Chocolate and Beyond

Don't diet but do clothes that fit

Do you have a rail of clothes in your wardrobe that used to fit and you're hoping it won't be long before you're back into them? Send them to a charity shop right now! Whilst you may believe that seeing these clothes will serve as a reminder of the size you 'could be', they will actually just limit your ability to feel happy about yourself right now, as you are.

If any lasting change is going to happen that brings about weight loss, it won't be through reminding yourself constantly how unhappy you are with your current weight, by seeing clothes that don't fit hanging in your wardrobe all the time. Self-acceptance and loving yourself whatever shape or size you are is key to any changes that might happen regarding your improved relationship with food.

Meet Beyond Chocolate authors at One Life Live (plus free tickets!)

FREE TICKETS FOR 'ONE LIFE 'AT OLYMPIA

Meet Sophie and Audrey Boss, authors of Beyond Chocolate, at The One Life Live show at Olympia in London from 29th February to 2nd March.

It's an event for anyone who dreams of breaking free from the daily grind to pursue a new personal or professional goal. There are 10 inspirational zones and the Boss sisters will be at stand M62 in the Life Change Zone, spreading the word about how Beyond Chocolate is doing just that - changing lives.

Tickets cost £12 if booked online, but Beyond Chocolate have 10 pairs to give away to the first of you to email them with your name and address at [email protected]!

For more information, visit One Life

Challenging greed with intuitive eating

One of the main struggles I've had with intuitive eating is grappling with the challenge of satiety verses greed. Not only is there an issue with my past (and sometimes present) unhealthy relationship with food, there is also the fact that sometimes I'm just downright greedy.

No emotions involved. No eating disorder getting in the way. No struggle with binge or starve. Just plain, old, simple greed: "I love the taste of this food, so I'm going to eat more, regardless of the fact that I'm no longer hungry."

It is easy to kid yourself that you are not yet full, and therefore want to eat more, because you actually are just being greedy. But it is hard to accept this less desirable trait in ourselves (and sometimes, for me, easier to blame it on something like 'emotional eating').

Mood Food Company

There is now a website where you can shop for foods according to which mood you want to induce! The MoodFood Company has information about which foods are likely to help in nurturing different states of mind, and has a shop where you can buy a variety of natural and organic produce.

I feel quite strongly that a diet can have a huge impact on your emotional and mental health, and a long time ago I wrote an article (ironically, for a diet magazine, this was before I re-educated myself on the perils of dieting!) on eating mood food. I don't believe that you can single out certain foods to help certain moods, but I do think that aiming for overall balance and an inclusion of certain food groups can very much help maintain stable mental health.

Has summer arrived?

Oh my god - the weather is bizarre! And very beautiful - but yesterday I was out with nothing but a thin long-sleeved top and there were people out in t-shirts! This is FEBRUARY! Two weeks ago we had snow, and now we have ice-cream suggestive sunshine!

It looks like today is going to be another warm one and I was just reading on Yahoo that Manchester, for once, is one of the areas that these unprecedented temperatures are being recorded (it's the hottest ever, apparently).

Sisterly plug: The Wedding Hair Portfolio

Well, if there is anything that a woman might drastically diet for, it is her wedding, so I'm not altogether 'way off the mark' for mentioning my sister Nina's web venture The Wedding Hair Portfolio here!

I just wanted to give Nina a little plug as she's worked so hard on her website - which is a very new concept as an online hair magazine for brides - and it is so beautifully photographed it is worth having a nosy on even if you have no plans to marry!

Email Nina if you want any more information on her services. She also owns Bridal Hair and Tiaras, and Posh Pins.

Chocolate, apples or a glass of red wine?

I've just received the latest Beyond Chocolate newsletter which is great for motivating yourself when the dreaded 'diet' word is finding its way back in your thoughts again. This feature is focusing on enjoyment, and I thought I'd publish it here for you to read.

PRINCIPLE NO. 6: ENJOY (Remind me what this principle is about)

"Chocolate lovers can rejoice. It's claimed that two squares of a certain brand of chocolate that recently hit the supermarket shelves contain more antioxidants than 5lbs of apples. The newspapers went wild for it. So, should you abandon your Granny Smiths for Choxi+? Are chocolate bars the new blueberries? Hmmm. Possibly not.

How to get more people to read your IE blog

I know many IE (intuitive eating) bloggers are just happy with getting their experience written down, but others would like to share their stories with a much wider audience. If you want to find ways of getting the IE message out there, as well as getting more people to read your articles on your site, then I found this great little way of doing it.

Write an article for GoArticles.com and link to your blog within the piece. I wrote this feature called Ditch the Diet for a Healthier New You a while ago for a magazine and it never got used, so I just decided to edit it a little and put it on the site last week.

The feature has now had 14 requests, meaning that other people will be adding it to their sites or publications and circulating my blog link, which is in the article.

Isn't a diet a form of eating disorder, really?

I mentioned sometime ago on my post Discovering shared journeys that I'd been having lunch with a new friend only to discover that she had been reading my site for months without knowing it was mine (spooky, hey?).

Anyhow, I'm sure she won't mind me saying that this friend is Sarah, who has since begun her own blog called Finding serenity within me, connected with her recovery from an eating disorder.

Sarah's latest post is really interesting, where she brings attention to some definitions between eating disorders and dieting that she found on a newsite.

Strategies I used to employ to stay thin

I'm in the process of writing a mini 'eBook' to offer on my site (for free, that is!), and am about half way through at the moment. However, I just thought I'd share a little part of it to get you all excited about its launch (hehe).

It seems hard to recall all the effort I put into controlling my weight (or trying to) in my dieting days, and I wrote down a list that soon brought it all back. This is what I write about, but I'd love to know if you have any of your own you can add, or whether any of my old tactics sound familiar to you:

These are some of the strategies I employed to stay thin, not every one of them all of the time, but usually a combination of a few sometimes: