Dr. Ebony

Coping with Stress without Food

drebony — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 03:51:26 +0000

It’s summer and it’s supposed to be an amazing time, right?! Well, that is the case for a lot of you AND a lot of you are still just trying to deal with the hustle and bustle of your life. Sometimes just when you think you’re about to get a break…something else piles on your plate, right?! I know that’s been the case for me. Life doesn’t stop happening and sometimes happens even when you think it’s supposed to be slowing down. More and more things being added to your to-do list can be significantly triggering! And, just when you think you have a grasp on eating well, being active, practicing self-care, and taking care of your body…another task is added that can trigger stress, burnout, or feelings of just being overwhelmed.

I want you to enjoy your summer as much as you can, so let me share some simple tips for coping with stress without food!

1. Turn off the radio on the ride home and listen to an uplifting podcast. Before getting in your car and driving home or to your after work destination on autopilot. Listen to a podcast or audio book that can uplift you and help you decompress from the work day! Too many times we just get in the car and run on autopilot without even knowing it. It’s so bad for some of you that even though you have clocked out, you are STILL thinking about work, which further stresses you out! Instead, put on a good audio book or podcast that can actually help you free up your mental space.

2. Write and speak intentions and gratitude statements. Many times when you are stressed it’s because of your perspective and where you are focusing your thoughts and energy. The ways that you view or think about a situation can sometimes lead you to be more stressed out! Writing and speaking statements of intentions (stating what you want to see in your life) and gratitude (giving thanks for what you have in your life and what you want as if you already have it) can shift these thoughts and perspectives and decrease your stress!

3. Take a nap! Sometimes you just nee a good ol’ fashion nap! Taking a nap can actually help your brain process the day’s stressors in a way that calms your stress. Giving yourself about 30-45 mins to get some rest can actually leave you feeling a little more restored and energized (Please note: sleeping longer than this or too close to your bedtime can disrupt your sleep routine, so you want to place your naps earlier in the day, if you can). A consistent practice of breaking up your day with a nap can help you manage stress in effective ways!

4. Meditate or pray. A consistent practice of sitting quietly, either praying, meditating, or practicing mindfulness has been consistently shown in research to be an effective strategy for reducing stress. Quiet time helps to quiet the mind. Intentionally siting in quiet or slowing down yourself down can disrupt your normal patterns of turning to food when you’re stressed. Slowing things down a bit and taking some deep breaths can re-center you and remind you of your goals and intentions around food and health.

**Be sure to catch up on the latest episodes in my podcast, FOOD IS NOT BAE! available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Soundcloud**

Health and Blessings for a Great Week!

Why I Still Carry a Paper Planner

drebony — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 17:50:55 +0000

Call me crazy, but I have carried a paper planner since the 7th grade! I cannot do without it! Paper planners have helped me to achieve all of the goals in my life I am most proud of… graduating high school, graduating college, getting through grad school, planning a wedding, losing weight, navigating a divorce, getting married again, moving from state to state, and buying a house! Whew chile!! I just don’t know how I could’ve done all of that without some sort of organization and planning. You don’t have to carry a paper planner, but having some sort of plan is KEY to success, longevity, and consistency.

That’s why this week I am focusing on planning and informing all of my friends why it’s so important to begin to incorporate planning into your health journey. We plan for everything else, how about we start planning for health! Can I get a, “Yeeeessss, sis!!”

Here are some things to know about planning…

1) You already have the skills! We plan for work. We plan for our hair and nail appts. We plan for our meet ups with friends. We plan for our TV shows. We plan for our children. WE PLAN! So, you can do it, you just have to transfer that skill over to your health. In the same way that you have planning meetings at work, you can start taking 20-30 mins a week to plan what you want to tackle in your health for the week.

2) Start super small! I know you are ambitious, honey. That’s such an awesome trait to have! However, it can also be a blessing and a curse. Trying to do everything at once can be exciting on the one hand and overwhelming on the other. The key to getting wins with your health is starting small and taking small bites of your larger goals. On IG yesterday I used the analogy of a burger and pizza. You don’t just devour the whole burger or pizza in one bite. No, you devour it in small chewable bites. Use the same analogy for your health journey. Create a plan that allows you to take small chewable bites instead of trying to take it all down in one bite!

3) Give yourself time to process what’s going on and to make mistakes! Too many times the health journey makes people feel like you need to be perfect. Well, you don’t! Trying to be perfect is a set up for a guaranteed let down. Your plans and goals should be flexible and make room for you to be HUMAN! You should have a plan that allows you to make mistakes and learn as you go. When you bite that pizza or burger, there is a process to getting it into your stomach. You have to chew the bite into even smaller pieces to even get down your throat. This is a process! The same goes for your health goals. Make sure you create small, chewable plans. THEN, allow yourself to sit in that process for a moment and chew on what is happening and what you’re doing. Too many times we rush to go on to the next thing before we’ve even finished chewing the first bite! Slow down, and enjoy the flavors of the food!! In other words, slow down and enjoy learning yourself and noticing the many details of your wins before trying to move on too fast.

Here’s to health and blessings!

Dr. Ebony

Tips for Consistency

drebony — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 14:52:16 +0000

Being consistent is a major struggle for most people. However, it is a MUST if you are going to create a lifestyle change. Your consistency doesn’t have to look like someone else’s and your measures of success will be different. In fact, consistency is something you create based on where you are, where you want to go, and how soon you want to get there. If you are like me, then you know that comparing yourself to someone else does not help with consistency. So instead, pay attention to YOUR OWN goals and efforts and you will be able to tell if you are putting in more efforts towards your goals than not.

Once you have that down, include some of these things into your routine and you will see increased consistency!

1. Write out a priorities list. Once the list is complete, notice where your priorities are around your health and eating. If they are not in your top 4, then this will make it extremely difficult to be consistent. So, if it’s important to you, rework your list and really take a look at whether your health and eating can be higher on your list while other things move down. Once your top priorities include your health and food, your efforts in these areas will be consistent!

2. Think and speak like a success more than you think and speak like a failure! What you think will guide your language and what you tell yourself will manifest itself in your life. If you say you have no consistency, you will have none! However, if you speak consistency in your life, you will be consistent! Simply saying, “I am consistent. I consistently practice making food choices that improve my health” will change your life! Write that down and post it somewhere so you can read it and say it everyday!

3. Expand what you measure your success by. Don’t count on the scale to validate all of your efforts. If you do this, you run the of being disappointed VERY OFTEN! And, feelings of disappointment can stall consistency. If you learn to look at other things (i.e., clothes size, small changes, compliments, inner feelings, etc) as measures of success, you will find that your efforts are great and this will motivate you to keep going…then BAM, consistency!

Eating Well is a Form of Self-Care

drebony — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 14:40:32 +0000

Self-care doesn’t have to come in the form of pedicures, bubble baths, or a new piece of clothing. You can practice self-care just by the choices you make about the foods that you put into your body.

Self-care is typically defined as “the practice of taking an active role in protecting one’s own well-being and happiness, in particular during periods of stress.” I find it interesting that there is an emphasis on periods of stress in the definition. This is interesting because the times that we practice self-care the LEAST, are when we are stressed! And, when we are stressed, most times, we turn to food to cope with the stress. However, as we can see, moments of stress call for self-care the most – as an intervention and as a preventive measure.

By expanding your self-care tool box to include eating well and healthy, you are shifting your mental paradigm to begin thinking differently about your food choices in times of stress… and, in general. If you can start paying attention to your food choices and asking yourself (especially in times of stress), “Am I taking care of my body by eating this?”, “Do these food choices demonstrate self-care?”, or “What do I need right now?” – you automatically disrupt the pattern of eating out of stress and initiate a new pattern of eating well to control the stress. That’s powerful! No diet plan, meal plan, Keto, Atkins, Weight Watchers, Low Carb, or Paleo diet program could ever teach that!

Self-care means doing something for yourself that elevates you mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

Dr. Ebony

And, this is what eating from a place of self-care looks like. You can ask those same questions when grocery shopping, choosing dinner, planning for lunch, brunch with friends, whenever! By simply asking myself these questions on a regular basis, I stay aware and mindful of what I am putting in my body and I don’t consume unnecessary foods and calories, thereby still hitting my goals, if I want to!

Ready, Set, RESET!

drebony — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 22:24:28 +0000

Around this time of year a lot of you are still crushing your goals and wrapping up the year with setting new goals for the next year. However, a large portion of you (us) have fallen off the wagon this time of year and feel STUCK. It’s so hard to get back “on” after you feel like you’ve fallen off. One of the reasons it’s so hard to get back on is because you may be overthinking the process. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking you have to wait until the “right” time or the “perfect” time to start again. Or, you may be thinking that you have to pick up where you left off… Both of those are furthest from the truth!

You actually don’t need to pick up where you left off because if where you left off was working, you would’ve never quit!! (Come on, somebody!) If you want to get back on and be successful, you’ve got to go back to the place where you were your most successful. Maybe that was at the beginning. And, that’s ok! Go back there! Maybe that was a few months ago right before life took a crazy turn. If you were successful during that moment, go back THERE! Don’t go back to the place where you quit and try to pick up. Go back to where you were doing good and start from there.

The more successes you have, the more likely you will keep going. If you start out already feeling defeated, then guess what…you’re going to be defeated. I always tell people, the greatest chance of you continuing and succeeding is being able to actually SEE yourself succeed. I mean, really, who wants to continue to do something they feel like they keep failing at??? I don’t see anyone with raised hands! The best chance you can give yourself to get this thing back right, is to see yourself killing it! I’ve never met a person who said, “Well, I’m doing too good right now to keep going. I’m just going to stop because I can’t deal with how much I’m killing it.” Ummmm, no! What I hear is, “I am crushing my goals and I feel so good. I’m going to keep this up!”

So, my question (well, questions) to you are … When was the time you felt your most successful with your weight loss and health journey? What caused you to fall off the wagon? Answering these two questions will give you a good place to start!

If you’re still confused, don’t worry! I’m going to help you out! I have 3 ways that I’ve been able to keep going for over 15 years, even when there were times where I had fallen off the wagon…

1. Start Small

All of my ambitious people out there aren’t going to understand this. But, girl, you’ve GOT to start small when you’re trying to get back on the wagon. Almost always will you start and QUIT (soon after) if you try to start out with too much and trying to make huge changes right away. Some examples of small changes are:

adding ONE more glass of water into your day
eating one more piece of fruit
only drinking 2 sodas a day opposed to 3
eating cake 3 nights a week as opposed to 4
drinking wine instead of fruity cocktails

You will be surprised at how much of a difference these small changes make over time.

"The more success you have, the more you will feel like going."

Dr. Ebony

2. Set Goals!

And, give yourself a realist goal/expectation. When people try to jump back on the wagon they do so with expectations that they cannot live up to. This is a set up for failure before you even start. Realistic for you may be to make changes 2 days of the week. It’s really hard for even the veteran in weight loss to be “on point” for 7 days. It’s just not realistic for the average person. So, make sure those goals are realistic!

3. Get Your Sleep IN Order!

Sleep is the single most important part of your health. It’s the way your body recovers repairs itself. If your sleep is off, then you’re overworking the system that is supposed to be working for you! You want to make sure that all of the hard work that you’re putting in is working for you. So, check that sleep!

There you go! That’s something to think about. So, as you plan to hop back on the wagon this week (because, it’s that time!), take some of these tips into consideration and apply them.