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.