Intuitive Eating for Life Quotes

“You’ll need self-compassion every step of the way of your Intuitive Eating practice. From ensuring you are eating enough to ultimately healing body image”
― Jenna Hollenstein MS Rd Cdn, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“Sympathetic: Physical muscle tension, jaw clenched, tightness in chest and throat,”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“Ventral: Physically open sensation in chest, no tension in the jaw, abdomen relaxed, lips and arms feel neutral, body feels relaxed. Emotionally interested in my experience and in others’ experience, content and satisfied, able to work with difficulty, open to feeling, flow, engaged with the world, feeling squarely in my own life, confidence that everything will be okay.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“Dorsal: Physically sleepy, body feels heavy and wooden, sensation of caving into myself. Emotionally shameful, feeling alienated from others, feeling “cursed,” wanting to disappear.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“According to polyvagal theory, mindfulness can enhance your awareness of the different states you move through on any given day. This, in itself, can support Intuitive Eating. Here is an example of how”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“The ventral vagal complex is where you feel most yourself: calm, curious, creative, confident, clear, courageous, compassionate, and connected.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“The nervous system is “regulated” when ventral is in charge and “dysregulated” when sympathetic or dorsal is running the show.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“Brain changes brought about through mindfulness alter how you experience yourself, your life, and the world. Time seems to slow down. Your mind feels spacious. Awareness expands. And you notice what is happening as it happens.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“When you begin to practice mindfulness, there are immediate and longer term effects. Short-term effects include shifts in circulating neurotransmitter and hormone levels.9 This enhances attention and relaxation.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“works with your emotions with gentleness.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“Mindfulness of phenomena is about making connections between the different parts of your experience. For example, if you tend to approach food with rigid control, you probably apply that to other parts of your life, such as work, family, and relationships. Healing your relationship with food and body can filter into every other part of your life. And those of others.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“Mindfulness of mind, or thought, guides you to remodel your brain by choosing to think thoughts that align with gentleness and self-compassion instead of dieting thoughts that have driven you to hate yourself. You literally rewire your brain.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“near-life experiences” in which you are fully present. Waking up to your actual life is the best use of your time, energy, and effort I can imagine, and both mindfulness and Intuitive Eating support you to do this.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“When life feels richer, you need less entertainment, less nonstop pleasure. You can be right where you are.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“Food tastes brilliant, flowers are tender and gorgeous, your love for others is deep and otherworldly. Your suffering also comes into focus. Heartbreak aches dully in your chest, anger stokes a fire in your belly, shame feels like your entire body is caving in. But with the stability gained from mindfulness, you are more able to stay with these emotions. And the staying starts to feel important. Even your suffering is rich, part of what makes you alive.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“Experiencing life in this pure, raw way can make it come alive. What was once straightforward, unexciting, and black and white suddenly becomes Technicolor, richly textured, magnetizing. At least that’s how it’s been for me.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“Gentleness is implicit in allowing things to just be—including yourself. Mindfulness helps you see things clearly, honestly: as they are. Before you can judge them as positive, negative, or neutral, things just are.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice

“both Intuitive Eating and mindfulness are paths, not destinations or endpoints. You can’t mess them up. Both processes unfold at an appropriate pace for you. And—spoiler alert—this unfolding continues for the rest of your life.”
― Jenna Hollenstein, Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice