Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

A heads up that this will be my final post for awhile as I’m going on maternity leave. Wish me luck! If you’d like to follow along on Instagram you can do so at @daryarose.

Next week’s Mindful Meal Challenge will start again on Monday. Sign up now to join us!

This week it’s OK to let your kids trick-or-treat, gut fungi are a thing, and how to reclaim your mornings.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

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“You have to rig the game so you can win, set yourself the lowest minimal bar to do something. That was really the key to my success.” – Sarah

It happens to the best of us. You get a little older, your life changes, you start moving less, maybe have a kid or two, and before you know it the extra pounds have slowly crept on. And when you finally realize something needs to be done about it you find you can’t lose it as easily as you used to.

This can be a crucial moment in a person’s life. Do I hop on a diet and get back to my target weight right away or do I look at my lifestyle and start thinking long-term? The latter can seem like a daunting task and you may lack confidence in your ability to do it. But it is the only way to achieve lasting success.

This insight was the key to Sarah’s success. Having been raised on whole foods she found Summer Tomato and immediately identified with the philosophy of using Real Food to lose weight. She knew dieting was not the answer.

Exercise was a different story. Sarah knew that developing a consistent workout routine would be crucial for her success, but that it would also be her most challenging obstacle to overcome.

In this episode Sarah explains the very small yet critical mindset shift she made that enabled her to not only build an exercise routine, but to look forward to it every day.

If you hate exercise and have been trying to develop a routine for years without success I invite you to try Sarah’s approach. It’s a game changer.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Related links:

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan

Foodist: Using Real Food and Real Science to Lose Weight Without Dieting by Darya Rose, Ph.D

You Never Regret A Workout

Home Court Habits: The Secret to Effortless Weight Control

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

MyFitnessPal

Mindful Meal Challenge

Zero – fasting tracker app from Kevin Rose

No, You Don’t Deserve That Indulgence Today

Listen:

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Listen on Soundcloud

If you’d like to be a guest on the show, please fill out the form here and tell us your story.

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

Next week’s Mindful Meal Challenge will start again on Monday. Sign up now to join us!

This week how to be perpetually healthy, questioning the sustainability of online meat, and what it means to be a supertaster.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Read the rest of this story »

When Kevin and I first decided to start a family I thought getting pregnant would be pretty easy. Even though I’m 37, I know I’m super healthy and that my mother and her four sisters all had children in their late 30s without issue.

I figured that despite my chronological age, biology would still clock me in under 30 (later fertility testing actually showed this to be true).

Still, after several months of trying it didn’t happen and I started to become concerned. Had we waited too long?

At that point we started to get more serious. First I made my husband adjust his twice weekly sauna sessions (fun fact: it can take 3-6 months for sperm counts to recover after intense heat exposure). He didn’t want to give up the practice completely, so he would bring Ziplock bags of ice to rest his junk on while in the heat.

I also started using at home ovulation test strips and learned that the app I had been using to track my cycle was off by nearly a week in predicting ovulation. Oops.

When neither of these fixes resulted in pregnancy by the end of a full year of trying we decided it was time to run some tests to see if something was biologically dysfunctional. We both went through the usual battery of fertility tests and learned what we thought we already knew, which is that both of us are really healthy (not just “for our age”) and capable of conceiving.

This was great news, but also disheartening. If nothing is wrong, then why isn’t it working?

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Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

Next week’s Mindful Meal Challenge will start again on Monday. Sign up now to join us!

This week mice trained to binge on full stomach, the problem with HIIT, and black tea is a superfood too.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Read the rest of this story »

Getting inspired is easy. A great article, book, or documentary can be incredibly powerful in sparking a desire for a new direction in your life. But no matter how desperately you want to change, internalizing a new philosophy enough to permanently modify your behavior can feel impossible.

This is how Anne used to feel when she would read Summer Tomato. After several years of striving to have the “perfect” diet that eventually destroyed her relationship with food, she was ready to embrace joy in eating and prioritize her own happiness (in addition to health).

But she would read articles like How to Eat Half a Donut and think that while it sounded amazing, there was no way she could ever do something like that. Clearly I (Darya) was fooling myself into using willpower and not thinking it’s really willpower, or was a different breed of human altogether. Normal people don’t eat half a donut.

Anne had her doubts she was capable of truly leaving her old habits behind, but she kept trying because she knew she couldn’t go back to her former restrictive mindset.

Today she’s called in to proudly share her success story of how she was finally able to build up a set of positive experiences that gave her the confidence and ability to choose foods based on her needs and values, rather than her fears and impulses. She no longer believes that willpower and restriction are necessary for her to control her own behavior, and can easily walk away from an unfinished donut or cupcake if it isn’t bringing her the joy she expected.

She explains the exact steps she took that led to her transformation and enabled her to finally internalize the foodist mindset she only understood intellectually, but not emotionally, until this year.

If you’ve been struggling to believe you’re capable of leaving your restrictive dieting mindset behind for good, Anne’s story will give you both the hope and practical advice you need to get there.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Related links:

The Worst Thing You Can Do if You’re Trying to Lose Weight – Self-worth and the bathroom scale

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Food Inc. documentary

Confirmation bias

Summer Tomato Book Review: The China Study

The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss

Goals are for Losers: The Life-Changing Advice No One Tells You

How To Eat A Half A Donut

Use This Mindful Eating Placemat to Remember to Slow Down and Enjoy Your Food

9 Simple Tricks To Eat More Mindfully

Headspace

Mindful Meal Challenge

How To Avoid Drinking Too Much In Social Situations Foodist podcast

Listen:

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If you’d like to be a guest on the show, please fill out the form here and tell us your story.

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

Next week’s Mindful Meal Challenge will start again on Monday. Sign up now to join us!

This week exercise more to maintain weight in middle age, the secret to getting motivated, and how lysine and arginine increase satiety.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Read the rest of this story »

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

Next week’s Mindful Meal Challenge will start again on Monday. Sign up now to join us!

This week plastics turn up in seafood and sea salt, Mary’s chicken outed as a factory farm, and NOT dieting helps with weight loss.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Read the rest of this story »

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

Next week’s Mindful Meal Challenge will start again on Monday. Sign up now to join us!

This week climate change lowers crops’ nutrition, beliefs impact meal satiety, and eating close to bedtime linked to body fat.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Read the rest of this story »

Amber has been on and off elimination diets for months. After a long battle with all sorts of painful digestive issues she struggles to pinpoint exactly what she is eating that causes this.

She has educated herself well on how these diets work and takes them very seriously. But after weeks of food restriction, analysis and no results, Amber is frustrated.

This frustration not only causes her to lose hope and motivation to continue with the diet, but is now also causing her to binge on junk food.

Amber knows deep down she is not a binge eater and that this is a reaction to her months of struggles. She has tried to eat slower and more mindfully, but nothing seems to be working.

Having battled with digestive issues myself I offer Amber advice on what has worked for me and help motivate her to get back on track.

Together we formulate a plan so that she can get off the elimination diet for good and start enjoying her meals again pain free.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Related links:

Too Many Vegetables? How To Prevent Gas and Digestive Problems Caused By Healthy Eating

5 Simple Ways To Eat More Probiotics

7 Reasons Keeping a Food Journal is Better Than Counting Calories – What-the-Hell Effect

VSL #3 Probiotic

Listen:

Listen on iTunes

Listen on Stitcher

Listen on Soundcloud

If you’d like to be a guest on the show, please fill out the form here and tell us your story.