I think we have all heard the saying “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”.

I digress, I think it is one of MANY important meals of the day. Eating enough throughout the day is what is really important so that there are less chances of bingeing.

There is a debate in the Intuitive Eating Wellness space whether it is ok to skip breakfast or not.

Well, it depends.

Some have to wake up really early,and are just not hungry. You may be waking up at 5am,6am,7am to get ready for your day and just not quite ready to eat yet, so your first meal of the day may be 10am,11am, 12 noon even.

One of the principles of Intuitive Eating is honor your hunger and fullness, and it is here where we honor our hunger, and not go by the clock. This is good.

But here is what usually happens:

We are in careers/ caregiving responsibilities etc where we may not have the chance to eat at 10 am, 11 am, and so forth as our first meal of the day. So then when you finally do have an opportunity to eat, you end up bingeing all the foods and not feel so great due to eating past fullness. A total normal response to not having food all day. I think about the nurses that work in a hospital, the teachers at school, the bus driver in the city, etc. SO what do you do in this case?

When you know you won’t be able to eat at all due to a meeting, obligations, your job etc this is where “practical eating” comes in.

Practical eating is the habit of eating BEFORE your scheduled obligations whether you are hungry or not because you won’t have an opportunity to eat for awhile. This applies even for lunch and dinner too. Otherwise, you will be finding yourself at 3pm bingeing and eating past fullness and wonder why you are “overeating”. But this is normal, your body needed food.

Overtime, your body can send signals of hunger before your set schedule begins including those schedules where you have to get up earlier and get ready for your day.

I help women with these kind of situations and more in my 1:1 Private Coaching program! Apply to see if you are a good fit, it is only a few questions and are easy to answer. Click here to get started: Apply for Coaching

Winter is in full swing here in Chicago, so I thought I’d embrace the coziness of this season by cozying up in my favorite coffee shop today and write to you about the three reasons why you may be eating past fullness.

1. You did not eat enough: One reason you find yourself eating past fullness is because you did not eat enough. Simple as that. If you are skipping meals throughout the day, eventually your body is going to cry for nourishment and eat all the things as much as possible for fear of not sure when it will get food again. By the way, this is a totally NORMAL response as it is your body’s way of wanting to keep you safe.
2. You are going through a very stressful time in your life and to relieve the stressor, you turn to food: A common reason you may be eating past fullness is because you are going through a situation that is causing high stress and you use food to help you soothe. In my 1:1 Private Coaching program, we come up with other ways to also lower stress levels that don’t involve with food.
3. You restrict certain foods due to thinking they are “bad” only to turn around and binge on those foods: You restrict the food you avoid until you no longer are able to, or if you get exposed to those foods, you then tend to binge those foods. This is why giving yourself permission to eat all the foods helps lower the desirability of those foods and no longer make them high on a pedestal.

I hope these tips help you see why eating past fullness occurs. Eating past fullness is your body’s way of wanting to survive and keep you safe. I go more into this topic among others when it comes to having peace with food in my coaching program!

Right now I have the capacity to coach two women in my 1:1 Private Coaching Program. If interested, please apply at the link to see if we would be a good fit. Click Here : Apply

Happy 2023…it is here finally! It seems just yesterday we were celebrating 2022.

About two years ago around this time, I recall working with a client on what New Year’s Resolutions do they want to have in the new year. The client stated that resolutions are not a thing in her world, but does love to add onto her daily routine to help improve her quality of life. She wanted to do more walking whether the weather was cold or not as winters in Chicago can be brutal. Even more brutal if you are in a small condo with not much space.

Aiming to improve our life, aka goals, or intentions if you want to call them, can start anytime in the year. But the hype around this time of year can get pretty loud. This is the time to practice that inner wisdom and self trust on what will work best for YOU.

For me, I love easing into the new year and kinda still hash out what I would like to keep on doing and what I want to add. If it takes the entire January(or year really) to do so, so be it. You can always however,work on goals or intentions ANYTIME and does not have to be exactly January 1st of every year.

Just remember that you do NOT need fixing, and you do NOT need to diet and go hard on your workouts to make up for that holiday eating you did.

I have a self-care 30 day non-dated calendar that includes 30 non-diet ways to care for yourself without the pursuit of dieting or intense workouts. If you don’t have it yet, definitely grab it here: 30 Day Self-Care Calendar

And now in other news, I wanted to let you know that I have started my podcast called the Intuitive Wellness Cafe! If you would like to hear the trailer, you can hear it now on Apple and Spotify.

Here is the link to listen: https://anchor.fm/deanna-kozarov

Here’s to an eventful 2023, to navigating it with self-compassion, self-trust, patience,and as much joy and gratitude as possible.

-Deanna

As you go through your food freedom journey and stop dieting, you can journal on these next three questions to help you move towards food freedom:

1. What would your life look like if you stress less about food?

Does this include being able to enjoy the things that you enjoyed before dieting? What are those things/events/people?

2. How do you want to move your body today? Or do you want to rest?

Part of achieving food freedom is to let go of the rules of exercise as well, because this is connected to wanting to manipulate your body and go on a diet. Forming a movement menu, which is a list of your favorite ways to move and then choosing that one movement you want to do that day, is a great way to go about moving your body without rules. I have a template to create your own movement menu you can grab here: Movement Menu

3. What is the one thing you can do for yourself today that has nothing to do with dieting/weight loss pursuits that will help you practice self care?

Intuitive Eating is a self-care eating framework-it encourages one to care for oneself without the use of food all the time. I have a pdf full of ideas on how to care for yourself without dieting that you can grab at the link here: 30 days of Self-Care Calendar

Are you someone that wants to work deeper with a coach on these concepts to achieve food freedom and stop dieting? I will have the capacity to take on 1 client come January. Apply at this link here to see if you are a good fit: Apply for 1:1 Private Coaching

I am not sure if you have read Atomic Habits, a very popular self help book by James Clear that have helped thousands of people achieve their goals. I have to admit I am REALLY bad when it comes to trending books and movies and can get behind because well, life. I finally read Atomic Habits over the summer and I was just thinking how Atomic Habits can definitely apply to achieving food freedom and Intuitive Eating.

Reading how people transformed their lives for the better and the self-help genre books are my favorite types of books to read!

You, like me I am sure have been dieting all your life, years and decades even. So stopping dieting and practicing Intuitive Eating now can seem like an overwhelming task. But just like anything else in life you are trying new, it won’t be a quick fix or happen overnight.

This is why implementing Atomic Habits can be one way to go about it. For those who have not read Atomic Habits yet, it’s basically making the changes in your life in small bite sizes instead of all at once. It makes sense because going at it from an all or nothing mindset can set you up for failure. 

For instance, making peace with food involves allowing to give yourself unconditional permission to eat ALL the foods. You may be inclined, like I was, to start eating alllll the foods at once that you were avoiding this entire time due to dieting, restricting, and trying to eat just the “good foods”. 

But starting with that one food rule and going with it for awhile until you are ready to add more foods may be a more effective to go about it. This isn’t a race and reminder, not a diet or set of food rules. Going at your own comfortable pace would be the way to approach it.

And not having to make it a daily habit at first may be what you need to get started, even one meal or one day out of the week is great! This is your journey and you get to set the tone and pace for your food freedom journey.

Have you signed up for your free guide to “ How to Kickstart your Food Freedom Journey” yet? If not it has very quick tips to get you started. You can access it here at this link: How to Kickstart Your Food Freedom Journey

One of the benefits of practicing Intuitive Eating in our lives is that food is just food. There is no good or bad food, all food is neutral. This along with having unconditional permission to eat all the foods are a few of many characteristics of Intuitive Eating, which you can find the 10 principles here: Intuitive Eating Principles.

I love celebrating my birthday with my family. We usually pick something fun to do in the city and it so happens that my birthday is around the holidays so we get to catch all the decorations and lights which makes for perfect picture taking.

We catch the 147 bus to downtown and spend the entire day drinking coffee, shopping, and eventually settle down to a fancy dinner in the evening.

We did get a birthday cake of course, a three layer chocolate cake (always chocolate) and blew out some candles. Of course we always had leftovers. I had a slice, and moved on.

Three days after my birthday, we still had cake in the fridge. As my family continued to eat cake for breakfast, I completely and utterly forgot we still had cake. In fact, it was almost gone! I went ahead and helped myself a slice to go with my coffee that morning.

I laughed when this happened because before I learned about intuitive eating, I would overeat dessert since I wasn’t really allowing myself to have it. But because I have been treating myself to desserts more often, sometimes even daily, having cake on my birthday was just another day of treats for me. I was able to have that slice of cake and move on.

This is the power of Intuitive Eating, not waiting until your birthday to have dessert. Not feeling guilty for having sweets, but letting it be a part of your world on a daily basis, if you want.

Giving unconditional permission to eat ALL the foods and more often will actually let you not binge on that said food later. It is no longer put on a pedestal and your body learns that you will have dessert anytime, since you allow it to have sweets regularly. This goes for any food that you have tried to “keep out of the house” which actually backfires once you DO bring it in the home.

Want to experience this kind of food freedom? I have a free guide on how to kickstart your food freedom journey. It has great quick tips to get started.

Click here for your Free guide: How to Kickstart Your Food Freedom Journey.

As I sit on my balcony out of my two bedroom condo in Chicago, ear plugs in as I listen to the Calm App, I contemplated what my first blog post should be about. It took me a long time to sit down and write my first post, but here we are.

This blog will be a combination on a variety of topics that will help you get inspired, educated, resourceful, and grow a sense of self-compassion and self-trust.

Topics will range from Intuitive Eating,Intuitive Movement, life updates,inspirational and motivational pieces, intuitive living, minimalism, and wellness without the pursuit of dieting. I may throw in a recipe once in awhile.

One thing is for sure, I will never promote dieting, diet culture, or extreme fitness regimens on this site. I also am very aware that I have many privileges as well. I am aware that everyone’s own lived experience is valid.

I want to also dedicate this first blog post to God, my family, and everyone that has contributed and supported to helping me start my Intuitive Eating Health Coaching business. It truly means a lot to me to do this kind of work and help women quit the diet cycle and help them redefine what health and wellness really means to them without the pursuit of weight loss and dieting. I have my work cut out for me, but I am happy to be here.

Thank you for reading this far and I hope you come back here soon! Grab a cup of coffee or tea and browse around the site. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

You can read more about my story here