RTL Episode 59: No Food Rules with Colleen Christensen

On today's health episode, I am joined by Colleen Christensen.

Colleen is a Registered Dietitian who believes in the power of food freedom. Through her social media channels, blog, videos and popular membership community, The SociEATy, Colleen helps women to stop dieting and start fueling their bodies intuitively - without food rules! As a dietitian, Colleen guides and inspires others to discover the style of food freedom that feels GOOD...both mentally and physically!

Listen to today's episode to learn more about Colleen, intuitive eating and how you can discover the power of food freedom.

https://colleenchristensennutrition.com

https://www.youtube.com/c/ColleenChristensen/

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-socieaty-podcast/id1555103494

@no.food.rules

@the_socieaty

Episode 59 Transcript

Josephine Atluri (00:08):

On today's health episode of Responding to Life: talking health, fertility, and parenthood, I am speaking with Colleen Christensen. Colleen is a registered dietician who believes in the power of food freedom. Through her social media channels, blog videos, and incredibly popular membership community, the sociEATy, she helps women to stop dieting and start fueling their bodies intuitively without food rules. As a dietician, Colleen knows the importance of nutrition, but also that an unhealthy obsession can be detrimental to our health. Finding the balance we're all still striving for isn't a myth mystical unicorn, it's 180% within everyone's reach and Colleen guides and inspires others to find the style of food freedom that feels good mentally and physically. So let's get started and hear more from Colleen. Welcome to the show, Colleen. I'm so excited to have you on today to talk about all things nutrition.

Colleen Christensen (01:13):

Thank you so much for having me. Always, always a pleasure to chat about.

Josephine Atluri (01:17):

Yeah. So as I read off your bio in the introduction, I have so many questions and I'm really excited for today's conversation. So first off, why don't you, why don't we start by having you share with us what food freedom means to you and to your clients?

Colleen Christensen (01:34):

Yes. So food freedom to me just means having a healthy relationship with food. It means eating is easy. Eating is fun. Eating is not stressful and you can enjoy cupcakes and carrots and you see food as equal. And I don't mean that a cupcake is the same thing as a carrot. What I mean is that neither of them is put on a pedestal. Neither of them holds more weight. They are morally equal, right? And I think that to me is what food freedom is - to be able to enjoy that and I think honestly in the bigger picture to be able to enjoy life more and to make it just again, eating should be easier and more enjoyable in both the body nourishing aspects and the soul nourishing aspects.

Josephine Atluri (02:25):

Well, I love that. I I'm like I'm all in. I love this. And so I learned of your work and of you through a referral, which is completely not related to this, but I'm super glad for it because it is all about creating mindfulness as a lifestyle and having awareness as the foundation for everything in your life, such that you're more open and present to things like relationships, work, fitness, sleep and eating. And that's why I wanted to speak with you today because of how you approach nutrition. So let's talk intuitive nutrition because that is what I see as sort of your dogma for how to eat and live better, and perhaps describe to our listeners what this means and what it looks like on an average day.

Colleen Christensen (03:09):

Yes. So really intuitive nutrition - what that means - it's getting back to, like, you talked about a lot about mindfulness and just becoming back to the mindfulness of how does different foods feel in our bodies and, you know, just becoming more of that kind of what I call body attunement and allowing ourselves to own our food choices, whether that be to eat the cupcake or whether that be to eat the carrot, it is really allowing ourselves to apply nutrition information that we hear because nutrition information is important, right? I feel like when we, when we think about the term food freedom, we instantly think of the Instagram graphics with the donuts and the cookies and all those things and while yes, that is an amazing part of food freedom - I mean, I'm specifically thinking I recently got a giant lemon twist waffle cone ice cream with fruity pebbles on top.

Colleen Christensen (04:06):

It was amazing. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't feel great if I ate that every single day, right? And my body wouldn't function optimally, my brain wouldn't be able to think clearly - so many different things. So it is about really applying nutrition information in a way that is flexible; in a way that feels good; that's not having those rules and it's really finding the middle ground. So what I kind of describe it as is picture like a Venn diagram. So two circles overlapping, we have our internal cravings, our desires, you know, the things that we're like, Ooh, that looks really good I want that in one circle and then we have our external nutrition knowledge and health information and the other circle and [inaudible] nutrition and intuitive nutrition is really the overlap of those two. So a really great example of what does that look like on a daily basis is honestly, I just had some lunch just now and the way that I kind of worked through that is I always ask myself, okay, you know, is there anything that I am craving right now? Sometimes it's something very specific. You know yesterday it was like, I really want some of that cheesecake that I had in the fridge - this was like mid afternoon - so I had that, end of story. Again, would I want to do that every day? No. But today I was like, you know what? I kind of want something sweet for lunch. Okay. Now how can I, that's one circle? How can I think about, you know, what would make my body feel good? Okay. So maybe I'll get some protein in there, some carbs, some fat. So I had this delicious, like blueberry yogurt bowl. I paired it with some coconut flakes, flax seed, some whole grain crackers and it was really that to me is what intuitive nutrition is about. Like, okay, what does my body want? What will make it feel good? And how can I craft this in a way that honors both my health and my tastebuds and I mean, that's just one real life example.

Josephine Atluri (06:03):

Okay. So I'm digging this whole conversation because it really is like hearing you talk about how you apply that self-talk and that process to food is much of what, how I sort of teach my clients and my mindfulness community for approaching just life in general. So it's really that starting with that basis of awareness but then as you approach a situation, asking yourself these questions like you did with your foods, such as, you know, what is it that I'm craving right now? What, what can I do to meet these different, like nutritional food groups and then just going through that whole process and what I try to tell people in terms of like making mindfulness a lifestyle is that it will just over time evolve to be almost automatic.

Josephine Atluri (06:56):

That you ask yourself, like in the beginning it's a process and you, you know, you have to start - it sounds like it's the same way with how you talk about eating it's you just have to start to ask yourself these questions, but then over time as you continue to apply it, then automatically when you feel yourself hungry, you feel it, you're aware of it, and then you go through those steps. So I just love everything that you're saying and thank you for putting it in sort of that visual, that Venn diagram. I think that was really helpful for people - I'm sure will be helpful for people to understand what it means to be an eating intuitively.

Colleen Christensen (07:33):

Yeah and I think that's a really important thing to know is that I always say it's funny cause I get DMs all the time on Instagram saying I've been doing intuitive eating for a week and I'm not getting it and I'm, you know, I'm doing it and I feel like we need to reframe that into I'm learning intuitive eating, or, you know, I'm learning about this stuff because it's a learning process, right? The whole idea about intuitive eating is that we're all born as intuitive eaters. We're all born with the ability to essentially self-regulate our nutrition. I mean, think about it when babies are hungry, they cry, right? But when they feel full, they just turn their cheek away, right? That is what we are trying to get back to. And it's funny I always bring it back to watching my nephews eat. So there's one time it was my littlest nephew's first birthday and by middle nephew, he had three giant, giant slices of cake on his plate and he was like, oh, I'm so excited to eat all these, you know, this is going to be great. And he stopped about halfway through and I don't even know if he got halfway through, you know, one and a half of the slices, but then he was like, okay Aunt Colleen I'm full, I'm done. And I said, oh yeah, I was just kind of just kind of being a little bit, you know, my naturalintuitive eating dietician self, just ask these questions: Oh, you know, what made you decide that you were finished? You know, if I had anymore, I'd get a tummy ache. And that is what we are trying to get back to and it's just, it's so fascinating if you just kind of watch kids eat who haven't been as exposed to diet culture as we have as you know, adults, because we've gone through life it is fascinating, and that's really what we are trying to get back to. So kind of going back to this idea of learning is that it's not going to happen overnight. Think about how many years you have spent I mean, reading all the magazines that tell you do X, Y, Z you know, tips to lose weight or even going through the grocery store, seeing like, you know, this diet had this person go down this many dress sizes, like it's everywhere. But it's, it's something that takes time to learn. So everything that I walked through about my lunch today, it happened on autopilot. Like I didn't have to consciously say, okay Colleen, what are you craving? What do we need to put in this meal to, you know, make sure it fuels your body to make sure that it's satisfying. It, it just all kind of came together and it all started to happen.

Colleen Christensen (10:04):

But at first it is a lot more conscious of saying, okay, you know, what am I craving? Okay, let me think about this. And like you said, then it becomes more autopilot. But I feel like in a world that wants this instant gratification, we always think like hey, I'm going to start doing this and it's just going to start happening. I like to view everything as a learning experience. And there might be some times you're like, Nope, that didn't hit the spot or that wasn't satisfying or a I had a sugar crush after that. Nothing about that is a bad experience. That is, that is valuable data for you. That is, you know, a little nugget of wisdom to put in your pocket so that when you're faced with that situation next time, maybe you have an outcome that feels a little bit better. That is how we start to - our intuition lets our own body - let ourselves - start to guide our choices.

Josephine Atluri (10:54):

Love this. I feel like I'm listening to myself talk, but you're doing it in terms of like food so just excellent. Like yes, I subscribed to that whole idea of you would take everything as a learning opportunity and rather than trying to look at it through the lens of negativity, like, oh, I didn't meet my expectations for this or my goals for this rather than looking at it like that, looking at it in terms of, okay, well this is a learning opportunity, you know, why did this happen? You know, what were the triggers? What was this, you know, the whole thing and just sort of dissecting it so that at the next time you can sort of apply everything that you learned from that last situation to this new one. You know, you were mentioning diet culture and I would love to touch upon that.

Josephine Atluri (11:40):

You talked about how it's just this whole constant learning process because we've been exposed to so many different diets out there and you know, I, myself, as you were saying that it takes time. You know, I myself had to go through that whole process for myself with an eating disorder that I developed in my thirties and I'm very vocal about it and it just sort of hit me from left field - I had no idea that that would ever happen to me at such like a late stage, but I had to relearn everything that I sort of had sort of started taking on and associating with food because I was training for this race. And so I started looking at food in a completely different way that I had before and then because of that, I had to then as I was going through this process of like healing, had to go through the steps of looking at food in a completely different way. So I'd love for you to touch upon diet culture and you know, the labels and the guilt that sort of come with that thinking and basically how we can sort of go against what we're hearing - constantly hearing about out there.

Colleen Christensen (12:52):

Yes. So I mean, diet culture is everywhere and it's funny I've been going back and watching just some older TV shows, even just like Friends reruns, even Full House if you guys are familiar with that era of TV. But, and there's just so much diet culture messaging in there in the, in the way that we've always - weight and manipulating our bodies and trying to take up as little space as possible has always been such a goal that society has put on us. And it's just something that has again robbed us of not only our ability to eat intuitively, but a lot of our joy in life and it has then put on this, like you said, that guilt and it's just made eating so complicated. And we associate being thin, being smaller with all these things, success, happiness and being thinner is not going to make you achieve those things, but diet culture, those are the messages that we receive, right? And so that is why a lot of us strive so hard for this. A lot of the times it's not necessarily about the food. It's not necessarily about the weight. It is tied to something else. I know for me, when I was really struggling with my food rules, I was trying to, it was, for me, it was control. I felt like my life was so chaotic. I felt like I was never good enough for other people, but controlling my food was something that I was good at. Like it was not about the food at all and I find that a lot of the times our desires and you know, the way that diet culture wraps us in, it's not about the food. It's not necessarily about the weight. It's about something deeper. So in a way to kind of go about that is trying to view food in a new way and just understanding how complex it is and that satisfaction is hugely important and really dispelling these myths that diet culture has told us and understanding how, you know they could be harmful.

Colleen Christensen (14:57):

So I think one of the biggest things that you can do to really unlearn all of the diet culture is to do a social media detox. So go through your feed because we truly are what we see and that is how we've become so entrenched in diet culture is because we've been surrounded by it, right? So we want to make sure that we are doing our best to limit that. And I want to be careful because we don't want to say that I want you to go live inside this bubble forever, where you can never go to the grocery store and see the magazines on the racks. Like, but the way that I explain it is when you're first starting your journey towards food freedom, ditching diet culture. I want you to envision, I'm a very visual person here as you can tell, I want you to envision that you are wearing tissue paper.

Colleen Christensen (15:43):

It is so thin. You have to do everything in your power to protect yourself, right? Because you don't have a suit of armor, but as you go through your intuitive eating journey, you start to really ditch diet culture. You start to understand more about intuition and intuitive eating and food freedom, and you start to not let your food choices or your weight become your self worth. That tissue paper starts to thicken and you start to be wearing this suit of armor against diet culture. So that to me is really the goal. When I say ditch diet culture, because yes, we want to do as much as we can to limit it. But I also want people to live. I want people to be able to go to the grocery store and not feel like they have to, you know, oh my gosh - don't look right, don't look right because I'm walking past the magazines. The goal is to not let that stuff impact you because as much as I'd like to say, that diet culture is going to go away, it is such a huge industry and [while] I think we're making really amazing progress with it, but we've got a long way to go. So we need to kind of take that and say, okay, this is triggering to me, how can I work through this and make it not versus just avoidance? Does that make sense?

Josephine Atluri (16:55):

Oh my gosh. Yes. It totally makes sense, Colleen, because I just have been nodding my head (and we can't see each other right now) but I've been nodding my head at everything you've been saying, you know? It is. So I had to go through that whole process myself. There were certain triggers for me and in the beginning, I, you know, I really did have to avoid certain things that were very triggering for me, but then over time as I worked through it and really got to the heart of what my experiences were, then, I was able to look at things in a different way. And really that's the shift is that now, instead of looking at, say the cover of a magazine, as you pointed out and having that be like, the first thing in my mind is, oh my God, she's so thin.

Josephine Atluri (17:38):

Like I can never be that thin instead having, being able to look at it and just appreciate, oh wow. She looks really, she looks really good and have, have it not relate back to me a negative way, but that, that takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of practice and in that practice and that timeaffording yourself some grace in the whole process and that, you know, I love that you touched upon that idea of it's not necessarily the food, that it could be something deeper and how yours was an issue of control. And for me, that was exactly what it was with the whole becoming bulimic. It was just that idea of like, this was something that I can control and that was in my power. And that's what I felt that was what was missing for me. And that's how that sort of evolved. So I, you know, it's really great all the advice that you've been giving, and gives people another way to look at sort of where they are at with food and their approach and relationship with food. In this conversation, you know, I'd love for you to discuss something that you would love to have normalized in terms of this discussion of food. You know, something that you hear very common through your community and you would just love to demystify it and just have it be normalized.

Colleen Christensen (18:55):

Yeah. I think this idea that just eating is easy. We always feel, I know for me, I was like, why is this so hard for me? I feel like I'm the only one struggling with it. You're not, right? That is one of the main reasons why I created my community, The sociEATy, is because when I was going through this, I felt so alone. I honestly felt crazy. I was like, like, why is this so hard? Why am I struggling? Why does food have this power over me? But then when I started to understand, it's not my fault, okay? This is the society's issue that, you know, has impacted me, but I can overcome it. Then I started to honestly gain more confidence in myself and it allowed me to make progress. I think that's a really important thing is you are not alone.

Colleen Christensen (19:37):

We are all working through this, especially with the recent, I mean, intuitive eating, the book was written first in I believe it was 1995, but over the past couple of years it has just boomed. And I feel like we're having such, just like revelation with it and I think that's amazing. So lean into that because the more support that you have, it is, it is not a linear path. There's going to be hard days. And the more support that you have with that is huge. But one other thing I think about intuitive eating that should be kind of dispelled is kind of like we talked about when you go on Instagram and I mean, my explore feed is filled with donuts, filled with pizza, all those things. So there's this idea and something that I get told a lot, it's like, yeah, well, Colleen I want food freedom.

Colleen Christensen (20:22):

I don't want food to control me, but I also want to be healthy. I also want to, you know, eat vegetables. I want to work out. I want to honor my body, both my mental health and my physical health. And I think that it's important to note that the reason why intuitive eating gets this donut and pizza diet kind of unhealthy label is because that's what gets clicks. That when you kind of about it that way, okay, well, this is a picture of, you know, a whole grain sandwich with Turkey is not as sexy as a donut. Of course, it's not going to, you know, get as many clicks it's might not reach the explore feed, so we're kind of getting those skewed idea of what intuitive eating is and I think that again, that's where a lot of the power is when you can talk to people about that, whether it's a community, whether it's a friend, whether it's a professional, just walking through that and understanding more of like normalizing the process of intuitive eating and also understanding, again, it is not necessarily just donuts all day because I get that a lot too in my DMs saying, okay, Colleen, but I'm like, I'm eating all the things, but I'm not feeling good.

Colleen Christensen (21:29):

And what I always ask is I was like, okay, I know you think you're doing intuitive eating because that's what you see on social media. That's what you probably think it is. But really what you're doing is probably just rebelling against diet culture and essentially just doing the opposite. It's what some people call it, entitlement eating in saying, okay, you know, I, I never let myself have the donuts. I'm always going to have the donut. And I do think a little bit of that is needed in the beginning to feel comfortable eating the donut, but we want to make sure that we are shifting from, okay, well, you know, diet culture says I can't eat the donut, but you know, now I can, so I'm going to and asking ourselves, do I want to eat the donut? I had a, again, a real life experience with that.

Colleen Christensen (22:14):

I, it was, I don't know, recent time I had went to the grocery store - I had to pick something up. It was like eight o'clock in the morning. I was like, oh, you know what? Maybe I'll get some donuts. That's a fun thing. So got a couple brought them home just to have on hand. And then it was a couple of weeks later I went, I had to run back to the store in the morning. Again, it was like, ooh, donuts are fresh right now maybe I'll get some more of those. And then I asked myself, I was like, okay, yes, I can get the donut, but do I want the donut? And when I thought about it, I was like, not really, like, it's not, it doesn't sound super appealing to me. And so I was like, okay, I can have those any time, you know, that's fine. And I think that's something that should also be normalized about intuitive eating, just because you can pick the donut doesn't mean you always have to, it's allowing yourself to understand - more asking - it's not can, or can I not, it is do I want it?

Josephine Atluri (23:06):

I had not heard of entitlement eating, but that totally makes sense to me so I'm glad that you sort of defined the difference as I'm sure when you're starting something new, especially something like this, it can be very confusing to, to know what sort of the rules are. But, but that leads me to a question because you know, your handle on Instagram is @no.food.rules. So are there really no food rules?

Colleen Christensen (23:38):

I truly believe that there are not. You could eat/you could do anything, right? And even in the instance, you, I mean, you could sit there and eat a dozen donuts if you want, you have the power to do that. But again, the question is, do you want to, does that feel good to you when we start to think about all of those things? And I think that that's an important thing too, in relation to food allergies or sensitivities and those sorts of things and asking ourselves, technically you could, if you were allergic to something, you could go, you could go eat it, but you're essentially using the intuition and say, okay, well, how would that make my body feel based on what I know my, how my body would react, I'm going to not, it's not a rule. It's an empowered choice of not choosing that.

Colleen Christensen (24:23):

Right? Cause I don't really want to go into anaphylactic shock or, you know, whatever it might be. We have the power. And I think that when you own your food choices, that way versus allowing ourselves, first of all, when we say we can't have a food, it's actually increases our brain's motivation and reward response for that food. So I don't know if you've ever, you know, had said, you know, oh, you know what, we have ice cream in the fridge, we can't have it until XYZ time. A lot of times you're probably thinking about that. You're counting down the minutes or the hours until you can eat that. And a lot of that can stem from just saying, I can't have that right now. So even switching that to saying, you know what, I'm going to make an empowered choice to, okay you know, we're going to enjoy this altogether later. It's going to be great. I think that that's a really important switch is when just shifting from, I can't have this, I can't have this to more of those empowered choices.

Josephine Atluri (25:15):

Yeah, no, I love that. That's, that's great. Great feedback. You know, I could, I could keep speaking to you forever Colleen. This is all helpful and I know the audience is gonna love this. But speaking of the audience, many of my listeners are aspiring parents or parents already and I wanted to wrap up our discussion about modeling a healthy relationship with food for, for the littles that you have in your life. You know, I find that can be a struggle for kids because everyone's kids have different nutritional needs and you're trying to model a certain way, but might not necessarily be what's right for your child. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that.

Colleen Christensen (25:57):

Yeah. I feel like this is, this is honestly one of the reasons why I wanted to improve my own relationship with food. And it's something that a lot of people tell me in my community is one of their, I call your why of, okay, that's important to think of. I want to find food freedom, but why? Like, think about the bigger picture. What is the, what's your motivation for this - something super strong? So for me, I had this vision in my head and I always say - I've done this a million times in this episode, I'm a very visual person - so I say make a mental movie of it. And for me, when I was, it was when my then boyfriend now husband and I had just started living together and it was just my life, I felt like was turned upside down. He would want to, you know, we'd have pizza night.

Colleen Christensen (26:41):

I would flip out like it was like food just controlled everything. And I just looked at it and I was like, I can't live the rest of my life like this. Like I had this vision in my head of us with our future kids sitting down at breakfast, pancakes, maple syrup, whipped cream, all the things. And I just realized, I was like, that's not going to be able to happen. Like what's going to happen. Mom's going to be like, okay, I'm going to go, you know, make my egg whites and black coffee while you guys eat this. Like, that's just not the type of relationship that I wanted to have with food and my kids. That's not what I wanted to model for them. So I really think that in terms of where does the idea of really setting a good example, it starts with us, right?

Colleen Christensen (27:24):

We have to do the work ourselves and that's hard. And because our kids do see. It was so funny. So someone just posted recently, we have a private Facebook group for the sociEATy and she was saying, she's been working on using positive mantras and affirmations for her body. And her, one of the ones she was saying is, you know what, you know what my butt is gorgeous. My butt is gorgeous. And her daughter came into the room and said, you know what, mama, your butt is gorgeous. And they notice those things. And I think the more that we can model that - watch our language is going to be a big one, too, making sure that we don't label foods as good or bad, but rather than saying, okay, I'm gonna make sure that I don't, you know, do this, you know, for my kids.

Colleen Christensen (28:10):

I really think that it's going to be beneficial for both ends if we allow ourselves to say, how can I improve my relationship with food? And like I said, that is a really big one for a lot of my audience and why we, why I started this in the first place. And I really do think that, I mean, when we think about it, the reason that we got here is because of our environment. And no, we won't be again able to put our kids inside of a bubble, but we can say, okay, you know what? They're spending, you know, a majority of their time and their meals with me, how can I really work to create this positive experience? We can honestly hang onto their intuition so they don't have to go through this relearning process that I've had to. I think that really that's the, that's the biggest thing that we can do.

Josephine Atluri (28:54):

Yes, that's so great. I love the tips that you included for parents because, you know, we're always trying to try to have our kids see what we want them to be so that was wonderful advice, thank you so much, Colleen. I always wrap up my interviews by asking my guests to, you know, you've already given us so many tips, but I'd love for you to share something that our listeners can do to respond to life in a more mindful and positive way with regards to what you do.

Colleen Christensen (29:24):

So I think have two tips for you. So the first one is, again, everything is a learning experience. So I just kind of view yourself as a scientist. You're just collecting data that kind of removes the judgment, especially when you're in the beginning of this process. It's like, oh my gosh, I ate more cake than I wanted to. I feel guilty. I feel all these emotions. Okay. Let me switch that and say, okay, this is just data, right? This is just, okay. Now I know that much cake probably didn't feel good. Okay. Now I know for next time and even saying, you know, maybe I kind of ate it on autopilot. I didn't even taste it. So maybe next time I'll use a mindful eating exercise. I'll notice okay, what does it taste like? Could I explain this to someone? What does it look like? Does it have a smell?

Colleen Christensen (30:08):

Maybe I'll incorporate some of that next time. That's one of the big things is just, just collect data. Pretend you're a scientist. The second tip that I have for you is for me, especially when we encounter those moments of discomfort, when it is saying, you know, oh I ate the cake and I don't feel good right now. Or to be honest with you, I was having a morning today. And it was just like one thing after another was going wrong. All these tech issues, all these things outside of my control and I just said to myself, you know what, everything is temporary and we get through it, right? And just because you're feeling especially strong emotions, maybe it's strong guilt, maybe it's strong physical discomfort of, oh my gosh again, I ate past fullness. Okay, you know what I'm feeling this way right now, but everything is temporary. I'm learning from it. And we're going to just put one foot in front of the other and move on. That's honestly something that helps me in my day-to-day life.

Josephine Atluri (31:00):

That is amazing. Yes. Everything is temporary. It's true. And this is just being in the moment and taking it as a learning experience and just gaining the data. It's wonderful. I love it. And to wrap up, I always ask my guests to share one gratitude they have for today as a way to shift into a state of positivity.

Colleen Christensen (31:21):

I think that's, for me just having a support system. I'm so grateful for it. My husband is amazing. He is kind of the ying to my yang. I think we all need that. I'm very level headed, very realistic about things. Sometimes I, my creative mind can wander a little bit. So having people in your life who can kind of balance you outthat's something that I'm grateful for and just having people to talk to about things because I think that that's just huge. We can have these things swirl around in our heads and we just exacerbate them, right? We just blow them out of proportion. So anything you can do, and if there's no one to talk to in the moment, journaling, just getting things out of your head, you can be your own support system that way and seeing things for what they are, I think is huge and I'm very grateful for those in my life who are that support system for me.

Josephine Atluri (32:15):

Oh that's beautiful. And so in the spirit of giving and receiving, I'd love for you to share with the audience, how they can connect with you and gain your wonderful advice.

Colleen Christensen (32:25):

Yeah. So you can find me on Instagram personally @no.food.rules, then you can follow the sociEATy, the_sociEATy - society spelled E AT y cause we're a society that likes to eat. You can find us there. You can find me and how you can join the society at colleenchristensennutrition.com also on YouTube as Colleen Christensen, podcasts as the sociEATy, all the places.

Josephine Atluri (32:51):

Well, thank you so much Colleen. This has been so wonderful speaking to you. I'm so glad we were connected.

Colleen Christensen (32:56):

Same here. Thank you so much for having me.

Josephine Atluri (33:07):

Thank you so much for joining me for today's conversation with Colleen Christiansen. Be sure to check out all the episodes of Responding to Life on my jatluri.com. As a reminder, I recently released a new book called the Mindfulness Journal for Parents. You can buy it on Amazon. You can also purchase it on my websitejatluri.com, and it comes with an online companion course.

Josephine Atluri (33:34):

Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Responding to Life podcast. For more info on today's guest, check out the episode summary. I'd love to connect with you more. So be sure to check out my website, respondingtolifepodcast.com for links to previous episodes, articles I've written, and interviews I've done on mindfulness, meditation, infertility and parenting. You'll also find free video meditations on my site and on my YouTube channel, Josephine Atluri Meditation. If you'd like to book a one-on-one session with me, you can do so on the website. You can also follow me on Instagram @josephineratluri for daily inspiration and mindfulness tips. Finally, I'd love for you to join my Facebook group, to connect with a supportive community and receive greater insight on how to incorporate mindfulness into your life. Check out the mindful parenting group at Josephine Atluri or the empowering your fertility group. Thanks again for tuning in today. I look forward to sharing more conversations with you on how to respond to life in a more mindful way.