Quit Stressing About Food!: Practical steps to simplify healthy eating for the whole family

By Dannielle Illingworth

 

I’ve written this book for all the busy mums who feel completely overwhelmed when it comes to their health.  

After working with literally hundreds of clients, I heard the same things over and over again:

“I don’t know if I’m eating the right foods”

“I know what to do, I jus

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dannielle Illingworth
• Release date: May 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9780648565512

Book preview

Book Title

Text Copyright © 2019 Dannielle Illingworth

All rights reserved

ISBN

Paperback/printed version: 978-0-6485655-0-5

Digital/e-version: 978-0-6485655-1-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means - electronic, photocopy, recording, or otherwise - without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by the Australian copyright law.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my Pop - thank you for teaching me to believe in my dreams.

I always promised to dedicate my first book to you, and it’s finally here!

I wish you were here to read it.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Healthy doesn’t have to be hard

Chapter 2

Let’s simplify meal times

Chapter 3

There’s no such thing as perfect

Chapter 4

Overcoming food cravings

Chapter 5

Simple but important

Chapter 6

How do you feel about yourself?

Chapter 7

Prioritising to simplify

Chapter 8

Reconnecting with YOU

Conclusion

Introduction

I specifically remember being 12 years old, sitting on the beach watching my parents and two sisters playing in the waves. I refused to go in the water because I didn’t have any shorts and my thighs were too fat to be seen in public. I was a size 8.

For many reasons, body image was something I struggled with for most of my teen life and into my early twenties. I honestly believed that if I were thinner, I would be happier. That belief stuck with me until I was 22, when I lost almost 10kg in a very short amount of time and had finally achieved what I thought was my ‘ideal size’. And then the illusion came crashing down: being thinner didn’t make me happier at all. It didn’t change the way I felt about myself or about my body. And so I set out on a journey to create my own happiness, regardless of my size or weight.

Over the years, I’ve been as high as 80kg and as low as 58kg. I’ve tried every diet you could ever think of, and none of them worked long-term. It wasn’t until I stopped focusing on my weight and started focusing on my health and happiness that things started changing for me. I overcame my food cravings, I cleaned up my diet, and I started exercising for enjoyment rather than punishment. I’ve given up fad diets for good. And I’ve honestly never felt better.

The reason I’m so passionate about helping women give up diets, simplify healthy eating and reconnect with their bodies is because I’ve been there. I’ve hated my body and starved myself and refused to go out because I felt too fat. I’ve been so completely overwhelmed by what I was supposed to be eating that I would just refuse to eat at all (which was usually followed by binge eating). I’ve spent years being controlled by my intense cravings for specific foods, and I’ve completely lost myself in my striving for perfection.

I’ve come out the other side of that and I want to help as many women as possible do the same thing.

Who I wrote this book for

I’ve written this book for all the busy mums who feel completely overwhelmed when it comes to their health. After working with literally hundreds of clients, I heard the same things over and over again:

I don’t know if I’m eating the right foods

I know what to do, I just can’t stick to it long-term

I can’t get rid of my chocolate cravings

I’m sick of eating the same thing every night because the kids won’t eat anything else

I feel guilty when I do things for myself, I feel like I should be spending that time with my family

I’m doing all the right things and my weight just won’t budge

If any of those comments sound familiar - if you’ve said those exact words before - then this book was written for you.

As the title suggests, this book is all about simple ways to support your health. This isn’t a diet book, or a fad program - it’s a series of super simple, practical and sustainable tips and tricks that will help you create a healthier lifestyle with ease.

Without perfectionism, guilt, or stress.

Step by step, we’ll cover things like getting back to basics with your food, and how to save time and money in the kitchen. We’ll delve into how to let go of the desire to be perfect, and how to gently shift the way you talk to yourself and think about yourself. You’ll learn how to support your emotional health, how to overcome chocolate cravings (no willpower needed!) and how to prioritise and let go of the things that aren’t really important.

Follow through or flick through

I designed this book with the hope that it would become your new go-to guide for all things simple health. Whether you read it front to back, or just pick it up and flick to a random page, I know this book will give you exactly what you need, right when you need it.

If possible, I’d recommend reading the book start to finish, and then keeping it as a guide that you can flick through whenever you need some inspiration or a refresher. That way you know you haven’t missed anything.

I’ve also tried to keep paragraphs and chapters as short as I could, so that if you’re interrupted during your reading you can easily pick up where you left off. You can use the small headings (like above) as a signpost of where you’re up to in the book - which means you don’t have to find a spare hour in your day to read. You can read a section in five minutes, if that’s all you have!

Creating long-lasting change

My belief is that you’re setting yourself up for failure if you try to overhaul your entire life at once. It’s okay to go cold turkey on certain things, like giving up chocolate or alcohol, but completely changing everything about your eating habits, exercise routine and lifestyle is a huge task. I like using real-life examples, so let me introduce you to Becky.

Before Becky was my client, she was an all-or-nothing type of person when it came to diet and exercise. She would make a decision to become healthier and lose weight, and would attempt to go from her usual diet to a perfect diet overnight. You might be able to relate to Becky’s attitude: she said that if she got $1 for every time she said my diet starts tomorrow she’d be a millionaire! Becky was generally able to sustain her diet and lifestyle changes for a week, sometimes even more. The issue came when she slipped up in one aspect of her perfect lifestyle plan, she would feel like a failure and give up on everything! Just before Becky came to work with me, she had managed to keep up with her diet and exercise routine perfectly for 10 days, and on the 11th day she slept in and didn’t make it to the gym before work. So what did she do? Gave up altogether. She felt as though there was no point in continuing because she’d already stuffed up. She binged on junk foods all day on that 11th day, and told herself she’d start her diet again next week.

Sound familiar? Here’s what happened when Becky started working with me.

Becky came to me wanting to create a perfect plan to keep her perfectly motivated and help her achieve her perfect body in the perfect amount of time. She was putting so much pressure on herself to achieve everything all at once, and had gotten stuck in a cycle of attempting diets and giving up as soon as one small thing went wrong. I helped Becky understand that no one achieves anything overnight - change and progress takes time and practice. So together, we decided on just one thing that Becky was going to change - and not tomorrow, not on Monday, but straight away! She was going to be mindful of including protein in every meal and snack. No plan for exercise, or eliminating all sugar, or limiting other types of carbohydrates. For two weeks, Becky focused on her protein intake and she came back to my clinic feeling absolutely amazing. Two weeks was the longest period of time she had ever managed to stick to a dietary change! So we ticked that one off, and set to work deciding what her next change could be. She had started to lose weight, felt less bloated, had much more energy, and was motivated and excited to keep going on her health and weight loss journey.

Becky’s small success and results from just one change gave her the momentum to continue making changes, one at a time, being gentle and compassionate towards herself the whole way through. Becky continued on to change her exercise routine, increase her intake of vegetables and fresh fruit, and ultimately achieved her goal weight and created an easy, sustainable and healthy lifestyle that she loved.

Starting really small is the key here, and that’s why I’ve designed this book to help you do exactly that. One step at a time, one change at a time. This isn’t a