandwiches, I’m now proud to say that I know the best one in the city. I also crave broiled chicken breasts, chicken salad sandwiches, zucchini, roasted carrots, asparagus, beef burgers, turkey burgers, mango, espresso and chocolate. I’m enjoying all real foods that I used to love but had no taste for throughout my entire pregnancy.

What’s intuitive about this? I just think it’s interesting that after 40 weeks with absolutely no taste for protein, it’s taken center stage on my plate for the last 10 weeks. Not because a doctor prescribed it, and not because I think I should be eating it, but because that’s what my body is craving. Intensely.

And then there’s oatmeal. Ever since I returned home from the hospital all I’ve wanted for breakfast is a big bowl of oatmeal with sliced bananas on top. I keep thinking I’ll crave eggs for breakfast again soon, or yogurt and fruit….a blueberry muffin, perhaps, but no. In 10 weeks, it hasn’t happened.

What’s so interesting to me about my taste for oatmeal is what I learned recently in my mommy and me class: oatmeal is said to increase milk production. I don’t know if this is true or simply an old wives tale, but as you can see from the picture above (those are bags of stored milk in our freezer), I’ve got enough milk to open my own store: Maggie’s Milk for Munchkins.

Who knows why I’m so into oatmeal these days, or if my meat craving is my body’s way of making up for the lack of it in my diet for so many months. But I say it’s no coincidence. I say my body knew exactly what it needed to produce a hefty milk supply, and sent me signals of what foods would help generate the most efficient “production line.”

Lesson learned? Our bodies possess an inner wisdom. They know what they need to eat to function properly. Pregnancy and now nursing has magnified this lesson for me in a beautiful (and delicious) way. Do you have any good examples of this in your life? If so, please do share.

Favorite Product of the Week: Wolfgang Puck Tortilla Soup

**Disclaimer: I am writing this post in a very rushed manner, but if I don't do it now, it won't happen. So please excuse any and all grammatical errors. On that note, let's just keep this disclaimer for all posts from here on out. Such is my life with a 9-week old baby, who, if you care to know, I am totally in love with**

I have a thing for tortilla soup. I love it, but I only love a certain kind of tortilla soup. It has to have a thick red broth, not a clear broth you can see through. It’s got to have some spice and it just has to be good. One of the best tortilla soups I ever had was a special on the menu at The Abbey in West Hollywood. I really wish that restaurant would put the soup back on the menu as a staple. It’s that good.

I’ve also never been able to find a recipe for the kind of tortilla soup I love. I just had to eat it at restaurants when I was lucky enough to spot it on the menu.

I also have a very strong dislike for most canned soups. I have yet to taste one that was actually worth eating. Until today. As I was rushing through the aisles of Gelson’s earlier this week between feedings (all of my errands must now take place between the end of one feeding for my bambina, and the start of the next one), I came across a display of Wolfgang Puck soups. Given that I have no time these days to cook much beyond what can be broiled or baked in the oven while I’m doing something else (changing diapers, trying to ease my little girl into a nice nap, or feeding her), I thought, what the heck. I’ll give it a try.

And let me just say, “I’m so excited!!!!” Wolfgang Puck’s tortilla soup is GOOD! Really good. It’s exactly the kind I like, and it is definitely restaurant quality. It bears no resemblance to the airplane-food-quality of nearly every other canned soup I’ve ever eaten. I just ate an entire can of it along with a chicken salad sandwich (I have a VERY healthy appetite these days with the nursing) and it was delicious!

Okay, my munchkin is calling. More later, but check out this soup and let me know what you think!

What If You Could Eat Anything?

What if you could eat anything you wanted? It’s a question that intuitive eating skeptics ask often. “If I could eat anything I wanted, I’d weigh [fill in the blank] pounds,” some say. “I’d eat ice cream all day long.” “All I’d eat is cheeseburgers.”

“Really?” I want to ask in response. But instead, I usually say, “Try it.” An awkward silence ensues. “I’m serious,” I say. “Give yourself unconditional permission to eat whatever you want – chocolate, cheeseburgers, pizza, ice cream, whatever your ‘scary’ food is.”

People rarely take me up on this suggestion, but I wish they would. If they did, they’d see that giving oneself unconditional permission to eat anything, anytime, really does lead, ultimately, to balanced eating. This lesson was reinforced recently when I had my wisdom teeth pulled. (Yes, I had to be put out to have all four wisdom teeth pulled a month after giving birth – luckily, I had a hefty milk supply in my freezer at home for my munchkin – more on that later).

After the big extraction, the nurse in the dentist’s office told me to only eat soft foods for the first few days – ice cream, pudding, yogurt, chicken broth, etc. “Can I eat oatmeal or cottage cheese?” I asked, hoping for permission to eat something with protein (cottage cheese) and something that wasn’t sweet (oatmeal). Her eyebrows raised and her lips puckered up in disappointment. “Mmmm, probably not for the first few days, but see how you do.”

Not one to break the rules, I stocked up on everything she suggested. Keeping in mind there is only so much chicken broth one can eat, I was pretty much stuck with sweet foods. And I have to say, from the moment I started “eating,” if you could call it that, all I wanted was oatmeal, a plate of eggs and a nice piece of chicken (not all at once).

I’m quite certain that if I was told I couldn’t eat dairy, all I’d want was ice cream, a warm latte or a bowl of yogurt and fruit. This is how our minds work. If we’re told to limit a particular food from our diet, that’s all we’ll crave. And if we’re told we can eat as much of something as we’d like (yes, even ICE CREAM), we’re generally going to get sick of it very quickly.

So, the wisdom from getting my wisdom teeth extracted: give yourself permission to eat what you want, when you want it when you’re hungry. And stop when you’re satisfied. Doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Putting the Fork (or Spoon) Down

About a month and a half ago I traded in gelato for apricots on a warm summer evening, when all I wanted was a delicious frozen dessert. “How is that intuitive,” you ask? Read on.

Jeremy and I had just finished one of the most delicious Thai dinners we’d had all year, and though it was satisfying, we wanted to cap it off with an equally tasty dessert. We saved room for it, and eagerly made our way to our neighborhood’s newest dessert shop, which I’ll leave nameless just in case they are having early opening product snafus. (I don’t want to give them a bad name if their product improves)

When we walked into said nameless dessert shop on Ventura Boulevard, we strolled through the entire store just admiring the design, décor and concept. It was part old-fashioned ice-cream parlor and part candy store. I was in heaven – already picturing many evening trips to this place, hubby on one arm, Baby Miller on the other. The store serves gelato (one of my personal favorites), frozen yogurt, candy and an assortment of baked goods – cookies, cakes, cupcakes, you name it.

Wonderful idea. Bad execution.

Jeremy ordered a frozen yogurt, which he got to serve to himself (part of the fun), and I ordered gelato. We sat at a table outside to enjoy our desserts and one of our quickly evaporating nights out as a couple before our little Emily arrived. But then we tasted our treats. After about three or four bites, I put my spoon down and gave it to Jeremy.

“Does this taste funny to you?” I asked, wondering if it was my highly sensitive pregnancy taste buds playing a trick on me or if the gelato was simply not good.

“Yeah, it’s gross,” he said after taking a cautious bite. “And my yogurt is disgusting, too.” We each took a few more small bites, in the hopes of our desserts magically improving, but they didn’t. Being extremely pregnant, and having my heart set on a frozen dessert, I suggested we bail on the $8 worth of bad gelato/yogurt currently melting on the table between us, and go to Baskin Robbins.

Because you can’t turn down a pregnant woman’s request for ice cream, my hubby started driving us to our local shop. Just as we were about to pass the turnoff for home, I said, “You know what? I don’t think I want it anymore. That gelato kind of ruined my craving for ice cream.”

He felt the same way, so we headed home, where I found, to my delight, two delicious looking (and tasting) apricots sitting in our fruit bowl. Needless to say, that was my dessert and it was more satisfying than ice cream ever could have been at that moment, post gross-gelato.

Intuitive Eating Takeaways:

- Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, and certainly stop when something doesn’t taste good. It’s all too easy to eat an entire meal (often past fullness) in the hopes that the next bite will be satisfying, when in actuality, it’s not.

- Give yourself permission to eat your favorite foods. Unconditionally. Because I knew I could go to Baskin Robbins anytime I desired, I was able to listen to my body and change course, trading in a chocolate-peanut butter cone for two apricots. (When my taste for ice cream returned a few days later, we did make our way to Baskin Robbins, and I ordered my cone)

Top 10 Signs I’m A New (and Very Sleep-Deprived) Mom

As I ring in a key milestone today – our little Emily turning 2 weeks old – I thought it appropriate to encapsulate a list of the top 10 signs that I am a brand new and very sleep-deprived mom. This list isn’t exactly about eating when you’re hungry or listening to your body (I’m doing the former, but not the latter, given that all my body is saying now is GET SOME SLEEP), but I find the following list worth posting anyway.

Most of these things (minus number 6, which brought my husband and I to the ground in laughter the first time it happened) have not been funny in the moment of impact, but in retrospect, I guess they are fairly comedic. Here goes….


1. Boob Lube. My entire life now revolves around two sources of food sitting atop my chest – and the care (read, expensive products) that goes into keeping my girls happy, healthy and producing milk for my munchkin, is beyond anything I’d ever imagined.

2. Dead Car Battery. Earlier this week, I discovered that my car battery was dead after gearing up for over an hour to get out of the house for one errand (to which my mom was going to drive me, as I can’t get behind the wheel yet). Reason for dead battery – light was left on (by sleep-deprived mommy) in the backseat.

3. Meals A-Flying. Last night, all I wanted was broiled chicken breasts, green beans and biscuits and I was determined that 13 days into motherhood, I could pull this off. I will commend myself for pulling it off (and the end result was surprisingly delicious), but that was after I literally dropped the chicken and the pyrex pan in which it was sitting, into the stove. The pan ended up face down on the open oven door, with the raw chicken breasts slammed against the oven window. Hubby was called in for the rescue, and the meal was saved.

4. SYTYCD….the 24-hour show. It now takes me at least 24 hours to get through one episode of my favorite show, So You Think You Can Dance.

5. DVD Pause Button Wearing Down. During the last two weeks, our DVD player has taken on a new function – teaching us what the heck we’re doing with various baby products. At the end of week 1, my hubby and I were on hands and knees with our munchkin atop one of her many swaddle blankets (see image above), watching the Luna Lullaby DVD explaining how to swaddle appropriately. We had a lovely orchestra of screaming adorable-munchkin to help set the mood, and we paused after each step was taught to practice it ourselves. One week later, Emily is sleeping soundly in a top-notch double-swaddle as mommy writes this post.

6. Projectile Poop. I’ve now officially caught in my hand both poop and barf. That alone qualifies for a good present for my first mother’s day next year.

7. White Noise = One of Life’s Biggest Joys. That’s right, the white noise maker we bought on Amazon during week 1 is definitely up there on my list of favorite products. It helps during the swaddling process to calm our munchkin…..which in turn helps keep mommy and daddy sane.

8. Diaper Diva. Yes, our little girl is a diaper diva. Her first 24 hours at home filled an entire Diaper Genie II with dirty diapers.

9. New Vocabulary. Most frequently used words include: swaddle, wet, swaddle, dirty, swaddle, hungry, swaddle, poop, swaddle. Get my drift?

10. Love Takes On New Meaning. It baffles my mind that I can love someone so much and so unconditionally, particularly given that this someone poops and barfs on me, keeps me up all night long and produces the above top 10 list. But I guess that’s how parenthood works. I’m in love with my little girl. And that’s that.

Cry When You’re Hungry

Hi there. Sorry I’ve been away for some time. I was off having a baby! That’s right. I haven’t blogged about being pregnant, though I might still write about the experience, as so many different food and body image issues arise during pregnancy.

Two of the most prominent for me were the following:

1. Food grossed me out. Food never tasted quite the same to me when I was cooking our little bun in my oven. People often asked me if I had any weird food cravings, and aside from milk and grapefruit juice, which I couldn’t get enough of during the first six months, the answer was mainly no. Way more bizarre to me was the long list of foods I normally love that I just could not stomach during pregnancy.

2. My body became a conversation topic – anywhere and everywhere I went. It’s a good thing I am in a healthy place with body image, because the moment I became pregnant, my body – it’s size, shape, growth or lack thereof, was on the table for discussion. Publicly. And now that I’m not pregnant anymore, it actually still seems to be. Quotes from the last 12 days include: “Wow, your belly really went down since yesterday!” “How long will it take for you to not look pregnant anymore?” Said over laughter, "You still look pregnant!" (hysterical, right?) And my personal favorite, “Why do you still look pregnant?” Hmmm, let me think for a moment -- because I had a baby 12 days ago? Just a guess.

Anyway, all sarcasm aside, I am now a very proud mommy to my little pumpkin. And though this blog is not about pregnancy or babies, it’s all a part of who I am now, so I thought I’d better make the announcement here.

Plus, I have a sense my little girl is going to have a lot to teach us all about intuitive eating and listening to our bodies. During the past 12 days I’ve already learned volumes about what intuitive eating looks like in babies.

It’s called CRYING. And lots of it until you give them that milk. Sometimes it takes my husband and me an hour to figure out that – though she just had a great feeding an hour prior– our little pumpkin is still hungry. And the moment mommy gives her some milk, she’s calm as can be.

So…..here’s to intuitive eating from birth. More regular blog posts (including some, perhaps, about pregnancy and about the intuitive eaters present in all of us from birth) to come when I have a little more sleep in my system.

To the right....pregnant Maggie, and Mommy Maggie with Baby.