Picture a really awful day, the kind where, and I'm speaking from personal experience here, I could eat my way down through a mountain of donuts and call it coping. If you've ever punished yourself with food, treated it like your enemy, your life preserver, or your buffer against pain, you already know how tangled your relationship with food can get. Untangling exactly that is what nutrition coach Shelley Loving does for a living.
Shelley's husband had a heart attack in 2014, and three years later that scare sent her looking for a more holistic way to feed her family. She trained as an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, then became a certified culinary nutrition expert through the Academy for Culinary Nutrition in 2019, and a certified professional cook from the Ruby Online Culinary School in the summer of 2021. Along the way she realized that while she was cooking to heal her husband, she was healing herself too.
We get into why counting calories and carbs never worked for either of us, her 80-20 rule for enjoying the foods you love without guilt, how to read an ingredient list instead of a nutrition facts panel, and the three baby steps she hands anyone who feels too overwhelmed to start. Grace makes an appearance too, because as Shelley puts it, you're allowed to eat the donut.
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-D8m0WUxCs
In this episode
- Why punishing yourself with food never actually works, and what to do instead of restriction
- The 80-20 rule for enjoying treats without guilt or shame
- How a little Sunday planning (like laying out your outfits for the week) saves time, money, and stress at the grocery store
- Why you should read the ingredient list instead of the nutrition facts panel
- What chronic inflammation actually is, and why it's the root of most disease
- Three baby steps for anyone who feels too overwhelmed to change how they eat
Timestamps
- (00:02) Welcome and guest intro: meet nutrition coach Shelley Loving
- (01:16) Grace, patience, and unconditional love as the foundation of her teaching
- (02:00) Her husband's heart attack, and how cooking to heal him healed her too
- (04:20) The mountain-of-donuts moment: how emotional eating actually works
- (06:45) The 80-20 rule for indulging without guilt
- (07:48) Where food lands on your priority list (and why it should be higher)
- (10:20) The Sunday-outfit analogy for weekly meal planning
- (13:29) Anti-inflammatory eating and brain health
- (17:30) Baby step one: read the ingredient list, skip the nutrition facts
- (19:00) Chronic inflammation as the root of most disease
- (21:51) The mindset shift: is this food serving my taste buds or my body
- (22:53) Self-harm, self-sabotage, and healing your relationship with food
- (26:07) Where to find Shelley and her free event on chronic inflammation
About Shelley Loving
Shelley Loving is an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, certified culinary nutrition expert, and certified professional cook. After her husband's heart attack in 2014, she trained at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, the Academy for Culinary Nutrition (2019), and the Ruby Online Culinary School (2021), and now teaches people how to eat healthier without restriction, shame, or guilt.
Learn more at ShelleyCanHelp.com.
Favorite quotes "Our relationship with food is the longest relationship we will have with anything while we are on this earth. From birth to death, we have a relationship with food." —Shelley Loving "Our health starts in the kitchen. It doesn't start at the doctor's office." —Shelley Loving "Read your food label, know what's in your food, concentrate on what foods cause and reduce inflammation, and then show yourself grace when you mess up." —Shelley Loving Resources mentioned
- ShelleyCanHelp.com: Shelley's website, newsletter, and coaching programs
- Institute for Integrative Nutrition (where Shelley earned her Integrative Nutrition Health Coach certification)
- Academy for Culinary Nutrition (where Shelley became a certified culinary nutrition expert in 2019)
- Ruby Online Culinary School (where Shelley became a certified professional cook in 2021)
Related episodes
- Journey In My Body: Interview with Rachel Lavin, author of "The Doughnut Diaries": another honest conversation about food, body image, and healing a strained relationship with eating.
- Transforming Body, Mind, and Spirit: Interview with Jennifer Pilates: more on treating your body as a whole system instead of a project to fix.
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