Once, when I was preparing to co-teach a class with my meditation instructor, I confessed that I was feeling nervous and anxious. She suggested I might think of it as a heightened state of awareness. The body doesn’t necessarily know the difference between anxiety and excitement so the heightened awareness I was experiencing negatively as anxiety could also be reframed as heightened awareness to novelty and change.

As I shared in my last newsletter, change has found me once again and I’m moving through some personal and professional transitions. As we all know, change can be challenging. The pressure to know what you’re doing at all times is strong and change can upend all sense of safety and security.

I haven't written to you in a couple of months and want to share what is going on in my life right now. I've now been a dietitian for 25 years, in private practice for the last 11 or 12. My practice was created based on a hunch that there was something important to be gained from combining eating disorder recovery work with meditation and mindfulness.

What are your thoughts?

Some thoughts on why it’s so hard to trust yourself and why it’s so very important, not just to Intuitive Eating but to your life overall.

I've shared before that I love the idea of practice. Instead of my initial association of practice with something you do only in preparation for some big day, today I see almost everything I do as a practice.

If you are in or have been in a long-term relationship, you know that it never stays the same. We have the choice to work with that reality or fight it.

Most of us think of physical activity as exercise, but I don't love that word. Exercise, for me, is judgemental. It implies that physical activity needs to be vigorous in order to count.

One morning, walking into the kitchen at my in-law's house in Sicily, the music was already blasting and the day's meals were in the works. My father in law, almost 90 years old, was leaning on the kitchen island, tapping his foot and looking like he was about to break into a dance. It occurred to me at that moment that this gentle man, like all of us, was born to move his body. His body naturally expressed his happiness at being surrounded by his beloved family as Italian pop music kept the beat.

The intense energy as we push toward the end of the year can lead us to focus on how we're going to do better, be better, look better in the new year. Maybe it's a way of coping with the stress of the holidays. Maybe it's the predatory tactics of companies like Weight Watchers, Noom, and the makers of injectable weight loss drugs. Whatever it is, I'm here to encourage you to resist the pull toward a "better you."
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As we move toward the Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s holidays, it is not uncommon to feel spread too thin. Last-minute trips to the supermarket, same-day deliveries from Amazon, and running again and again through my list of lists: this is what I’m often doing at this time of year. Which makes it a good time to remember the basics of self-care and how to stay connected with them during the holiday season.

I’ve learned that I’m an extroverted introvert. That is to say that I can exist in and even enjoy spaces with other people but that I really do need to be alone in order to recharge and reset. Because of that tendency, any time something gets out of balance – for example, anxiety or depression – I tend to overdo the alone time.

The shamatha meditation technique is the simplest that I know of. We feel the breath, let the mind be just as it is. Whenever we get lost, we come back: gently, precisely, and without judgment.

Meditation is shrouded in myth. I know that because I believed a lot of those myths before I really became a meditator. Perhaps you do too?

It is clear to me – both based on reading the scientific research and my own personal experience – that Intuitive Eating is the only way forward. It has been and continues to be thoroughly studied. It is evolving and becomes more compassionate and skillful with each edition. And it is truly made for everyone, because it is driven by each individual’s somatic awareness and innate wisdom.