The word ‘diet’ is often linked with restrictive eating – no white foods, carbs, no fat – and the list goes on. Unfortunately, such restrictive eating patterns often backfire, creating a destructive role of bad feelings and negativity. Truth is, the word ‘diet’ encompasses all of the food and beverages you ingest, whether healthy or not. So every one of us is on a diet. But not everyone is eating mindfully.

It’s that time of the year when everyone is working on their ‘New Year’ resolutions… Would you believe going on a ‘diet’ or getting ‘fit’ to lose weight is at the top of everyone’s list AGAIN… YET AGAIN !

In the Non-diet approach "exercise" is called different things. One of the names I love is "Joyful Movement". This encapsulates the idea that we can find activities that we love, that make our bodies feel alive, energised, vital. Often people feel that to lose weight they must exercise, do XXX calories per day at the gym, coupled with restricting food calories. But in most cases these regimes leave them feeling exhausted, depleted and demotivated because all their hard work is not translating to weight loss on the scales.

With numerous bushfires still burning across the country, our stress levels as a community are high. Even those of us not in immediate danger are upset about what’s happened and worried about what lies ahead.

Our kids are not immune to this.

And so it is 2020..

Welcome to the first Collective blog for 2020. (As a side note, can you believe it is 2020?! Where did the last 20 years go?! Back when we were worrying about Y2K, and as per our recent post, dreaming of flying Jetson’s cars!)

What do we aim for with Intuitive Eating?

Many people come to me hoping to lose weight - but is that actually what they really want?

I often ask my clients - "Do you want to lose weight and keep worrying about what you eat and what you weigh OR do you want to improve your relationship with food, stop worrying about food, weight and body and eventually be at peace?"

It’s that time of year to bring out our creative spirit and create cute Christmas craft for our children to enjoy.

Craft is a weekly activity within my household, although within the festive season I love to expose my children to a variety of creative art activities to get them excited for Christmas.

Writing the Collective’s social media posts this week has certainly got me thinking about what makes Christmas special. Sure, the presents are great, but the things I most remember tend to be about the people, and the experiences. Sharing those memories and continuing our family Christmas traditions really helps to bring everyone together and make the occasion feel special. And the excitement and enthusiasm of kids at Christmas is infectious.

As Christmas approaches and all the Christmas Parties and Festivities start, I thought I'd write about how Intuitive Eating fits with Christmas. It's actually an Ideal fit - because if you eat Intuitively, then nothing changes.

What do I mean by this?

by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson

We couldn’t do a resources week here at the Collective without including this book. It is quite possibly our most shared resource, and for good reason. The subtitle of the book reads – ‘12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind, Survive Everyday Parenting Struggles, and Help Your Family Thrive’. It’s a parenting book, but one which understands the reality of parenting and provides strategies that are actually helpful, able to be implemented, and which provides the science (in an understandable way) to support the approach.

What do psychologists do? According to the Australian Psychological Society (APS) the work psychologists do is incredibly varied and the list is endless. You might find psychologists helping to formulate a campaign to influence Australians to give up smoking, designing a new test to detect mental health issues early, or developing an app to help people beat anxiety. In fact, wherever there are people, a psychologist can usually bring their expertise to that outcomes are improved.

“Be gentle first with yourself if you wish to be gentle with others.” ~Lama Yeshe

A few week ago, as a team we sat in a small group being led by one of our wonderful psychologist Ailsa Graham a pioneer in the field of self-compassion and mindfulness knowledge and research.