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Hi there! Katie here.

Healing my relationship with food was one of the best + most important things I ever did.

It was amazing to not feel stressed out around food, and to feel downright joyful + happy about my eating.

But even more importantly: radically examining my eating taught me so freaking much about who I was as a person. I realized things about my working style, my relationships, my anxieties, and my dreams that I truly did not know until I started exploring why I was eating so much, and in a way that I felt I couldn’t “control.” And I always thought I was a pretty self-aware person!

For many years, I channeled that passion into coaching around eating — both 1:1 coaching and Dessert Club groups.

Gradually, my 1:1 coaching practice became not just about eating, but really about everything – work and relationships and stress and spirituality and body awareness and compulsion and technology and meaning. It was a natural evolution; you can’t really change your eating without changing how you interpret the world, and how you move through it. I became a general life coach, and I started katieseaver.com, to write + offer coaching on these topics.

Increasingly, it has felt right to take a break from running Dessert Club groups. They are still close to my heart, by my current passion is my 1:1 life coaching clients.

But I hope you’ll enjoy the years of archived posts here on the Dessert Club blog. And if you’d like more from me, here are some resources:

• Work with me 1:1
  I coach on eating topics — or anything at all!

• Sign up for my weekly life coaching newsletter
  Topics include how not to burn out at work, how to cultivate deeper relationships, and how to not be so compulsive about technology

• Check out my life coaching blog

And, as always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.

Let's talk about eating during my twin pregnancy / postpartum

Some of my longer-term readers already know, but I gave birth to twin boys in June of 2020. As I write this, my babies are already nine months old!

From this standpoint, I feel comfortable admitting something that always made me a little embarrassed:

I was a little nervous about eating during pregnancy + postpartum.

In retrospect, I think it was because, over the years, I’ve read a fair number of celebrity interviews about their pregnancy and postpartum experiences.

Have you ever read those? Celebrities — at least in articles I’ve read — seem to talk about eating huge quantities of food, gorging on Krispy Kremes…and then gaining tons of weight. And then afterwards: going on incredibly restrictive diets + doing mind-bogglingly intense workouts.

None of that sounded appealing to me.

Not the crazy cravings + enormous portions; that doesn’t sound like it would make you feel well! And definitely not the strict dieting + exercise; I definitely wasn’t going to do that.

So today, I wanted to share what helped me during my twin pregnancy + post-partum period, and why I think it was so useful.

Here it is:

I figured out how to eat in a way that served me before I ever got pregnant.

“Eating in a way that serves you” means eating in a way that furthers your health as a whole person: your physical health, emotional health, mental health, and spiritual health — and more.

On one hand, this might be disappointing. It’s not some dramatic “Experts Hate This Los Angeles Mom For Her Fat Loss Secret.” It’s not new or different from what I suggest for non-pregnant folks, what I write about on this blog, and what I teach — in practical steps — in the Dessert Club Mastermind.

On the other hand, I cannot overemphasize how grateful I was to have this methodology for eating, for four reasons:

1.  Pregnancy wasn’t the only time I could enjoy indulgent food

Have you ever read any celebrity interviews about pregnancy? In the articles I’ve read, they’re always talking about all of the junk food they ate — Krispy Kremes, pizza, multiple containers of mac and cheese in one sitting.

(I considered linking to some of these articles. But honestly, I find them stressful — with lots of talk of dieting, guilt, “pigging out,” and more.)

Many of these same celebrities also bemoan the particularly large amount of weight that they gained. I’m not here to shame anyone for their weight gain — pregnancy or otherwise! But I have wondered: do they view pregnancy as their only chance to eat enjoyable food? As a result, do they eat more indulgent food than really serves them?

The truth is, I already ate plenty of delicious, indulgent food before I was pregnancy; I’d been eating that way for the past decade. I felt comfortable around those foods — confident that I could enjoy them in quantities that felt satisfying, and also feel well in my body.

Plus — and this might even be more important — I knew that I’d be continuing to eat delicious, indulgent food after my pregnancy.

So during my pregnancy…I just ate like I always ate. I didn’t particularly feel like I “overindulged” — I just ate like normal.

2. I was already respecting my hunger signals.

Many of the same celebrities who bemoan eating lots of indulgent food also bemoan how much they ate during pregnancy. They often complain about how much weight they gained during pregnancy as a result of all of that eating.

I suspect that at least part of that weight gain may be because they were underweight to begin with — Hollywood beauty standards prize a level of thinness that is not necessarily healthy.

But, I also wonder if at least part of it is that many of them have spent years or decades being slightly hungry all the time. So during pregnancy — when it is clear that under-eating will be unhealthy for your baby – they want to eat, and they want to finally be full…really full.

I already respected my hunger signals — meaning, I ate to fullness every day for more than a decade. So, again, pregnancy wasn’t my only time to be full.

3. I was already eating based on my (variable) experience of hunger, rather than fixed ideas about portion size.

My experience of eating during pregnancy and postpartum is that there has been a lot of variation in my hunger levels. Some of that was obvious and expected — feeling queasy and not very hungry in the first trimester, for example.

But I didn’t, personally, realize how much variation there would be in general. Some days, I felt like I was hungry for 1.5x or 2x what I might eat for dinner on another day. Some days — even now, while I’m still breastfeeding my boys — I need two snacks between breakfast and lunch. Other days I don’t.

My experience of working with clients and myself is that if you eat based on preconceived, mental ideas of portion sizes, you tend to have two modes: “on” (when you eat an “appropriate” portion) and “off” (when you eat the entire bag of chips). So if you are extra hungry during pregnancy or postpartum, you might just enter “off” mode — and keep eating and eating.

One of the core beliefs about eating is that you should listen to your body’s experience, not the clock, and not your preconceived ideas about what you should eat. I was used to eating in a nuanced way that varied by the day and by the meal — and I think that really helped me eat an amount that was right for me, given the enormous amount of variation during this time.

4. I could tell when I was eating based on true needs, versus based on stress, emotions, or fatigue.

This was particularly crucial for postpartum eating. It’s probably not shocking to admit: especially in the early days my babies were born, I was emotional, stressed and exhausted…a fair amount.

It’s also probably not shocking to point out: It is very, very easy to eat in a way that doesn’t serve you when you are stressed, emotional, or exhausted.

For many of us, it will require skills that we may not currently have to notice when we are eating in response to things like stress, emotions, or fatigue, and then to intervene in a way that is gentle, realistic, and that doesn’t set off a chain reaction of more and more unhappy eating.

It’s not a bad idea to start practicing this before you have a screaming 21-day-old who won’t sleep.

…

Of course, emphasizing that I listened to myself and my body doesn’t mean that I also didn’t listen to experts. This book was very helpful for my twin pregnancy, for example, and I did try to prioritize protein, iron, and keeping my blood sugar levels stable, in a way that felt gentle and kind to myself.

And I also want to say: even if you are already pregnant — or the “babies” are out and eighteen years old — I don’t think it’s too late! The kinds of eating ideas that I talk about here will serve you no matter when you start.

I’ll say it again: It’s not too late.
It’s never too late to start eating authentically, in a way that truly serves you.  

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Four observations about fullness

I wanted to share four observations about fullness from my 11+ years of deeply observing my own eating. I hope they might also be useful to you:

 1. Fullness is in the contrast

People often tell me that they have trouble knowing if they are full.

My next question to them is: Are you waiting until you are hungry to start eating?  

The easiest way to notice fullness in your body is in the contrast with hunger — we know we are full when we feel the absence of the hunger sensation in our belly, the way our body calms when the slight agitation associated with being hungry is gone, etc.

If you start eating without actually being hungry — perhaps because you were snacking the whole time you made dinner — you will not notice this contrast.

In fact — and this is very important —  If you start eating when you are neutral-to-somewhat-full…you will likely not get a clear signal of fullness until you get to the distended-belly-uncomfortably-full phase.

This is not a judgement about you being a bad person or “failing” in any way, if your belly is distended and you are uncomfortably full! It’s just an observation that being uncomfortably full is…uncomfortable. You will probably have a better experience if you simply wait until you are hungry to start eating.

2. Notice if you’re afraid of fullness

Many people I work with are afraid of fullness. They’ve spent years — or decades — associating fullness with bingeing, or with being “bad” and falling off of their diet or eating plan. Because, of course, when we are “on” our diet and eating plan, of course, we rarely allow ourselves to eat that much.  

And yet, I can tell you, from over a decade of experience: our bodies were meant to be full. The experience of fullness is a sensation that you can experience many times a day, while also having a body shape that a healthy + relatively stable.

3. It’s okay to want to be full

When I first decided that I was going to listen to myself and my body about how to eat, I noticed that I really liked to end my meals full. Not uncomfortably full, but definitely solidly full.

I liked the feeling of having a solidly full belly — knowing that I would be happy without eating for several hours. I think it relaxed me, after years of always eating the “minimum” at every meal, to finally allow myself to eat a whole freaking burrito and feel full.

Of course, letting myself be full wasn’t the same as overeating to the point of making myself feel unwell. At that time (and still, sometimes!), it felt good to feel solidly full. It was a happy thing. I felt great — grounded and sturdy and calm. There is a difference.

Over time, once I knew that I could be solidly full as many times as I pleased without “ruining” anything…it eventually became appealing to be less full — often even “lightly” full. Now, how full I want to be varies with the weather, what I’ve eaten lately, and more.

This to say: Let your process be your process. Many people who are coming off years or decades of restriction will want to be full at first, because now they finally can. It will probably change over time.

4.  Separate fullness from satisfaction 

This is an advanced move, but I’ll mention it here in case it’s useful to you: it can be helpful to separate fullness (e.g., no longer being hungry, getting enough nourishment) from satisfaction (e.g., getting enough pleasure in a meal).

Often, if I’m eating something that is very pleasurable but also very rich — quesadillas, deep dish pizza, chocolate lava cake — what serves me best is stopping eating that food before I’m full.

I won’t make myself go hungry, though. I’ll just finish my meal with something else that is a bit lighter, and will make my body feel a bit better (which could be anything from fruit to yogurt to meat to cheese to random leftovers, etc.)

I worry a little bit that me mentioning this will trigger feelings of restriction in some of you reading this, so let me be clear: I eat lots of pleasurable, indulgent food.

The reason why this move is “advanced” is because you have to do it from a place of taking excellent care of yourself, not from a place of wanting weight loss or attempting to restrict yourself. I do it because I eat lots of pleasurable food, so I don’t have to finish this pleasurable food. I’d much rather eat pleasurable food and feel well at the end of the meal.

…

I hope that these four observations were helpful! If these kind of specific, actionable ideas resonate with you, you might be a great fit for the Dessert Club Mastermind.

In the Dessert Club Mastermind, I’ll be sharing everything I know about how to eat in a way that truly serves you — without dieting, body-shaming, or a lack of warm chocolate chip cookies.

Eating doesn’t have to take up so much mental space or be so tiring — really.

I will be closing applications for the Dessert Club Mastermind *tonight* + there’s only two spots left. So if you’d like to grab a last spot, you can apply here. 

Even if you aren’t restricting, you may still have a problem. (*hot take*)

"I don’t do any kind of crazy restriction, but sometimes — well, a lot of the time — I eat more than I intended to. More than I *wanted* to. My eating makes me feel unhappy and unwell."

I heard some variation of this over and over this week. I was having interest calls with folks who are on the waitlist to join the Dessert Club Mastermind, and they kept telling me the same thing.

Before I continue, I want to be crystal-clear: I’m not here to embarrass or shame anyone.

And yet, I will say it:

Just like under-nourishing ourselves is not ideal…over-nourishing ourselves is also not ideal.

In certain circles, this is not a radical thing to say. People focused on weight loss or weight “maintenance” are constantly trying to avoid eating “too much.”

But something else has happened in the past decade or two. There has been an emergence of some really, really awesome movements: intuitive eating, body positivity, a rejection of diet culture.

I love most of what these movements have to say:

• Stop being so fixated on your weight!

• All body sizes, shapes, and abilities deserve respect + appreciation!

• Listen to your appetite about what to eat!

• Eat pleasurable foods!

And yet, I think that these movements have a blind spot. I’ve written about it recently, and I got such a strong response, that it seemed like, well, almost no one was saying it. No one was saying: look, diet culture is not healthy or conducive to happiness. But also, a lot of folks in the “intuitive eating” + body positivity worlds often don’t emphasize something that’s very important, too:

Just like under-nourishing ourselves is not ideal…over-nourishing ourselves is also not ideal.

The solution to your eating issues isn’t just to “stop worrying about it” and put a cookie in your mouth whenever the thought occurs to you. Look at me! I'm rebelling against diet culture + releasing restriction!

That may work for some people, but for many, many others, it will lead to eating in a way that doesn’t make you feel well or truly serve you.

(This is absolutely not to say you shouldn’t eat plenty of cookies! I freaking love cookies and eat sweets multiple times a day! And of course: folks recovering from an eating disorder may need to focus only on eliminating restriction. This does not apply to them.)

It is simply to say: our conversation needs to be more nuanced than that.

Again: Just like under-nourishing ourselves is not ideal…over-nourishing ourselves is also not ideal.

…

Of course, nourishing oneself isn’t something we typically do with scientific precision. We’re going to listen to our body’s signals, our diverse needs (emotional, mental, spiritual, relational), what is possible for us (e.g., what food is available, what we can afford), and make the best decision we can in the moment.

But just because the “right” amount of nourishment is a range…doesn’t mean that most of us don’t know when we’ve over-nourished ourselves.

It’s not about the food quantity. It could be a single Cool Ranch Dorito, or three XL bags. It’s not even about the food itself. It could be double fudge brownies, or celery.

Just like under-nourishing ourselves is not ideal…over-nourishing ourselves is also not ideal. It can be detracting from our mental, emotional, spiritual and yes — physical — wellbeing.

Over-nourishment can show up in a many forms, but here are a few common signs:

• You frequently eat in a kind of a “trance” — almost like you completely zone out while you’re eating, and only “come to” when the food is gone.

• You use eating to “push through” fatigue (emotional, mental, or physical), to ignore emotions or agitation in your body, or to give you pleasure when you don’t have other reliable sources of it.

• You don’t feel well in your body some or all the time.

Sometimes we push this kind of behavior under the carpet. Yeah, it’s not ideal that I just ate like that, but I won’t do it again.

But let’s be real: You will definitely do it again.

In fact, you will do it over and over and over and over…if you don’t get to the bottom of what’s truly causing it.

I’m not here to shame anyone. I’m simply here to offer a dose of reality.

And I’m also here to name: you don’t have to have an eating-disorder level of restriction to have a relationship with food that is problematic, painful, and worth looking into.

…

One last thing? If you’d like to eat differently — with more empowerment, calm, and heck, even joy…it’s possible.

My signature program, the Dessert Club Mastermind, is focused on precisely that. In the Dessert Club Mastermind, I share everything I know about how to eat in a way that truly works for you — without body shaming, dieting, or a lack of warm chocolate chip cookies.

If you’re interested in joining us, you can learn more + apply for an interest call starting on Monday.

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Why did you eat in a way that didn’t serve you? (a practical exercise + 6 hypotheses)

Let’s do a quick activity: think of the last three times that you felt you ate in a way that didn’t serve you. It could be a lot of food, or just a couple of bites. Write them down.

Now, think about each of those times: why did you do that?

For many of us, this question is very difficult to answer. We just don‘t know why we did it.

And, of course, if we don’t know the true reasons, it will be very, very difficult to stop doing the activity. We'll act like the problem is the eating itself, and try to put all kinds of rules in place to stop ourselves from overeating (only 400 calories in a meal! Intermittently fast!)...without realizing that we are targeting the symptom, not the true cause.

Sometimes it’s easier to answer that question if you have ideas for why it could be — potential hypotheses. So today I wanted to share six reasons why I often see people eating in ways that don’t serve them (+ things I've done myself!):

1. Tiredness (emotional, mental, or physical)

This is so common that it should be one of the first things you check when you’re about to eat, especially if you’re grazing. Am I tired? Most of us are more tired — especially emotionally and mentally — than we want to admit. For many of us, the political, social, and pandemic trends of the past year have greatly exacerbated this fatigue.

Eating can often be a way of taking the "edge off" of the agitation we often feel...agitation that is often due to “pushing through” our days even though we’re tired.

2. Feelings

You’re having feelings. About a conversation you just had, or a conversation you need to have. About your job and whether it’s really the right job for you. About your colleague who is extremely annoying. And then, suddenly, you’re grabbing a handful of cinnamon sugar pita chips.

Often we don’t like to think of ourselves with labels like “emotional eaters” — and yet, our feelings are influencing our eating decisions.

3. Inability to notice your body’s eating-related sensations food

Many of us have never been taught, or have forgotten, how to sense hunger, fullness, and how foods make us feel in our bodies. Or we only notice when we are absolutely stuffed, or completely ravenous — we are not yet skillful at noticing the subtle gradations in hunger, fullness, or how our bodies are affected by what we eat.

And so we eat...without consulting our bodies.

4. Habit of not paying attention to your body’s signals around food

Maybe you could notice hunger, fullness, or how foods make you feel, but you just…don’t. You always eat lunch scrolling Instagram, for example, and so you miss these important signals.

5. Deprivation / scarcity

We’re afraid to be hungry, because if we get too hungry…we we'll never get full again because we aren't “allowed” to eat enough to get full. Or, we’re afraid that if we don’t eat this delicious food now, we won’t be able to have it again — because we often restrict our access to delicious foods.

It's important to name that these feelings may be very reasonable and rational; maybe we do restrict foods and portion sizes — or did in the past. The irony, of course, is that the attempt to limit portions and types of foods may push us to eat even more of those foods.

6. Need for pleasure

Maybe you don’t get enough pleasure in your eating (this is related to scarcity). Maybe you don’t get enough pleasure in your life as a whole. And so you go searching for it in this eating experience.

Sometimes this means that we eat too much of delicious or indulgent foods. But also, sometimes we will overeat on just-okay or even boring things — say, a dinner of chicken and vegetables — because we keep hoping: maybe this next bite will give me the pleasure I've been craving.

…

The good news about each of these six hypotheses is that you can do something about every single one.

Tiredness? Feelings? The inability to notice eating-related body sensations? The habit of not noticing those body sensations? Deprivation? A need for pleasure?

You can do something about every freaking one.

Of course, what you can “do” isn’t, say, become a robot. You know:

• A I-can-work-for-12-hours-without-breaks-or-exhaustion robot

• A I-don’t-like-warm-chocolate-chip-cookies robots

• And, let us not forget: a I-never-get-hungry-and-can-happily-exist-on-1,200-calories-a-day robot.

The solutions that I can offer you are, well… human solutions.

But: there is a relief, I think, to at least acknowledging what the problem is. If you don’t look at the real problem, you will never solve it.

(And, just to mention — identifying the true problems, and figuring out human solutions is at the core of what we’re up to in the Dessert Club. Early Bird enrollment for the Dessert Club Mastermind opens on Friday of next week! Regular enrollment opens February 15.)

Your eating is an alarm bell. Listen to what it has to tell you. Build the skills that you need to respond productively.

It can be done.

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Two problematic myths from Intuitive Eating/anti-diet “experts”

I’m not sure that I’d call my eating-related work “Intuitive Eating” anymore (“authentic eating” currently feels more right), but it certainly does overlap with many of the core principles of Intuitive Eating — listening to your body about when and how much to eat, reducing feelings of restriction, and more.

And yet — I have some beef with many Intuitive Eating or anti-diet “experts” or influencers. Serious beef. It’s time for me to be honest:

1.     Eliminating restriction may not be enough.

Many prominent folks in the field seem to advise something like: Stop restricting / dieting! Then everything with your eating will work itself out!

I totally agree that restricting tends to wreak havoc with your eating. You become more obsessed with food, more likely to turn to eating when you aren’t even hungry, and more.

But based on my extensive experience: eliminating restriction alone is usually not enough.

I’ve worked with clients who were advised to eliminate restriction without building the skills to take care of themselves around food (which is what we practice in the Dessert Club), and then kept eating.

And eating.
And eating.  

And yes — they gained a significant amount of weight in a short time, and didn’t feel well in their bodies.

I’ve also read several books by prominent body positivity activists who share that they’ve gained very significant amounts of weight after they decided “fuck diet culture.” They seem to imply that this is just a common, natural side-affect of ditching diet culture.

No. That just doesn’t make sense.

Absolutely, our weight will vary over the course of our lives. Of course! And, of course, if you started out having an eating disorder or restricting in a significant way, and especially if you were underweight, you will likely gain weight as you start eating again and your body finds a healthy set point.

And yet.

Just like it’s not mentally, emotionally, or physically healthy to under-nourish ourselves…it’s also not healthy to over-nourish ourselves. We’re likely not going to feel well. And yes, we are going to gain weight that our bodies don’t need. The weight isn’t the problem here — the weight is simply a symptom of not taking good care of ourselves with our eating.

Again — I feel a little nervous writing this. Will the Body Positivity Police arrest me? But also, I feel like many people are probably hesitant to change their eating because some part of them thinks: wait, if I just eliminate restriction, won’t I keep eating and eating and eating?

They are right to be worried. Yes, for some people it will be totally fine. But for many others: eliminating restriction alone is like being given the green light to start eating, but no one has taught you how — in an authentic, non-diet culture way — to stop eating. 

2.     This stuff is often hard and complex.

Other prominent folks in the field do acknowledge that eliminating restriction alone isn’t enough. They’ll mention that you should also stop try to not eat if you’re not hungry, for example, or that you should try not to eat for emotional reasons alone.

What they don’t mention enough though is this: Doing this may be hard. Really, really hard. You may need new skills that you do not currently have.

It is one thing to say: if you’re not hungry, don’t eat.

It’s a very different thing to live that practice. When you really start to look into it (if you’re anything like me or the many people I’ve coached in the Dessert Club), you’ll find that you’re eating when you’re not hungry many times a day.

You probably won’t just be able to flip a switch and “stop” doing it. New skills are required — the capacity to observe new things about yourself, and ask new questions. This is at the core of the work in the Dessert Club — and there’s a reason why it’s a serious, multi-week program (and even then, the journey continues!) 

I’m a life coach, not a nutritionist — because my work is all about that deep, complex, stuff. It drives me bananas when people act like, “just stop eating emotionally” as if someone reading it would say, oh gee, I never thought of that before! “Stop eating emotionally” is actually a tall order — it typically requires skills that many of us do not currently have.

…

Whew. Okay. Rant completed.

I hope this if helpful. I wanted to write about it because I think that sometimes people are curious about changing their way of eating…but some small part of them also holds back.

And I think that part of that hesitancy is reasonable. Some “influencers” or “experts” can tell a narrative about how to change your eating that can be…problematic. So I want to set the record straight:

• Eliminating restriction alone won’t be enough. Most of us won’t just say “fuck diet culture, I’ll eat whatever I want!” — and then will eat in a way that truly serves us.

• It won’t just be flipping a switch. Most of us will have do so some hard work, self-reflection and skill-building in order to eat in a way that really works for us.

And, of course, this deep, important work to shift how you relate to food is at the core of the Dessert Club. The waitlist is currently closed, but general enrollment will open in February. If you’d like to be notified when enrollment opens, please sign up for my newsletter!

On Authentic Eating

I would like to make a modest — or perhaps radical — proposal for your new year: try eating authentically.

Not sure what “authentic eating” means? Well, it’s possible that I…just maybe…invented the phrase. So I’ll define it: in my opinion, authentic eating is intimately related to authentic living.

Authentic living means living in a way that is consistent with who you truly are. It means listening to your inner voice about who you are and what you want, and acting on your own behalf as you move through the world.

A few key points about living authentically:

1. Authentic living may not be “intuitive.” Many of us are currently not living authentically. Instead, we’re living lives that we think we “should” live, or lives that our parents or colleagues would approve of, for example. It may feel extremely un-obvious, and un-intuitive to live authentically! It may take some work — self-reflection, new skills, outside help — in order to figure out how to live our most authentic lives.

2. Authentic living acknowledges complexity and nuance. You contain many parts and desires — you are complex, and it takes some work and skillfulness to balance those complex needs. Those needs and desires may change by the day or year.

3. Authentic living doesn’t necessarily mean selfish or irresponsible living. Authentic living doesn’t mean telling your work colleague that you dislike her — though, if you do dislike her, it might mean privately acknowledging it to yourself. Even if some part of might not want to do your taxes — you might choose to do them anyway because you would be able to notice that it would be more annoying to deal with the IRS on your back for being delinquent.

In my work as a life coach, I support my clients on all kinds of topics: how to feel more clear, grounded, calm, spacious, sparkling, vibrant, alive, productive, intentional, engaged, connected — and more. But at the core of all of my work is a commitment to authenticity — honoring what we truly need, want, and feel called to do and be in our lives.

From this perspective, I think that “authentic eating” becomes a bit clearer.

Authentic eating, in my opinion, means eating in a way that is consistent with who you truly are. It means listening to your inner experience about what you need and want — with food, and beyond — and acting on your own behalf as you make decisions about eating and life as a whole.

The same points apply about eating authentically:

1.  Authentic eating may not be “intuitive.” Eating in a way that truly serves you often requires cultivating new skills — many of us are not skillful enough at noticing subtle levels of hunger and fullness, for example, or the ways in which our agitation levels are affecting our eating. This is why I don’t love the phrase “intuitive eating” — it may not be intuitive or obvious for you!

2. Authentic eating acknowledges complexity and nuance. In any given moment, you are balancing needs for hunger, pleasure, energy, nutrition, connection, money, convenience, and more. You need a system of eating that allows you to honor and balance all of these needs.

3. Authentic eating doesn’t mean irresponsible eating. Sometimes people read my essays and worry: Katie, if I did what you’d suggest, I’d start eating cookie dough and *never stop.* Based on my experience working with many, many people: I do not believe that you would. If you are really in touch with your truth, it simply wouldn’t make sense to eat cookie dough and never stop.

…

In both authentic living and eating, many of us start out being able to do it naturally. My 6-month old babies — at least as far as I can tell — are deeply authentic in their life choices, and in their eating.

But somewhere along the way, most of us lose touch with that authenticity. This makes a certain amount of developmental sense. My fabulous 6-month-olds are unable to notice, in a detailed way, what the world wants of them. On the other hand, you are probably both consciously and unconsciously aware of what your mom, boss, best friend, or college classmates think of you or want from you.

But if we’re comfortable with the idea that cultivating an authentic, meaningful life can require some work — some self-discovery, some new skills, some courage, and perhaps even some help (I needed some!)… is it possible that the same could be true of an authentic relationship to food?

What work might you do to cultivate a more authentic relationship to food in 2021?

…

One last thing: it can be hard to do this eating work on your own. It’s hard to know where to start, and it can be hard to actually put these ideas into action.

If you’d like some support on that journey — much more detail on how to begin, lots of implementation, and the warmest community there is — you might consider joining the Dessert Club. Enrollment opens in February, but the doors to the early bird waitlist (no commitment, just the option to sign up early and save) close on January 10.

And no matter what path you take, I’m rooting for you in the year ahead. You’ve got this.  

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Back to basics: What you should do while you eat

I’ve been writing this blog for several years now, so I assume that you know everything that I know! But that might not be true. :) So I’m doing a series that I call “back to basics,” in which I share my perspective on the “basics” of a happy, sane relationship with food. My last “back to basics” piece was about hunger.

I have a suggestion for one, basic thing that will help you eat in a way that truly serves you: When you eat, only eat.

In other words: Don’t eat while distracted.

I know, I know. You’ve probably heard the one before. It’s not exactly a new suggestion that eating without distractions might be a good idea.

But hear me out. I’m not suggesting eating without distractions because it’s more proper, or because I want you to cultivate some sort of instagram-worthy dinner, complete with candles and cloth napkins (though if you’d like, have at it).

The reason to eat without distractions is because you’re more likely to be able to notice what you need to notice: hunger, fullness, how this food is making you feel, and what you’re craving in this moment (not what you thought you wanted at the beginning of the meal).

Actually, I’m still being too gentle: the reason to eat without distractions is because it will be very, very, VERY difficult to notice what you need to notice, if you eat while distracted.

Especially in the beginning, this is not optional.

Science confirms this; one study, for example, that found that you experience more flavor, from less food, if you eat without distractions. As a result, people who ate without distractions ate less, without purposefully trying to do so.

In my book, distractions include:

Instagram
YouTube
Books
Driving
Working
Standing (yep — if you’re standing, you’re likely to be doing other things — cooking, walking, etc.) 

I typically hear four reactions to this advice:

1. But meals are my chance to have fun! I can’t have fun if I can’t eat with my distractions!

2. But I won’t be able to get enough done at work if I don’t eat while working!

3. But my specific situation doesn’t allow for undistracted eating!

4. But I’ll feel like a crazy person!

Let’s talk about them.

1. But meals are my chance to have fun!

I really empathize with this concern. I used to be a hardcore reader-while-eater, for example. My meals were my break! I wanted to have fun!

But, when I looked deeper, I realized: I was often taking breaks to eat because I wanted fun, and not because I was actually hungry. Also, I would often eat more, just because I didn’t feel like going back to work yet. As a result, I was often eating more than I truly needed, or too much of foods that didn’t make me feel my best.

I had to give up what I call the “robot fantasy” — the myth that my brain could just “decide” how much I’d work in a day, and I would behave like an obedient robot, and get the job done.  I had to accept that my eating patterns were telling me something: I needed more breaks.

If I allowed myself to have breaks just because I needed breaks — and not because I “needed to eat” — I ate a lot less. I first had this realization in my senior year of college, when I was writing my thesis — a 100+ page paper that was the capstone of my undergrad experience. I hadn’t been allowing myself breaks except to eat, sleep and exercise.

But once I did…I’m pretty sure I read the entire True Blood series that spring.

2. I won’t be able to get enough done at work if I don’t eat while working!

I totally empathize with this one, too.

It’s important to separate the social pressure from the productivity question. Productivity-wise: Is it actually true that taking 20 minutes to eat last night’s leftovers is going to ruin your productivity? Our brains need breaks — stepping away, in my opinion, is more likely to make you more effective and efficient for the rest of the day because you’re more likely to think and prioritize better once you get back.

But there is absolutely also social pressure. When I was a management consultant in Manhattan, it sometimes felt like no one took lunch breaks (and often no breaks for breakfast or dinner or snacks, either) — everyone just got food and then went back to making slides and Excel models.

The only thing I’ll say here is that if you are being reasonable, very few managers can say, no, taking 20 or 30 minutes to eat a sandwich isn’t allowed. Yes, it might be a little strange — but if you find that it is so helpful for your wellbeing, being a tiny bit strange might be worth it. Who knows, you might even inspire others by being brave!

3.  My specific situation doesn’t allow for undistracted eating!

I get it — you’re an emergency room nurse. You’re taking care of two kids under 5. Undistracted eating sounds nice but also…impossible.

So I will say what I always say: You definitely don’t need to be rigid about this. Just do your best to gently care for yourself.

Maybe you can’t eat undistracted on your 12-hour shift (at the emergency room, or with your kids).  When you happen to have five minutes free while the kids are napping or between patients, maybe you try to eat a snack undistracted. And maybe you try to have at least one meal a day undistracted — when you’re not on call.

But remember — just do your best to gently care for yourself. It’s okay if it’s not “perfect.”

4. I’ll feel like a crazy person!

If you fear that if you only did one thing (eat) and not multiple things (eating while going on Instagram and listening to a podcast) you might feel jumpy or agitated or like you might crawl out of your skin….well, that’s possible.

But, if sitting and only eating brings up agitation that is hard to be with…that agitation was there anyway. That agitation was absolutely affecting your eating. I can’t overemphasize how much it will serve you to face it, head on. May I recommend lying on the floor for five minutes, perhaps before eating? That may help you process some of it, before you’re face-to-face with your sandwich.

…

One last note: It’s true that talking to other humans while eating is also distracting — but since that is one of our primal human pleasures, I wouldn’t suggest cutting that out entirely. But if you’re struggling with your eating, it might be useful to have at least one meal a day when you’re alone and can focus on your food. And you might be extra thoughtful when you do eat with others — maybe take a break mid-meal to check in with yourself, for example.

And, I can’t resist a challenge: Could you try to eat without distractions this week?

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On eating methodologies

I define an “eating methodology” as a framework that helps you know when, what, how, or how much to eat.  

Some methodologies are strict; others are quite flexible. Some are personal and idiosyncratic, while others — intermittent fasting, Keto, or the Mediterranean Diet, for example — have books and large Instagram communities and lots of internet articles written about them.

If you’re someone who’s frustrated with your eating, I’d guess that one of the following is true:

1. You don’t have a methodology for eating

2. You don’t have a methodology that is appropriate and holistically healthy for you.

Let’s explore each of these possibilities:

1. You don’t have a methodology for eating

Some people will eat in a way that serves them, completely instinctually. The way that they eat makes them feel physically well, and supports their other needs — emotional, physical, relational, etc. I would argue that they do have a methodology for eating, but it is implicit and they may have never thought about it.

And yet, many of the rest of us…don’t do this. Left to own our devices, our eating is likely to be influenced by outside forces, like:

• What’s there — If the donuts are in the work meeting, you might want to eat them!

• Who’s there — if everyone else is eating, you’ll eat. But if no one is eating, you might not eat — even if you’re hungry!

• Our emotions — More indulgent food, or larger quantities of food, can seem more appealing when we are stressed, anxious, tired, bored — or even happy.

I’m not saying you can never choose to eat a donut at a work meeting, or cake when everyone else is eating cake.

But I am saying that sometimes the work-donut serves us, and other times it doesn’t. It can be helpful to have at least a gentle framework — questions to ask, things to notice — to guide our eating, so we know we are eating intentionally, rather than in a reactive way.

2. You don’t have a methodology that is sustainable and holistically healthy for you.

If your eating methodology leaves you anxious, obsessed with food, or frequently feeling guilty, then it is not mentally or emotionally healthy for you.

If your methodology for eating is mentally or emotionally unhealthy for you, then it is not healthy for you. This is true, even if you are ostensibly consuming “healthy food” in “healthy quantities.” 

And, of course, if how we approach food is not mentally or emotionally healthy, many of us will find it very difficult to consistently consume “healthy food” in “healthy quantities.” We might do it sometimes, and then other times, we’ll finish a sleeve of cookies standing next to our pantry at 11 pm.

…

As I said above, not everyone needs an “eating methodology;” some people do it completely naturally.

But if you’re someone who frequently feels frustrated or guilty or annoyed with their eating, then, in my experience, a methodology can be quite useful. I don’t personally prefer a strict or rigid methodology, but a gentle and flexible framework — questions to ask, things to notice — can help guide you when you need it.

The obvious next question, of course, is: how do I develop my own eating methodology?

As it turns out, that is my goal for you! Perhaps you would like to peruse the archives of my blog (here and here), where I’ve spent 6 years trying to give you bite-sized ideas for how to do just that?

Or, if you’d like a more thorough approach: I run a group program called the Dessert Club, whose goal is to help you figure out how to eat in a way that serves you. I’ll be opening the group again in 2021 (with a slightly new format — and one that is suited to you no matter where you live!).

If you’re interested in the Dessert Club, you can sign up here to be the first to know when the doors open for enrollment (+ you’ll receive a discount code that is good for early bird sign-ups!).

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What's easy, and what's hard

How many minutes have your spent analyzing your calories? Or carbs, or fat, or protein?
How many hours have you spent analyzing how “bad” or “good” you were at the meal you just ate? Or planning ahead to your next meal?

On one hand, this is hard work.

And yet, I also think it’s easy. It’s what we’ve been doing for years. It’s a well-worn path, one that’s all over TV and the nutrition section of your bookstore.  

The hard work is stepping away from the drama of I’ll-put-pre-portioned-chicken-and-vegetables-in-tupperwares-for-the-next-week-to-make-up-for-the-Oreos-I-just-ate.

The hard work is asking, “wait, why do I eat so often when I’m not even hungry?”

Many of us don’t identify as “emotional eaters.” We don’t see the connection between our eating and something deeper — something that might have to do with our anxieties, our fears, our frustrations, our relationships. That’s other people, not us.

And yet, “I-ate-half-a-box-of-Oreos-and-feel-terrible” is not a problem that calorie counting, or meal planning, can solve. We’ve made meal plans before…and eaten half the box of Oreos anyway.

The hard work is pulling ourselves away from the drama of food and portions and calories, and looking deeply at our whole selves. This is a level of insight that many of us — despite hundreds or even thousands of hours thinking about our “eating” — may have never achieved.

And it’s because it’s genuinely hard. The connection between our eating and the rest of our lives can be complex and nuanced. Looking at it can bring up a lot of painful feelings, and take more energy than we expect.

(This, of course, is the reason why I coach and facilitate groups on this topic. It can be so helpful to get support on these issues — here’s some ways to work with me, if you’d like).

But the first step is to acknowledge:

1. Getting caught up in the drama of points and macros and calories and meal planning intermittent fasting windows is easy.

2. Going deep — really understanding why we eat the way we do — that’s what is hard and complex.

It’s also really, really worth doing.

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On taking yourself seriously

Here’s a trend that I’ve noticed in people who struggle with their eating: we don’t take ourselves seriously.

Often, one of my clients will have the most amazing insight. Something like:

•  “I realized that I eat because I’m so tired and drained at work that it actually feels painful. When I eat, I don’t have to feel that tiredness.” 

• “I just noticed that I eat after I’ve put my kids to bed because I want pleasure…now. And there’s not a lot in my life that can give me pleasure that reliably, and quickly.”

But many people, once they’ve had an incredible insight like this, will then say: “But it’s not like my life is really hard, compared to other people!”

Of course, I appreciate this humility. Yes, there are other people fighting bigger battles — most of us are (hopefully) not working in coal mines or battling late-stage cancer.

And yet.

And yet, if we’re eating in response to fatigue, a need for pleasure, or a need for breaks…we’re going to keep eating until we address these needs in some way. Sometimes this requires actual changes in our lives (changing our schedule, our job, the support we seek out, etc.), and sometimes it just requires a perspective shift or new mental or emotional tools.

We’re never going to make the changes required if we don’t acknowledge our challenges and our suffering for what it is: challenges and suffering.

In other words: We need to take ourselves seriously.

I’m sure you know someone with greater challenges or more severe suffering. But you don’t do yourself, or them, any favors by denying your own difficulties. The pain doesn’t go away just because you don’t acknowledge it — it just goes underground. It infects your eating (and probably other areas of your life, too).

So today I’ll ask: What pain or challenge in your life aren’t you taking seriously?

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"Should I go on a diet tomorrow?"

“Should I go on a diet tomorrow?” I wondered to myself. I was sitting in my AirBnB on Labor Day morning, writing in my journal as I looked at the woods outside my window and drank a cup of tea.  

It had been an indulgent weekend – I went down to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I’m a big lover of biscuits and barbecue, and I had all that and more – “more” included fresh sugar-coated donuts covered in fresh chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry sauces, deep dish pizza, salmon benedict, cinnamon and white chocolate scones.

It was awesome, and I definitely enjoyed myself. But on Monday morning? I felt pretty unwell in my body.

And so I said to myself: I should go on a diet.

This is a conversation I’ve had with myself before. This is a conversation, no matter for how long I’ve tried to eat authentically, that I continue to have with myself…

Whenever I have an indulgent week or weekend or dinner.
Whenever I have an event coming up that I feel nervous about.
Whenever I’m feeling depressed or helpless about my life.

And let me start off by saying: if you want to go on a diet, go for it. My number one belief about eating (and life) is that: You can take care of yourself better than anyone else, if you are able to listen to yourself.

But if you’ve tried going on a diet before, and it doesn’t seem to be working for you and making your life as wonderful or fabulous as you hoped it would be, can we just chat for a little bit?

That thing I said above is worth repeating: My number one belief about eating (and life) is that you can take care of yourself better than anyone else, if you are able to listen to yourself.

Why does this matter? Because that I-wanna-go-on-a-diet-NOW feeling can be interpreted in two ways:

1. My essential self has been bad, overindulgent, or just too fat and needs to be reigned in by a diet

2. My essential self needs something from me right now and I need to listen closely

So let’s talk about #1 first. Because let’s face it, I’ve done #1 before.

Most of us have spent so much of our lives being told that we are not trustworthy. That if we truly listen to our deepest selves, they will betray us. Our essential self wants to eat chocolate until we don’t fit into any of our clothes (even those sweatpants with the stretched out elastic waistband).

With that philosophy, diets make total sense. Diets tell us what we should eat, so we don’t eat too much. Diets are a way of restoring order to our universe by outsourcing the decision-making.

Of course, there are all kinds of diets out there. Many let you choose your own foods or choose how much you eat, as long as you don’t go over a certain total daily amount, for example. But, I would argue that even in those situations, you are outsourcing your decision making to a higher authority – your diet – rather than trusting in your own wisdom.

That is why I recommend that you don’t go on a diet tomorrow — don’t make the decision too rashly. Because in going on a diet, you are choosing to move away from your inner guidance. You are choosing to listen to the guidance of something else – the diet – just when you deepest self needs you most.

Your other option, #2, is to seize this beautiful opportunity to prove to yourself that you can take care of yourself.

Your other option is to wrap your arms around yourself because she is aching. To hold her tight and to say, “Oh, self, you need to be listened to. I’m sorry you’re feeling so gross right now. What can I do to help?”

And when you do that, you actually open up the lines of communication. You actually improve your relationship with yourself, rather than set yourself up for another cycle of over-eating and restricting.

When I over-indulged on Labor Day, I found that I just felt gross in my body. I saw that I needed to eat food that would nourish me and make my body feel good – some grilled chicken, a delicious salad. And I that needed some time to veg and be alone – I had been traveling and socializing too much during the month of August.

I didn’t need a diet to fix things. I just needed to listen better.

…

But maybe you’re not convinced. Maybe you would still like to go on a diet. If that’s the case, I’d suggest that you wait a few days. Four days, minimum.

In the meantime, I’d strongly suggest you do the following. And you can do this, even if you’re not going to go on a diet at all! :

1. Lie on your bed for 10 minutes and feel absolutely terrible. I’m sorry, I wish I could start this list off with something a bit more perky than this. I really do.
   
   But frankly, if you want to go on a diet, it’s usually a sign that you do feel terrible and are trying to be all problem-solving-expert about it. Which is fine. I love solving problems, myself. But in my experience, the best way to stop feeling crappy is to start actually feeling crappy.
   
   So start.
   
   I promise you, if you lie on your bed and focus all of your energy on feeling like an upset piece of flesh, you will stop feeling so upset. But you need to really inhabit the feeling. What does your heart feel like to be so scared, overwhelmed, upset? What does your belly feel like? Your back? Your arms, legs, face? Does it feel tingly to feel like such a f***ing waste of space? Warm? Purple-colored?
   
   Start as soon as possible.
    

2. Write in a journal about what is scary right now.  Diets are often a way to impose order on our lives when things feel overwhelming. Be brutally honest with yourself – it might have to do with your weight/body/eating, or it might not.
   
   For example, sometimes I want to go on a diet because my body feels unwell. But at other times, it is because I’m going to be seeing people I love or I want to impress, and I’m afraid they won’t love or respect me as much if I don’t have a more “ideal” body. Is that messy? Yes. Is it important for you to know? Also yes.
   
   Journals are great for this because writing things down get them out of your head, so the swirling thoughts won’t last nearly as long.
    

3. Ask yourself what is the kindest thing you can do for yourself right now. Sometimes the answer is “I want a turkey sandwich with avocado for lunch.” At other times, the answer is, “I want to do absolutely nothing except play Candy Crush all afternoon.”
   
   Short of actions that would get you fired at your job or absolutely ruin your relationship with a loved one, do it. Move anything you have to do it – laundry, socializing, cleaning your apartment.
   
   Make sure that your deepest self knows that you will be there for her. Whatever it takes.
    

4. The next time you are hungry and want to eat, deeply ask yourself what you want to eat. 
   
   Just because I don’t suggest you run off and start The Zone or Atkins doesn’t mean you can’t move towards healthier ways of eating.
   
   But I find that “healthy” eating is more likely to be sustainable when it comes from a conversation with the self, rather than being imposed top-down. So ask yourself: hey, what do you want to eat? Would something light and vegetable-y feel good right now?
   
   The key is to use food as a way of being kind to yourself, rather than a way of punishing yourself. A salad with grilled chicken can be a gift to myself after a day of eating pancakes and burgers, or it can be a punishment. You get to choose.

And mostly, know that I am out there, sending you love and strength.

Because I’ve been there, and seen the other side. In my experience, if we choose to nourish ourselves, rather than running off to Weight Watchers or Dr. Atkins, we can strengthen our relationship and trust with ourselves in a way that is invaluable.

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Superfans may notice that I originally shared this essay back in 2014. While I’m on maternity leave, I’m sharing some of the best posts from my archives — I hope you enjoy! :)  

What if you don’t want the food on your plate?

Have you ever sat down to eat a meal, only to realize that you don’t actually want the food that is on your plate?

One winter Friday night, it was 8:00 pm and I was sitting down to warm egg salad on whole wheat toast. Egg salad is a comforting meal that I usually love, but tonight I realized that it just wasn’t cutting it.

I realized in that moment that the only thing that would satisfy me was Spaghetti Bolognese.

Homemade Spaghetti Bolognese, with spicy sausage, sautéed mushrooms, and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano on top.

And I knew just what I had to do.

But I didn’t always know what to do. In fact, this situation used to be really tough for me. So in this post, I want to give you two options for what to do when that Spaghetti Bolognese Realization hits:

1. Go get what you most want 

Sometimes you need to eat what you most want. 

That was what was true for me on that Friday night. It was 20-degree weather, but I didn’t care. I knew that by the time I went to the supermarket, got home, and made dinner, it would be 9:30 pm, but I didn’t care.

So I put on my coat and my hat and my scarf and my gloves, and I went to the supermarket.

And once the Spaghetti Bolognese was ready? I didn’t actually want that much. A small plate was perfect.

I’m not saying that you have to do this. Sometimes there are other very compelling reasons why you can’t do this. But I am saying that sometimes when you want Spaghetti Bolognese, the only thing that will do is Spaghetti Bolognese.

Here’s something for you to play around with at least once this week: This week, when you’re about to eat, ask yourself if what you have in front of you is what you most want to be eating. If it isn’t, see if you have the time/energy/resources to give it to yourself. See how it affects your appetite and your contentment.

2. Eat what’s on your plate anyway

It’s extremely unrealistic to expect that every night is a go-to-the-supermarket-at-8-and-make-homemade-pasta kind of night.

Maybe what’s on your plate is the only food within miles, or you don’t have time or resources to make another meal. Or you’re already in your sweatpants and don’t feel like leaving the house.

Whatever the reason, it’s perfectly acceptable to eat the food anyway.

But it’s pretty important to remain aware of the fact that you’re not prioritizing taste that night. That instead of giving your taste buds what they most want, you are instead indulging some other need: the need to not leave the house in 20 degree weather, the need to finish up the meal and move onto the other things on your to-do list, the need to have time to rest rather than spending it procuring food or cooking.

The reason that this is important is because, since you’re not prioritizing taste, you may end your meal not completely satisfied.

And when that happens, it’s very tempting to want to eat more. A few chocolate covered pretzels. A bite of old French toast, straight out of the Tupperware in your fridge. Four Sun Chips, while you’re holding the bag in one hand and the rubber band in the other.

And this is a danger zone.

Of course, if you are hungry, there’s nothing wrong with having more food after your main meal. But too often this post-meal scrounging is because your meal wasn’t satisfying, and now you’re trying to satisfy yourself by having a bite of this, a lick of that.

But those little bits of things won’t work when what you really want is Spaghetti Bolognese.

So if you find yourself in that situation this week, here’s some things to try:

• Take a moment to remember that you are taking care of yourself in ways that don’t have to do with delicious foods. Do this in a way that feels gentle and good to you: take a deep breath, feel your body, touch your hips and arms, and face, and remember that you it’s okay to not feel pleasure from food at every second, because you’re fulfilling your needs in other ways — by not going outside tonight, by not spending too much time dealing with food prep.
  

• Do something fun. Sometimes I have chosen not to prioritize food, but that is because I am so stressed and busy in other ways. The problem then is that I’m not getting pleasure from food, and I’m not getting pleasure from my to-do list. On those days, it’s really important for me to carve out even 10 minutes to do something fun, as a bribe to get myself to stop eating (hey, you’ve gotta do what you gotta do).
   

So here’s my invitation to you: think back on a time recently, when you sat down to eat but didn’t actually want what was on your plate. How could you have handled it differently?

“Sometimes you just need to sit and be achy and not eat.”

It was 11:35 pm.

I'd just gotten off the phone with someone I love. It wasn't a bad call, but it brought up a lot of feelings and thoughts for me. And afterwards I felt...achy.  

And, simultaneously, I thought, "You know what would be a nice pre-bed treat? Some of that white chocolate I have in my cabinet. Just a little bite."

Amazing how that happens, huh? It's almost like clockwork. 

Because I've been on this merry-go-round before, I stopped myself by asking, "are you hungry, Katie?" And (duh) the answer was "No."

"No I’m not hungry. I’m just achy."

But what then?

If intuitive eating is something you're interested in, if you want to learn to listen to yourself to see when you should eat and when you shouldn't, this is something you're going to come up against.

The late-night-feel-terribles. 
The mid-afternoon-feel-terribles.
And even the I-don't-want-to-get-out-of-bed-because-I-feel-terrible-and-the-only-acceptable-bribe-is-chocolate-s.

I don’t think this is discussed enough — the fact that if you do this work properly, you’ll come across some truly difficult stuff that has nothing to do with food. So today, I wanted to share a video in which I discuss more about what this is like, and what you can do about it.

After you watch the video, you might ask yourself: Have you ever felt noticed how you felt emotionally, at times when you weren’t hungry but wanted to eat anyway? (So many of us never actually notice whether we’re hungry or not). What would it have been like to sit with those feelings, for at least a little bit?

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Superfans may notice that I originally shared this video back in 2014. (!!) While I’m on maternity leave, I’m sharing some of my best posts from my archives — I hope you enjoy! :)  

On muffins and Mexican food (Or: My very first food epiphany)

“If I try to eat intuitively, I’ll never stop eating.”
“If I try to eat intuitively, I’ll gain so much weight, I won’t fit into any of my clothes.”
“If I try to eat intuitively, it will turn out that my desire for food is endless.”

Can you relate?

Underlying all of these fears is the sense that if we listened to ourselves, we would be hurt or ruined by some wild, overwhelming, self-destructive force within us.

And my heart aches, as I hear it. Because I’ve been there too. Frankly, I still have those fears, on days when I am feeling scared and frustrated and overwhelmed. On those days, my desire for miniature peanut butter cups feels infinite.

To that, I want to offer you a very simple truth that is at the core of my belief system about eating and about life:

You aren’t too crazy or wild. You’ve just spent too long not listening to yourself.  

Let me give you a very vivid example from very early on in my eating journey.

Years ago, I was staying with my parents for a month before starting a new job, and I had just discovered intuitive eating. I had spent most of my adult life, up to this point, alternately feeling restricted around food or bingeing, and I was exhausted.

I was desperate to lose weight, but even more than that, I was desperate to feel not-crazy around food. I decided that I would even be willing to never lose weight, if I could stop this terrible fight with myself.

I started with muffins and Mexican food.

My mom always bought these incredible chocolate chip muffins from the supermarket. (Well, maybe they weren’t absolutely incredible, but I loved them).

My mother is wise and loving and very organized. So, when she eats a muffin, she has a plan for eating in moderation. She eats one quarter of a muffin. Or one half of a muffin, tops. As a result, I had spent most of my adult life usually also eating one half or less of a muffin, because I thought that was the “right” thing to do.

But, to be honest, I was freaking tired of eating halves and quarters of muffins.
I wanted a whole muffin.

And I didn’t want to just eat muffins for breakfast — I truly felt like I wanted to eat muffins all day.

So I let myself get hungry. And when I got hungry, I asked myself what I wanted, and it was a muffin. It was 4 p.m.

So I went to the kitchen and got a muffin. I toasted it in the oven, so it was warm and the butter melted, and I sat at the dining room table to eat it. (And felt terrified. We were a house where people ate apples, or perhaps almonds, for a snack. We were not a house where people ate whole muffins in the afternoon. Was someone going to come and arrest me? It sounds funny when I say this, but it was not funny at the time).

And I ate my whole muffin.

The next day, I wanted a muffin again at 4 p.m., so I ate one then too. I also toasted it, so the butter melted and was perfect, and I had a big glass of milk. And I put down a placemat and ate it at the dining room table.

This whole incident was about ten years ago, and eating a muffin for a snack at this point in my life feels like no big deal. But it’s hard to overemphasize how risky it felt at the time — part of me was convinced that this could not keep going on like this. Entire muffins as snacks was not ideal. I was going to stop fitting into my jeans very soon.

But you know what was crazy? That night, after my second day of muffin eating, I went out to a Mexican restaurant with my family.

You should know, I LOVE Mexican food. But Mexican food places had always been scary to me – the calories add up so fast once you start getting things like chips or guacamole or quesadillas. 

And I freakin’ love chips and guacamole and quesadillas.

I also always found myself obsessively looking at other people’s plates during meals like that, especially my mother’s, because she was very good at moderation. I tried to eat no more than what she was eating, but I usually failed.

But on that night, I found that I wasn’t hungry at all. I had eaten a big muffin for a mid-afternoon snack, after all. So I had a bite or two of a quesadilla, a chip or three, and brought the rest home as leftovers.

That had never happened to me before.
Ever.

Up until that point, I felt terrified eating at Mexican restaurants, because I didn’t feel like I could be trusted. But when I let go and trusted that I would stop eating when I was full, I didn’t want to eat that much after all. 

That was my first experience with a concept that is at the absolute core of my philosophy about eating and about life:

You aren’t too crazy or wild. You have just spent too long not listening to yourself.  

Everything else I write about on this site is an outgrowth of this philosophy. If we communicate authentically with ourselves, we will know when it is time to eat, and we will know what to eat.

Our deepest selves want to feel good. Part of feeling good means eating chocolate cake, because chocolate cake is rich and makes our toes curl. But feeling good also means that our bodies want to be able to move and feel comfortable and balanced. And in order for that to happen, we can’t eat chocolate cake all the time. We need protein and fiber and whole grains and leafy greens.

We also need to, you know, stop eating occasionally.

So that’s my challenge for you for this week:

What if you opened up the lines of communication between you and yourself for just a day or two or four?

What if you nicely asked yourself what you wanted, and then gave it to yourself instead of micro-managing the whole thing in your head?
And then did it at the next meal?
What if you trusted that your body knows when it is hungry and when it is full, and that it will tell you?

Could you try it?
Even for just a day?

Back to basics

When I first decided that restricting what I was eating, then overdoing it, and all the while, weighing myself 1-4 times a day were making me crazy, I decided that I had to get back to the basics.

And there is one question that is the most basic of all: Are you hungry?

It sounds so simple and obvious. I mean, everyone knows when they’re hungry or not, right?

Well, except me. I found that I didn’t really know the answer to that question. I mean, I knew if I was ravenous or if I was completely stuffed. But during those in-between, non-crisis moments, what did hunger feel like? I had never really paid attention.

So I started keeping a journal, writing down what I ate and whether I was hungry or not. I was nervous about the journaling because it felt like a diet, but I promised myself I wouldn’t judge or restrict myself; I was just collecting impartial data.

I found, very quickly, that I was rarely eating when I was hungry. I mean, I had a LOT of other good reasons:

• Because all my friends were having lunch and I wanted to socialize with them

• Because I had been sitting in a library for five hours, and moving my legs and going to dinner felt nice 

• Because if I didn’t eat now I might not be able to eat later because the dining hall would be closed

• Because I was talking to someone who made me feel uncomfortable or small (or was at a party where I didn’t want to be) and it was easier to eat a large handful of roasted nuts than to talk the whole time

• Because the garlic mashed potatoes with parsley looked so good and they would never be as good as in that moment.

This was shocking to me. I had never realized how often I ate when I wasn’t hungry. So I kept tracking, writing it all down. And gradually, just from the noticing, I started to make some different decisions.

And things became radically different, in my eating and in my life.

I realized that I often ate when I wasn’t hungry because there was some other truth I didn’t want to face – that I needed a break from work or that I needed to go home from a party or just that I needed to lie on my bed and cry and feel terrible. So I started eating less often and doing more of whatever else I needed.

Plus, my binges lessened radically in frequency and intensity. Now, as I started to binge, I could promise myself that I could eat whatever it was later, when I was hungry. And if “whatever I wanted” meant donut holes and barbeque kettle chips for dinner, so be it. Donut holes and barbeque kettle chips are still food, and if I wanted them when I was hungry, I ate eat them and they filled me up, and that was much better than a binge – when I ate when I wasn’t hungry at all without any regard to my body.

This was only the beginning of my journey towards healing my relationship with food and with myself, but that simple first step was essential: eat when you’re hungry. 

So, this week, that’s my loving challenge to you. 

Your self-exploration challenge: 

1.     Start right now.
Ask yourself how hungry you are right now. Just note it gently.
(I started with just “very hungry,” “a little hungry,” or “not hungry” in my journal. But sometimes a 1-10 scale is also very useful - 1 being ravenous, 10 being totally stuffed, and 5 being exactly in between).

2.    The next time you eat, take a quick moment to evaluate how hungry you are.

3.     Keep track of your hunger for at least a week by writing it down.
Keep track in a journal of how hungry you were each time you eat. Even if you can’t write it down in the moment (maybe you’re in public), make sure that you write it all down at the end of the day.

4.     Don’t worry about it if you eat when you’re not hungry.
This is the most important step. The point of keeping track of your hunger is not to be mean to yourself or to beat yourself up. The point is to bring a bit of awareness to your life. Maybe you will find that for an entire week, you basically never eat when you are hungry (this is what I found). As you keep bringing kindness to yourself and being willing to be aware, you will change without pushing.

Let me know how it goes. I’m sending all of my love and support over the web.

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While I’m on maternity leave, I’m sharing some of the best posts from my archives — I hope you enjoy! :)  

On choosing what to eat

How do you actually choose what you should eat? 

It seems like an obvious question, and yet, a lot of us aren’t actually very good at doing this in a way that serves us. We either over-do it, or we limit foods that would bring us pleasure or satisfaction and end up feeling deprived or dissatisfied or unwell in our bodies.

Many of us assume that “planning” should be a big part of choosing what to eat effectively. For a long time, I planned what I would eat because I was afraid of what I would eat if I didn't have a rock-solid plan in place: "I will eat exactly half of my quesadilla at the Mexican restaurant," for example.

Of course, planning isn’t inherently bad. If it makes you feel good, keep doing it, and there’s a lot of contexts in which I think it makes total sense (packing a lunch for work or school, for example).

And yet, holding on too rigidly to our planning can also have some downsides — and so in this video, I want to talk to you about what those downsides may be, offer you a slightly different perspective on how to choose what you want to eat: being willing to be surprised.

Is this something that comes naturally to you, or something that you struggle with? Is there a situation recently, where you might have acted more on your own behalf, if you’d let yourself be surprised?

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Superfans may notice that I originally shared this video back in 2014. (!!) While I’m on maternity leave, I’m sharing some of my best posts from my archives — I hope you enjoy! :)  

It's okay to love food.

I recently threw away some papers from my teenage bedroom, and I found a list of “things to bake” on a small Winnie the Pooh pad of paper. The list included quiche, sourdough bread, and cinnamon rolls.

It reminded me of two things: 

1. I love food, and I have always loved food.

2. The way that I love food now is so much better than the way I loved food back then. 

Back then, my deep love of food felt kind of dangerous, like a liability. I always had to keep it under control — only three bites of that slice of cake, Katie. I was usually pretty good at keeping everything moderate … except when I wasn’t (like when I'd eat a ton of cookie dough while baking and then take a walk afterwards and think, I’m never eating cookie dough again. Ever.)

The way that I love food now feels like a happy and well-adjusted relationship. I feel like I can express my love without causing some kind of crisis or problem. 

As I ate a small piece of chocolate peanut butter pie for a snack this afternoon, I realized that I write a lot about what a relief resolving our “eating issues” can be, how it can reduce the mental clutter and make us happier. But I wonder if I explicitly say something else frequently enough:

Loving food is not wrong. 

Loving fresh bread and warm cookies and baby back ribs that are covered in barbecue sauce is not wrong. 

And eating bread and cookies and baby back ribs is not wrong either. 

What’s “wrong” is that you’ve spent so long messing with your eating that you’ve convinced yourself that your cravings can’t be trusted.
What’s “wrong” is that you’ve gotten lost in the restrict-and-overindulge cycle so often that you’ve forgotten that true satisfaction is natural and achievable.

Loving food can be a natural and awesome expression of sensuality, pleasure, and human-ness. 

So I want to remind you, in case you forgot or never learned: 

You don’t have to be afraid of your love of food. 
It’s okay to love food. 
It’s okay to eat food that you love.

You might just have to do some personal exploration to figure out how. 

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Superfans may notice that I originally shared this essay back in 2017. While I’m on maternity leave, I’m sharing some of my best posts from my archives — I hope you enjoy! :)  

The five minute rule

It’s 3 pm, and I’m looking at a napkin in front of me that has a slice of coffee cake and an Oreo cookie. There was one other cookie, but I plopped it in my mouth on the way to the table.

I just finished lunch – a late lunch for me, but I wasn’t hungry earlier – and I am desperate inhale these treats as quickly as possible.

And then maybe get more.

More sounds nice.

And yet I have to ask myself: Are you still hungry, Katie? 

The answer? I’m not quite sure.

Ugh.

I’m sure that my heart is beating kind of fast and I feel kind of hot. I have a lot on my mind – I’ve been thinking about my life and what I want.  And I also need to get back to work soon; I’m feeling a bit behind.

I’m sure that I was really hungry 10 minutes ago, before I ate a salad and some lamb and half of an English muffin with guacamole.

But now, I'm not quite so sure. Except that I would really like to eat.

And then eat some more.

I’d like to eat now please.

In moments like this – when I really wanna eat but am maybe hungry but maybe probably not – it is time to implement the five-minute rule.

The five minute rule is this:

If you're in the middle of eating and you're no longer sure if you're hungry, you must physically leave and do something pleasurable for five minutes. 

The reasoning behind the five minute rule is that you need to separate yourself from food for five minutes, so you can assess whether or not you’re full with an open mind.

There are three components of the five-minute rule:

1. You have to leave the place where you are eating.

2. You have to do something pleasurable.

3. You have to promise yourself that after five minutes you will come back and eat if you’re still hungry. And if you’re not hungry, promise yourself that you will finish eating at the next available moment when you are hungry. And you have to mean it.

Here’s why:

1.  You have to leave the place where you are eating.

Leave the table. Go to a different room. Only when you have physical space can you actually know whether you are hungry enough to keep eating. Try to find somewhere quiet, where you can connect to that deepest part of yourself.

This can be a bit tricky if you are with a team or on a date or at work or a dinner party. In those situations, I highly recommend the bathroom. Five minutes isn’t an insane amount of time to spend in the bathroom, and bathrooms are usually pretty quiet.

Even your reaction to the thought of leaving your food for five minutes may be telling. If I am truly hungry, I am slightly reluctant, but it’s usually not a big deal. “It’s fine, I’ll just eat later,” I say to myself. But if I know, on some deeper level, that I’m not hungry, I hate leaving, because the thought of facing the truth is overwhelming.

2. You have to do something pleasurable.

If you tell yourself, “You have to go and go work on a boring work project for five minutes and then you can finish this coffee cake,” is that going to work? Maybe, but I also bet that once those five minutes are over, you are going to be gobbling down the sweet, crumbly brown sugar topping yet again.

If you are someone who struggles with over-eating, or emotional eating, or compulsive eating, you need to keep a “bag-of-tricks” of five-minute (or more) diversions with you at all times. For me, the easiest one is usually a good book. I’ll usually also have a friend in mind that I’ve been meaning to call or a blogger whose site I’ve been wanting to spend more time checking out, and I always want to take a walk.

Admittedly, these things can take more than five minutes. But five minutes is all you need to break the spell. If I’m being a little bingey, and I go read a great Jennifer Weiner book on my bed for five minutes, I will enjoy the book so much, I won’t need to eat. Even when I worked in management consulting, I would always keep a novel in my bag, and sometimes sneak off to an empty conference room and read my book for a few minutes, if I just needed some space to be quiet and decompress.

Even just walking out the door of your home or job and walking two minutes away, and two minutes back, will give you enough perspective to know whether you need to keep eating or not

A final note: maybe you are genuinely unable to think of something pleasurable or don’t have anything with you. If that’s the case, any break will do. If you’re at a restaurant, go to the bathroom and say some nice words to yourself in the mirror, play Candy Crush on your phone or admire how pretty your hands are (I bet they are very pretty). Just some space can make a big difference.

3. Promise yourself that you can eat again after the five minute break, and mean it.  

The only way that I can get myself to stop eating the brown sugar coffee cake that is on the table in front of me, when I am feeling jittery and kinda-maybe-still-hungry but also just really feel like having a full belly, is to promise myself that I can finish it later, and really mean it.

That way, what you’re doing is not being a mean parent who says “no” all the time. You are just saying, “Wait five minutes, my sweet one.”

And then if you are still hungry, go for it.  And if you aren’t, then you won’t go for it. But make a promise to yourself that as soon as you are hungry, you will.

And mean it. At the end of the day, repairing our relationship with food and eating is fundamentally about trust, about knowing that we can trust ourselves to be kind to our deepest selves, about knowing that we can take care of ourselves.

…

The five-minute rule is not about depriving yourself of anything. It’s about taking care of yourself as well as you possibly can.

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Superfans may notice that I originally shared this essay back in 2014. (!!) While I’m on maternity leave, I’m sharing some of my best posts from my archives — I hope you enjoy! :)  

What WWII-era research can teach us about why calorie restriction is so freaking rough

It was November 1944.

WWII was winding down in Europe, and the Allies knew that as they entered cities in previously German-occupied Europe, they’d be running into a lot of starved, emaciated civilians.

As Kalm and Semba point out in their great overview in the Journal of Nutrition, at the time, “very little was known scientifically about human starvation or how to deal with people who had undergone this extreme degree of starvation.”

So Ancel Keys, a young physiology professor at the University of Minnesota, recruited 35 healthy men, all conscientious objectors, and subjected them to 24 weeks of “semi-starvation.” During this time they ate approximately 1,560 calories a day, primarily in the form of potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, dark bread, and macaroni. The objective was to make the men lose 25% of their body weight, and then re-feed them back to normal.  They also were required to walk for 22 miles per week.

And let’s talk about the crazy stuff that went down:

They felt exhausted, irritable, impatient, and easily annoyed. Men reported flipping out at each other for tiny things that wouldn’t otherwise bother them – their friends’ idiosyncrasies or waiting too long in a line.

They become obsessed with food. Several men started collecting cookbooks and recipes; one man, Carlyle Frederick, owned nearly 100 by the time the experiment was over. Another man was so tempted by a bakery window that he bought a dozen donuts and gave them to children on the street, just so he could watch their joy eating them. Men developed elaborate rituals to eat their food, or even mixed water in with the meal to make it look like more.

At first the participants were allowed to chew gum, but when some of them started chewing up to 40 sticks per day, gum was forbidden for fear that it would skew the results.

They stopped caring about almost anything else. One man reported that he couldn’t wait for the experiment to be over not because it would be an end to physical discomfort, but because it was both exhausting and boring to be so obsessed with food. When they went to the movies, “you weren’t particularly interested in the love scenes, but you noticed every time they ate and what they ate.” They lost all interest in women, dating, and sex.  

Perhaps the most telling element is how many finished the study. From Emily Deans:

"Only 32 of the original 36 completed the semi-starvation period. One man who broke diet admitted to stealing scrapings from the garbage cans, stealing and eating raw rutabagas, and stopping at shops to eat sundaes. Two of the men suffered severe psychological stress - one became suicidal, and another cut off three of his fingers in an act of self-mutilation. Both men were taken to a psychiatric hospital."

And once they ended the semi-starvation period?

All of the men agreed that even after their 3-month “rehabilitation period” they had still not fully recovered. One man had to have his stomach pumped in the hospital due to bingeing the first day after the experiment ended. Many reported that long after study ended, they still ate excessively. One described it as a “year-long cavity” that needed to be filled. Another, after finishing the study, reported that for a long time he “couldn’t satisfy his craving for food by filling up his stomach.”

Oh man.

That feeling – I can’t satisfy my craving for food by filling up my stomach – I can definitely relate to that.

In fact, I can relate to all of those feelings – feeling like everything a friend or lover does drives me crazy when I’m hungry, feeling obsessed with food, feeling anxious and irritable.

What is perhaps most striking to me about this is, first, how similar the conditions sound to many typical diets. The participants ate mostly “whole foods,” just in a restricted, 1600-calorie-per-day way. And it wasn’t like they were going to CrossFit or SoulCycle classes in addition — they had this experience just on ~3 miles a day of walking. In some ways, this is easier than the diets that many folks subject themselves to.

And yet: not only did they go a little crazy during the process, it took them between two months and two years to recover.

Obviously, these men were at a healthy weight before the study, and losing so much weight led them to become underweight. Moreover, it does seem that they didn’t have optimal levels of some nutrients – their diet seemed very low protein, for example. And yet, I think it still provides powerful lessons about the problematic and lasting effects of calorie restriction, especially on mental and emotional health.

So I'll ask you: Have you noticed any of these symptoms, when you've tried to restrict your eating in some way? Does hearing about this study make you consider them in a new light? 

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This essay was originally shared in 2015, and edited for 2020. While I’m on maternity leave, I’m sharing some of my older, “best-of” posts, which you may not have seen yet!