Imagine if you never had to feel guilty about anything you ate, ever again. Imagine if you didn’t need to worry about food choices, if loosing weight was no longer something that occupied your thoughts, and if you ate for pleasure or nourishment, but never felt regret.
Wouldn’t that be life changing?
Being fed up with feeling guilty or ashamed
My idea for a capsule kitchen came about through the need to simplify, but also because I was fed up with constantly being told different things about how to eat healthy. More precisely, I was not ok with the message that in order to be healthy I’m supposed to give up sugar.
I was at home with a newborn at the time, adjusting to my new life as a mum and in a body that was still in the middle of change.
And I was fed up.
In the years before pregnancy I had done all the detoxes and juice cleanses, ate raw, made sugar free sweets, practised yoga – all in a quest to find balance, and yet, never felt like I was doing it right. Whenever I ate something that didn’t fit the picture I felt guilty or ashamed. Whenever I overate I was mad at myself for not having enough self-control.
Do you ever scold yourself for not having enough self-control? It feels awful, doesn’t it.
So there I was, home with baby and not willing to give up sugar. In fact I made a pact with myself to bake a cake every Sunday as a family tradition. As part of my capsule kitchen. A real cake. Evil white sugar and everything.
And suddenly, things just started to shift. I did not worry anymore about what I ate, I ate what I felt like. I did not think about my weight, and yet the baby weight slowly disappeared.
Hang on, hang on. Surely it can’t be as simple as that.
No, of course it’s not. It took me years, decades really, to stop trying to control my weight or body. I was just at a point in my life where I was ready to let go. My stubbornness about the sugar thing, combined with my frustration about all the confusing messages around healthy eating, just proved the right combination to stop listening to other people and start listening to my body. Who, as it turns out, knows best.
By control I don’t just mean the big disordered eating kind of control. I also mean the small stuff. Trying to replace things with ‘healthy alternatives’ that don’t quite hit the spot; feeling guilty in the morning because you remember that after a ‘good’ day you started snacking too much in front of the TV or had the late night munchies; trying to ‘make up’ for something you ate by either skipping a meal or doing sport. All those things are forms of control.
I should note that I didn’t just stuff cake in my face all day. Because I had spent a significant amount of time learning about healthy food, I knew how my body felt when it craved a green smoothie or a piece of cake. I ate a lot of plant based wholefoods because they were delicious and gave me joy. If I craved something sweet I could tell if it needed to be chocolate or if it could be bliss balls with my tea. All these things feel different because your body is capable of telling you what it needs. (And occasionally our soul chimes in too, but that’s ok.)
Nothing was off limits anymore and that was the game changer.
Intuitive Eating
What I didn’t know at the time, is that there is a term for this and that is called intuitive eating. It is getting more attention now (or at least I see it mentioned more often). If you google the term and your city, you are likely to find a practitioner that can help, if that is something you’d like to explore and you think you can’t do it on your own.
My mission is simply to tell you that it works and how much lighter your life can be when you allow yourself to tune into your body, instead of trying to control it.
It is important to note that intuitive eating is not about weight loss, but about learning to trust your body’s hunger cues again. It looks different for everyone and in my case it resulted in weight loss after my first and second pregnancy. For the time in between it simply meant that I didn’t need to actively control my weight, my body found its equilibrium on its own.
The reason this is so important to me, is because I now have a daughter. She is 8 months old and eats with glee. Foods are exciting for her. She tucks in, often wants more, but knows when she’s had enough. There is no self-doubt, no overeating or deprivation. I look at her and want nothing more than for her to grow up never loosing that feeling of trust in her body and knowing that she is perfect just the way she is.
Finding balance and moderation
So I’ve been thinking about balance and moderation, and what that looks like. It certainly doesn’t mean cutting anything out or focusing on a list of superfoods that will turn your health and life around. On the contrary, my health and overall wellbeing, especially my mental health, has improved vastly and effortlessly when I started focusing on variety. A little bit of everything.
Over the years I have adopted the habit of eating lots of different things with a focus on whole foods. So much so that now it comes naturally, without having to make a conscious effort. That’s what makes my diet and lifestyle around food pretty stress free. Processed foods are part of it, sugar is part of it. Guilt and shame are not.
When I put together my seasonal capsule recipe collection or our weekly family menu, I try to make it as varied as possible. Balance and moderation means to me trusting your body and creating the bigger picture. If you focus on the bigger picture, the tiny pieces loose significance and that makes all the difference.
Your mental health is a crucial part of your wellbeing. And whilst that is nothing that can be achieved from one day to the next, today is a wonderful place to start.
Much love,
Katrine x
Cover photo by Elsa Noblet on Unsplash