With Christmas approaching quickly, we know you’ll be attending a lot of parties, get-togethers, dinners, and more. Coach Manders has put together her best tips and advice for navigating the holiday parties. Because the last thing we want is for you to be nervous or anxious at this time of year. Hopefully, these tips will help you relax so you can truly enjoy yourself.

Ah, The Holidays! It’s the most wonderful time of the year! It’s also when nutrition tends to become an afterthought for most folks for a few reasons…

This is a 30 day journaling & mindfulness project, designed to improve your relationship with food, abandon food guilt, & help you gain full control over your eating habits. Our goal is for you to come out of this more in tune with yourself, what is on your plate, & your eating behaviors. Your next 30 days with us are going to show you a lot about yourself, particularly your relationship with food. Each day, you will have a journaling prompt to complete, along with a mindfulness task to carry with you throughout the day.

New Year's resolutions are the traditions in which we commit to changing an undesired trait or behavior in ourselves, in order to accomplish a personal goal or otherwise improve our quality of life. Until I was 27 years old, my New Year’s Resolution was always weight loss related (along with 90% of the population) with the hope to get the holiday weight gain off. I set myself up for failure, year after year, starting in October, by throwing in the effort towel a little early. I would overindulge for nearly three months straight, only to waste a time meant for personal growth on superficial nonsense that was brought about by my own hand (and mouth).

As soon as I heard the sentence “your wrist is broken” come out of my doctor’s mouth, I couldn’t stop laughing. This was ridiculous. 2018 had to be playing tricks on me. With Hashimoto’s coming to light in May, finding out my body wasn’t producing hormones in July, and now this???

We all know that one person who seems to have their life together, everything seems so easy and carefree. I think we all strive to be like that in some way or another. That person probably goes into each day with a plan.

From a young age, I always noticed that I had a "belly". So much so that I hated the word "belly" with a fiery passion. To this day, the word still makes me queasy. But I always felt like I was overweight in some regard simply because I had a "belly". What exacerbated the situation was that I chose to be competitive in swimming, where I would wear a simple Speedo brief. And I felt like I stood out (or rather stood "rounder") in the way I didn't want to: I was one of the "fat" ones in a sea of tall, skinny swimmers.

Even if we want to change, we may feel stuck, or we’re attached to something that keeps us from changing. We may get pulled between different things, like taking care of others versus taking care of ourselves; or, wanting to lose weight, but not wanting to give up comfort eating and drinking.

In 2008, my collegiate swimming career was coming to an end. By that point in time, it was coming somewhat as a welcome. I was just coming out of some serious issues with over-training syndrome and exercise addiction. But a large part of me was concerned about what my identity would be like without swimming. Outside of that, what was I to do as far as fitness and staying in shape? For 16 years I had grown accustomed to just wearing a Speedo to swim in. But would I have the audacity to ever put one back on if I couldn't look at least decent in it again? So many concerns were going through my head with the end of such a career…

It’s 2:45 AM and I’m lying in my bed listening to my husband snore. My mind is racing - thoughts like “I’m never going to fall asleep”, and “my day is going to be ruined” stream across my mind. After flipping over onto my side for what feels like the thousandth time, I accept defeat. I lost the battle. I crawl out of bed, stomp downstairs, and flop onto the couch, much to the dismay of my 4-year old Rhodesian Ridgeback…

I’ve cycled through lots of extremes regarding my nutrition. I’ve gone years never thinking twice about what I consumed. I’ve gone through periods of intense bingeing, only to restrict for days on end. I have also lived on the other side of the extreme…

I felt it was time that I wrote something more personal. I think I have avoided delving too deep because of the shame that is attached to food addiction, emotional eating, binging, etc. It wasn’t until fairly recently that I was able to pinpoint exactly how I defined my own emotional eating behavior. I once sought the help of a therapist for this very issue. Why do I eat when I’m not hungry? I was met with amateur-hour suggestions. Eat off a red plate, drink water before meals, “I’ll fill a prescription for an appetite suppressant.”

Let's talk about stress. We’re all pretty familiar with it. As adults stress becomes a part of our life. We have responsibilities and deadlines to attend to. Although we often think of stress as a bad thing, in small doses, it’s actually quite beneficial. It motivates us to meet those deadlines at work, finish a school project, stick to our diet, or get to the gym first thing in the morning. But sometimes, stress becomes overwhelming. It accumulates and eventually, we can’t take it anymore. This build-up and constant stress is the kind that’s harmful to our health. This is the type of stress we want to talk about.

Problem-solving has many layers. You’re here and I’m here because we have a problem that we’ve yet to solve on our own. We’re here because we need help. There’s nothing wrong with needing help. Everyone needs help with something in their lives at some point. As you start to outline the things you need or the actions you need to take to solve a problem, it may take a bit to get going. But at some point, it starts to build like a classic cartoon snowball rolling down a hill. Here is a sample list of things or actions you’ve likely done as you started your journey with BIN to solve this problem.