Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy Menu Plan Monday: Eating Intentionally

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Menu Plan Monday: Eating Intentionally Posted: 01 Jan 2012 05:49 PM PST Thank you for subscribing to Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy! Treat yourself this Christmas to sweet little healthy goodies. Click here now for your free copy of Healthy Holidays, Slightly Indulgent Sweet Treats! If you put “Go on a diet” or something similar on your New Year’s Resolution list this year (and who didn’t?), I invite you to join me this year as I focus on Eating Intentionally. Based on the concept of Intuitive Eating, “Eating Intentionally” means changing your mindset about food into a healthy one that benefits your whole self. I’m so excited to get started on this journey, and I’d love your company! See you there! Breakfasts Pancake Sandwiches Muesli 1-2-3 Granola! Chocolate Coated Bananas Green Tea Oatmeal Lunches Leftovers Freezer Stash of Non-Allergenic Foods (for Certain Little Someone) Sandwiches (tuna or nitrate/nitrite-free deli ham) Black-Bean Stuffed Sweet Potatoes Dinners Braised Moroccan Chicken (minus the olives), Moroccan Carrots, Rice Potato Soup, Muffins Country Style Sausage, Muffins, Assorted Fruit Shrimp Scampi Pizza, Fresh Veggies and Fruit Tuna Casserole Snacks Nuts, Raisins, Cranberries, Dried Apples Leftover Christmas Cookies (yes, still) Puppy Chow Popcorn In My Kitchen Today On Mondays, I spend some extra time in the kitchen, cooking ahead and making baked goods to last for the week and beyond. A large portion of the day is often dedicated to allergen-free foods for my Certain Little Someone. Granola Artisan Bread Dough (regular and allergen-free) Black Beans and Sweet Potatoes Share this:

Eating Intentionally: Entering the No-Diet Zone Posted: 01 Jan 2012 05:26 PM PST Thank you for subscribing to Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy! Treat yourself this Christmas to sweet little healthy goodies. Click here now for your free copy of Healthy Holidays, Slightly Indulgent Sweet Treats! This picture is a free graphic printable available at the adorable blog Lil Luna. Click on the picture to see more free printable cuteness! (She asks that you follow her on FB before indulging in a print.) How many of you made a New Year’s Resolution  to go on a diet? Raise your hands high – you know who you are! I am here to help you break your resolution. No, seriously. I don’t believe in  diets. “What?!” I hear you ask incredulously. A healthy blogger who doesn’t believe in diets?! Uh huh. I believe in Eating Intentionally, inspired by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resche, who wrote “Intuitive Eating”, a brilliant book that I read and reviewed back last year. Their concept of “intuitive eating” really struck a chord with me, and validated my own personal thoughts regarding food consumption and healthy eating. I’m taking the concept a step further this year and making it a part of my life, from abstract idea to internalized principle. My personal guide word for 2012 is “Intentional” (inspired in part by my friend Leigh Ann, who blogs at Intentional by Grace), and my goal is to be intentional in every area of my life, including what and how I eat. And I invite you to join me! Each month (from January to October), I’m going to highlight one of the 10 principles behind the concept of intuitive eating, and put it to practice in my life. I’m going to encourage you to do the same! On the first Sunday of every month, I’m going to write a post explaining the principle I’m going to work on throughout that month. Then, every Monday, as part of my Menu Plan Monday post, I’m going to have an Eating Intentionally Check-In, where I’ll keep you updated with my progress. In turn, if you decide to go on this journey with me this year, you can check-in with me, too! Leave a comment in each Meal Plan Monday post telling me how you’re doing with that month’s principle. If you’re a blogger, write a post about it, and leave a link in the comments section! And now for January’s principle: Ditch the Diet Mentality.  Your mission this month, should you choose to accept it, is this: if one of your New Year’s Resolutions was to go on a diet, then cross it off your list. Scared to? I highly recommend you read Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works, as the authors go into great detail about the detriments of dieting. Talk about scary! To summarize, here are my thoughts from my original review of the book: All the research - ALL the research, and they cite quite a bit of it – proves that forbidding foods (either specific foods or limiting amounts of it) always results in an almost "hoarding" mentality, wherein you binge either before or after dieting because you feel deprived. It's ingrained in us as part of our survival to make sure we always have food available – we need it to live! So when we anticipate (or experience) a deprivation of food, our bodies naturally kick into preservation mode and begin hoarding food, fat and calories to keep us alive. This is partly a psychological function, but it has its roots in biology, which made the biggest impression on me. I won't go into the science of it here (because I know I'll mess it up, science not being my strong point), but the bottom line is that there is a biological reaction that occurs in your body whenever you expect to be deprived of food, or indeed are deprived of food. And that biological reaction goes against the whole idea of dieting, because it causes your body to lose muscle mass, store fat, and eat more food. So from a biological standpoint, there is no point in dieting; it is, in fact, counter-productive. What does “ditching the diet mentality” mean practically? How exactly do you go about doing that? It means: Forget about the New Year’s diet resolution. It won’t last long anyway. Don’t read any books, magazine articles, blog posts, or any other written material about dieting or diet plans or losing weight. Just don’t. Don’t look at nutrition labels for calories and fat content. DON’T!!! And I mean it. Don’t mentally calculate calories. Don’t even worry about portion sizes. I’m not saying that ALL of the above activities are bad in and of themselves. But each one of them lends itself to a crippling mindset that you have to cut back on what you eat, which then leads to that hoarding mentality that will totally backfire on you. Take this entire month to work yourself out of that mindset – which comes almost naturally to the average American woman – and work yourself into a much healthier frame of mind so you can then get on with the real business of eating intentionally. So – are you ready to jump in and join me? Are you ready to ditch the diet? Are you brave enough to cross it off the list? Let me know by leaving a quick comment below. And then don’t forget to subscribe (if you don’t already) so we can all keep track of each other’s progress as we learn to eat intentionally. Here’s to an Intentional New Year! Share this:

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