Dear Strong and Beautifuls,

Fitness and health is about so much more than weight loss, thigh gap, and bikini bodies, but it is very much about feeling comfortable in our own skin and working towards total confidence and wellbeing. To that end, and because this is a complaint I've been hearing about a lot lately, I humbly submit my personal method to identify eating habits that aren't working for you and shifting them towards those that do. Remember, I'm not a nutritionist, so these really are my personal tips (and the program I plan to follow next fall when I'm trying to get my jeans to fit again).

- Identify the culprit(s). Write down what you consume and how it makes you feel, bearing in mind that noticing how and when you eat and how you feel afterwards is as important as what you're actually eating and how much. Scarfing a burrito waiting for the subway is, for many of us, a shortcut to a stomach ache and belly bloat - not to mention kinda gross - whereas the same burrito, enjoyed morsel by morsel, sitting down, actually just covered all your food groups and delivered a bunch of useful nutrients, energy, and pleasure to your brain & bod. It's the same with wine - chugging a bottle solo watching an episode of Friends is different than sipping the same bottle over a few hours giggling with actual friends, no?

- Write down everything you consume for a few weeks (i use Notes on my iphone, but putting actual pen to paper is good, too) and then do weekly assessments. This could mean trading food journals with a buddy, seeing her take on your habits and vice versa, counting culprits by tallying how many times that week you ate pizza or drank beer, or simply noting your mood and constitution after eating or drinking. The biggest clue that the food itself or the way it was consumed is a problem for you is if you have stomach issues, including visible belly bloat, or feel crappy after eating it - including if you feel depressed, tired, or hungry.

- Count up food groups or types and use that info to steer you towards improvements. For instance, if I ate wheat 20 times in a week and vegetables 7, I can clearly identify an imbalance and take steps to correct. Armed with quantifiable data, it's much easier to decide between the quesadilla and the salad, or to dessert or just nibble some fruit. Plus, it's fun to set little goals for yourself and track your improvements, such as knocking a few drinks off the weekly tally or eating vegetables more than grains and starches.

As you get to know your patterns, you'll find ways to make informed decisions that change as you do, and while it takes a little mindfulness, it's not exactly what I would call difficult to do. I definitely wouldn't call it a diet, which is often a temporary change with temporary effects. Everyone is different and so are her needs and tastes in food & fitness, so get to know yourself before the next juice cleanse, elimination diet, or keto week.

*

ME as an example!

It's open to interpretation how you want to count, but I've found that a bit of simple data analysis gives me a clear idea of what I'm actually eating and how it works for me - i.e., its effects on my digestion, energy, and how it makes me feel overall. For me, it's been helpful to count food groups (vegetables, fruits, grains, protein, fats, sugar) to see what my "culprits" are, culprits being things that don't agree with me, aren't in line with how I want to be eating, or are just plain excessive. I can also see how frequently I'm having them, or if there's just some imbalances that need correcting. Once I've figured out what the culprits are, I tend to break down my categories even further. For instance, this is usually what my tally list looks like, with my 3 culprits listed first:

Sugar - normally 3, now about 7
Booze - well, not anymore
Wheat - normally 4, more like 8 while pregnant
Legumes - 3
Dairy - 17 (includes Greek yogurt)
Red Meat - 3
Poultry - 5
Fish/seafood - 4
Eggs - 2
Rice, potatoes, corn, gluten-free grains & starches - 11
Veggies - 17
Fruit - 10
Other (usually includes the occasional protein bar, whey protein powder, nuts, random grains, pork, or something else that doesn't fit neatly into the other categories because I don't often eat it).

For me, any more detail gets overwhelming, but to each her own. Since I've been pregnant, I've started tallying my workout hours as well. The numbers are not meant to be a guideline for you, just a glimpse into what I'm up to :)

cut the culprits
Now you know what you're eating, what you could be eating more/less of, and have a general snapshot of your actual diet. So what's next? It's a little different for everyone, but it seems that for many of us fitness-minded healthy babes who are still struggling with low energy, belly bloat, a few nagging pounds, joint pain, skin problems, etc., there are a few top typical culprits. Obvi, I'm not a doctor and can't diagnose you, so please take the following tips for what they are, which is lessons learned from my personal experience and research. Listen to your body and trust it - it will always tell you the truth, and nothing that I or Oprah or Gwyneth Paltrow say should supersede that.

That said, my personal method is to attack the culprits in a particular order, rather than scrap them altogether and feel frustrated, deprived, or imbalanced. Here's the first phase of my strategy:

1) Nix sugar first. It seems to me that sugar wreaks more havoc on the body than any other single substance (except booze, but if you're drinking like many of us consume sugar, that is a topic for a different newsletter. I'm pretty sure even the party girls aren't lacing their lattes with whiskey every day or ending each meal with a tequila shot treat. Not unless you're on vacation, anyway). The unscientific way of understanding this is to recognize that sugar and sweeteners are processed (yes, including agave nectar and Sugar in the Raw), which makes their effects on the body extra intense compared to naturally sweet stuff. Even a small amount can throw your blood sugar and hormones temporarily but meaningfully out of whack. When you're trying to regulate and balance, the last thing you want is a major upset to your system.

Because of this tendency to abnormally spike blood sugar and disrupt hunger hormones, sugar is pretty much the only thing for which I advocate the cold turkey approach. I vow to remove it entirely for a week and see how far I get before someone offers me a cookie I can't refuse - usually 3 days will do the trick. In the meantime, I make a couple other small changes that make this process easier:

1) I replace sugar things with fat - such as taking my coffee with a little cream or half & half instead of sugar. This helps satiate the belly and the palate with no major effect on blood sugar. I'll also add healthy fats to all my meals such as avocado slices, butter on steamed vegetables, or nibbling a little cheese or olives to keep me full and feeling level and energetic.

2) I put off eating or drinking anything sugary or that has a sugar-like effect in the body (aka something that rapidly raises blood sugar), including fruit, grains, and starches until later in the day. I don't actually eat low-carb or even grain-free, I just save it for later, usually post workout. I often eat fruit before night classes because my particular body practically yells for it every late afternoon, but I abstain when I'm trying to recalibrate.

These are temporary sacrifices. This restriction isn't meant to last forever, so after you've recalibrated your internal balance and really gotten to know what does and doesn't work for you, it is perfectly good and reasonable to eat fruit or carby things whenever you want or need them. I've just found this take-no-prisoners approach to be a helpful method for sugar detoxing, which is the first and, for many of us, the most crucial step.

(FYI, I'm not doing any of this while pregnant except limiting sugar, kind of. These days, I have to eat carbs all day long or Mr. Baby lets me know he needs them!)

*

In our world, food and choices about what and how to eat are so plentiful that it's easy to find ourselves mired in too much advice, conflicting strategies, unhealthy habits, and harsh self-criticism about how "good" or "bad" we've been. Rather than follow the latest gospel of "healthy" eating (although I do like to stay up on recent research), I think it's important to remember that everyBODY is different and that the best way to improve your health through food is to understand what you, as an individual, need.

That's the real foundation for why I keep track of what I consume, note how it makes me feel, and try to identify patterns therein. After we get a handle on what's what, it's actually pretty easy to see where we can make adjustments to suit our lifestyle and current needs that are often more pleasurable than they are painful or difficult. Aside from sugar, which I discussed a few weeks ago (hit me up if you'd like a recap and I'll resend), the order of what you trim and how is pretty much up to you. I'd bet if you're paying attention, you already have some ideas of how to adjust things to get them to work for you (if not, I'm more than happy to help). Here's a few more common culprits and triggers I've noticed in myself and others and my ideas for how to deal with them:

wheat. So delicious, so prevalent, and so not necessary to eat every day. I don't demonize gluten (for non-Celiacs) except insofar as it's a sticky plant protein that is inherently rather difficult to digest and can cause chronic low-grade inflammatory responses in many people. I think of a wheat product as a great source of carbohydrate energy that is not a great source of actual nutrients. If I'm trying to reset my system, lose a few lbs., or clear up my skin & my mind, I skip it entirely. I also tend to limit things that pretend to be wheat, like gluten-free breads & pastries. Otherwise, I save it for special-ish occasions and things I really love, like fresh pasta a couple times a month or that flaky paratha bread at Café Mogador. (Until I got pregnant, that is - now me & Mr. Baby's carb needs outweigh any qualms I have with wheat, so I just eat the darn gluten for simplicity's sake and deal with it.)

dairy. If dairy doesn't work for you and that makes you sad, here's a few adjustments I've made that can help. (If you're allergic, though, you'll have to check with a nutritionist or doctor before giving these a whirl. Duh.) First, get choosy about your sources. Organic is good, but grass-fed is better. Milk from grass-fed animals has a very different (better) nutrient profile and just might not mess with your insides like the regs does. Also, keep the fat. I can attest from experience that eating lowfat yogurt for breakfast used to bum me out because I'd always be hungrier after and I never understood what the rage was all about. Then I discovered the satisfying near-decadence of full-fat Greek yogurt. Major life-changer for me and has saved me throughout my pregnancy - just a few spoonfuls do the trick. Plus, lowfat dairy has been linked to diabetes. Nope, not kidding. Go ahead and Google it if you're curious.

corn, ancient grains, and other staple starches. Other people who are smarter and more well-researched than I am have written about corn (namely Michael Pollan) but in our gluten-fee fad world, it seems to me that corn is still considered to wear a silky golden halo. Friends, corn is a grain, and like any other grain, it contains a great deal of energy, not necessarily a fantastic amount of nutrients, and can be quite difficult to digest, which results in ultimately mucking up your system. Same goes for quinoa, amaranth, and rice, to name a few. My food tracking has taught me that quinoa sits in my stomach like a brick (plus, not for nothing, I just don't like it) and also that I simply feel better when grains are less than a quarter of what I eat in a day or even none at all. It's not that I don't eat rice and corn - I most definitely do - but I try not to rely on them overmuch and try eat more real vegetables instead. I love fresh corn and corn salsa but try to avoid the processed kind, saving tortilla chips for Mexican restaurants and sticking carrots and zucchini slices in my guacamole at home. However, I do frequently eat rice and rice noodles and I'll tell you why: I digest rice well, it burns clean, and being a dancer/fitness instructor/New Yorker, I. Need. Carbs. And so do you. (The trick is to find which ones agree with you best.)

The moral of the story here is there's really no "bad" foods or one "right" way to eat, and you may be the total opposite of me. These are just ideas on how to strike a balance that makes you feel good. For me, I tend to save my favorite indulgences for just that - occasional indulgences - which are enjoyed without guilt or shame because I know that the rest of the time I eat in a way that works for me. I don't miss treats on the days I don't eat them, but you can bet I eat flour tortillas and chips & queso when I'm in Texas, croissant and baguette when I'm in a French bakery, and throughout my pregnancy, a reasonable amount of pumpernickel bagels and hot pizza slices. I also eat vegetables at nearly every meal and don't eat sugar in anything that isn't overtly a dessert. A few adjustments here and there, learning to make choices that please you and work for you, and generally striving to understand your personal balance will have awesome effects.

Stay Rad,

Annie