Tune In Tomorrow Night (12/30/09)

Help spread the word. Rachel Simmons' "A Girl's Life" is airing on PBS stations across the country tomorrow night. I just learned of this film so I can't guarantee the quality of the content, but from the preview below, it looks like it will get the Maggie Miller stamp of approval. Set your Tivos and tune in. I think this will be a good hour spent in front of the tube. If your daughters (and sons) are old enough, I'd recommend watching it together as a family. For those of you in Los Angeles, it airs at 8 p.m. on KCET.

In the spirit of holiday giving

I thought I'd share this video I happened upon today. It has nothing to do with food, body image or eating. But it made me smile, and I hope it does the same for you. Enjoy!! And have a wonderful holiday, whatever you're celebrating.

Run (Don't Walk) to John O’Groats Encino!

So here it is: my first-ever restaurant review for “Eat When You’re Hungry” readers. I don’t know if I’ll do more reviews or not, but I am so excited about this new-to-the-valley restaurant that I can’t contain myself any longer. In fact, I’m so in love with said restaurant that I’ve put off writing this post because I didn’t think my words would do justice to the place.

Since I just can’t wait any longer, and without further adieu, here goes: my review of the fabulous, scrumptious, gem of a restaurant where the owner knows your name after your first meal there: John O’Groats.

If you’re familiar with John O’Groats, no doubt you’ve been to the one on Pico Boulevard in West L.A. It’s been a staple there for decades and grew out of the equally fabulous (so I hear) Bit O’ Scotland restaurant. It’s a family-owned eatery, and the owner Paul, who went to Cornell’s hotel management school, understands how to run a restaurant like few people can. The West L.A. location is known for it’s amazing food including everything from comfort food classics and sophisticated scrambles, to O’Groats creations like huevos rancheros on their famous biscuit dough. John O'Groats is also popular because of its equally addictive atmosphere (the owner really will get to know you and ask about details you forgot you’d shared with him the last time you were there). Some people go to the restaurant for the biscuits alone because they are just that good.

Anyway, when I found out that John O’Groats opened in Encino, I was cautiously thrilled. The West Los Angeles location has a personality that I figured couldn’t be recreated in a new location. Well, my caution was for naught because John O’Groats nailed it in the new spot. I almost think it’s better than the original restaurant. Let’s start with décor. It’s updated and sophisticated, yet the entire restaurant reminds you why you love the original one so much. They even incorporated the famous (at least “famous” to regular patrons) U-Shaped counter that is so loved in the West L.A. location, where you can watch all the action or simply sit back and read the paper over a good cup of coffee.

Plus, gift of all gifts – the restaurant is equipped with personal PURSE HOLDERS! That’s right: every table has a little hook under it to hang your purse. All restaurants in America should take note and follow suit. For that reason alone, you should go to John O'Groats Encino and personally thank the owner for thinking of this.

I should also note that by the time I’d been to the restaurant twice, the owner and the manager (two different people) already knew me and my entire family. Speaking of family, despite occasional trepidation at taking four-month-old Emily to meals in restaurants, I’ve always felt totally comfortable bringing her to John O’Groats in Encino. There is a changing table in the Ladies’ Room, plus two back rooms where you don’t feel abandoned by the restaurant staff, and yet feel okay if your baby decides to break out in sobs because she’s hungry (or wants to be held, or needs a diaper change, or just feels like exercising her lungs).

And the food is scrumptious! I tend to keep it simple with bacon, eggs and fresh-from-the-oven biscuits served with butter and jam. They also have the best steel-cut oatmeal in the city, in addition to sophisticated omelets, scrambles, burgers, salads, sandwiches, and yes, pot pie. (Note: The lunch and dinner menu is just as good as the breakfast one, so don't be misled by the pictures of biscuits and french toast on the restaurant's website)

If you want a treat this weekend, run (don’t walk) to John O’Groats in Encino. Introduce yourself to the owner, Paul. And let me know what you think!

Full of Thanks this Thanksgiving

I’ve been thinking a lot about what to focus on in my Thanksgiving blog post. Yesterday I queued up my first-ever restaurant review, but I’m saving it for after the holiday because I don’t want it to get lost in the shuffle of turkey recipes and holiday travel-mania. I’ve obviously thought a great deal about how this holiday comes with a big helping of anxiety for those suffering with food issues. But rather than write about the Thanksgiving meal itself (and all the food-related anxiety that can come along with it) as I did last year, I thought I’d take the focus off of the dinner plate and instead share with you what I’m grateful for this year.

And here it is: my list of the top 10 things I’m thanking my lucky stars for as I head up to beautiful Lake Tahoe for the holiday:

• My appetite (and taste buds). After 39 weeks of preggomania, I thought I’d lost both for good, but I didn’t, and they’re BACK!
• My family and friends, and their understanding of all the highs and lows I’ve been experiencing since little Miss Munchkin began her life inside of me at about this time last year.
• Laughter (and the discovery of things like this and this that have kept me laughing even when I couldn’t get Muffin Bunny to stop crying).
• A freezer door full of extra Munchkin Milk.
• The best husband in the world (and his first-class “shushing” skills, exhibited brilliantly during the first few weeks of Emily’s life).
• Looks from Little Miss Munchkin that make time stop, put a smile inside of me that I’ve yet to be able to describe in words….and make me think that maybe, just maybe, I could do this again in a few years.
• A roof over my head, and a job to return to in a week and a half, even though I’m terrified to cut the chord with Little Miss Munchkin during business hours (yes, I broke the rules and put two things in one bullet).
• The cutest belly in the world to look at every day (see above), which reminds me just why we should never have anything but love for our own bodies and bellies.
• This blog, which has helped me stay connected to my identity during a time that I have turned my life over to someone else.
• My readers, who continue to inspire me, reminding me daily why I wrote my book and continue to dig the meaning out of mundane life situations…and write about it here.

You’ll notice that not one item on this list has anything to do with the size of my pants or the calorie count of the beef stew I ate at my mother-in-law’s house last night.

If you’re already feeling weighed down by food anxiety, put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and write out your own list of what you’re grateful for. You might find that all of the life (and food) worries that consume your thoughts melt away into a beautiful pile of gratitude that reminds you just why this life of yours is so damn sweet.

Happy Thanksgiving. And thank you for helping to make mine one to be thankful for.

KCBS-TV Nailed It!

I have to give a huge shout-out to Lisa Sigell and KCBS-TV for their fabulous story on
orthorexia which just aired during the 11 p.m. newscast. This is such an important topic, and the station nailed it! Not only did the station get the facts right, but it picked up on all the nuances of what is a very complicated issue. Reporting at its best. So...have a look, let me know what you think, share the link with your friends, and continue to tune into KCBS-TV. I am very impressed with the station's top-quality stories. Thank you, Lisa Sigell and KCBS-TV!

A Warm Welcome

Given all the wonderful feedback I've received both online and off for my reaction to the WCBS-TV piece on orthorexia, I felt it inappropriate to switch focus abruptly and continue posting on my usual topics: food, intuitive eating, body image and even some reflections on my relatively recent entree into mommyhood. Inappropriate because I'm still processing the entire experience and trying to determine whether it's worth it for me to continue to put myself out there in front of the media and risk having my voice completely mis-represented, in the hopes of reaching a few more people with my message.

So while I continue to process the experience and respond to all of the wonderful feedback I've received from new and long-time readers alike, I thought I'd give a warm welcome to all my new visitors. To you I say, WELCOME! Sit back, pour a cup of coffee and dig into some of the thoughts I've poured out onto this site over the last few years. And then, come back soon!

I have lots of posts lined up about some pretty interesting topics, and I have one restaurant review that has been percolating in my head for weeks now -- I'm very excited about it, and just need to find a way to write it in such a way that does justice to how much I love this restaurant.

Anyway, thanks for all the positive feedback to my posts this week (if you've emailed me your reactions, feel free to post your comments next time -- others enjoy seeing all the feedback), welcome to all of you new visitors, and stay tuned -- lots of new posts to follow soon!

Additional Thoughts: Once an Eating Disorder, NOT ALWAYS an Eating Disorder

I'm sitting on my couch, laptop in lap, thinking about why I feel so unsettled that the WCBS-TV story labeled me "Orthorexic." And I'm realizing that the reason it doesn't sit well with me is because I shed that label many years ago. My entire philosophy and message in my book is that just because you once suffered from an eating disorder does not mean that you always will. I am living, breathing proof that you do not need to carry that label around with you for the rest of your life.

Perhaps the producer(s) at WCBS-TV think of an eating disorder as a disease that comes with a lifelong membership and/or label. But that's not true. My own experience has taught me that is not the case. My sole purpose in writing Eat When You're Hungry and spending nights and weekends authoring this blog and answering emails from people all over the world about intuitive eating, and recovery from lifelong diets, is to help people shed these labels they have given themselves.

I actually just got home from a wonderful dinner with my family to celebrate my mother's birthday. I enjoyed a delicious lamb ragu pasta followed by a fabulous chocolate bread pudding with peanut butter ice cream. I worked hard for many years to be able to get to a place where I could actually enjoy a meal like that guilt-free and data-free (un-learning the calorie and fat count of all of those foods), and yes -- I was successful, and you can be too!

Today I am Maggie Miller, mom, wife, mother, daughter, sister. I eat real food and I don't feel guilty about it. I eat real food and I don't calculate calories, fat or fiber. I'm about as "normal" an eater as you could possibly find now, with virtually no disordered thoughts about food left in my psyche. So to see that title "Maggie Miller, Orthorexic" on screen tonight really surprised me.

Please know, if you are currently suffering with an eating disorder, or simply a seemingly never-ending struggle with body image and/or food, that you can be free from it -- you DON'T have to carry that label with you forever (even if a TV station mistakenly places it next to your name).

All in the Details

After being interviewed more than a month ago, the story on orthorexia finally aired on WCBS-TV tonight. I must commend WCBS-TV for devoting air-time to such an important topic. However, I am both shaking my head and smiling while I type this: the title the station granted me was "Maggie Miller, Orthorexic." I might have preferred, "Maggie Miller, Author, Coach." I even would have taken "former orthorexic" or "recovered orthorexic."

Sidenote, I never refer to someone as an "orthorexic," "anorexic" or "bulimic." People are more than the issues with which they struggle, so I always refer to people by name and if relevant say that they are suffering with anorexia, bulimia or orthorexia...rather than define them as their eating disorder. But I digress.

That being said, I stand by my words quoted in the story. My life did open up once I finally recovered from disordered eating. I decided that life was more important than having the "perfect" diet. I set out to write "Eat When You're Hungry" with one goal: to help as many people as I possibly could to stop dieting and start living. I hope that despite the incorrect label "Orthorexic," without the word "former" in front of it, my story of recovery will come through and help others who are currently enmeshed in this labyrinth of eating choices.

I hope I remain a living, breathing example to people all over the world of someone who has successfully overcome years of restrictive eating. Remember, eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full and love yourself.

Tune in Tomorrow Night

Big news at Eat When You're Hungry! I was interviewed back in September by a producer at WCBS-TV in NY for a story she was working on about orthorexia. The story is set to air this Tuesday night during the 11 p.m. newscast. If you're not in New York, you can view the story on the WCBS-TV website. Let's try to get as many people as possible to watch this story on such an important topic. Spread the word, re-tweet my announcement on twitter, and tell your friends to tune in. If you're pleased with the story, email WCBS-TV to thank them for devoting airtime to such an important subject.

(*Disclaimer: I have not seen the story yet, so I'm hoping I'll be pleased with the reporting on orthorexia*)

I'll Bake If I Want To!

I’ve been having a craving for oat bran-raisin muffins for weeks, and finally had 10 minutes to put my little munchkin down and bake a dozen of them. Because I like to share recipes (and all other things) I love with you here on this blog, I considered snapping a picture of the treats and typing up the recipe. But then my very overtired brain started having a dialogue with itself, wondering if such a post would be a good idea.

“Oat bran is labeled by so many people as a ‘health food,’” I said to myself. “People will think that this anti-diet preacher is a fraud,” I thought. They’ll think that while I say I eat REAL FOODS including the ones with fat inside of them, that really I subsist on fat-free, fiber-filled oat bran, skim milk and dried fruit.

As I’m typing this on my computer (with a bowl of oatmeal by my side) I’m realizing what a ridiculous conversation this was that I had with myself. I blame baby brain.

Now the dialogue in my head is going something like this: “Seriously, Maggie? Because you actually enjoy (er, LOVE….and had a major craving for) something that others label as a ‘health food,’ you think your Eat When You’re Hungry message will be tarnished?”

“Well, yes,” I thought. That is exactly what I was thinking.

But then I came across this blog post talking about delicious foods that have been “hijacked by diet industry hype,” and it got me thinking – I love my oat bran muffins, darnit, and I’m sharing the recipe on my blog!

These muffins are simple and satisfying, and if we’re being honest on this blog (which we are), they really are a raisin delivery device for me. Plus, my hubby can’t stand raisins, so I don’t have to worry about them disappearing from the freezer before I’ve had a chance to get my fill of them.

Anyway, try out the recipe if you want to, but in the meantime, let me know – are there any foods you love that have been “hijacked” by the diet industry?

Oat Bran Raisin Muffins
(Courtesy of Mother’s Oat Bran – side of box recipe)
2 ¼ cups Oat Bran Hot Cereal, uncooked
¼ cup chopped nuts (I omit these and replace with raisins)
¼ cup raisins (I put in quite a bit more than this)
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup milk
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/3 cup honey or molasses
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Line 12 medium muffin cups with paper baking cups or spray bottoms only with no-stick cooking spray. Combine dry ingredients; mix well. Add combined milk, eggs, honey and oil; mix just until dry ingredients are moistened. Fill prepared muffin cups ¾ full. Bake 15 to 17 minutes or until golden brown.
1 Dozen

Guest Post: How to Raise an Intuitive Eater

By Maryann Tomovich Jacobsen, MS, RD

Maryann Tomovich Jacobsen is a registered dietitian, mother of two and creator of www.RaiseHealthyEaters.com, a blog dedicated to providing parents with the most credible nutrition information. You can follow her updates on twitter.

Even though I was born an intuitive eater, I had to work at becoming one as an adult. I wish I could get back the countless hours I spent obsessing about food and weight. And while I’m grateful that I found a way out, I’m determined to spare my children of the experience.

When I first started on this journey I wanted to know the answer to one question: what makes someone eat the way they do? Why do some people listen to their hunger and satiety cues and others ignore them?

I’ve learned that parental feeding strategies have a big impact on a child’s future relationship with food. Because most food learning occurs the first 5 years of life, parents are a child’s most important “food” teacher.

On my blog, www.RaiseHealthyEaters.com, I write about three crucial factors for raising children to eat intuitively. To understand why each is so important, let’s go over each one:

1) How to feed: The most important way to help children create a healthy relationship with food is to work on how you feed them. Remember, children are born with the natural ability to regulate food intake. So focus on feeding strategies that protect their in-born satiety and fullness cues.

Ellyn Satter, dietitian, feeding expert and author of several books, created the Division of Responsibility of feeding. Basically parents decide the “when,” “what,” and “where” of feeding and children decide the “whether” and “how much” of eating. Children know how much food they need – and when parents let them decide how much to eat they learn to listen to their bodies. But if kids are controlled at mealtime, they’ll learn to eat for external reasons instead. Studies show children eat less when pressured and more when food is restricted.

2) What to feed: A parent’s main responsibility in feeding is deciding what their child will eat. Nutrition is important for growing children. For more on nutrition needs at certain ages, see How to Maximize Nutrition at Every Stage.

The goal is to expose your child to a variety of foods including fruits, vegetables, whole and refined grains, dairy, meats, beans, nuts, fats and sweets. Children under 18 months of age don’t have much room for empty calorie foods like ice cream and cookies, but as they get closer to 2 these food can be part of their balanced diet. Studies show that when offered a variety of foods, children will get the nutrition they need.

Why is a dietitian recommending you serve sweet foods? Because studies show that restricting access to such foods causes children to eat more in the absence of hunger. But you also don’t want to offer sweet foods at every meal and snack. Instead, offer them every so often at a regular snack time. But that’s not all – you’ll need to make sure your child can have as much of it as they want.

In her books, Ellyn Satter discusses this idea of scarcity of eating. When children feel they can’t get enough food, especially highly palatable foods like sweets, they will want them even more. That means restricting them to only one cookie when they really want two or three, makes them fixate on these foods more. The bottom line is kids need to learn how to eat all types of foods.

3. Be a positive role model: You can master the how of feeding and provide balanced meals but if you still battle food your child will take notice. I truly believe becoming a parent makes you a better person. The love a mom and dad have for their child is an incredible force that can be channeled into overcoming life-long challenges.

So if don’t have a healthy relationship with food, take steps to work on it. If you’ve been reading Maggie’s blog, you’re already on your way. It starts with listening to you hunger and satiety cues, making feeding yourself a priority (along with your children) and reading some good books including Maggie’s story and Intuitive Eating.

Raising an intuitive eater is not an easy task in today’s world. But if you can focus on the three crucial elements – how to feed, what to feed and being a positive role model – you’ll have it mastered in no time.

Do You Think I'm Fat?

As a mother of a three-month old baby girl, I guess tears well up pretty easily, but wow. I think this is pretty powerful -- for anyone.

Fat Talk Free Week

It's that time of year again -- Fat Talk Free Week . Watch this video, visit the site, get involved.

Do You Ever Eat Fast Food?

A few weeks ago, a producer at WCBS-TV in New York contacted me to discuss a story she was working on about orthorexia. At the conclusion of what turned out to be a two-hour whirlwind of camera tests, lighting adjustments and a wonderful interview about a subject near and dear to my heart, the producer asked me a telling question.

“I know you probably eat very healthfully most of the time, but do you ever, you know, stop at a fast food restaurant on the turnpike,” she asked? “And if you do, do you feel guilty about it?”

Her question made me smile because it reminded me that despite my standing on a soapbox at every opportunity I find to preach “Stop Dieting!” “Stop Labeling Foods as Good or Bad!” people still assume I eat an “extremely healthy diet,” whatever that means to each person who makes the assumption.

My answer to the producer’s question was a resounding, “YES!”…and “NO!”

“Yes, I eat fast food occasionally, and NO I don’t feel guilty about it,” I told her passionately. “My husband and I – and now our baby – drive up to Lake Tahoe fairly regularly and we always stop at In ‘N Out, Wendy’s or whatever other fast food restaurant is available when hunger strikes.

To be clear, I care about health and wellbeing. I’m a trained wellness coach, after all, and as I’ve written in my book, I have genetically high cholesterol (when I went vegan for six months many years ago in an attempt to bring it down, my cholesterol actually went up), that I must monitor and ultimately treat.

Having a baby has also made me care about my health more than I have at any other time in my life because I want to be there every step of the way for my girl – on the sidelines at soccer games, from the front row of piano recitals and on the sofa at home when tears pour out of a broken heart.

However, I believe very strongly that emotional, spiritual and psychological health are just as important as physical health. You can have the healthiest diet in the world and be quite unhealthy (case in point: orthorexia). To the contrary, we’ve all watched interviews with enthusiastic 103-year-olds who gloat that one of their secrets to living so long was enjoying a bowl of ice cream every day.

Given my focus on eating real food in lieu of “food products” filled with chemicals, I can understand the assumption that I eat quite healthfully much of the time, and yes, I guess that’s actually true. But I also eat foods that have no (or very little) nutritional value whatsoever. I enjoy the tastes that dance around my mouth as I eat these foods (I’m still talking about the peanut-butter cookie dough ice cream I discovered at Ben & Jerry’s over a month ago). Sometimes these foods make my body feel good, and sometimes they don’t.

Saturday, for instance, on vacation in Palm Desert, I started the day with a big bowl of oatmeal and coffee, which I enjoyed thoroughly. At lunch I ordered a chicken sandwich, French fries and a salad from the poolside cafe. The food at lunch was marginal, but I was hungry, so I ate quite a bit of the salad (it was the best part of the meal) and all of the chicken. I skipped the bun because I didn’t like it at all, and that left room for me to eat all of my French fries, which I did. Feeling unsatisfied after this meal, I changed the flavor in my mouth by chewing a sugary piece of watermelon-flavored gum a friend of mine offered me back at the pool.

Did I enjoy my lunch? No, not particularly. Did I enjoy the company of my family as I ate it? Absolutely. Did I feel sad that I didn’t have a sybaritic meal? Yes, a little bit. Did I feel guilty about the French fries? Not in the least. Was I looking forward to preparing homemade lunches when I returned from vacation? Yes, though I knew I’d miss the desert air I enjoyed so much over the weekend.

Life is about choices, and I chose many years ago to let go of the guilt I used to feel about food. I never thought that would be possible so many years ago when I struggled through orthorexic behaviors, and it took many years to fully let it go. But I can honestly tell you now that my guilt about food is gone.

When I eat ice cream I enjoy every bite, without a dollop of guilt on top.

I tell you this both as a way to address the assumption about my “healthy eating” and to celebrate full recovery from disordered eating. I am living, breathing proof that the saying “once an eating disorder always an eating disorder” is not true. You can heal from encaging food thoughts and behaviors.

Keep your eyes open for the WCBS-TV story on orthorexia, and write to the station to thank them for devoting airtime to such an important subject matter. I’ll be the first to let you know when it airs.

Favorite Product of the Week: POM Wonderful

I recently started a Favorite Product of the Week series, with the intention of sharing information about (real) food products I love.

I guess the folks at POM Wonderful have been reading these posts, as they recently sent me some of their juice. I have to say, with the exception of my pregnancy-induced cravings for grapefruit juice and my post-partum cravings for cranberry juice, I’m not usually much of a juice drinker.

My hubby, on the other hand, is. His favorites are orange juice with lots of pulp, and for about the last year or so, POM Wonderful. When POM contacted me, I asked my husband what made him start drinking the juice. “I wanted to start drinking something full of antioxidants,” he said. Because the juice is so strong, he mixes about one part juice to three parts water, pours it over ice and drinks a large glass of it almost every day.

Given Jeremy’s positive reaction to the juice, when POM Wonderful contacted me with free product I gave it a whirl. And you know what? It’s pretty tasty juice. I’ve had a little shot-glass full of the stuff every morning for a few days now, and it’s a nice way to start my day. I don’t know that I’ll continue drinking it every day like Jeremy does, as it’s pretty strong, and I actually don’t like the watered down version quite as much. But for now, I’m enjoying the juice.

As you know, I don’t get too caught up in health claims of any particular food (or drink). But POM Wonderful does appear to be made from real pomegranates, it’s tasty, and now my hubby and I can toast each other’s good health each morning with our glass of magenta juice.

If you’re looking to give your taste buds a new flavor to explore (the taste is quite distinctive), give it a try. I think you can buy the juice in most supermarkets.

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.

Buttermilk Biscuits, Anyone?

In honor of the weekend, which is almost here, I thought I’d post the recipe for my favorite homemade buttermilk biscuits. I discovered this recipe sandwiched between 300+ pages of a wonderful book called The French Don’t Diet Plan. Please don’t be scared off by the word “plan” in the title. I realize that word can suggest this book is actually a “diet plan,” even if it’s being marketed as a “don’t diet plan.”

While I don’t recommend this book to the novice intuitive eater, I do recommend it to people who have truly made peace with food, and are looking to explore their palates even further. It offers a nice glimpse into the “French paradox,” and I find it a refreshing reminder of the importance of finding pleasure in eating. I also enjoy re-reading it after any particularly annoying experience of hearing someone tell me something is “fattening” or “caloric” or you-name-it.

Anyway, like the book or not (I really enjoyed the read, and many subsequent re-reads), these biscuits are sure to make any morning a good one. If you have time this weekend, I highly recommend you preheat your oven to 475 and enjoy the aroma that fills your home as these wonderful biscuits puff up in the oven.

“Somebody’s Buttermilk Biscuits”
Courtesy of The French Don’t Diet Plan

You’ll Need

2 cups all-purpose flour
Pinch of baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 ¼ cups buttermilk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

In a Large Mixing Bowl

Mix the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt, and baking powder). Then mix the wet ingredients (oil and buttermilk) into the dry ingredients. You can either stir them around with a wooden spoon, use a food processor, or knead it with your hands until the dough is nice and smooth. If your hands get a bit sticky from the wet dough, just dust a bit of flour on them. (NOTE: This dough is very wet! I usually add a tiny bit more flour to make it easier to handle. But don’t worry if the dough seems too wet. It probably isn’t).

Preheat the over to 475 degrees.

On a Cutting Board

Sprinkle with flour and set the dough on it. Knead it a few times to increase the fluffiness you can expect from the biscuits when they come out of the oven. The dough picks up flour from the board; make sure it takes on just enough to be soft but not sticky.

Form the dough into a round that’s about ½-inch thick. Use the open end of a small glass to cut the biscuits.

Dab the glass in flour periodically or it’ll get sticky from the wet flour on the inside of the dough. The biscuits don’t have to be perfectly round, and you can mold them into any shape you want. Put them in a 9-inch baking pan or large iron skillet so they’re snug one next to the other. Once they are all packed in, cut a sliver of butter to place over the top of each.

Bake for about 14 minutes (my oven runs “cool,” so they take a bit longer for me). When you smell them and the tops are golden, take them out and enjoy.

Favorite Product of the Week: Bonne Maman Strawberry Preserves

I like to eat real food, and I like to make it myself when I can. But I’m also a full-time working woman writing a blog during my “free time,” and still trying to be the best wife, daughter, sister and friend that I can be. As you can imagine, this leaves little time for cooking. So when I find a product that tastes like I (or better yet, my mom) made it, and the ingredients are easily pronounceable and appear to be things I could purchase myself in the grocery store, I get very excited.

That happened this week, so I have to share it with you here.

My favorite product of the week is Bonne Maman Strawberry Preserves. Not surprisingly, this is a product of France. It comes in an adorable jar that looks like your grandmother jarred it herself. The ingredients are what you’d expect to find in strawberry preserves and it tastes like it was made fresh from the strawberry farm and jarred just for you!

Before the weekend, I will try to post one of my favorite recipes that makes a scrumptious bed for these preserves.

Pork Cutlets with Mustard Sauce

“Maggie, what do you eat on a daily basis,” people often ask me when they first learn about Eat When Your’e Hungry. “Give me some of your real food recipes.” Well, I’m just as busy as the next person in this 24-hour/day nonstop working world, but when I do find the time to cook a meal worth sharing, I guess I really should start posting the recipes here. These are tried and true Maggie favorites: easy and delicious, and always made with real food (rather than food-like-substances).

Here goes. This is a recipe we made last week and one that has become almost a weekly staple. It’s a cinch to make and tastes like a meal you’d eat at a fancy restaurant. As you can see from the picture, we often make it with roasted potatoes and either broccoli or asparagus. Bonus points for you if you see the heart-shaped potato on my hubby’s plate.

Try this recipe when you feel like putting on your chef’s hat. You’ll be so impressed with yourself after making this dish, you may even feel inspired to buy the entire cookbook.

Pork Cutlets with Mustard Sauce
Courtesty of Food Made Fast: Weeknight (Williams-Sonoma)

Boneless center-cut pork loin chops, 4, each about 6 oz
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Mustard seeds, 1 tablespoon
Unsalted butter, 3 tablespoons
Shallots, 2, minced (chopped frozen onions are also A-OK)
Dry white wine, 1/3 cup
Chicken broth, 1/3 cup
Heavy (double) cream, 1/3 cup
Honey Dijon mustard, 2 tablespoons

1. Cook the pork

Season the pork chops with salt, pepper, and the mustard seeds, patting them firmly into the meat. In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, melt the butter. Working in batches if necessary, add the pork chops and cook, turning once, until golden on the outside and barely pink in the center, about 8 minutes total. Transfer to a plate.

2. Make the sauce

Add the shallots to the drippings in the pan, reduce the heat to medium, and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the wine and broth, stir, and cook, scraping up the browned bits on the pan bottom, for about 1 minute. Add the cream and mustard and cook, stirring, until smooth and bubbly, about 1 minute. Return the pork and any juices from the plate to the pan. Simmer until the pork is heated through, about 1 minute. Season to taste with salt and pepper

Eat When You're Hungry Now At Amazon

After many requests from friends and strangers alike for hard copies of Eat When You're Hungry, I'm happy to report that the book is now available on Amazon! What's most gratifying about seeing my book on the "shelf" at Amazon is that it now has the potential to reach an even broader audience. When I first put fingers to keyboard and set out on this Eat When You're Hungry journey, my goal was simple -- to help as many people as I possibly could to stop dieting and start living. That remains my goal today, and thanks to the wonder of the Internet, I'm reaching more people every day.

Go check out my hard copy book, share the link with friends and family, and if/once you've read the book, consider writing a review.

Happy eating (and reading)!

Food, Inc.

Last night I saw a film that I recommend you see ASAP – before it’s out of theaters. It’s called Food, Inc. If it’s not in a theater near you, put it on your Blockbuster or Netflix list for when it comes out on DVD. And in the meantime, you can learn more about the film and the issues it explores here.

I can’t believe it, but I hadn’t heard of this film before last night, when my husband and I were looking for a movie to see. We were planning to see a fun summer flick, but when I saw the title “Food, Inc.” our plans changed. Rotten tomatoes gave it at 96 percent on its tomatometer, so that should speak for itself.

And don’t worry – this isn’t a holier-than-thou film professing the “perfect” diet or suggesting anything negative about meat-eaters (you know I wouldn’t support anything like that). It’s a holistic look at the food industry, food safety issues and a number of larger policy and socioeconomic issues.

Let me know if you see it, and tell me what you think!

What I Learned from a Bag of Pretzels

As you might have guessed from the picture, this is a post about peanut butter pretzels. Yes, I’m digging deep to keep this blog updated and offer you some sane, non-diet, intuitive eating insight at least on a weekly basis. Which leads me to write today’s post about, yes, peanut butter pretzels.

I used to salivate just looking at these puffed pretzels sprinkled with salt and filled with one of my favorite foods – peanut butter. I don’t buy the pretzels all that often because I’m not a big salty-snack snacker. I tend to gravitate towards sweet things – fruit, biscotti, or a buttery Madeleine cookie. But, my tastes change on occasion and sometimes I want salty.

That was certainly the case during the peanut butter scare a number of months ago, when all I seemed to want was salty peanut butter filled pretzels from Trader Joe’s. Not being able to eat them (because of the PB scare) made them even more enticing to me, so once I felt they were safe I bought a bag. Not long after I dipped my hand into the bag of what some would call a “very dangerous” snack (more on that later), I got very sick of the pretzels and haven’t been able to enjoy them since.

How did I tire of such a delightful snack so quickly? Here’s how it happened. It was Sunday afternoon, and a few hours after a delicious breakfast with Jeremy, I left home to meet my mom and sister for a bit of shopping. Given that I’d had a late breakfast, I wasn’t hungry for lunch, but I knew if I didn’t eat anything until dinner I’d be famished and cranky, possibly with a headache. So I packed a large Ziploc bag full of the pretzels, and put it in my purse along with a string cheese in case I got hungry on the road. Which I did.

As you can imagine, all I had to eat was my string cheese and PB pretzels. I enjoyed probably about the first 20 or so pretzels, but mid-way through the bag, I noticed that I was forcing myself to eat them, simply to alleviate growing hunger pangs.

I discovered on that afternoon that, delicious as they are, pretzels of any kind do not a meal make.

Fast forward about a month or so. I was at work late one night last week, fully immersed in a research project. I was growing very hungry for dinner, but I didn’t want to leave the office because I was not sure if I’d be able to re-enter the zone of productivity I was in at that moment, hunger pangs and all. The only snack I had with me was, you guessed it – that same bag of peanut butter pretzels I’d longed for during the PB scare…..yes, that one bag of pretzels had been sitting on my desk at work for weeks, untouched after opening it to get my through my afternoon shopping excursion with Mom and Big Sis.

Once again, I forced myself to eat the pretzels simply to ward off a headache and growing hunger pangs. I guess they sort of did the trick, but I didn’t enjoy one of them, and they kind of ruined my late dinner once I finally got home. As I sat at my computer, plowing through research, I begrudgingly ate one pretzel at a time, not enjoying the experience one bit.

When I got home from work that night – the remaining PB pretzels in hand – Jeremy looked at them and his eyes grew large, filled with that warm-fuzzy look you get when thinking about your mom’s jelly toast that no one made quite as well as she did (or whatever food it is that “does” it for you).

Just days later, when my parents were at our place to help us move furniture, we were literally walking out the door to dinner, and my mom spotted the pretzels. “Can I have just a few?” she asked with the look of a child caught awake way past her bedtime. “Of course!” I said, “Help yourself.” She and Jeremy then commiserated about how you can’t ever eat just one of those pretzels. “They’re addictive, and very dangerous,” Jeremy said. “I can’t buy them or I’ll eat them all in one sitting,” said my mom. “I know! I asked Maggie to keep them out of the house or I’d eat the entire bag.”

Well, I’ve got news for my hubbie, my mom….and you. The pretzels lose their allure (or “danger”) when you give yourself unconditional permission to eat them. Without judgement. Or shame. Or a slap on the wrist. But be careful – if you’re like me and make your previously mouth watering snack into a makeshift meal on a shopping spree, you may never want to eat it again.

Intuitive Eating -- For Real

Two Sunday mornings ago, all I wanted for breakfast was berries – strawberries, blackberries and blueberries, ideally with yogurt and granola, and a buttery croissant on the side.

We were all out of fruit at home, and our favorite dive diner has delicious eggs, but yogurt parfait isn’t on the menu. As we laid in bed thinking of where to go, we decided on Coral Tree Café. There’s one not too far from our place, and actually we’d never been there together for breakfast.

On our way there, windows open, the air so perfect it hugged every finger floating out the window, we noticed that Cheesecake Factory was serving breakfast! This caught our attention because CF has a big patio and the day was just so yummy that we wanted to take it all in by eating outside. So right then and there our journey to Coral Tree derailed.

Big mistake. Good weather aside, we should have stuck to our original plan. Sorry, Cheesecake Factory, we've enjoyed many delicious dinners at your restaurants, but your breakfast was awful. I’m not sure how you can make eggs so tasteless, and when I asked if I could get strawberries instead of bacon with my eggs, the waitress said, “We don’t have any fruit.” Seriously? Seriously. No fruit for Sunday brunch. I could write a very long post about how disgusting our breakfast was, but I’ll spare you. All I’ll say is that sitting on the patio in beautiful southern California weather didn’t make up for the pathetic breakfast we begrudgingly made our way through.

I share this story with you because I want you to know that every meal isn’t going to be perfect. Some meals may be so dissatisfying that you stop eating them with hunger pangs still in your belly. Other meals will be so disappointing that you’ll want to stop mid-way through, but you won’t because you’re hungry and there’s food in front of you, and you have to get to Costco, get the kids fed and bathed, finish a PPT and put the next meal on the table. So you eat it.

And if you’re like me two weekends ago, it may very well ruin your entire morning. In fact, my mood didn’t turn around until about 3 in the afternoon…….when I got home from the store with a palette of strawberries, a container of blackberries, my favorite yogurt and a new box of granola. Guess what I ate for breakfast every day last week?

So, just remember that even a “seasoned” intuitive eater like myself sometimes has gross food. And sometimes it even ruins my day. But, it’s all a part of this journey. Every meal is a learning experience. You’ll notice that my disappointing meal at CF did not lead me into a binge-fest (though it did lead to a week’s worth of yogurt parfaits for breakfast, and I enjoyed every bite!).

One other little nugget for all those nay-sayers out there who say, “Intuitive eating? Doesn’t that mean you can eat anything you want? All I’d ever eat is donuts and cheeseburgers!” Guess what, sometimes all you’ll want is fresh fruit.

Intuitive Eating Audio: Must Listen!

If you're looking for yet another tool to help you break free from the diet mentality, I strongly urge you to buy the recently-released Intuitive Eating audio CDs. If you've already read Intuitive Eating in print, don't think this is the same thing. It's not. I think it's best used as a companion to the book.

As I said in my review of the CDs on amazon, having worked with people struggling to break free from the diet mentality (and having done so myself many years ago), I can honestly say this CD-set is a must-have! I recommend Intuitive Eating (print edition) to people regularly and now I recommend this as well. Elyse and Evelyn are on the top of their game in these CDs. They both share so much wisdom, passion and clarity about food and body image -- you can't help but to feel at peace -- and energized -- just listening to the CDs. Their philosophy just makes so much sense, and it works.

If you're looking to break free from the diet mentality, and make peace with food and with yourself, listen to this CD set and practice the exercises. You won't be disappointed.

Open Letter to Oprah

Dear Oprah,

I Tivo your show every day and reference it almost as often in my daily life. I think you are truly an inspiration, though I know that sounds cliché. In fact, it is because of my great respect for you, that I’ve hesitated writing this open letter to you for some time. However, after today’s show, “Why Kirstie Alley Fell Off the Wagon,” I must put my fingers to the keyboard and get out my thoughts.

You said today, as you have said many times this year, that you can’t believe you’re still talking about weight. With all due respect, then stop talking about weight!

If you can truly stop talking about weight, you will find that your issues with weight will melt away (often along with the weight itself). But you can’t focus on that last part – the weight. You just can’t. And unfortunately, though I know you know “it’s not about the weight,” you’re still focusing on it during your shows [insert flashy teaser of “World’s Best Dieter” who has gained and lost 3,000 pounds over his lifetime].

Despite so many weight-loss/gain shows, I know you get – profoundly – that "it" is not about food, weight or diets. I know you do. And your wisdom on that subject snuck out, even during today’s show that was purely about weight loss and gain.

You wisely asked Kirstie if the bikini has to be the goal. You reminded Kirstie that it’s not about comparing yourself to someone else’s body (thank you).

Oprah, you get that this is a journey about health, and you get that health means emotional, spiritual and physical health. You understand better than many other people that “it” is not about weight or food.

But sadly, your show continues to be about weight and food. We’ve seen close-ups of your meal plan(s), we’ve listened to Dr. Oz review caloric information with vulnerable kids who want to lose weight, we’ve looked through the pages of “Eat This, Not That” and been reminded too many times that “It’s not about the food, so choose the good foods.” That just doesn’t work.

Stick with your guns. This is NOT about food. There are much more important issues that should pave the road of this journey for every single person on it. Issues of worth and love, emotional hunger, joy, sadness, fear. Feelings. True, real-life, don’t-always-feel-good feelings. That’s what this journey is about. It’s not about the cheesecake (eat it if you love it). And it’s not about organic strawberries (eat them if you love them – but do so from a place of pleasure rather than from a place of deprivation or self-righteousness).

Oprah, if you truly are committed to changing the conversation about weight, I urge you to stop focusing your show on weight. Stop producing flashy teasers of weight loss and weight gain stories. You have offered so, so much to this world, and I’d love to see you help our nation change the conversation around diets (which are proven to result in weight gain in the long term) and weight.

If you’re looking for an alternative to attention-grabbing weight-loss (gain) stories, please, please, please consider devoting an entire hour-long show to Intuitive Eating. And start with the co-authors of the book. There is so much wisdom between the pages of that book and in the minds of the nutritionists who created this non-diet approach that is helping – even saving lives of – people all over the world.

With an overflowing sense of respect,

Maggie

When Healthy Eating Becomes Unhealthy

I have to give a shout-out to New York Times reporter Abby Ellin for writing What's Eating Our Kids? Fears About 'Bad' Foods. This is such an important subject and one that Abby has tackled well for The New York Times. I attended an Eating Disorders Bootcamp workshop conducted by nutritionist Jessica Setnick, who is wisely quoted at the end of the article, discussing just how damaging it can be for parents to label foods as "good" or "bad," or worse, to disallow certain foods from their children's diets because they apparently carry the label, "bad."

And while I am a huge fan of Nina Planck's book Real Food, and recommend it to people often (though not unless they already have made peace with food), I respectfully disagree with her assertion, "that it’s a 'total cop out' to lay blame on schools and parents for children’s eating disorders [because] the eating disorder comes out of a disordered psyche." That may be very well and true that an eating disorder is part of a larger pyschiatric issue, but the fact remains that there are people all over the world suffering daily from disordered eating that is not viewed as "severe enough" to be labeled "anorexic," "bulimic" or even "orthorexic." For those people to turn on the television, open a magazine, walk into gym class or just sit across the breakfast table from mom or dad and hear foods being described as "good" and "bad," I'm sorry. That affects people, and in my opinion it does so in an extraordinarily unhealthy way.

Sure, some people can hear about "good foods" and "bad foods" and let it slide out of their mental cavity without internalizing one word of it. But most people can't. I can't tell you how many people's obsessions with "healthy eating" that turned very UNhealthy, started when they moved into a community (such as Los Angeles) that was saturated with negative talk around "bad" foods. And that's why we have such an obsession in this country with our foods being functional and healthy. YES, of course I'm in support of healthy eating, and yes, I just savored a delicious bowl of homemade oatmeal with sliced bananas and a glass of milk. And yes, I also savored a delicious chocolate fudge brownie yesterday afternoon at work. But folks, it's true -- healthy eating can turn into a very unhealthy obsession. It's the entire reason I wrote Eat When You're Hungry: to help the kids Abby writes about in her article, and the adults they will become who will want to make peace with food, but won't know how without help.

There's not much more I can say on this topic without writing another book. In the meantime, thank you Abby Ellin for your great article in The New York Times. And thanks to my friend Linzey, for bringing it to my attention during what was a very busy week!

What do you think about this article? I'd love to hear your comments.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays, and it was even before I met my husband. After all, it's a day filled with my favorite color, flowers, hearts and chocolate. What's not to like? Actually, many years ago, it was an annual tradition for my sister, one of our mutual friends and me to make Valentine's Day cookies together. That friend moved away, so we've had to start new traditions. And boy did I find a good one this year!

If you're ever looking for a fun treat to give someone.....for Valentine's Day, for a birthday, graduation or just because, I highly recommend that you check out Good Fortunes. They make all sorts of customized cookies, but their specialty is the giant fortune cookie. You choose the coating (dark chocolate or white chocolate) and you write the message inside the giant cookie! I had so much fun with this, I can't wait to give one to someone else for a birthday, congratulations or just because. I ordered mine a bit early, so it came two days before Valentine's Day, and my husband was so surprised and delighted, that he called me at work and sang "You Are My Sunshine" over the phone. That was almost better than the fun of ordering the cookie.

He waited to crack open the cookie until I got home, and I have to say, the cookie lived up to all expectations. I took a few photos to give you a sense of it.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

An Unseasonal Treat

I have a treat I'd like to tell you about, but it is completely unseasonal, particularly for those of you living in places where the weather actually reflects winter right now. But I'm sharing it with you anyway. Iced pomegranate green tea.

I discovered this over the summer at a friend's house during a girls get-together, and to be honest, I almost didn't try it because I generally am repulsed by iced tea (unless it's mixed with lemonade in an Arnold Palmer). I love hot tea, but I've never liked it on ice, despite it looking so refreshing and appearing to be such a satisfying beverage. To be polite (and adventurous), I timidly poured myself about a quarter of a glass and to my utter delight and surprise, I loved it.

First, let's start with the color -- it's a beautiful shade of redish pink. The color alone will liven up any festivity. And then there's the taste. It's absolutely delightful. So light, refreshing and yes, smile-inducing. Definitely more exciting than water, yet it doesn't leave behind a sugary aftertaste in your mouth like a juice or lemonade would.

Recently, I've been making a pot of it at home on Sunday, and bringing it with me to work during the week. At about 3 or 4 in the afternoon when I'm craving a pick-me-up, this stuff does the trick. It makes me feel like I'm out at a picnic in the middle of New Hampshire (and I don't even get to drink it out of an adorable glass like I do at home).

Here's the kind I drink. Try it out and drink in good health.