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 ticks spread meat allergies, gut bacteria increase lifespan, and your Italian tomatoes are probably fake.

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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Once or twice a week Allison and her husband decide to order take-out for dinner. They find fun reasons to celebrate, often making a night out of it by renting a movie and having a couple drinks to go along with the food delivery. It is a good time and sharing these moments together brings a lot of joy to their relationship.

Theoretically there is nothing unhealthy about this behavior. But for Allison and her husband the problem is the amount of food that is ordered and how much of it is consumed. It is not uncommon for them to order two extra large pizzas and eat one each.

Allison knows the amount of food she and her husband are consuming on these nights is not healthy and has seen a fluctuation in their weights. To compensate for the extra calories she often turns to dieting tactics and maintains a very intense exercise routine. She and her husband have tried cooking at home to compensate for their binges and have even planted a garden to inspire them to eat more vegetables, but eventually their willpower gives out and the co-bingeing ritual repeats.

Allison wants to change this unhealthy behavior, but she cannot seem to stop herself from doing it. Throughout the episode Allison and I investigate why she is over ordering take-out and discover that she has many limiting beliefs around what she considers to be healthy behavior. It becomes clear that these limiting beliefs have created blind spots for her, which are preventing her from seeing a solution.

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, by Darya Rose, Ph.D.

The Mindful Meal Challenge

How to develop confidence in your ability to get healthy (podcast)

The No.1 Thing That Prevents You From Changing Your Habits

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 Amazon buys Whole Foods, pros and cons of Whole30, and why veggies should have sex appeal.

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 »

A couple of times a month Polly is expected to go out for drinks with her coworkers. This is part of the company culture and a great opportunity to bond with her team. Plus, she really enjoys it and finds it to be an overall rewarding experience.

The problem is that at these events Polly finds herself drinking three to four times more alcohol than she normally would. This frustrates her because it is out of character and not aligned with her healthstyle values.

In her normal life Polly has no problem stopping after one or two drinks and the rest of her healthstyle is very strong. She eats mindfully, cooks every day, exercises, and gets plenty of sleep.

Polly has tried to talk herself into drinking less at work events without success. As soon as she arrives anxiety and excitement kick in and she feels the urge to match her coworkers drink for drink, making sure no one’s glass is ever empty.

While all over-indulgence habits are hard to break, binge drinking is particularly tough since alcohol inhibits your ability to make good decisions. It is important to remember in these cases that small actions can lead to big results over time and to have patience with yourself when you aren’t perfect.

In this episode, Polly and I discover what her triggers are and I share with her some tricks that have helped me drink less in social situations. We also develop strategies she can use to alter her behavior through trial and error, instead of setting strict rules to follow. This encourages her to approach her situation with a new and more realistic outlook.

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:

8 Tips For Drinking Less Without Your Friends Knowing

How To Cut Back On Alcohol Without Going Cold Turkey

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.

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 the real reason diets don’t work, the best exercise for aging, and a new clue to binge eating.

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 »

A fundamental principle of being a foodist is that you shouldn’t restrict yourself from eating foods that you love. One of the wonderful aspects of eating is that it is pleasurable, and this is an entirely valid reason to choose to eat something.

New and aspiring foodists love this idea, but often find it difficult to balance the values of eating for pleasure and eating for health. Exactly how often is it “okay” to choose foods for pleasure? How much of them can you “enjoy”? And how do you stop yourself from overdoing it once you’ve started?

Katie is grappling with these issues, and can’t help but feel that she doesn’t have enough self-control to stop herself from overeating junk foods, despite her love of healthy foods as well.

Together we discuss how she can develop the ability to choose indulgences that are more valuable to her and stop eating when she’s truly satisfied, rather than way past that point.

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

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.

You can probably name several barriers in your life that feel like they are preventing you from getting healthy or achieving your goals, but the biggest ones are always mental.

Confidence in particular has an insidious ability to undermine your motivation, making it feel like nothing you can do actually matters since no matter what you try you’ll always be stuck in the same place. Logically you may know that if you don’t try or do something different it isn’t likely things will change, but when all your actions feel futile this knowledge has little power to help.

Lack of confidence keeps you feeling stuck and overwhelmed, and it is one of the most common symptoms of someone who has tried for years to lose weight or get healthy without lasting success. It’s like a Catch-22, you can’t succeed with action. And you can’t take action without the confidence that comes from success.

Or is that too a limiting belief?

In this episode, Leslie tells the story of how several small wins in her life built up trust in her process and confidence in her ability to overcome healthstyle obstacles. This meant shedding several limiting beliefs she had about what it means to feel confident, as well as what success really looks like.

Leslie’s story covers several decades of obstacles, including both failures and successes, as well as what being healthy means for her today. Her story is wonderful illustration of what it means to build confidence and trust your process when it comes to health.

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:

Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach

Mindful Meal Challenge

How Reshanda Overcame Binge Eating and Lost 28 Lbs

For Richard Ford, Memoir Is A Chance To ‘Tell The Unthinkable’

Breville toaster oven

Foodist Kitchen

Small Victories by Julie Turshen

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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.

Becky is normally a healthy eater and exercises regularly. She isn’t overweight, but would love to lose a few pounds. She also knows that if she stopped her periodic binges the weight would likely take care of itself.

Becky has also read Foodist and Summer Tomato, and knows that dieting isn’t a good strategy and that she has a tendency to moralize her food choices in a way that undermines her efforts. Yet she doesn’t know how to stop and continues trying to use willpower to both change her beliefs and stop her bingeing, which clearly is not working. She often finds herself bingeing at night after going out with her husband and friends, consuming thousands of calories at a time and feeling horrible the next day.

Knowing that your beliefs are counterproductive isn’t enough to change them, and willpower isn’t the answer. Reshaping your beliefs is difficult and you can hear in Becky’s voice how hard it is for her internalize the idea that pleasure is a valid reason to eat. Her experience to date has only shown her that she loses control around these foods and feels bad afterward, so it is almost impossible for her to see at this stage how a middle ground is possible.

In this episode I help Becky recognize the fundamental limitations of her approach and develop a strategy to start to unravel her rigid belief that she should only eat for fuel and nutrition. There are multiple issues she needs to work on, but she’ll have a much greater chance at success with this new approach.

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:

No, You Don’t Deserve That Indulgence Today

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.

Sometimes it feels like you have everything figured out except for this one, baffling problem that seems to defy all logic. For Nina, her healthstyle has always been rather straightforward. She enjoys eating healthy, she understands the value of indulgences, and can easily adjust her behavior to align with her values in almost every circumstance. Almost.

Nina reached out to me because she can’t understand why she binges on junk food during her babysitting job, despite knowing it’s a bad decision and not worth it. She has tried a few things to stop, and had a bit of success, but still doesn’t feel like she has control over her behavior in this one, specific circumstance.

As is often the case when a very specific context becomes a trigger for an intractable habit, Nina can lucidly describe her issue and the circumstances that cause it to arise. She knows she’ll regret her actions, she knows Cheetos and Cinnamon Toast Crunch aren’t special on a random Thursday afternoon, and she knows it’ll impact her ability to enjoy herself after she leaves. What she can’t figure out is why she continues to act in a way she doesn’t like, despite this self-awareness.

For Nina, solving this mystery requires reframing an old habit in a new light. Even though the circumstances have changed for her as an adult, she is acting out an old behavior she developed as a child. As a result, she lacks the perspective necessary to recognize a solution that is right under her nose.

Together Nina and I come up with a simple way for her to hit pause on the autopilot caused by the babysitting trigger and pull herself back into the present moment so she can make a more rational and value-based choice in behavior.

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.

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 wanting more willpower undermines your willpower, exercise trumps genetics, and a comprehensive gut primer.

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 »