Audio mini-series:
Transcript:
What foods do you love??
If you’ve been following along these days in order — awesome.
And if not – awesome 🙂
It’s great that you’re here, in no matter what capacity!
I feel like we’ve had some doozies so far when it comes to reflection. If there’s one thing I know for sure since pursuing nutrition as a career, it’s that food is tied to a lot of feels.
Clients sometimes cry during sessions. Or have a big aha moments. Or feel like just working through their hangups with food has helped them to feel better physically and emotionally in other areas of their lives!
Yeah. Doing nutrition this way is cool.
And it’s also great to intersperse that deep reflection with some levity…
—————————————————————————————————————————
My name is Krystal Merrells. I’m a registered dietitian and a concussion warrior in Ontario, Canada.
I’ve had multiple concussions and I’ve seen how food can become this big stressful thing after a brain injury. I am here to help you move towards feeling good with food.
This is Food Love. A 14-day mini-series exploring your relationship with food.
Today is day 6: Share your love
—————————————————————————————————————————
Today let’s just talk about what we love about food.
And if “love” is too strong a word for you at this point in your relationship with food — no pressure!
You don’t need to fully commit to loving food if you don’t feel ready… The flirting and dating phases with food are perfectly good too ☺️
To help you talk about what you love (or like) about food, I’m going to offer up something only slightly silly…
On day two I mentioned that I play, perform, and teach improv theatre when I’m not wearing my dietitian hat.
Yup. That’s right.
When possible I get up on stage and play theatre games, act out scenes, and my personal favourite — pretend to be an animal or an animated household appliance.
Whoo!
Now don’t worry. I’m not suggesting that all improv plays out like that, or that you should do the same (unless you really dig the idea of playing a sentient microwave…)
But there’s one little improv warm up exercise I often facilitate that fits so well our day six theme.
In fact, it’s an exercise that I just LOVE.
Here’s how it goes:
- pick one food or meal you like or love. Then, get out a time telling device and for 60 seconds describe what it is you like or love about that food.
- Start each sentence with “I love…” (or “I like…”) Follow that up describing a new characteristic or attribute of that food. Example “I love chocolate. I love the way chocolate melts on my tongue. I love that chocolate can be used in both sweet and savoury recipes.” The key here is to describe all the things that food might be to you, as opposed to all the things that food is not. For example, “I love chocolate because it’s so much better than celery” doesn’t really work in this exercise.
- And now keep this going for 60 seconds! Honestly, it goes by super fast.
If you can, invite others around you to do it with you, so you’re sharing it with each other.
It is always so amazing to hear the things people say when they are doing this exercise! And it always puts a smile on my face 🙂
After you’ve done it, take a moment to then reflect on this exercise:
How did it feel talking about something you like or love?
What did you notice?
Does this relate at all to anything in your day-to-day? In your recovery? In your relationship with food?
And what would it be like if you viewed more foods like this?
Like with all of these reflections, there’s no right or wrong answers here. And I’d love to hear what you have to say!
So feel free to share your 60 seconds “I love/like…” On social media and tag me: @brain.mind.nutrition
Tomorrow is the halfway mark! And just like the exercise I’m offering up here, this mini-series is going fast 🙂
Until tomorrow, happy food love,
Krystal