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

This week Canada’s new food guide shuns industry, sunscreen is the new margarine, and exercise “snacks” improve fitness.

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

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.

This week how to save your kids from sugar, pesticides dangerous for unborn children, and lavender works as well as valium.

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

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 »

“It’s like 1000% or nothing at all.” ~Rachelle

Rachelle was in a snowboarding accident when she was 15 years old that cost her the use of both of her legs. After 18 years of battling both illness and body image issues, she is finally in a place where she is healthy and has a better relationship with food, and she’s ready to feel strong and fit again. She’d also love to lose 20 lbs.

Rachelle believes that being in a wheelchair makes getting enough exercise too difficult and time consuming to be practical for her busy life. She’s juggling both a family and a career as a lawyer, so it’s clear that both time and physical limitations create barriers for her workout habits. After a little digging in our conversation though, it starts to become clear that Rachelle’s psychological barriers are the main obstacle.

All her life Rachelle has been ambitious. Her previous attempts at getting fit involved intense exercise programs with personal trainers and sports like boxing––things that take a ton of time, energy and resources. She knows that with her career and family, activities like this cause her to burn out. But when she compares herself to her husband who has lost 20 lbs in three months she believes she needs to be doing intense training like this in order to see results.

Together Rachelle and I work to reframe her goals in a way that makes them compatible with her work and family life, while still allowing her to lose weight. We discuss specific mental exercises she can do to help maintain this perspective (often the hardest part) and give her the cognitive flexibility to be more creative in finding new ways to be active.

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

Whole30

Peloton bike

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Nicole loves to run, and has recently upped her training to include half and full marathons. While she has never run with the goal of weight loss, she has noticed that when she trains for longer races she has a tendency to gain unwanted fat around her midsection that she isn’t happy about.

Nicole’s hypothesis is that the extra fat is a result of the additional refined carbohydrates (e.g. bread and pasta) that she eats during training periods. She said that she has tried to fuel her workouts with foods that contain fewer carbs, but that she notices a negative impact on her performance.

After some investigating of her training and eating habits, Nicole and I conclude that this theory is inaccurate and that most likely culprit isn’t the pre-workout carbs but the post-workout hunger and subconscious overeating that results from intense training.

Extensive training both increases the body’s calorie demands and hunger, while weakening willpower and normal social constraints on overeating. The end result is a subconscious tendency to eat more calories than you actually need to refuel and subsequent weight gain. Achieving balance in this case is uniquely challenging.

This leads to a detailed discussion of the optimal ways to fuel her workouts and plan her post-training meals and snacks so that she doesn’t inadvertently eat more than she needs to recover and feel satisfied.

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:

Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin

Mindful Meal Challenge

How Can Julie Stop Overeating at Dinner Parties?

Home Court Habits: The Secret to Effortless Weight Control

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.

For the Love of Food

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

A quick reminder that next week’s Mindful Meal Challenge will start again on Monday. Sign up now to join us!

This week the Western diet gives you the munchies (literally), when to expect fitness results, and vegetables trump pesticides.

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 »

For the Love of Food

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

Great news! The Mindful Meal Challenge was such a success we’re going to run it again every week. Sign up now to start on Monday!

This week how to trust your future self, a simple way to better choices, and how parents impact your adult relationships.

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 »

For the Love of Food

Happy 2017! Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup. 

First a few orders of business:

• I was on the Art of Charm podcast – I love the show and had a great time talking to Jordan Harbinger and Jason DeFillipo about the psychology of getting healthy. Give it a listen here.
• Last call to save $15 on Foodist Kitchen – I extended the offer through the weekend, but don’t miss this chance to learn to cook without recipes and get the NEWYEAR2017 discount. Enroll in Foodist Kitchen today.
• The 5 Day Mindful Meal Challenge starts on Monday – I’m so excited about this. I’ve worked incredibly hard to create a free 5-day program that is unlike any mindful eating training I’ve ever seen. If you’ve struggled to develop a mindful eating habit, definitely don’t miss this chance to learn. Sign up for free today.

This week how to optimize aging, the mental game of getting healthy, and why your workouts aren’t working.

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 »

For the Love of Food

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

This week how your gut sabotages your diet, how to teach your kids to love veggies, and why exercise leads to weight gain.

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 »

“With the hustle and bustle of working and being a mom and trying to fulfill all these duties I completely lost myself.” – Rebecca

Although she had never been completely happy with her physique, after having three children within five years Rebecca found herself over 100 lbs heavier than she was before starting a family. It wasn’t until she ran into a friend who had lost 100 lbs of baby weight after working with a personal trainer that she changed her mindset and decided she needed to start investing in her own wellbeing again.

Over a period of eight months Rebecca embraced a new self-care routine of fitness and nutrition and lost all of the weight. The road wasn’t perfectly smooth, and she struggled with some of the struggles that come with dieting including binge eating. Ultimately though, she was able to find balance in her nutrition, stop bingeing and truly enjoy her healthstyle for the benefits it brings her.

Rebecca has also been kind enough to share a before and after picture for us to see her transformation.

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.

Relevant links:

Home Court Habits

After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

Does ‘The Biggest Loser’ Study Prove That Long-term Weight Loss is Impossible?

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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.

Elizabeth wishes she could form a more regular exercise habit, but every time she tries she finds herself lacking in motivation. While she describes herself as “not inactive” she wishes she did more “proper exercise” a few days a week.

Sometimes she is able to put together a good streak, but inevitably her efforts are undermined by feeling she isn’t up to the task. If she feels uncomfortable with her body or finds her workouts too hard, she starts to feel like a failure.

This perfectionist streak causes her to negatively judge herself to a point where exercise becomes an unpleasant rather than uplifting experience. As a result she finds herself avoiding exercise completely.

Together we discuss strategies to get out of the judgment loop and back into enjoying being active for its own sake.

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.

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.