Ever wish you had a giant “Re-Set” button you could press to jump start a healthier lifestyle? Lara Lattman, a functional nutritionist at Five Stones Healing and Wellness Center in Leesburg, helps her clients integrate food, meditation and exercise year round...”because you can’t just change your food and expect everything else to change!” On January 8-10, she will lead a virtual, "Intentional Re-Set" for the new year, including three, 30-minute yoga classes, detox nutrition plan and guided journaling and meditation sessions to help you get a heathy start in 2021. Sign up at http://www.fivestoneswellness.com/Events and subscribe to their monthly newsletter. She also posts healthy recipes on her Pinterest board at https://www.pinterest.com/snowlilly26/food/. Watch our full video interview at http://vimeo.com/LeesburgLifestyle.
Q: We’ve all been under a lot of stress, likely a factor in gaining weight under quarantine.
A: Stress causes stress eating. When we are sitting at home with nowhere to go and get stressed out and we’re right there with all the food, that’s a recipe for unhealthy habits. Stress causes our bodies to crave sugar and sweets.
Q: Right -- "comfort foods." How do you climb out of that?
A: Finding a healthy way to address that stress, whether it is doing a zoom happy hour with family and friends or just getting together to talk and feel connected to another person. When we are emotionally eating, what we need to do is address that emotional need without food. You can’t just take away the food because then you are still stuck with all of these emotions that we were trying to feed with food.
Then, find a way back into mindful eating. Maybe instead of saying I can’t eat this or I can’t eat that and cutting myself off, I say, what am I looking for right now in my body? Could it be something as simple as that I’m craving more vegetables? I could start by making sure that there are at least two vegetables on my plate every time I sit down to a meal. Vegetables help with antioxidants and anti-inflammatories; they’re a ton of fiber; and they help fill you up without having a lot of calories. I like to approach things as, what do you need in your diet vs. what are you depriving yourself of.
Q: Is that all you mean by mindful eating?
A: Mindful eating requires slowing down, taking some deep breaths and being there with your food as opposed to eating while you are watching TV or eating while you are working. Ask yourself, how does this food make me feel? Ignore external messages about what foods are good or bad for us. Mindful eating causes us to look into our bodies and ask, does this food make me feel good, and am I hungry or am I not hungry?
I ask people, how do you know when you’re not hungry? How do you know when you’re done eating? The answer is usually, when the food is gone. That’s an external message to the brain, my food is gone versus I’m not feeling hungry anymore.
Q: Talk about mindful shopping.
A: Never go to the grocery store hungry! We all probably know that, right? Then pick three recipes that you’re going to make and take that list to the store. Don’t overwhelm yourself. Your vegetables often go bad because you’re over-shopping. If you over-buy, you’re either going to waste it or waist it! Either way your body doesn’t need it. If you have leftover celery, go to Pinterest or Google and search for healthy recipes with celery!
