FooDee

We live in a society where we are so often conditioned to look outwards to decide what our goals/achievements are…

Many of us go through our lives often on autopilot, doing things because we ‘should’ do them without actually stopping to think if our actions are aligning with our values.

When you settle into yourself and go further on your journey - you can learn how to be the HERO of your own life.

You stop looking for outward, external validation to say whether you are happy, enough or worthy of things.

You start looking inward and learning what you like and want in this life of yours - and it's bloody revolutionary. 💪

So for today I ask you to have a think…

Why is it that you don’t feel enough?

Where did that belief come from?

In my work with clients, we go deep into your values and beliefs - because the food is just the tip of the iceberg

When you get below that iceberg and pursue the journey of self search, that is where you learn how to become your own hero of the story 💞

Setting non-diet health goals sets you up for success...

Why? 👇

Because you increase your motivation, self-esteem and desire to care for you from today, not after you have reached some ideal metric.

The more I learn and witness people actually change their behaviour for the longer term, the more I notice they have connected their goals to what they actually enjoy doing.

Think about this:

🍎How much negative energy have you built up in your mind and body about past failed attempts to lose weight?

🍎How does it help you achieve your goal of feeling healthy and having more energy?

🍎Are your thoughts weighing you down more than helping you?

🍎Is your goal only valuable if you got the result?

🍎Have you discounted every positive change you have made?

What if you made your health goal for 2024 to become the version of you who finds self-care for your health enjoyable and fun!!

The best place to start is...

Health supportive small habits - not another overwhelming to-do list!

Let's start with a few ideas:

👉 Make a list of foods you've heard are health supportive...and now ask yourself which one you enjoy and add those into your shopping.

👉 Make a list of activities you are thinking about adding into your routine in 2024, identify the ones you enjoy and choose 2 to try out.

👉 Make a list of a few quick wins you can add onto a current habit e.g. what self encouragement could you offer yourself as you brush your teeth?

What needs to change right now in your mind to allow you to achieve this?

Put it in a note on your phone and pay attention to how you are blocking yourself.

And if you are still stuck in a couple of weeks.

Know that you can learn how to become unstuck inside Accessing Your Core - my membership community.

Click on the link in my bio to join us!

Here is what I mean👇

First, what are emotions?

Emotions are complicated and managing emotional eating can be complicated.

But for today, I want you to remember that emotional eating is not a sin.

Emotional eating is actually something that all people do at times, our body needs food to survive.

But also our body needs to feel safe.

And it also likes to feel a reward in our everyday life.

Food can offer us just that!

👉The problem arises when emotional eating is the only way we have to cope with the problems that arise in our life.

When emotional eating becomes the ONLY way to cope with moments of stress, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, sadness, tiredness…

👉Food does not fix these underlying issues - in fact food can actually lead to a really unhelpful cycle of turning that food reliance into guilt and shame.

So just for a moment today, here is something to try:

Pause and reflect when you are feeling emotional and check in with yourself.

💭What is actually causing the stress, guilt, anxiety?

💭What are you doing with those feelings and if you were to deal with those emotions in another way, what would you do?

I would love to hear if this resonates with you and what comes up?

This year has been a whirlwind for FooDee Nutrition!

🍎I got to work spending countless hours helping clients in my 1:1 coaching programmes to reconnect with themselves…not to fix themselves. A common misconception, you are not soemthing that needs to be fixed, you are already whole, you just need to discover you.

🍎I fine tuned my self paced program for you to work on feeling Confident in what you are eating and thinking and doing and many of you have enjoyed the flexibility to be able to work away on your own merit.

🍎I launched a membership and have had the best December watching this group of women already kick ass challenging themselves, looking after themselves and just connecting with being their amazing selves.

🍎I became a trainer with Eating Freely, the worlds leading specialist programme for those with Binge & Emotional eating and get to support other healthcare professionals as they continue their journey to learn more about healing your relationship with food.

🍎I networked with some amazing women, asked for podcasts, radio interviews, challenged myself in so many ways. I practice what I preach, some worked, some didn’t.

There is no glam on the reality back end of all of those. It’s all about trial and error, and backing myself every single time. Making mistakes, trying ideas, discovering what works for you and me.

I am managing working, studying, self-care and day to day living as best I can. Somedays I feel I can do it all, and other days I want to crawl back under my pillow.

So with that, I wish you and yours a peaceful Christmas 🎄

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for sticking around and listening to what I share in my small corner of the social media world.

I have lots planned so I am going knocking off here for a while to restore myself!

See you in 2024 😘

“At some point, you gotta let go, and sit still, and allow contentment to come to you.”

Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love 💬

Unconditional permission...to eat, to think, to choose, to feel, to be.

A client who’s recently finished reflected that learning how to give herself permission was one of the greatest learnings she’s had.

That ability to choose to sit and watch a movie, to have the ability to let go of the list and just be ✨

A very simple invitation to have a think, what could you let go of, so you can sit still?

🖼️

NÍL AON TINTEÁN MAR DO THINTEÁN FÉIN

This is one of the oldest and most well known Irish proverbs.

What does it mean? well, it’s mostly translated to “There is no place like home” 🏡

Today I invite you to think about this...

There is no place like YOUR home.

No body like yours.

The desire we have to improve our bodies, I suggest is a desire to feel connection with our bodies; physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

Home is your body, it’s you 🏡

What are your thoughts?

🖼️

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”

Maya Angelou 💬

Supporting our health and healing our relationship with food happens by trial and error.

What holds you back in your improvements is the identity that you hold about yourself.

You have learned to believe because what you have been doing (aka dieting) hasn’t worked out in your best interests…

You have allowed it to create the meaning in yourself that you are a failure.

You are not your actions.

In the non diet approach we lap up failure because we are not afraid to grow from our mistakes.

This is what we teach our kids 🧒

So be nice to your inner child and teach yourself to be ok with trying and failing.

🖼️

5 things intuitive eating could teach you next year ⬇️

1. How to support your Wellbeing without making it about how you look.

2. How to be compassionate with yourself.

3. How to eat foods that feel good in your body in the moment and provide energy for your activities.

4. How to engage with movement that makes you laugh.

5. Help you to discover your food sensitivies, because there is no “set” list of healthy foods, you learn to choose what’s healthy for you.

What could 2024 be for you if you were to experience how truly empowering it is to be reconnected with your body?

To be able to accurately read and respect its signals regarding food, movement, rest, and self-care?

I am reminded of the Irish phrase “Nil aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin”

🖼️

“What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour”

Ralph Waldo Emerson 💬

There isn’t enough time for everything.

For all the Christmas ‘doing’ we do, are we getting to BE at all in the run up to Christmas?🎄

What could you cancel off your to-do list to spend your time wisely?

Not working to overwhelm or endlessly shopping
but making moments with friends, taking time for rest or having simple fun.

🖼️

Nourishing means more than the nutrients in the food you feed yourself..

🧑‍🎄Nourish yourself by taking the time to eat, by making eating a priority, by speaking kindly to yourself, by putting food on your plate that you enjoy, by choosing food that will sustain you for the work you have to do.


Don’t punish yourself with harmful words, with a meal that tastes bland and uninspiring, by spending more time on screens and less time outside, adding more to your list.

🖼️

Day 2🎄

One step to regulate your nervous system today ⬇️

Chronic stress is one of the common causes of an unregulated nervous system.

How much stress does your food cause you?

How much energy and time do your thoughts when you are eating take up?

Before you start eating, settle your body and mind with a few deep breaths, take one small step to regulate that nervous system and stress less.

Credit of the artwork to Lana Dullaghan

“Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most” Buddha

Christmas can bring many things to us all, for some it’s full of joyous and fun filled moments.

But for others it is a time of stress and loneliness.

I thought a few weeks back what I would like to do in the run up to Christmas and I asked if we could partner together.

My aim is to interupt your time on instragram bringing an immediate gift of Wellbeing, a mix of some beautful art and some thoughts to remind you to do what you need to do to mind you and yours this silly season 🎄

- Art piece by

This wonderful client I had the pleasure of working with shared this with me after our time together and I couldn’t be more proud of the work she put in

✨She took action and a brave step - choosing to prioritise her wellbeing and invest in herself for her future health

✨She choose not to get distracted with diets and dug deeper into understanding herself

When she did…

Not only did her relationship with food improve…she also had the tools and mindset to keep that going well after our time together.

You may be reading this, resonating with my posts and know that there IS a better way to do things than the autopilot you are currently running on.

It’s quite likely you’ve been to see many people to help you with your nutrition or movement, but have any of them really heard you?

Heard what you find challenging as a busy woman

Heard that you find it hard to get meals out to 3 fussy kids

Heard that you are afraid to eat around others

Heard that you are struggling with your sleep, boundaries and perfectionism

Heard that you blame yourself for your situation.

Has anyone seen you?

I promise, I will see you and hear you.

And we can get down to the business of building a solid relationship within yourself - with tools that go way beyond what we learn in our sessions.

Let’s future proof your wellbeing 🍏

Are you feeling the stress already around food during Christmas and New Year?

At a time when food is a big part of our celebrations - the parties, the office treats, the Christmas day dinner…

This stress can, for some people, suck away some of the joy of the season, and send some of us into anxiety thinking about weight gain and ‘ruining’ their diet.

But It IS possible to have a Christmas where

✨You can enjoy all of the food you truly want
✨You eat according to how your body feels
✨You don’t dread getting “back on the wagon” again come January 1st

If you are new to intuitive eating - try to incorporate some of these tips over the month and see how you feel.

If you need help with this - check out my podcast The Confident and Eating Podcast - click on the link in my bio to listen.

I share all of my wisdom and learnings on intuitive eating, along with some special guests and their experiences too.

Link in bio to listen❤

We all have one thing….

that we absolutely love in our wardrobes👇

I love these earrings…

It goes with everything and just brings me joy

It brings back memories, I bought these on a trip to London with my college girlfriends after my first baby. 13 years ago.

And I still love them today.

And as I reflect on my work with clients who struggle with their body image…

If you are super critical of it, and struggle to find a way to like it…

I wonder what it would be like to focus on a part of your body that has brought you fabulous memories?

Quite often I go to my eyes…they’ve taken me to far off places in the world and allowed me to witness how other humans operate and left me with memories that I can escape to when I feel the need to get away💭

And so I wonder what part of you brings you fabulous memories that lift your mood in this moment?

💫Is it your lines around your eyes that have been there from years of laughter and fun?

💫Is it your legs that carry you through life and have taken you on walks and adventures where you have gathered memories you look back on with joy?

You see so much of the time we focus on the negative or what we wish we had.

I ask you today to pause and look at what's right in front of you.

Like my earrings - when I look at these I think of those fabulous memories.

Did you know that dieting is considered a trauma?

As a trauma informed coach (and soon to be therapist)

I want to share that dieting is considered a trauma.

Diet trauma refers to the psychological damage that can result from a negative relationship with food and body image.

The root of diet trauma lies in the belief that our worth is tied to our number on the scale and our external appearance.

You are not weak if you experience negative mental health impact from dieting.

And you are not a failure, it's the diets that have failed you in the past. Diets cause us to lose our sense of safety in our bodies. They leave us stuck in a fight or flight state.

You are not failing - you are simply surviving in a dysregulated diet culture focused society?👀

There is a lot out there on social media at the moment about trauma and our nervous systems response to trauma.

Building real psychological safety is so much deeper than just telling you what you need to do.

It's learning how to build safety within yourself.

And that can be hard to do alone when all you know is a certain way of doing things.

Remember, building safety in your body is a gradual process. Be patient with yourself and celebrate small victories along the way.

My greatest pleasure is working with clients and seeing them build their safety within themselves, reducing anxiety about eating, their body and their health 💫

This stuff is personal folks, tools and techniques are amazing and that’s what I will be sharing in my community.

The difference is that you will be supported by a qualified professional who will have the safety of a therapeutic relationship for you to do yourself work.

🍎My community - Accessing Your Core - which includes a monthly coaching call with me, resources / bonus masterclasses and a community chat is there to help you move away from diet culture and discover your inner guide.

And we are LIVE!🎉

AccessingYour Core 🍎

Is my membership community for women who are ready to break free from diet culture and future proof their wellbeing with intuitive eating and personal development tools for life!

I am looking for 15 women who are ready to join me in a wellbeing journey that will help you to heal your relationship with food and have tools for life to do so!💫💫

Inside the community, you will have access to:

✔ Monthly 90 minute coaching sessions with Denise which will cover a different theme and also allow you to share on a personal level anything you would like to work through or be supported with (recorded to watch back in your own time if you can't attend live)

✔ A group chat community. A non-judgemental space for you to share, support and connect with other like-minded women on their own path of self discovery. Learn and grow from other women on a similar journey to you.

✔ Weekly support, accountability, motivation and challenges as part of the membership.

✔ PLUS BONUS masterclasses including guest speakers on a range of topics from intuitive eating, nutrition, sleep, self observation, self empowerment, growing your self confidence and self esteem, guided meditations, body image healing, the power of your thoughts and meditation.

If this sounds like you, click on the link in my bio to sign up today to avail of the founding members pricing or send me a DM and I will send you the link!

I wasn't the child who loved sport…

And it's taken years to build the mindset and the muscle to be able to do these things.

There is routine and programming involved, but that wasn’t what kept me going.

It was my intention that kept me going.

I see the value everyday in my health.. mental first and then physical.

What I learned along the way, is that it's thoughts first and then action 🏃‍♀️

Thoughts are not real and really get in our way.

Change your thoughts and watch the actions change and then the self rewards do come.

Change your thoughts and you change your life:

Watch out for Mrs impatient within, she'll want to be there in 6 weeks.

Tell her be quiet and get on with the work!

PS - if this is something you are ready to work on - then join us inside Accessing Your Core - my membership community.

DM me ‘CORE’ to get your hands on the introductory offer now live! 🥰🍎

Healing your relationship with food means you can realise how certain foods feel and what your body needs in that moment.

You get to a place where you feel you make a choice that appeals to you and a choice that meets your needs - without feeling any guilt or shame about it.

Part of that will be just showing patience and kindness towards yourself as you eat.

Here are 4 journal prompts for you to begin looking at your relationship with food

👉How does food make you feel?

👉How do you wish you felt about food?

👉Why do you eat?

👉Pause for a moment and think what three words would describe that relationship with food for you, what three words would you like to be describing that relationship with food?

That's it just a simple thought, a moment to stop and pause and reflect.

And how is your relationship with food?

If you need help with that...

🍏My membership community Accessing Your Core is waiting for you to help you to not only heal your relationship with food, but to also future proof your health so that you can handle life and its challenges.

I am strong in my belief that health is about living life in a way that is meaningful to each individual.

This can look different from one person to the next so why do we keep doing the same thing over and over again, if its just not working for us?

The reason is because we never stop to take stock of it.

We are stuck on autopilot.

Doing these things, putting boundaries in place, learning who you are - its not easy to do alone.

This is exactly why I have created my community - Accessing Your Core

I want to lead you in your focus on getting to know yourself deeply and understanding what brings meaning and joy.

I will be doing this by combining various techniques, including intuitive eating, CBT, breath coaching, self-coaching, and neuroscience.

If this sounds like you - click on the link in my bio to sign up to the waitlist and become part of a community ready to future proof their wellbeing.

The diet cycle itself is a dangerous roundabout of emotions.

We lose trust in ourselves and fight against our gut instincts.

We stop believing in ourselves and our ability to know what’s right for our own body.

BUT

There is a much kinder way to support your health that does NOT involve punishment.

But how do you even begin when all you know is dieting?⬇️

Lucky for you that is exactly what I have created in my FREE guide - journey to confident eating.

💛 Where exactly you are in your journey to confident eating
💛How to eat with greater confidence and;
💛The first steps you can take to eat more confidently.

Click on the link in my bio to grab it!

Something I see clients forget about on their health journey time and time again is this…

Not making time for rest and sleep...

They stock up the house with fruit and veg, they throw themselves into a new exercise regime either pounding the roads, joining the gym, or attempting to get flexible at yoga.

They have a hugeee to-do list for their health but never factor in things that bring them joy or things that allow them to rest and digest.

Because that’s harder, right?

We need to let our body digest the hard weeks that we have with life, the tricky scenarios we had negotiating with our children, the physical stress that our body felt with all this exercise, the mental stress of life, the constant inner voice wondering if I am doing it right.

How many of you actually sit down and switch IT off…And I don’t mean the phone - I mean your BRAIN?

Here are 2 things you can try out this week to help you to rest and relax.

👉Engage in ANY activity that really relaxes you, that switches you right of.

Many of us have such busy minds and we need to train that mind to slow down.

We don’t have to be sitting and meditating - we can go out for a walk, stop to look at the view, smell the flowers, taste the berries…see where the journey takes you!

👉Appreciate yourself a little more and expect a little less!!

One mega piece of advice I was given was to concentrate more on what I am doing and not on what others are doing.

If we are constantly looking and comparing ourselves to others, our head and body never get the chance to digest all that we have done, achieved.

Remember that this week, no matter what hurdles you face❤

Don’t buy into the….

“What I eat in a day” posts

They are everywhere on social media.

Your body and your energy and your hunger and fullness cues are the only things that you should be focusing on when it comes to what to eat in a day.

Because of diet culture, many of us have LOST the ability to tune into our own hunger.

And seeing those posts just further fuels the anxiety around what you “should” be eating just because a coach or influencer online eats that in a day.

Your body is different to the next person.

Your energy expenditure, intolerances, hunger levels, day to day needs all differ from one person to the next.

The thing is, we have become so disconnected from it that we feel we need someone else to tell us how to eat.

Want to learn how to tune into your own hunger, fullness and satisfaction cues?

Join my community and learn what works for you.

Link in bio.

I am angry today because ⬇️

Does that surprise you?

Hear me out on this one…

In the health and wellbeing space, there is a huge focus on the gratitude piece. Perhaps you have seen those journal prompts - I am grateful today because…

And a lot of us find that easy to reflect on.

So it really got me thinking..

What about those repressed emotions, like anger, sadness, loneliness?

Repressed emotions can impact your physical well being and most people avoid talking about those feelings we deem bad - anger, disappointment, sadness.

But this impacts our health. When you suppress those emotions it can result in muscle pain, high blood pressure, appetite changes, tension, digestion problems, fatigue, sleep issues - the list goes on.

So what I wish is that a lot more people in the health and wellness space could create an environment that allows us to process the positive and negative emotions too.

We try to fix these repressed emotions and by controlling it with the food - but that is not the answer.

So for today, allow these feelings to come up and pass.

So instead for today try and see what comes up for you.

Know that it is ok and it is normal.

👉I am angry because…

👉I am disappointed because..

This is the kind of work I will be doing inside the membership community this November.

Real, Honest Health and wellbeing stuff 💛

Link in bio!