Overcoming Intuitive Eating Roadblocks With Tomesha Campbell

Intuitive eating is a gentle approach to health and life that prioritizes feeling good in your body. It helps you cultivate a much more relaxed relationship with food, but the process isn't always easy. It takes time and patience, and a lot of work to unlearn and reframe diet culture messaging we've learned over the years.

Weight-inclusive health coach Tomesha Campbell joins me to talk about how you can work through some common roadblocks that people typically come across when trying to adopt an intuitive eating lifestyle.

Tomesha Campbell is an experienced health coach, speaker, and blogger. She is driven by the desire to support women to break up with the scale and develop a positive body image through a weight-inclusive approach to health. Tomesha's journey with weight and body image has been a long one, but it's taught her that health is about so much more than weight. Tomesha has been featured on Autoimmune Wellness, the SPI Blog, and Boston While Black. She currently resides in Watertown, MA with her dog, Penny Deena.

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Referenced in this episode:

• Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
• The Intuitive Eating Workbook by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
• Robin Mallery's chocolate mindfulness exercise
• Podcast: Eating and the Enneagram with Health Coach Tomesha Campbell
• The Enneagram of Eating by Ann Gadd
• 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating
• Tomesha's website

How you can work with me:

• Apply to work with me 1:1
• Enroll in the Cycle Magic cycle-syncing course
• Check out my virtual workshops

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Transcript

Kristen: 0:02

You're listening to the lunar body, a podcast for feminist men's Straters who want to manage their health naturally and supernaturally through nutrition, herbalism, and intuitive expansion using science and the moon as your guide. Hey, welcome to the lunar body. I'm your host, Kristen Shalini period, priestess nutritionist, and the founder of Goodwill. Today, we have our final interview of the season. That's right. We are wrapping up season two very soon. I do want to give you a heads up that the next couple of weeks will be your last chance to save $100 on my cycle magic course, because I was offering that in celebration of the podcast being back. So once the season is over the code expires and that's the code lunar. If you're new here and you haven't heard about the course real quick, it's my signature program and it's 100% online and self-paced, it covers nutrition for happy hormones. Have the menstrual cycle works in great detail, how to manage PMs. We talk about intuitive eating and other intuition building practices. So you can apply it to food in your cycle. We talk about intuitive cycle tracking and of course eating for your cycle. I've given you the basics on eating for your cycle throughout these episodes, but the course goes more in depth on how you can support yourself in each. There's also a self care ritual library and a robust resource library. If you want to nerd out. And there's also lots of phase specific recipes for you to enjoy throughout your cycle. So you can find that@goodwillkitchen.net slash cycle magic and use the code lunar love at checkout for $100 off the course that code expires on may 11. Our guests today to Meesha Campbell is an experienced health coach, speaker and blogger. She is driven by the desire to support women, to break up with the scale and develop a positive body image through a weight inclusive approach to health, to Misha's journey with weight and body image has been a long one, but it's taught her that health is about so much more than weight. Tamisha has been featured on auto immune wellness, the SPI blog and Boston wild black. She currently resides in Watertown, Massachusetts with her dog, penny. I'm really excited for you to listen to this conversation. I get a lot of questions about intuitive eating because it's not an easy process, especially in our culture where it's a daily practice to unlearn the diet mentality and to challenge the messages that we receive about our food in our bodies. Every single day, I invited to Misha on to talk about some really common roadblocks to embracing intuitive eating things that I noticed clients getting stuck on things that you have all asked me about. And we're going to tackle some of the tougher mindset stuff today, and she provided so much helpful and actionable insights. So you're going to get a lot out of this one, but before we start, of course, remember this information is for educational purposes only. It is not medical advice. And it's your responsibility to speak to a qualified healthcare provider about your unique needs. The final decision when considering any diet or lifestyle changes, whether it's discussed on the internet in a podcast or prescribed by your doctor is always. Welcome to the show to Meesha. Thank you so much for being here.

Tomesha: 3:16

Thank you so much, Kristen. I'm excited to be here.

Kristen: 3:19

Awesome. So today we're talking about intuitive eating. This is an approach that I work with in my practice, but my main focus is menstrual health. So I wanted to bring you on because you are fully focused on intuitive eating and by the body positivity. And so I thought you were the. Person to speak with, to tackle some of the common roadblocks that people come across when it comes to adopting this approach to health and nutrition. So before we get into it, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do and who you work with?

Tomesha: 3:50

Thank you so much. So I'm Tanisha Campbell, as you've already said, and I really love working with women to break up with the scale and develop a positive body image. That's something that I actually struggled with for many years, um, during my time in the military and even after, so being able to get people to a point where we can see health beyond the scale and see that health can happen at every size is something that, um, I'm really passionate about supporting people. See.

Kristen: 4:16

Yeah. So you mentioned health at every size, which is great. So for those who don't know, um, can you share what that is and how, um, embracing it can influence people's health?

Tomesha: 4:26

Yeah. So wait, um, so health at every size is a weight inclusive approach. And I know this isn't newer term for some people, but really what the health at every size movement started was around fat acceptance and helping people understand and see that their body and their shape and their size. Does it doesn't necessarily dictate your health and about ensuring that people get that respectful care when it comes to being in, dealing with doctors and nurses and health coaches and you know, all, all of the people in the health field and what it really has come to be in some instances is more of a body acceptance movement as well, where people are starting to realize that health. Often gets tied to beauty and success and our body shape and our size. So being able to get people to a point where we can start seeing health can happen at every size. That doesn't mean that you're more quote, unquote healthy at every size. Sometimes that gets mixed up and construed. Like we understand it. People, you know, their health is not determined by their weight is essentially what it tries to really narrow down and get to the point so that people can actually see what other practices can you engage in that can improve your health, but aren't just focused on losing weight.

Kristen: 5:34

Right. And I'm glad you brought that up, that it can sometimes be mistaken for healthy at every size. And it's more about, you know, focusing on weight, stigma, and making sure that people have access. Everyone has access to the right care. Exactly. And so I feel like that can be an area of resistance for people when they don't, when they don't understand it fully. But since they are touching on these ideas of resistance around this type of stuff today, um, I know that you have been open about your history with exercise addiction and body image. So I'm wondering how you found intuitive eating and coming from such a powerful diet culture mentality. Um, what was it that made it click for you?

Tomesha: 6:16

Yeah, for me, like I actually found intuitive eating accidentally. It really happened at the end of my time in the Marine Corps where I actually needed to maintain a certain weight, stay at height and weight standard. And I was really engaging in some very disordered activities to be able to do that. And I got to the point where one of my good friends who was a Marine asked me one day when I was kind of ranting about how little I was eating and how much I was exercising. He just asked me, are you okay? And that question just triggers something in me to realize like I actually have not. Okay. And this is a time for me to start thinking about action in a different way and not being something that is so focused on the amount of calories I'm consuming, the macros I'm consuming and trying to understand and discover a different way of eating. And that kind of led me down the path of learning more about mindful eating. And eventually I discovered intuitive eating, which has really helped me stop. Trusting again in the way that I eat and trusting in my food choices and it not being necessarily led by specific rules, not to step in state. We all have, I haven't taught food intolerances and some allergies, and I do follow like an auto-immune protocol way of eating, but being able to even incorporate intuitive, eating to that has been very helpful for me.

Kristen: 7:30

Awesome. So you, you mentioned a couple of things in there, which are definitely things that we're going to talk about today because, um, I asked, so I pulled my audience a bit about what, what kind of resistance is they have to intuitive eating. And I also have thought about things that clients had said to me and kind of areas where they get stuck. So was there any area in your journey that that was difficult for you to access.

Tomesha: 7:56

The first step of like, it's interesting. Cause the principles are at there's 10 principles of intuitive eating and they don't necessarily have to go like principle one to 10 in that order. But number one was the hardest one should objecting diet mentality, because for so long, I really did believe that a lot of my worth and my value came into the way that my body looked. So it was very difficult to kind of think about. Eating and exercising in a different way and doing it from a standpoint of, I'm not doing this to transform how I look on the outside. I'm doing this to like, because I genuinely enjoy this food. I'm eating this food. Not because it's quote unquote healthy, I'm eating it because it's nourishing. And I actually like it, you know, I'm exercising, not because I'm trying to lose weight, I'm exercising because actually enjoy this form of movement. So being able to kind of start thinking about health in a different way and not even just help my body in a different way. It was one of the hardest steps. Really one of the most important for me personally.

Kristen: 8:49

Definitely. It's like once you get over that hurdle, it makes not everything super easy, but definitely a little bit better. Um, so how I'm curious, how long it took you to get over that hurdle? Because I know that. Wellness. And, you know, there's a lot of things that people try where it's like, we're very impatient. We want things to happen very quickly. So I would love for you to share what that was like for you and just to give a more realistic picture of what it might look like. No, that's

Tomesha: 9:19

a good point. I'm happy you asked for realism because I like to say like, my journey started about 2015. But it wasn't until probably 2018. And this was after I even got my nutrition certification where like the intuitive eating principles and stuff like that started clicking. Because even though you inherently know, like, this is the path that I'm going toward, it's also hard because I was still engaging in, you know, different challenges in what. Challenges. And I was still coaching clients. We're really focused on losing weight. So therefore being their coach, I felt like I also need to lose weight and maintain a certain body type. So even though I was like moving in that direction, it probably took a good couple of years before I fully started really trusting that this was a pathway that I can go into. And, and especially if you are a coach, you may also think like, okay, this is not going to be profitable because no, one's going to want to work with someone who is in a larger body, which I know now is not true at all, but I just didn't believe that.

Kristen: 10:16

Yeah, I had a very similar trajectory. You're starting out with, you know, what you learned in school, which is very heavily influenced by diet culture. And then I, when I found intuitive eating, I was like, oh, I can't, I can't unlearn this now I can't turn around and start, you know, I mean, I was doing things like, um, Kicking sugar and carb addiction. That was the first course that I came up with. And now I look at it and I'm like, oh no. And I know that like, it helped people in certain ways, but also I would do it so much differently now, you know, but it's so funny that I, I feel like a lot of people have that journey and it is, it does take time. It also took me a couple of years. Figure it out and make it click. So, yeah. So some of the things that we'll talk about today are things where hopefully, if you hear to Misha's advice and insight on it, maybe it'll start to click for you too. I have about like five or six common areas of resistance. If. Let me know how you would a person. So the first roadblock for eating intuitively is the fear of letting food go to waste. So a lot of us grew up being told, like, you can't leave the table until you clean your plate. Um, so in adulthood, there's still that urge to eat beyond your hunger signals until it's all gone. So nothing goes to waste. So how would you address that?

Tomesha: 11:34

That's such a good question in this one is one that I really resonate with, especially as I started working with people from different cultures and I realized it's like food insecurity is a real thing. So like understanding that some people it's also like a very cultural thing too, will be put on their plate, or they may feel like you're disrespecting a family member. If you don't eat everything, that's there. But also coming to the point where people understand. You get to make the choices about what you consume and what you don't consume. And sometimes that means having a little bit of a difficult conversations with family and friends about things that you don't enjoy and that you do enjoy, and it's perfectly fine. They know. And I know that's kind of weird, especially around like for women, it's often cultural that we're all supposed to be nice and polite, but also understanding it's also polite to my body to respect and honor my hunger and honor the fact that I just don't want to consume this food. It's actually fine not to clean your. But in those also Tom, where it's perfectly fine to do that. If you love everything, want it, and you just want to eat it and enjoy that and do it without guilt or shame.

Kristen: 12:34

Yeah. I also remind people that it's okay to have leftovers. You can put it back in the fridge. That's fine. I, some people, I mean, I used to be weird about leftovers. I'd be like, oh, she's not going to eat that. But now I meal prep for the whole week and I know people are like, wait, you're. That on Friday when you made it on Sunday and I'm like, yes, yes I am. And it's okay. Whatever works for you. Um, I'm actually glad that you brought up food insecurity. So is that something that you see with clients often and how is it sort of manifesting in their relationship to food? Now, if they're beyond.

Tomesha: 13:11

Yeah. I mean, I can sit there and say, I don't see it too often in clients, but I see it often in my community. And I say that because a lot of the people who are very food insecure unfortunately, would not have the finances to work with me. But they're often the people that will send me direct messages are when I used to do a lot of like no planning, no prepping challenges. And, and, um, they would be the ones that reach out to me the most and say, thank you. You've helped me stretch my dollar mold. So being able to help them see that there's ways that they could, you know, eat intuitively on a budget, which often comes up because people think often, like, that means I'm going to have to, you know, like there's the span of people who think I'm just buying junk food, but then there's the other people that are thinking I'm always shopping at whole foods and trader Joe's. And I can't afford that. So like helping them be able to see that middle ground. You know, even if you are food insecure, you can still find ways to nourish yourself and helping them see that things like baked beans, things like beans of any type, you know, pan things and helping them see frozen things are not bad sources of food. Cause that's off of that belief too, of like, this is an unhealthy version of healthy food and I'm like, that's just weird.

Kristen: 14:14

Yeah. And there's a lot of that good and bad mentality. And that's another thing that's pretty difficult to get out of it because I mean, that's where it's so ingrained in us. How do you approach that with clients, for telling you like, well, I can't, this is what I can afford, but it's bad for me.

Tomesha: 14:30

Exactly. You know, and really to your point, I'm happy you brought up a good and bad thing and helping them see that good and bad is really subjective. Let's say, like, I don't say things are bad, but there's somethings that don't work for me. And that's perfectly fine if you're like, there's some things that I don't feel well when I consume them, like, yes, I love ice cream, but a bucket of ice cream is probably not going to work well for me. So I was like, helping people understand that there's, there's something to be said about finding what really, truly works for you in your body. And then assessing that some things don't.

Kristen: 15:00

So that actually brings me to the next one. So what about navigating restrictions in your diet? Like certain allergies or, um, if you wanted to adopt a vegan diet, um, intuitive eating says to allow yourself permission to eat all foods. So how, how do we work around this? Or do we work around this?

Tomesha: 15:19

I like this question because I work with. And this is where I'm probably going to be like the opposite of like some people that I've even followed in the intuitive eating. Some of my mentors probably won't agree with me, but I always look at it like this, that I do allow myself to eat all foods, but that doesn't necessarily mean I have to eat all foods. And that's where I try to find that distinction of like, yes, I'm allowed to eat corn and grains and like, you know, donuts if I want to. But that doesn't mean that I get to that I will consume those things. So that just gives you, but taking away that. Well, it helps people not see that as something that if I do consume it, I'm doing it in secret because I know for some people that can really lead to some disordered habits. I know for me personally, I dealt with binge eating. So I know for some people that can kind of lead them to consume these things in secret and feel and feel like I need to only consume them at certain times, versus you could technically as soon as whenever you want to, but you get to choose that, you know, maybe you never consume it.

Kristen: 16:14

That's a feeling of safety around your personal. Yeah, I actually, I had someone once who, um, and she allowed me to share this. She, she with want this bag of chips and she knew that it wouldn't make her feel good, but she just wanted it and she would just keep it next to her, like near her. It's like a security blanket almost where it's like, okay, I know it's there if I want to have it. Um, but I, I don't want it right now, but I know it's there if I need it. And that's. The kind of the mentality. I think that is, I mean, maybe not to like babysit your bag of chips, but you know, to eventually adopt a sense of safety around certain foods so that you're not panicking around it. And, um, like you said, you know, just because I can have it doesn't mean I will.

Tomesha: 16:59

Exactly. And I almost forgot to answer the second point about being vegan because I follow for the most part, the autoimmune protocol. And some people would see that as not intuitive eating, but I argue it is because going through that protocol, Helped me figure out like, okay, these are the certain types of foods that I may enjoy night shades, but night shades don't work for me. So intuitively I know, okay. I'll consume them, but I probably don't want to consume them. If I'm about to give a podcast interview, if I'm about to do something that's really important. I probably don't want to feel like poopoo the day before or the day up. So it's like, I'll intuitively know like, okay, that's something I might consume more on the weekend. Not because it's like a cheat, but because I know I'm not going to have as much to do then versus someone who might be vegan either your efforts were vegan for us. Reasons. So that's, that's a very different reason of your choosing to like, not eat that food or you're vegan by choice, even if it's not ethical because you feel better when you're consuming that way. So it's like, you also get choice to choose to say, you know, I choose to follow this because it feels good for me.

Kristen: 17:58

Yeah, exactly. It's a different way of feeling good. Yeah. When it comes to meal planning, um, this can be a way to support yourself throughout the week because you have food available to meet your needs when you're hungry. Um, but when I pulled my audience, someone mentioned that they intuitively crave variety, but they don't have the time for it. So how can we both support ourselves in our time constraints with meal prep, but also keep it exciting for a week.

Tomesha: 18:26

Oh, I love this question too, because something that I started doing and I love that they have a lot more meal delivery services is sometimes I, and because a lot of the services are, at least if you get the ones that the food is prepped ahead of time, you can actually, I like to order a couple of different varieties of meals and then mix that in with the meals that I'm prepping during the week. So for instance, I might order like five meals or six meals from a meal delivery service, and then I'll also prepare. For the week so that if I decide, okay, I want to consume what I've cooked for the week, but I also, maybe on Friday or like a Wednesday, I'm like, I don't really want to consume the food that I cooked all week. I want to have something different. So it's like also planning to me gives you that variety of understanding that you also can plan in. Days that you're going to be eating out with friends and family days that you might want to order delivery. So I like to meal plan and also mix in like I'm not actually going to cook every single meal that I eat because I don't always cook every single meal that I eat. It could be a lot for some people. So having that variety in could also help people and then finding meals that are very freezable. So I try to get a lot of freezer friendly meals so that if I find near the end of the week, I didn't need a lot of the stuff I cooked. Cause maybe I didn't love it as much. I'll just freeze it for later.

Kristen: 19:37

Yeah, your freezer is your friends, your future self will. Thank you. I always tell people. Um, yeah, I always tell people also to have like emergency foods, like kind of like that, where you either free something for later or have something else that you can pull from because sometimes. We get very ambitious with our meal plans and, um, you know, maybe we make too much of something where like, I literally cannot eat this again. I will die. Like maybe just like have a box Mac and cheese for those days. Um, so yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. Um, yeah, there are a lot of good meal delivery services now in. Like you said it does it doesn't always have to come out of your own kitchen. And I think that's another thing that people come up against is, oh, if, if I'm eating out, that's quote unquote

Tomesha: 20:23

bad. Yeah. We'll be eating out saying there's, that's always tricky because I think there's this perception of like fried foods. I'm like, well, you don't have to always do fast food. Like, yes, it might cost you a little bit more. So you might want to add that into your budget if you want to have like an eating out plan. But I always tell people, try to find a couple of restaurants that are actually, I've worked with the client. Wanting to eat a certain way. Like she wanted to like incorporate more like nourishing foods into our diets. So we kind of went through like three or four per favorite restaurants. And we looked through the menu and found things that over like, Hey, these would be more nourishing than others. These will be probably less nourishing. This events say that you get to eat either way. Like if it's up to you, it's your money. But this is kind of gave her like a little bit more flexibility with understanding. Like I don't have to cook every single day. But I can still go out and enjoy time with my friends and like, not feel guilty for choosing, you know, this food or that food.

Kristen: 21:14

Yeah, I think this, this kind of brings us back to allowing yourself permission to do things because not just to eat all foods, but to explore different, different types of foods and different, um, whether it's coming out of your kitchen or not, because all of it just gives you more information to work with. So when we were talking about, um, you know, navigating allergies and diets, and, you know, you, you can eat those things. If, I mean, please don't if you're allergic, but I mean, then you know how it works, then you know how it feels in your body. That is all just information to work with. Um, so yeah, just allowing yourself permission and in many different areas, when it comes to eating, that's really important. Another another really common topic that I hear is, um, moving, moving on to exercise. So people have trouble separating their fitness activities from the pursuit of weight loss. And I know that was one of my biggest hurdles too, is like, you know, still in the mentality of earning your food with exercise or having to work off food. Uh, food that they ate with exercise also, doesn't help that there are a lot of fitness instructors out there who like, say things like that in class. How do you start to break that association?

Tomesha: 22:29

Yeah, that one was my hard one, too. Especially with. Because I always associated exercise with weight loss and in like earning my calories for me. And what I often recommend for clients is to find forms of movement that you enjoy. And that might mean actually taking a pause and I scared one of my clients I didn't mean to, but I told her I took a pause for a month and didn't exercise at all, knowing that I would probably gain weight because I was eating so restricted and. Her eyes, pretty much bowls out of her head, but I was hoping it was helping her understand that I was like, sometimes the fear of gaining weight is the thing that we need to overcome. That's the thing that's holding people back. Sometimes you just need to let that happen and then realize, is this the worst case scenario? It probably isn't. It's probably going to be okay. And then now you can move towards saying, well, that was my greatest fear. I've overcome this fear that I can possibly gain weight. If I don't exercise. Now I can start moving to finding different forms of movement that I enjoy. And now we'll do different apps like ClassPass and stuff. You can try different things because I love to run, but I know everyone isn't into that. And then whenever I tell people I'm a runner, they're like, I'm gonna try to find like running. I was like, no, don't try to like running. If you love to dance, if you love to bowl, if you love CrossFit, if you love yoga, I was like, do that. Like there's nothing to sit there and say that your form of movement needs to look like anyone else's form of movement. Can you

Kristen: 23:49

talk a little bit more about. The fear of weight gain has that is definitely huge for people.

Tomesha: 23:55

Yeah. Well, the fear of weight gain, this one is so hard because I know that there's so much weight stigma around it. And when I say like, I allowed myself to gain the weight, I'm not going to sit and say that it was. But I also was like, I'm not going to step on this scale. I'm not, I'm going to become comfortable with the fact that these clothes aren't fitting and I'm going to start looking to new clothes. I know there's sometimes this desire to kind of keep the plastic clothes of like hoping to get back to that old weight. But when I kind of let go of the fact that I was like, listen to me, she used to be in the one sizes and now I'm in the double sizes and it's okay. And there's nothing wrong with that. And being able to understand that as you gain weight, You also gain this opportunity to start seeing help in a different way and understanding isn't really the weight gain that is preventing me from doing the things that I wanted to do because I've gained weight over the years, but I still run probably faster than I used to. I still lift more weight than I used to. So it's like I started realizing that I was associating this gaining weight to all of these negative attributes. And I started realizing that none of these things are true. Like they may be true. And people. So I'm not going to sit there and say that some of my friends who gained weight don't have, you know, pain in their knees and their LDL may go up. So that's realistic. I'm not going to sit there and say that like, that doesn't happen. But I think for a lot of us, we were like worried about the worst case scenario when the worst case scenario isn't necessarily true for us. So. I also say that being that I worked with doctors, so I was like, you should still work with your medical professional, you know, as you're going through that process, but really overcoming that fear, that that weight is going to be like the worst thing that could ever happen was hard, but it was something that really helped me start making different choices when it came to my health and start understanding that I could still engage in healthy activity regardless of what my weight size is like, that doesn't stop me from doing those things.

Kristen: 25:46

Yeah. I love that. And. It's so important, I think to actually sit and think about where these beliefs are coming from, because they may be in the back of our mind and like, but why is gaining weight? The biggest fear that I have? What does it mean? Or what do I think it means where those things come from? We don't even realize that those thoughts are there. I think sometimes. So I'm glad that you brought up the, the closet to your, I call it your aspirational clothing, but it's, it's, you know, a previous version of yourself that you're hanging on to, and. I think when you are hanging on to that past version of yourself, yes. Maybe there is a period where you have to mourn or grieve in older version of yourself, but then you can't focus too much on that because then you lose the opportunity to embrace that new person that you are.

Tomesha: 26:35

Yeah, exactly.

Kristen: 26:36

Okay. So the next, the next couple of things I want to talk about, have to do with work and when your job gets in the way. The intuitive eating journey. So you mentioned being in the military and some, maybe this one. Really relate to, how can you eat intuitively when you have to maintain a certain weight or body type for your job?

Tomesha: 26:56

Yeah, that's a really good point because this one was like, really what may push me to start eating intuitively is because I actually struggled a lot to maintain such a low body weight because of all of the like disordered and restricted things I was doing. So with people now I always try to caveat this by saying like, You need to obviously stay employed. So that's going to be important to kind of think about things like, how are you going to nourish your body? Like what types of proteins carbs and fats are going to, you're going to consume because that could impact things. And you probably are going to be a little bit mindful around times where you need to weigh in. Um, if that's part of your career, you know, just because obviously water, weight is a thing. That said it's also important for people to consider on a long-term is this something that you can sustain? And like, that was my big reason for like leaving the Marine Corps was because I was becoming so restricted that for me personally, mentally and physically, it was no longer healthy. So that's also something for, I think people to consider is if it gets to the point where. It's so difficult to maintain that low weight. You may need to consider this may or may not be a field that makes sense at this point anymore. And there's lots of career coaches that can support you on that journey of making that transition. But that's always something I like to say, cause I know I obviously don't want to just tell people like, yes, this is the one time where you can be restrictive, but it's like, I understand that for some people you probably are going to be a little bit more during that time where, you know, you are going to be close to your way in, but you know,

Kristen: 28:26

Yeah. Yeah, that's a tricky one because it also takes into account your financial security and your future. And so that, one's a really tough one to come up with when you were in the military, was this the time that you were working with intuitive eating? Is this, is that the time when you started to find it?

Tomesha: 28:43

This is actually prior to my intuitive approach. So that was the harder part too, is like, I wasn't even eating intuitively at this point. So I wasn't even at a point where I realized that. Everything wasn't about protein, carbs and fat. It wasn't till after that, I started discovering, like, this is a process that makes me actually like, sadly going through this weight gain experience, going through, like trying to maintain his weight standards that push me toward intuitive eating.

Kristen: 29:11

Yeah. And I wonder, I wonder if someday we can get away from. Wait standards in these types of environments. And because, I mean, we know, I mean, as you said, you know, weight doesn't necessarily mean anything about your health or your physical fitness, really. Um, so wouldn't it be nice if we do away with that?

Tomesha: 29:31

Exactly. I agree. Cause it kinda, almost makes it seem like you could be an intuitive eater until that situation comes up. So it makes it hard. Cause it's like, well then, you know, you're doing the opposite of what you're trying to accomplish. All right.

Kristen: 29:44

Hopefully that insight helps there. But, um, and then also another, another job that came up, um, pretty regularly when people were responding to me is I have a few teachers reach out to me. Um, so when you're a teacher, you don't have time for anything, right? Like barely even a bathroom break. So, um, I want to read a message from one of those teachers and she said, um, She said I eat before I leave the house, even if I'm not hungry. And I have a snack and lunch during my scheduled times at school, rather than basing hunger off of my body's cues, these routines follow me into the weekends and I'll eat out of habit of time rather than real. Does that make sense? Oh,

Tomesha: 30:21

that makes a lot of sense. And this one, I'm actually happy you brought up this specific scenario because this one's probably the most relatable for a lot of people and they, and they talk a little bit about it in like the intuitive eating book, but from a practical standpoint, that actually makes a lot of sense during the time where you're, where you can't eat, you should eat. You know, I understand if there's like importance of like, you know, honoring your home. But realistically, if you literally can't eat until like 3:00 PM, you know, and it makes more sense for you to eat at 11, even though you're not even hungry that I would eat at 11 because you know, if I don't eat at 11, I'm going to have to wait till after these, these kids are out of this classroom, then I'm going to be tired. I'm probably going to be extremely fatigued, cranky. It's like, you're not going to be feeling well. So it actually makes sense. Follow that time period during the week. But then to the point of on the weekends, that's when something that I did in the beginning of my intuitive eating journey, which helped me just because I needed to kind of put myself on a clock is I would actually schedule specific times to consume food, to drink water. Because even though, because not every body is actually that attuned to their hunger in the beginning, especially. So it's like sometimes you kind of have to put yourself on a schedule so that you could eventually get to a point where you don't need to be honest. So that kind of works for some people can eat intuitively and just wait. But I know there's some people who like, I'll wait until midnight to eat if I could. So it's like, now you need to actually like schedule that time in because you just can't wait. And so you feel hunger if, if you're not actually that attuned to your hunger,

Kristen: 31:48

right? Yeah. Sometimes I'm like, this is the terrible front-loading. I was thinking, you know, eating your food, you know, just eating. If you, if you can't eat for hours, it's almost like honoring your future hunger really. So I'm a big fan of scheduling things, especially, I mean, just in general, but especially if you aren't, if you don't know what your hunger and fullness signals are. So then, you know, maybe just like you're saying, maybe you've kind of changed those times that you eat. You start to feel those hunger signals and maybe you start to learn what your hunger signals are on the weekends and then apply it to during the week. Do you think that's possible? Oh, that's

Tomesha: 32:28

a good point. And maybe even think about like also honoring the fact that you could technically, like, let's just say you scheduled it into eat at noon, but then you realize, okay, it's two hours later and at two I'm hungry again, some people would think, oh, I got. To eat until five. It's like, no, eat it too, because maybe this is a sign that maybe you didn't eat enough protein or like you didn't consume enough carbohydrates at that previous meal. So that's why you're kind of hungry. So that can also help people get a little bit more flexibility with like figuring out where they need to be to actually like, feel their food. Yeah.

Kristen: 32:59

Yeah. It's all, it's all just information that we're working with. Okay. And then the last, the last question that I had here was how can I balance eating to feel good with not depriving myself of sweets? So eating things just for taste versus only for hunger.

Tomesha: 33:16

I love that. Cause that's why the principle of like discover your satisfaction factors. Like one of my favorite ones and also like making peace with food, obviously, but it's understanding that. I actually make sure that I make room for sweets inside by meal planning for the week, just because I generally enjoy them. I'm not anti sugar. I love Michael Butra, you know, like I add a little honey to it. So it's like what I was trying to tell on, especially with clients, it's like figuring out what types of foods work for them. Because even though maybe you might be used to just eating like the Twinkies and the like cakes and stuff, like maybe that may not make you feel so great. So I was like, Sweet that you do enjoy, that makes you feel great. And also pair it with that nourishing meal that you know is going to keep you satiated.

Kristen: 34:01

Yeah. Always leave room for dessert. Let's yeah, yeah, yeah. The satisfaction factors. I feel like that's one thing that we completely miss out on when we're stuck in that diet mentality, because it's those, I mean, so when I read, I read the book, anti diet, Christy Harrison, and she talked a lot about like sad diet foods. You know, you try to, I mean, you try to replace the real thing with the. And this version with all these like weird replacement powders. And it's always just like, man, it shouldn't just had the real thing, cause this is gross. Um, so yeah, just have the real thing. And also I find that if you, I mean, you don't have to replace it with like all these weird substitutes, but also think about. Making it with whole foods and things with more fiber and things that'll actually fill you up because I used to teach, uh, uh, um, like a whole foods dessert class, and we would use things like almond flour, like denser things, more fiber, and people would have like just one or two of whatever we were making. Wow. I'm actually satisfied. This is weird. Yeah. It's scare minting with different ingredients to, it can

Tomesha: 35:13

be helpful. That's so true. And it's also like helpful people understand you don't have to even finish it all. Like that's another thing, like you think like how to eat the whole cake or, you know, the whole cookie is like, no, you can take a bite and. Person, I forget her name. But years ago she was, um, a health coach who taught us. She taught a class and she was saying like, just have your clients take a bite of a cookie and just let it sit in your mouth. And she had us all take a small bite of a cookie in like, literally for a minute. We couldn't chew. We just let it sit on a. It was nasty, but it was just because it was like, we didn't even realize, like, you don't even give yourself time to like, get satisfied. You just eat so fast. We're like, yeah, this would be sucked. Like, I would hate this so quickly. And I don't want any of this

Kristen: 35:55

that reminds me of, um, there's a. There's a practice that I do with people sometimes. And I got it from this woman, Robin Mallory, I think that's her name on YouTube. She has this Ted talk. If you want to look it up, but she does this chocolate mindfulness practice where she gives people just a square of chocolate. And so when I've done this in person, I'll be passing out the chocolates and I'll be like, don't eat the chocolate yet. And someone will raise their hand and be like, ah, I need another one. They already ate it. So, but the whole point is. She has you just like slowly unwrapping it, smelling it. And then finally you take a bite. This one square. She has, you eat it in three separate bites. And when I tell people that they're like, uh, excuse me, like, again, I'll need another one please, but you go so slow and you take that one bite and you sit with it and let it melt on your tongue. And it's just, it just draws up the experience. And then also. There we're back to that satisfaction back at her. It draws out the satisfaction too. So just being more present with your food. So definitely look that up. It's a fun one, but I wrote it, they do it with food that will taste good instead of like the weird gross cookies, or actually you could do it with those cookies and then maybe that'll make you realize, like, maybe I'll just have the real thing. Um, okay. So those are all of, um, The common areas of resistance that people shared. And I tried to distill it down into like most popular things. So hopefully everyone got their questions answered there. Um, but one final thing I wanted to touch on is that, um, a few episodes ago I did a series on mindfulness and mental health, and I talked about different modes of self exploration. So like astrology and human design and the Enneagram. So I shared them as tools for self understanding and to help encourage more self-compassion because when you understand that you are likely wired a certain way, then you can start to navigate around those, um, predispositions and make things work for you. Trying to push through them. So you were on a podcast that I heard where you discussed the different eating styles for each Enneagram, which I thought was so interesting. So would you be able to explain a little bit about what that is and how people can apply it to intuitive eating?

Tomesha: 38:15

Yeah. Thank you so much. I'm so happy. You could hear that episode because, um, really what it was is, um, we actually mean the podcast hosting. This book and to India gram and eating. And it really, um, opened us up to this opportunity to understand how, how the Enneagram could be used to be like more mindful eaters or intuitive eaters. And going through that process, it really helps me kind of understand why some of my clients responded the way they do. And why some people can actually do well on very restrictive diets and why some personality types will do awful on those. So it was like helping. So like an example would be. Um, like type ones and type threes. Like those are people who tend to have ton of desires, some form of control. So, which is not a bad thing. It's not bad to have it, but because of that, they really would love more flexibility when it comes to their eating. So that might be the personality type that would want to have like. Meal plan that has a lot of variety or might enjoy eating out at different types of restaurants. They also could be the person that wants to cook because they want to be able to have different choices on different days, which can be overwhelming to some, but like not so much to others versus me. I'm a type two in like type twos and fours. We, we are pretty self-aware, but at the same time, We're also people who don't really like being told what to do. So like falling something that is super restricted, we can do it for a short period of time. But then after a while, we've got to be that person that might rebel. So those are the people that are probably not going to do very well with like follow this rule. It's way. So being able to kind of look at it and we have a couple of different types in, um, I'm happy to refer them to the actual podcast so they can kind of figure out what each of the types are light. But so being able to kind of look at the Enneagram and then figure out how that corresponds to the way that you eat in the way that you operate in the world will help people understand, like why. You might eat a certain way and why that's not a good or a bad thing and understanding how you can kind of fit that around, um, the food choices that you make, because there are some types that do very well on like a flexible diet. There's some people who do better on something that is a little bit more restrictive, or there's some people who have no interest in food whatsoever. So they don't really care. So being able to kind of figure out where you land could help you figure out like which eat intuitive, eating approach works for you, which is also why. I'm one of those people. That's like every intuitive eater eats the same way because we all don't like we all have our own personalities and that's why like, some things work for some people while other things don't.

Kristen: 40:51

Yeah, totally. I know with intuitive eating, there are the 10 principles and some people are like, okay, I'm going to follow every single one, you know, but I find that working with clients, it's like, some people only really need to focus on a couple of them and then they're good, you know? Um, but yeah, I love, I love this tool as just another layer of understanding for how you function and okay. Maybe I'm not a person that can follow a super restrictive thing and it's not necessarily because. Um, I'm lazy or, you know, I just, I can't do it it's because that's how I'm wired. Um, so actually, maybe, I don't know if you know this off the top of your head, but, so I'm a type four with a five wing. What does that tell you about

Tomesha: 41:33

me? So, okay. So I had to bring my notes cause I was like, let me see just the case. I'm like, I don't know what type, so that'd be interesting. I feel like you probably be the person. Tends to be more aware of what your needs are. So it seems like type fours and fives would be more like on the self-awareness side and at the same time. So you're like, but you may tend to be a snacker. So it's, you also may be prone to a little bit of snacking. So for type fours, we're probably a five way. I would say being a little bit more my like bringing mindfulness into like the choices that you make could really help me follow more intuitive eating. We need to be a little bit more conscientious and also being kind of conscientious of your stress. Cause that could also probably be the reason why you might be prone to snacking at sometimes versus other times

Kristen: 42:19

you, you just read my diary, I'm definitely a snacker and definitely a stress snackers. But when I do so I have, I make a loose meal plan for myself and I try to put in like, these are my snacks for the week. This is what. Gravitate towards it. Sometimes I do sometimes I don't, but it's good to have like a little bit of structure and then I just, I follow it already. Don't. That's intuition, you know?

Tomesha: 42:44

Yes. I love this back. And that's what I love about planning, because to your point, it just gives you that option of like, there's the structure. But if I choose to be like, no, thanks. You know

Kristen: 42:53

exactly. Yeah. I kind of, I say that with exercise too. Like, I like to have a plan for myself and I like to schedule. Time for exercise, but I'll wake up and I'll just say, okay, where do I feel like doing today versus I have to do the same exact thing every day. Um, so there you go with the scheduling again, love to do that. Um, okay. So where, where can people learn more about their Enneagram type and how they might apply it?

Tomesha: 43:20

Oh, that's such a good question. Um, there's actually, what's it. The website, is it like hideous gram? Oh goodness. There's like a website they actually have, but I wouldn't recommend people take the. Abraham tests, even though I feel like my Enneagram friends would disagree and say, you should probably go to like an idiot gram expert to do it. But I actually do. I did take the test and I thought it was very useful for me to figure out what my particular type was. I think it's Enneagram Institute. If I'm remembering the name of it, I feel like that's it. And I don't want to lie. I don't want to send you all to something. Oh, yes. Enneagram Institute. I was right. Perfect.

Kristen: 43:59

I guess we can leave off with what are some ways that people can start to practice? Intuitive eating or, you know, body positivity in their daily

Tomesha: 44:10

life. Oh, that's such a good question. Um, I always recommend people to read the book. It's such a big read. I know it's a thick read, but like kind of understanding actually, you know, what's a better thing rather than just jumping into the book. They have an intuitive eating workbook that I think is very helpful for people because it walks you step by step through the practices and like how to implement them into your life. But I would recommend for people just to take it slow. Read the principles it's on their website. It's 10, just to get an understanding. And I would say pick one that maybe you might struggle with a little bit more than others, because it's one of those things where sometimes if you, we like to avoid the things that are hard. And I know I don't want to say eat the frog cause I know we have our begins, so like conquer the harder thing first and then it will make all the rest of the Domino's so much easier to. Um, to go through. So for me, it was like projecting the diamond tally, being able to kind of work through what does that look like and for my life and how can I implement, you know, less structured into a diet mentality. Does that mean, you know, when my friends and family members were making comments about my weight, like that's a great time to set some boundaries and say, I don't feel comfortable with this type of conversation. Does that mean when I'm, you know, Talking to my doctors and they're making different comments about my food choices, or you should be on this side, or you should not be on that side. That's a great time to have a conversation with them about these are my boundaries and these are my beliefs. So it's like sometimes it starts with, I guess I would say a lot of conversations, but taking some time to kind of work through each of the principles, but tackling, starting with one and then just letting it slowly evolve into.

Kristen: 45:41

Awesome. Yeah. And boundaries. We love a good boundary here. Um, okay, so that was awesome. Thank you so much. Where can people learn more about you and.

Tomesha: 45:54

Thank you so much for having me. You can go to eight fitness mindset.com. That's my website. I have my blog as well as all my other resources are available there. But thank you so much, Kristen, for having me. I'm so excited. Yeah, of

Kristen: 46:05

course. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening to the lunar body. This one woman production is listener supported, and if you'd like to support the show, you can check out the podcast perks in the show notes. Visit my virtual tip jar@goodwillkitchen.net slash tip. Or you can subscribe and leave a rating or review in iTunes. Other lovely lunar feminists. Like you find my show. If you'd like to get in touch, you can email me@thelunarbodyatgmail.com or find me on Instagram at Goodrich kitchens. Thank you so much for being here until next time. This is.