How To Change Your Relationship With Food To Increase Productivity [Ep. 40]
Curious about how to increase your productivity — while also bringing more ease and peace to your overall life?
Well, you’re in luck, as in this episode we’ll be discussing intuitive eating and how it can truly change your life!
Our special guest is Katelyn Parsons, an Intuitive Eating + Body Image Coach, who will be helping us to understand:
- What intuitive eating is and why it’s beneficial to bloggers and entrepreneurs
- How our relationship with food can both help and hinder our producitivty (with examples)
- How to get started with intuitive eating
- Tips for seeing long-term success with intuitive eating
- And more!
After listening to the episode, make sure to visit Katelyn’s website to connect with her further.
On that note, let’s dive into the episode.
Disclosure: This episode + post on email marketing contains affiliate links to trusted partners I think you’ll love!
How To Change Your Relationship With Food To Increase Productivity As A Blogger [Podcast Episode Audio]
Click here to listen on Apple Podcasts/iTunes
Click here to listen on Spotify
Click here to listen on TuneIn
Free Travel Blogger Resource Library
To help you really jumpstart your blogging success, I’ve added 55+ blogging resources like printables, video tutorials, and workbooks into a FREE resource library for travel bloggers.
These resources are meant to help you grow your traffic, community, and income faster and with less overwhelm!
How Bloggers Can Benefit From Intuitive Eating [Episode Transcript]
This transcript has been lightly edited. The interviewer, Jessie, is in bold font and the guest, Katelyn, is in regular font.
[00:00:40.020]
Hey, hey, everyone! I’m really excited about today’s guest we have Katelyn Parsons on. She’s a Certified Intuitive Eating and Body Image Coach and she’s going to be sharing her own personal story, as well as some important tips and strategies that we can use to apply intuitive eating and its benefits to our own life and to our business.
[00:01:01.200]
I think that sometimes we get so hung up on strategies like how to monetize a blog from day one , how to make money with online courses, and how to start a travel blog to grow our business.
[00:01:08.790]
But we forget about these more intuitive self-journey type of strategies that are really, really important and can be extremely powerful. So to kick things off, can you tell us about yourself and what led you to become an intuitive eating and body image coach?
[00:01:24.840]
Yes, and hi to everyone who’s listening. And thank you so much for having me on today. I’m really, really excited to have this conversation and just be in your energy and meet your community and all the things. So, yes, I’m a certified intuitive eating body image coach now, and my story is quite long for how I actually got here. And I’m still on this journey. I always like to share that. But to make a long story short and give you the Cliff Notes version, I was born with a really severe milk allergy.
[00:01:55.650]
When I when I was six months old, I had a really intense allergic reaction that put me in the hospital and basically left me with a milk allergy that I had to navigate up until I was seven years old. So essentially, this is kind of interesting and we’ll get into it later in the conversation. But we’re all born intuitive eaters, so we’re all born with this intuitive relationship with our bodies and this ability to really listen to and trust our bodies right out of the womb.
[00:02:26.580]
And what sabotages that is really the environment that we’re brought up in and the cultural references and all of these other variables. Well, for me, I never really had that intuitive relationship with food or my body by way of this allergy that I had been experiencing when I was a kid. And as you can imagine, this was the late 80s, early 90s. Weren’t many products available that were accommodating to dairy needs. It was really a struggle to find these products.
[00:02:54.300]
And so I always felt different. I always felt truthfully a little scared about my life being in jeopardy of not being able to eat certain foods. And so I always just kind of felt like the kid was left out and never created that safe environment for my body and myself. Fast forward until seven years old. I was diagnosed again and got the green light. I no longer had those anymore, which was wonderful, but so highly impressionable age for kids to really develop those cognitive skills, to be able to trust their bodies.
[00:03:28.800]
And so I was kind of learning that for the first time and also in an environment where I was going to birthday parties and I wanted to eat all the fun foods. And so if you look at it from a biological perspective. I was very much in that restriction and then binge cycle where I, I had to restrict myself by way of this allergy. And then suddenly I wanted to eat all of the things because I had been restricting them for so long.
[00:03:52.080]
And finally I was able to. So it’s interesting just kind of seeing that now and how that plays a role in our relationship with foods, just from a diet perspective, because back then that was just that biological reaction and it eventually led me into disordered eating and then a full-blown eating disorder and experienced all of this shame around the foods that I was eating and how I was consuming them, even really clean foods. I went through this phase towards the end of my battle with bulimia, where it almost entered into this orthorexic pattern with food, which is a really unhealthy relationship with traditionally healthy foods and how we consume them.
[00:04:36.720]
And so I was no longer bingeing on fast food and gigantic bags of Doritos and chocolate and all those things. It was now boxes of granola bars and green smoothies and trays of veggies and giant bags of dates and Mac and Damien nuts and peanut butter and things that were, quote unquote, clean. So I never really had this neutral relationship with food. And I eventually this was while it was health coaching, too. I was I got my certification to become a holistic health coach.
[00:05:09.240]
And during the beginning of my business, I was still bingeing all of the time. And I was just the opposite of feeling embodied in my body. And I had heard of intuitive eating, but I just totally had it wrong in terms of what it actually was. And in my mind, I was thinking, this is crap. If I eat whatever I want, intuitively it’s going to put me back exactly where I am right now, which is what I’m trying to get out of this cycle of not feeling in control of food.
[00:05:36.210]
I felt completely out of control with food and my body and I thought that’s what intuitive eating was, to just eat whatever you want, whenever you want. All of the rules, quote unquote, go out the window and all the things. And I just didn’t really have an understanding. But basically I got help. Again, I really made the decision that I needed some support to fine tune my relationship with food and my body and just really look at intuitively knowing that I had to actually heal.
[00:06:03.260]
And that opened up the opportunity to really learn about intuitive eating as well.
[00:06:09.320]
Thank you so much for sharing that. I resonate a lot with that as I had an eating disorder for a lot of my years growing up and now I do feel like I’ll never look at calories just because of that place that I was in. But it’s interesting to think back at how I used to think of food and how I do now and the journey I’ve been on to get here.
[00:06:32.300]
But yeah, it is so interesting how I mean, I think I was very affected by, like you were saying, the environment, things I was seeing, things I was hearing about how you should be and all that. But I am curious because you were saying when you heard the term intuitive eating, you thought it was something else. So for the people listening, I bet a lot of people are in that boat. What is intuitive eating and why is it beneficial for our community to know about this?
[00:06:58.400]
Intuitive eating is an evidence based framework for truly healing our relationship with food and rebuilding trust with our bodies. It was developed by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. They are two fabulous dietitians. This was developed over 20 years ago and it has over 125 scientific studies to date. And it’s really emerging in a lot of different spaces now. And I’m really, really grateful for that. Unfortunately, it’s being co-opted a lot into a hunger, fulness diet and diet culture is going to get their hands on everything.
[00:07:36.410]
And so unfortunately, it is something that we have to be mindful of in terms of what it is and what it isn’t. But basically, the intention of intuitive eating is to bring your body back to a place where you can listen to and trust your biological cues, those psychological cues that your body is really letting you know throughout the day. Some examples of this would be, of course, hunger, fullness when you’re tired, when you’re hot, when you’re cold, when you’re stressed out.
[00:08:03.860]
How is your body responding to all of these things and really getting to that place where you’re able to make space for yourself to listen to and respond to your body so that you can meet your needs in a really powerful way throughout the day, just to kind of give you a little bit more context for intuitive eating. It’s also based upon 10 different principles. It’s not a step by step or a 12-step; it’s not anything like that.
[00:08:27.080]
But it’s a framework for healing your relationship with food. And I want to point that out because it’s so much more than just food. A lot of the things that we talk about are related. I use three pillars with all my clients. So physical, mental, emotional. A lot of this is really so much more than food and our body image. And it really is talking about our emotional health, our mental wellbeing, as well as the fundamentals for our relationship with food, the first principle being rejecting the diet mentality.
[00:08:57.020]
So exactly what you were saying before about environment and all of these things, this is so important for healing our relationship with food, really just having that understanding of what are the messages that I’m receiving now without even realizing it. Diet culture, unfortunately, is all around us. It’s generational, it’s cultural, it’s systemic. It shows up in really sneaky ways, especially in the culture that we’re living in now, where the term diet perhaps might not be as sexy as it once was.
[00:09:29.960]
We kind of look at that term now and think, well, that’s for my mom, or that was for my grandmother. That was for a younger version of me. I just want to be healthy. And so this version of wellness has kind of been co-opted into another diet as well, too, that we really have to be careful about. And one of the best ways we can get to understanding when something is in the form of diet, culture or not, and if it’s impacting your life in an unhealthy way, is living in the “woulds”.
[00:09:57.380]
And just having that question on your radar throughout your day of am I approaching this from my personal want and my desire and what I know would be best for me versus what I think I should do with somebody else is telling me to do comparison. Another thing as well to who are we comparing ourselves to, including our younger version of ourselves. But all of these showing up and how intuitive eating really benefits this community, business owners in particular and entrepreneurs is when we have a really neutral, healthy, beautiful relationship with food that not only gives us the energy to
[00:10:38.480]
show up in our day, it frees up so much of our mental space, it really is, again, those three pillars, physical, mental and emotional. And I, I work with a lot of high achievers in my practice as well. And this is one of the most exciting things that I see when clients really start moving through this healing process and they realize, oh, my God, I didn’t even realize how much time I was spending on thinking about food and my body and all of these things.
[00:11:05.240]
And just to give you an example of what this might look like for somebody in business, and I just want to caveat with this is everyone is individual, everyone has their own set of unique needs. But this is a common example that I see with a lot of high achievers and just really busy individuals getting wrapped up in work that you perhaps forget to eat through the day. Or maybe you know that you but you are you’re just trying to push through and you kind of have that little voice in the back of your mind saying, well, it’s OK to I’m not I’m not eating the calories.
[00:11:37.250]
So this is actually going to be a good thing. And I’ll just make up for it later. And what that does is that really suppresses our biological cues to eat. And when we don’t eat consistently throughout that day, that restriction phase is almost always going to put you in a state of eating peacefulness, sometimes binge eating. I don’t necessarily like to use the term overeating because that’s the judgment around what is normal eating, but really what feels good for your body.
[00:12:02.240]
And then often when that happens, we find ourselves in this intense emotional and mental distress that really sabotages our ability to show up in our businesses.
[00:12:12.660]
Yes. And when we were speaking before, I know you had said productivity is related to this. So I’m curious. I know this is a topic that comes up a lot in my community because I think all business owners can say at one time or another, probably right now, that is a struggle. It’s a struggle to figure out how to get into workflow where you feel like flowy and fun versus pushing where you feel like you’re getting enough done. But I’m curious, how does our relationship with food help or hinder our productivity?
[00:12:40.220]
And do you have any specific examples to illustrate?
[00:12:43.340]
Yeah, absolutely. So it does help and hinder our productivity, our relationship with food. And it’s not always about the food. Very often it’s it’s not about the food. So one of the things that I like to talk about this is how we’re eating our food and especially as busy individuals in this community. There’s this desire to kind of push through and eat while we’re working and not taking any breaks and and really just kind of tie work and our meals or snacks together.
[00:13:14.090]
And that actually doesn’t help our productivity at all. It doesn’t get us to our next destination quicker. Sometimes that is what is going to have to happen. Sometimes there are going to be circumstances where there just isn’t an opportunity to take a break. And rather than skipping a meal or a snack, you know, that you’re taking care of just by pushing through and having a snack. However, I would be willing to bet, and I see this quite often, there are opportunities where we can give ourselves the space to really be present with our meals.
[00:13:46.730]
And this doesn’t mean a 30 minute breakfast or taking an hour long lunch or anything, but really taking those times to step away from your desk or your work or the activity that you’re involved in during the day and being with your food and really enjoying your food. When we don’t have the ability, when we don’t give ourselves the space to enjoy our food, our body picks up on that. And it really doesn’t recognize the satisfaction that it’s craving at the time.
[00:14:14.450]
And if we’re not giving our bodies the satisfaction and the nutrients that it’s desiring, we’re going to feel depleted in that and we’re going to try and get that in some other way. And that’s where it becomes really disordered, whether it’s food or substances or something else that just isn’t really helpful for us. So that’s one area of this and then another part of productivity. And just how this food helps or hinders is, again, the consistency that we’re eating through the day, really making sure that we’re nourishing our body adequately, consistently and with enough variety throughout the day.
[00:14:47.330]
And just like I had mentioned before, in a mindful way as well to. So really taking inventory of how you’re eating your food, where you’re eating your food, what you’re eating, and where those sneaky rules might be coming in and hindering your ability to have a consistent relationship with your meals and the food that you’re eating, as opposed to when we eat consistently, when we eat variety throughout the day. That gives us energy to show up when we eat consistently and in a mindful way that increases satisfaction.
[00:15:18.140]
And so we’re able to be more present with our work because we’re feeling more satisfied throughout our day as well, too. So those are just some some general areas. I mean, we could really we could go into the three pillars with this, but this is just kind of focusing on food rather than the emotional and mental and the mental perspective of this as well, too.
[00:15:35.330]
I’m curious. For people who are new to this. Are there ways maybe they haven’t been listening to their body and just the idea of that is strange or like they don’t know where to start? Are there any techniques for getting into with your body. Like, one thing I’m picturing is a food journal or something — like I eat this and this is how I felt. Or is that not really in line with this?
[00:15:57.560]
So there’s a few things that I’ll say about this. If you are coming from a restrictive background, this is going a little bit, going to look a little bit differently for you if you are somebody who struggles with an active eating disorder. By the way, I highly encourage if you are to seek a treatment team for that, it’s very important. But if if you are coming into intuitive eating from a restrictive background, even intermittent fasting, your fullness cues are going to look very differently than most people.
[00:16:27.470]
And this is really an opportunity to rebuild those cues. And so when we talk about really just getting into the rhythm of eating intuitively and picking up on what those are, if we’re coming from the restriction, it is going to feel a little strange at first. And it really is almost like a plan. I want to I want to share this almost like a gentle guide for yourself. It probably will be having breakfast when you’re feeling not necessarily that pang of hunger at first, but really just knowing that you’re on the path to feel that hunger because you are healing your relationship with food.
[00:17:02.160]
So eating breakfast, eating a snack and lunch, eating that gentle rhythm, that hum throughout the day of food. And I know that can be triggering as well, too, because if you are coming to this from a disordered place, a lot of people like to feel the emptiness and are really scared about the feeling of fullness and feeling hunger. And so I really want to be mindful if that is what you’re thinking right now, too. And this is why it can be so beneficial to work with somebody.
[00:17:30.590]
But if you’re just interested in this and not really in that space, and this is something that you’re not really coming out of in terms of intense restriction or whatnot, really just eating throughout the day and acknowledging how you’re feeling through the day. So this is why mindful eating can be so helpful. And that’s only possible for one meal a day. Let’s say you start out with breakfast and that’s the meal that you’re really paying attention to. How do I feel before I eat?
[00:17:58.460]
How do I feel during eating? How do I feel afterwards? What type of sensations my experiencing in my body? That can be really helpful as well, too. And just an analogy to give around getting in touch with our hunger and fullness cues. I always like to use the bathroom analogy. So when we when we have to go to the bathroom, that’s a biological cue. That’s a sign that our bladder is full, that we need to go.
[00:18:19.700]
That can be a great way to just tune into how your body is giving you these cues as well, too, and you listening and responding to that, because the reality is you’re going to feel your bladder heavier some times where there’s this intense desire to to pee or relieve yourself in some way. Other times you’re going to feel just a little bit more of a gentle nudge and go, but you’ll still experience that sensation. And so just acknowledging that cue, the caveat here is most people don’t experience shame or guilt or judgment or comparison when they’re going pee.
[00:18:50.150]
And the opposite is true for our relationship with food. So we live in a culture that does have this agenda against hunger. And so that’s something to be really mindful of as well, too. But our goal with intuitive eating is to get to this place where there is this natural relationship with food. There is this neutral relationship with your body cues, and we’re able to dismantle the shame and the judgment and the guilt and all of these negative emotions, the overthinking, all of these things so that your relationship with food is is really no different than going to the bathroom, except it has a lot more joy and satisfaction, the love that.
[00:19:30.090]
So let’s get a little big picture. I know you work with a lot of busy, ambitious people and you also, of course, run your own business. So in your experience, what are some of the greatest benefits for practicing intuitive eating? And how have you seen your clients professional lives change from it?
[00:19:47.240]
I think one of the biggest benefits of practicing intuitive eating is truly, though, the way that your mental state changes when you’re not currently in this state of judgment with yourself and overthinking and preoccupation and comparison and all of these intense emotions that go along with food when we can step away from living in the woods around our relationship with food and and really our bodies as well to where we’re staying focused on intuitive eating. But this really does go into body image work.
[00:20:21.500]
It’s almost impossible to do one without the other, at least in my practice. So it’s important to mention. But when you have a neutral relationship with food and a peaceful relationship with food, you’re able to show up more productively and more creatively. And your work, you’re a. To be more present in your relationships, you’re able to develop a sense of autonomy and this new level of confidence with yourself that you might have thought that you had before, but I promise it shifts when all of this noise really quiets down.
[00:20:53.700]
When you don’t have that constant chatter in the back of your mind around what you ate, what you should be eating, how you’re feeling, how you look at all of the the thoughts around food and your body running in your mind when that can really just quiet down and you build this ability to trust yourself and listen to your body and approach your life more compassionately and more curiously as well. To that increases your confidence. That increases your capacity to be present in your day no matter what you’re doing.
[00:21:26.910]
And also, when we’re more present, we’re able to make these decisions with more ease and more conviction and more excitement and more fun as well to because I get it, we’re talking about some really intense things in this conversation. And there’s a lot of unpacking. There’s a lot of unlearning. It’s emotional. It’s going to bring up a lot of tears. But I’m also a big believer that one of the best ways we can heal is through humor.
[00:21:49.080]
And so very often this is a great opportunity to just acknowledge where is the where is that opportunity to keep things lighthearted and find joy and build that in because there’s more space to live our lives more joyfully and more thoughtfully as well, too. So it really it does shift so many things. And with clients, I was actually just giving another workshop earlier this week and I was sharing that. It’s so cool and very easy because we’re talking about food, we’re talking about healing our relationships with food.
[00:22:20.010]
But without fail, I usually work with clients between four months to a year, depending on our relationship and what they need without fail, almost every single client, something changes in their life, whether it’s a new relationship, whether it’s getting out of a relationship, whether it’s moving into an apartment, whether it’s getting a new job, whether it’s starting a business, whether it’s shifting your business, travel, all of these things that we tend to put off or if we’re not putting off, we tend to hold back on in terms of how we’re really showing up in that area of our life.
[00:22:53.490]
It always shifts because we have the bandwidth to shift it and we have the clarity to be able to really look at these important areas of our life and make changes from this place of confidence and autonomy because there’s more space. Yes.
[00:23:07.030]
That’s so beautiful to think about. It affects your business. But this is so much more than that; like a journey or transformation.
[00:23:17.730]
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a transformation and a journey. I think I think that there’s a lot of transformation in healing. That is really it’s a slow build it it’s a lot of baby steps that really accumulate to a pretty significant transformation. But it’s also a lifelong journey as well to a lot of my clients. And I, I totally get it. I was this way, too. And I still have to be really mindful of this as well. But a lot of my clients are in that all or nothing mindset, that black and white thinking and the extremities, when we start working together and so very often, especially coming out of diet culture, there’s this anticipation of, well, I’m going to do this and I’m going to do everything right, just like we’re talking about.
[00:23:58.230]
And then everything’s going to shift and I just won’t have to deal with it again. And that’s something that we talk about right up front, really dismantling that, really figuring out how that’s keeping you safe and how that’s actually sabotaging your ability to move forward. And I talk about perfection a lot in a lot of the work that I do with clients as well, too. But when we’re able to get out of that all or nothing thinking and that expectation of I’ll do this right and then I just I’ll just get through this and I’ll never have to deal with it again.
[00:24:25.650]
And we can really embrace the suck and we can embrace the bumps and really understand that the biggest learning is actually when we hit those bumps. As painful as it is, sometimes those are actually the biggest growth moments and that really doesn’t end. And if we can get into a place where we’re embracing them versus avoiding them, that opens up so many possibilities for our life. And yes, I will say through this process, my hope and my goal for everybody that I work with and something that I see quite often is your relationship with food is not going to feel so dramatic.
[00:25:01.350]
By the time we’re done working together, you’re most likely not going to be as preoccupied and as erratic or feeling as out of control, really going to get to this neutral, intuitive relationship with food. But that doesn’t mean you’re done. That doesn’t mean that it’s fixed and you never have to worry about it ever again. Your relationship with food, your relationship with your body is a relationship. And any relationship that you’re in, in your life, you can understand this grows with you.
[00:25:29.610]
You grow together. Yeah. It’s this constant process of checking in and just giving ourselves the space to acknowledge what feels good, what’s working, what feels a little off? How do I be in these moments of discomfort and really get curious about what is creating this discomfort and what do I need to get through this as well, too?
[00:25:50.610]
It’s like getting to know yourself on a deeper level to create this rhythm.
[00:25:54.870]
Absolutely. I mean, this really is it’s that inner wisdom. It’s that inner trust. It’s that inner inner confidence and autonomy. And I know a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs and high achievers. There’s this persona of, I’ll just say false confidence, because a lot of women that I see, a lot of people that I support, they say this all the time. And I’ve experienced this to just everyone thinks I’m confident. Everyone thinks I have it all together.
[00:26:22.830]
Everyone thinks I’m the healthy eater. I have this identity that I’ve been holding on to for so long in my life. I don’t know who I am without that, first of all. And I also don’t feel like that at all internally. And that feels really challenging and really empty. And so that’s one of the most beautiful parts about healing our relationship with food in our bodies and really getting to that place where we can develop this inner trust in inner confidence is truly believing that for ourselves, truly knowing ourselves well enough to be with ourselves, it’s an embodiment process and it takes time.
[00:26:57.750]
And it’s and it is ongoing as well, too. But when we can really get to that place from the inside out, there’s so many possibilities that shift in our in our businesses and our life as well, too, because that that type of authenticity is unshakable.
[00:27:12.390]
Yes! Now I had one final question for you. What are some extra points that you think might be important for the community to know about this process that will set them up for long term success with intuitive eating?
[00:27:26.190]
So we talked about a lot of them already. But I will just I’ll wrap it up. I’ll put a bow on what I think some of the most important ones that we’ve talked about today are just so that everyone can kind of feel like they have something to grab onto and and move forward. How does that sound?
[00:27:42.720]
I love that. Yes, great.
[00:27:44.880]
So one of the one of the best things that you can start out with is going back to that first principle of really rejecting diet culture and rejecting the diet mentality.
[00:27:53.610]
And one of the best things that we can do to just check in with this where you are in your life is just to notice where you are relying on that external information. Who are you following on social media or just throughout your life that is creating this should or this comparison with yourself? Where are you getting your health information from? How much time are you putting into it? How is it making you feel? What type of apps are you using?
[00:28:16.380]
Where are you? Are you wearing a fitness watch that’s really creating this external rhythm of what you should be doing versus your ability to trust your body and what it needs? Are you writing all of your things that you’re eating down all the time? Are you weighing yourself? Are you measuring yourself with your clothes that don’t fit you? Perhaps these are really just tangible ways that we are inundated with that diet culture that have become so normalized that we don’t even realize that we’re doing it.
[00:28:42.330]
But really, just taking a moment to get quiet and looking at our lives and taking inventory of what’s actually disrupting our ability to trust ourselves and trust our bodies and creating that neutral environment with our relationship with food and our body wisdom and clearing it out if it’s not serving you. And if that feels overwhelming, just start with one thing. So I get it. I know it might feel like a really big ask to put your fitness watch away for a while.
[00:29:07.980]
If you’re getting triggered by that, maybe try something else. If you’re feeling like that’s something that you want to start with. Great. Try it out for a couple of days and see how it actually supports you. Or if it doesn’t, that’s something to acknowledge as well, too. I always say, you know your body better than anybody, but very often we feel like we don’t because diet culture is getting in the way. So my goal is to bring you back to that place where you can stand in that conviction of that type of body trust.
[00:29:32.010]
So that’s the first thing taking inventory and letting go of the things that are serving you right now from a diet culture perspective. Second thing is really how your body through the day and eating consistently throughout the day, having breakfast, having a snack, having lunch, having food through through your afternoons and and really just making sure you’re eating consistently and a variety of foods throughout the day. So important. So checking in with that and also how you’re feeling when you’re eating your foods as well, too.
[00:30:03.630]
And the third thing that I’ll say about that as well, too, is if there’s an opportunity to eat more mindfully. That is a game changer. And like I had mentioned, that might feel overwhelming to think about, like, oh, my God, I’m not going to eat all of my meals sitting down without distraction and all of the things pick one meal. And if that feels overwhelming, pick one meal each week to start with where you’re just like dinner on a Wednesday.
[00:30:27.600]
I’m shutting off the TV, I’m lighting a candle, I’m throwing on some awesome music, and I’m just sitting with my food and enjoying and seeing how it feels. Create that atmosphere for you to be in touch with your body and how you’re feeling, eating and enjoying your food, that is so important, once we really build this foundation that gives us so much more opportunity to look to look at some of the other areas as well, too.
[00:30:51.580]
But it’s almost impossible to look at those other areas if we’re not nourishing ourselves adequately and consistently throughout the day and we have all these disruptors getting in the way, too. So that’s what I would say.
[00:31:04.070]
Yeah. And I feel like this just reminds me of the idea that what works for bloggers — as well as many business owners, especially if you’re creating things — if you’re adding these more moments of joy to your day, you show up with more joy and happiness that gets infused into what you put out there. I mean, even if you’re not writing or painting or creating in the traditional sense, you could be creating a PowerPoint for a meeting and you’re just putting your creativity into what you make in your daily workday or even just your day hanging out with friends and family, just bringing those feelings to that.
[00:31:39.800]
Yeah. Infusing this sense of play throughout our day, which can feel really challenging, but if we just keep that in our mind of how, what would it look like to play today. Just keeping that in mind is so important because yeah, that absolutely fuels our creativity and also stress management as well, too. It’s it’s so important as well, which is one of the reasons why I’m such a big proponent of mindful eating, because when we’re eating mindfully, it really reduces that stressful state around food and it gives us the opportunity to get quiet and feel that satisfaction, that pleasure, that play perhaps and more creatively and more productively throughout the day.
[00:32:21.050]
Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this information. I was saying this to you before we started recording, but I feel like a lot of bloggers, entrepreneurs, myself included, sometimes it’s so easy to be like, OK, I have to learn this email marketing strategy or how to sell digital products online, because that’s what’s going to grow my business. And then we kind of put to the side these more inner self-journey strategies that are so important and could actually help you grow tremendously in your business.
[00:32:48.380]
But it’s just it doesn’t feel like the OK, if I do X, Y, Z on Pinterest I’m going to increase my blog traffic and that’s going to give you this. And we put it to the side, I think sometimes, which is really sad because it could not only change your business, but your entire life.
[00:33:02.450]
Yeah, I get it. I mean, I it’s not really the sexy thing to do. And also it’s something that we’ve been, especially as business owners and the previous generation of business teachers who have kind of indoctrinated us into this rhythm of plug in this formula and you’ll be you’ll be good to go. And we’ve also simultaneously adopted that to our relationship with food as well, to do this one diet. And everything’s going to be fixed. You’re you’re going to be fixed.
[00:33:33.590]
You are not something that is meant to be fixed. You’re not a calculator. It doesn’t work that easily. And so when we try to make ourselves that, it it really is bumping up against that resistance because your body is just trying to to let you know that it needs to be and to trust it.
[00:33:49.820]
Yes. That’s perfect. Perfect way to kind of end things and give people something to think about. And just an important reminder, I think, to take care of yourself. It’s the most important thing you can do in business and in life in general. But I’d love to actually end it by having you share the best places to find you if people want to learn more about you and your services and maybe some more tips on intuitive eating.
[00:34:13.580]
Yeah, absolutely. You can. The best way is my website. It’s my name, KatelynParsons.com. You’ll find all my social media there. And you can also find the Modern Girl Podcast. That’s my own podcast, where I interview incredible women about their own personal body image stories. And we also talk a lot about expert advice and tips about healing our relationship with food, body, mental health, emotional health, all of these things, as well.
Alright, now I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I hope you feel inspired and empowered to try intuitive eating to increase your productivity and create more ease in your day.
Don’t forget to grab access to the free travel blogging resource library that I’ve linked here. There are a ton of resources in there on growing your community and increasing your blogging profits.
And of course, make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes sharing these bite-sized strategies for bloggers who want to turn their blogs into profitable full-time businesses.
Happy blogging!
See Blogging Success With These Helpful Past Episodes:
How To Improve Your Mindset For Success In 3 Steps
Coping With Unexpected Change In Your Blogging Business
A Streamlined Workflow For Organizing Your Blogger To-Do List
How To Map Out & Crush Your Blogging Goals
Create A Free Challenge That Grows Your Email List & Income
Create A Profitable Automated Email Sequence (With Template!)
How To Be Comfortable in Front Of A Camera
Connect With The Profitable Travel Blogger Podcast
Stay In The Loop
Do you want to get notified when new episodes publish?
Then make sure to opt-in for podcast email notifications sent to your inbox!
You can do that by clicking here.
Subscribe + Review (To Win A Prize!)
Love learning new blogging strategies to help grow your website traffic, community, and income?
Click here to subscribe on iTunes to be notified when new episodes publish.
I’d also be extremely grateful if you’d leave a review right here and let me know your favorite part of the episode or a takeaway you walked away with. By leaving a review, you help the show be seen by more people, helping the episodes to have a greater impact.
Bonus:
Each month, I’ll be choosing one reviewer at random to win a FREE seat inside one of my masterclasses.
Winners can choose from:
- How To Grow Your Blogging Income Through Facebook Ads
- How To Land Paid Press Trips As A Travel Blogger
- How To Make Money (Fast) With Affiliate Marketing
- How To Start A Tour Company In Your Own Backyard
- How To Start A Blog, Grow An Audience & Make Money
- Build Your Blogging Profit Plan Masterclass
Winners will be chosen at random from the reviews and will be notified via email, so make sure to send me — jessie (at) jessieonajourney dot) com — your email address so I have it.