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 nutrition is not as complex as you think, backyard chickens spreading Salmonella, and diseased farmed salmon infest wild population.

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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I hear it all the time. People reach out to me who have been trying desperately to eat healthier or lose weight, lamenting their lack of willpower.

“I try to eat only when I’m hungry, but I just can’t seem to keep my hands out of the snack bowl at work.”

It isn’t always the snack bowl. Sometimes it’s the cracker box before dinner or the peanut butter at night. Whatever the source of the downfall it is always laden with a side of guilt and self-loathing.

On the surface the idea makes sense. If you only eat when you’re hungry then you should be providing yourself just enough fuel to be healthy without overdoing it on calories.

The problem is that you aren’t a car (or a Nutricon), and fuel isn’t the only reason you eat. And the longer you pretend that’s an achievable goal, the longer you will suffer.

Humans eat for many reasons. Hunger is obviously a big one, but there are several others.

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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 dinner is your enemy, vegetarians suffer from depression, and vitamin B supplements cause cancer.

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 »

“The way that you look and the way that you see yourself are not one and the same.” – Jamie Dana

In this episode I talk with Jamie, a health counselor and foodist success story.

Jamie and I have similar backgrounds and a lot in common. We both had mothers who raised us on packaged diet foods and jazzercise videos. And we both had powerful “a-ha” moments at the farmers market that changed how we approached our healthstyle forever.

Jamie tells her story about how she was able to introduce healthier foods into her and her family’s lives, and the impact it has made on their outlook of the world.

Her tips on how she turned her kids into more adventurous eaters and look at food completely differently are invaluable.

We also discuss what processed foods do to your brain, how tiny steps lead to huge successes and how living in line with your core values can bring rewards that are so much larger than what you could ever have imagined.

Jamie reminds us that eating well is not complicated and that how you feel on the inside changes how you look on the outside. She is now an avid supporter of the farmers market, lives a happy and healthy life and no longer gives dieting a second thought.

Prepare to be inspired as you listen to Jamie’s journey of how she was able to find and commit to a healthstyle that both her and her family love.

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:

Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco

The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat by Stephan J. Guyenet, Ph.D.

Rancho Gordo Beans

Weighty Matters – Yoni Freedhoff

Nutritionism 101: How to See Past Nutrition Marketing

Taste Psychology: Learning To Love Foods You Don’t Like

11 Proven Ways To Get Kids To Eat More Vegetables

Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss

Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink

Jamie Dana:

Dana Therapeutic Services

Dana Therapeutic Services Facebook page

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 vegan propaganda, exercise tones your brain, and the mysterious origins of Trader Joe’s foods.

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 »

One of the hardest things about making your healthy habits stick is finding ways to do them when you are very tired, stressed or busy.

Randi is a school teacher, which means that in the summertime she has more free time to focus on her healthstyle. During that time, she enjoys making delicious and healthy meals for herself and her family.

However, when school is back in session she no longer has the luxury of a full day to plan her meals, which leaves her feeling stressed about what she is going to make for dinner each night. This pressure causes her to avoid cooking altogether, substituting snacks for a proper meal on the weeknights.

As a breast cancer survivor Randi’s health is of the utmost importance to her. She knows that cooking nutritious meals each week is necessary to maintain her weight and stay in good health.

Luckily for Randi she has all of the tools she needs in order to achieve her cooking goal. By acknowledging some of her limiting beliefs and finding ways to work around them we come up with a strategy that enables her to cook healthy meals year-round.

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:

Foodist Kitchen

The No.1 Thing That Prevents You from Changing Your Habits (limiting beliefs)

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 real talk about weight loss resistance, how to fix your post-baby belly, and how different exercises impact hunger.

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 »

Losing a parent is one of the toughest things you can go through in life. Getting yourself back on track can feel impossible for a long time.

Bonnie was just getting her healthstyle together when her mom passed away. She was eating right, cut way back on sugar and was enjoying regular trips to the gym.

Although she was able to maintain her healthy eating habits, her exercise routine has been completely derailed. The idea of feeling strong and looking fit no longer motivates her, and her mental state almost a year later makes it hard for her to bring herself to even put on her sneakers.

Bonnie yearns to get back into the gym knowing that it would help her sleep better, relieve stress and make her feel like her old self again, but cannot figure out how to rekindle the habit.

Reframing some of Bonnie’s limiting beliefs and coming up with an idea for a new approach to exercise enables Bonnie to shift her perspective, inspiring her to get moving once again.

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:

Self Compassion, by Kristen Neff

Too Tired to Maintain Your Healthy Habits? What to Do When You Are Not Sleeping Well

Home Court Habits

Mindset, by Carol Dweck

No Sweat: How the Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring You a Lifetime of Fitness, by Michelle Segar

Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl

Radical Acceptance, by Tara Brach

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.

Quick announcement: On August 8 at 6pm PT I’m holding a Facebook Live Q&A session to answer question people have about pregnancy. The event will take place on the Summer Tomato FB page and you can submit/vote on questions in advance here.

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

This week the antidote to stress, Big Food rethinks chicken welfare, and why you can’t pay people to exercise more.

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 »

Leora enjoys learning about nutrition and discovering new healthy ingredients to try out. After years of study she has become very knowledgeable about what it takes to have a great healthstyle.

However, over the past few years Leora has become aware that what starts out as an innocent hobby often turns into a coping mechanism for managing stress. When life gets hard Leora turns to the health blogs in search for a way to regain a sense of control. Trying out a new diet that promises optimal health makes her feel like her life is back in order.

The problem is that the diet ends up causing her to not feel well and no longer enjoy her meals. She eventually goes back to her already excellent healthstyle feeling regretful for ever going on the diet in the first place.

What is frustrating to Leora is that she is aware that she is using dieting as a distraction from stress, but cannot seem to stop herself from doing it.

We discover that in order for Leora to quit dieting for good she needs to find other comforting ways to feel more in control when triggered by stress. Together we develop a strategy based off her own values and insights to get out of this habit pattern and release her dieting mindset for good.

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:

Mindful Meal Challenge

Headspace

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.