Tag Archive for: food freedom

3 Reasons Why Dieting Will Never Bring You Food Freedom

I was once someone who followed the latest fad diets. From carbohydrate restriction to counting calories, I have tried so many “guaranteed weight loss” trends. Even though I did lose some weight on these diets, I always gained it back. While these diets all had different regimens, one thing they all had in common is that I was miserable when I was on them.

 

Dieting is a way of life for many people. You probably know someone who is always bringing their own food to parties and constantly trying to “slim down,” you may even be one of those people. Perhaps you are reading this after breaking your current diet and you are desperate to find another way. Or you are reading this, and you are at your goal weight, having lost the weight by starving yourself, drinking shakes, or eating “clean” but tasteless food.

 

Dieting is no way to live. Although the diet industry wants you to believe that their “program” is a “way of life”, it’s just not peaceful and is filled with worry about whether you will gain the weight back, or whether there will be food you can eat wherever you go. I know I was tired of that life. And my clients were too.

 

Intuitive Eating is a journey that helps you listen to your body’s inner wisdom that you were born with regarding hunger, fullness and satisfaction around food and eating. This approach to eating will help to bring you mind and body peace.

 

Here are 3 reasons why dieting will never bring you the food freedom you desire:

 

  1. Diets Are Always Centered Around Food

 

Most diets will make you track everything that goes into your mouth. Food will constantly be on your mind. You will be thinking, what did I eat yesterday? What did I eat before? What am I eating now? It’s exhausting. Food should not be the center of your day; food should not encompass your entire brain. There is so much more to life that you can be doing than thinking about food all the time.

 

Diets bring food obsession and worry, not food freedom.

 

  1. Diets Cause You to Feel Guilty

 

Every diet has a list of restrictions with the food you can and cannot eat. But what if you happen to want to eat food that’s on the “avoid” list? Well, what usually happens when you are told you cannot have something? Yep, you want it more. You can deny your desire for only so long. So, you indulge, and the guilty feelings and harsh self-talk start.

 

Diets bring food guilt, not food freedom.

 

  1. Diets Cause You to Lose Trust in Yourself

 

Diets make you believe that you have been choosing the “wrong” foods for years and they cause you to blame yourself when you don’t lose weight. Last I checked, you are the owner of your body, your inner signals, and thoughts. You know your body better than anyone or anything. You alone should be in charge of what food you eat, not the diet.

 

Diets bring loss of self-trust, not food freedom.

 

I know now badly you want to be free of dieting, and you want to be free to have food present in your life with ease.

 

Pop your name and email in the boxes below to Break the Spell of Diets in 3 Days. Then, check your inbox for your Day 1 experience.

 

5 Ways to Enjoy Thanksgiving Without Food Guilt

It’s Turkey time!

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Thanksgiving?

Turkey? Stuffing? Pumpkin pie? Feeling stuffed?

What emotions come to mind when you think about Thanksgiving?

Gratitude? Overwhelm? Feeling disappointed in yourself at the end of the day for how much you ate?

Many people who are starting the Intuitive Eating journey, and even those who have been practicing for a while, struggle with Thanksgiving. The whole day is centered around eating, possibly leaving you uncomfortably full by the end of the evening. No wonder it’s a challenge for so many people!

I want you to know it doesn’t have to be this way. Thanksgiving does not have to be a source of anxiety at all. It can be a day full of love and gratitude for all the things in your life that you are thankful for.

But how? I’ve got 5 strategies for you!

1.Reframe Your Beliefs

If you go into Thanksgiving Day thinking you will “blow” it, then it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your thoughts/beliefs inform your feelings, which inform your actions which inform your results.

Maybe in years past you went into the holiday dieting, and with the first bite of a food you deemed “bad”, you figured “I blew it, I’ll just start again after the holidays”. Well, now you are going into the holiday as an Intuitive Eater, or an Intuitive Eater in training. Therefore, changing your self-talk can greatly impact your beliefs and ultimately your actions.

Try saying this to yourself: “I am capable of enjoying the Thanksgiving feast while honoring my inner signals of hunger, satiety and satisfaction.”

2.Honor Your Hunger throughout the Day

It can be tempting to skip breakfast or lunch when you know that you have a holiday dinner ahead of you. However, this is forcing your body to ignore its hunger cues earlier in the day and when you finally sit down to dinner, you will be ravenous. Then what happens? You eat past the point of comfortable fullness!

Instead, enjoy a well-balanced breakfast and lunch and you’ll see how much more you enjoy dinner.

Hint: Skipping meals to save calories for a big dinner is part of the sneaky diet mentality. What other ways is the diet mentality sneaking back into your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below!

3.Be Aware of Competition Eating

Family dinners with lots of people can be challenging! You might find that you take extra or larger helpings of food out of a fear that there won’t be anything left if you are still hungry. This is a form of “rebound eating”. Just the thought of being deprived leads you to “overeat”.

Here’s the thing! Even if you have a big family, there’s likely going to be enough food for second helpings should you still be hungry (who doesn’t have Thanksgiving leftovers!)

Try to resist the urge to overfill your plate. When you first sit down to dinner, assess your hunger level, and take the amount of food you think will fill your hunger. Keep in mind that if you are not quite satisfied when you finish eating, you can always take more. YOU are in charge!

4.Create A Colorful Balanced Plate

Some people think that nutrition is not considered in the Intuitive Eating philosophy. That is the farthest thing from the truth! Gentle Nutrition (Intuitive Eating Principle 10) takes into consideration taste and nutrition when making food choices.

When filling your plate at your Thanksgiving meal, consider whether most of the food groups are present. Protein, whole grains, veggies, and healthy fats all make for a balanced plate that will leave you feeling satisfied, energized and will keep your blood sugars stable.

5.Check-in with Yourself

Being around the family at holiday time can be a source of stress for many people. And this stress can be a disruptor to attuning to your hunger and fullness signals. Take the time before the big dinner to center yourself and focus on you. Then throughout the meal, take some time out to check in with yourself to assess how you are feeling. If you are feeling overwhelmed, take a few breaths to refocus your attention on your meal and to check in with your fullness cues.

There are lots of uncomfortable emotions that can come up this time of year.

If you’re struggling with emotional eating, I invite you to explore the Total Food Freedom: End Emotional Eating and Enjoy a New Relationship with Food Program, on sale now for BLACK FRIDAY!

Check out this killer deal (and see how you can get bonus time with me!)

Offer expires Friday 11/26/2021 at 6 pm EST.

Best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!

 

How to Stop Mealtime Battles

Do you look forward to your meals? Or are they often a battleground?

What about the buffet at a party?  Or the smorg at a wedding? Or just plain old Thursday night pizza night?

Do you constantly hear yourself say…

  •  “should I or shouldn’t I?”
  • “I can have, I can’t have?”
  • ” I want it, but I shouldn’t have it”
  • “darn, I can’t believe I ate that”

The inner voices of the chronic dieter are constantly shouting rules about what you should or shouldn’t eat. It makes food the enemy and mealtimes a battle ground. All in the name of weight loss!

But it shouldn’t be this way. In fact –

Food is supposed to bring us pleasure!

Yes, we are supposed to walk away from a meal feeling satisfied and happy. But all to often, if a dieter enjoys their meal, it comes with a side of guilt.

Ending the Battle with Food

So, how do you end the battle with food and regain the pleasure in eating?

By practicing food freedom.

Food freedom means YOU are in charge of the food choices you make and what you choose to eat, instead of letting outside food rules dictate this to you!

The goal is simple: decouple the act of eating from the thought that you need to be losing weight.

If you keep making food decisions with the end goal of weight loss, you will not recapture food freedom and experience the ultimate pleasure in your meals.

4 Ways to Start Practicing Food Freedom

1.Decide to commit:

Commit to not following food rules anymore. Commit to throwing them out the window. Commit to doing the best you can at this moment to start taking charge of your eating.

You will have to be tough with yourself on this one. It’s all too easy to fall back to another diet when you’re just not feeling great one day.

Nope. Draw that line in the sand that symbolized that today is the day that you won’t fall prey to the dieting messages anymore. YOU are in charge of your food choices and your eating! YAY!

2.Slowly start to eat one “forbidden” food at a time.

You know all those foods you fight with at mealtime? No more! There are no good or bad foods, remember that.

Slowly, begin to enjoy once-forbidden foods again and again until they lose the power they once had over you

This is not easy, I know!! If you need help, just reach out to me HERE.

3.Write a letter to yourself as to why you are choosing food freedom

 I’m sure there’s a LOT you could write in this letter. So go ahead and give it a try.

Why are you choosing food freedom now?

Here are some examples to get you started:

  • “Dieting has never worked for me in the past.”
  • “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life focusing on food.”
  • “I might “overeat” once it a while, and that is okay. It’s a choice I am making, and it does not define me”

4. Join us!

Come on over to the Intuitive Eating for a Diet Free Life private Facebook Group. Join other women on the journey towards food freedom. It’s free!

Last Chance to Get Freedom to Eat Forever™

I will be retiring my Freedom to Eat Forever™ Online Intuitive Eating Program at midnight Eastern on August 31st.

This program has helped MANY women and men break free of dieting, reclaim the trust in themselves and live their lives to the fullest (with guilt-free eating)!

And now is the LAST CHANCE for you to EVER get your hands on this program.

Why am I retiring the program you might wonder?

Because it’s going through an overhaul! Several of the Intuitive Eating principles have been updated and the new program will reflect these latest changes.

In addition, I will be adding new lessons so you can go deeper to uncover the root causes of your food and body struggles. I’ve been doing this deeper work with my 1-1 clients and it’s time I brought it to my online program.

You can get the updated program for FREE when you purchase the Freedom to Eat Forever Program now, before August 31st at midnight Eastern.

If you’ve been thinking about getting started on your Intuitive Eating journey but have been sitting on the fence, I would highly recommend you take advantage of this End of Summer Special. The new program (name will be revealed in a few weeks) will be at a MUCH higher investment.

Click HERE below to get your hands on Freedom to Eat Forever™ before it’s taken off the shelves for good.

BONUS: I’ve added a WhatsApp Chat Community to the program so you can get support and your questions answered quickly! You don’t need to do this alone. There are others waiting in the chat to say hello to you!

Plus there are a ton of other bonuses. Learn more HERE!

Don’t know what WhatsApp is? It’s a free app that you download to your phone. You join our group and type away. It’s just like sending a text to your friend, except this goes to your Freedom to Eat Forever family!

YES, I want Freedom to Eat Forever!

 

 

What it Feels Like to Not Diet

Imagine getting up in the morning and your first thought is “I am really looking forward to today”, and NOT “I am going to be really good today”.

Imagine getting dressed for the day and feeling confident in the clothes you put on (the first outfit, NOT the tenth).

Imagine walking into the kitchen to prepare breakfast and knowing intuitively what you want to eat to fuel your body for the start of the day, and NOT skip breakfast so you save your calories for later.

Imagine going out with co-workers for lunch and choosing what YOU want to eat, NOT a choice based on what someone else thinks you should eat (i.e. ordering the burger because that’s what YOU want and not the salad because you’re expected to eat a salad).

Imagine coming home after a long day’s work and taking 20 minutes to unwind and care for yourself, and NOT heading to the kitchen and mindlessly look in the fridge for something to throw in your mouth.

Imagine going out to dinner with your partner and enjoying the conversation and time together, and NOT stressing about what you’re eating.

THIS is how it feels to not diet!

This is …

FREEDOM to eat WITHOUT GUILT.

FREEDOM to be you!

FREEDOM to live your life unapologetically.

FREEDOM to respect all the wonders your body does for you

…instead of trying to shrink it over and over and over again.

This is what it feels like to never diet again.

To really learn to trust yourself that you are fully capable of making food choices to honor your health and your body.

Regaining Trust

Regaining trust in your body and yourself doesn’t happen overnight. But with each positive eating and body experience, you build another thread of trust, and soon, that trust becomes a rope and ultimately a bridge to regaining WholeBody Trust™.

Now’s Your Chance

You can start the process right now by …

…making the decision to stop dieting

…making the decision to take a leap of faith

…and making the decision to say yes to my offer of investing in yourself with the Freedom to Eat Forever™ Intuitive Eating Program.

Freedom to Eat Forever™ is my signature online program that will walk you through 5 steps towards becoming an Intuitive Eater and leaving dieting behind for good.

This program is now 75% off and won’t be available EVER after August 31st because I will be releasing a brand-new Intuitive Eating Program shortly.

You might think “great, I’ll wait for the new program”. Well, of course you can, but that program will launch at a much higher investment. But it will be yours FREE when you purchase Freedom to Eat Forever™ now.

Why am I offering this? Because I want you to get started on your journey now. I don’t want you to waste another minute of your life dieting and being disappointed, again.

Support is Waiting

Freedom to Eat Forever is a self-paced online program. However, because I know how important support is, I have started a WhatsApp Support Community. This is a group of amazing people who are on the same intuitive eating journey, and its where you can get your questions answered. I, of course, am in that group every day commenting and supporting everyone as well.

Won’t you join us?

Click HERE to learn more and to start your Intuitive Eating Journey today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Free Yourself from Food Fear

If you’re like me, the last few months have been filled with anxiety regarding the uncertainty of the pandemic. It seems like every day the news is reporting something more unnerving than the day before. With everything going on in the world, you are likely experiencing a lot of stress.

You’re not going to be able to control all of the stressors in your life, however you can take charge of some of them. Weight loss companies are aware of how stressed and anxious you are and use this to fuel your insecurities. You may have been hearing more weight loss advertisements on the radio and television lately.

Try not to let these companies take up any headspace, they are just added stress to your life. Instead, think about how wonderful your body has been over the past few months, it has helped you survive a global pandemic. Your body deserves to be celebrated!

Celebrating Your Body through Building Trust

I was thinking about ways you could celebrate your body, and I thought National Macaroni Day would be the perfect time to show your body that you DO trust it. You may not have realized it, but yesterday we celebrated this Macaroni-shaped pasta.

Let’s face it. If you’ve dieted, then more than likely you realize that pasta has been demonized as an “unhealthy” food because it’s a high carbohydrate food. This is unfortunate because you need carbohydrate, it’s the main energy source for your body. And because pasta is delicious!

Macaroni, and other pastas, are chock full of fiber, especially whole-grain varieties. Getting sufficient dietary fiber in your meals throughout the day is an act of self-care!

Fiber keeps your bowel movements regular and helps with satiety. It keeps you fuller for longer, so you aren’t rummaging through the cabinets searching for food throughout the day.

Demonizing Foods

The definition of “demonizing” is to portray as wicked and threatening.

Before I started teaching intuitive eating, it had not occurred to me that there were foods that were being demonized by the diet industry. But as I got knee deep into learning about diet culture and its sneaky ways, I came to find out that there’s a long list of foods that people are afraid to eat.

Yes, afraid! People have a ton of food fear!

“Oh no, I can’t eat _____ (fill in the blank). It’s bad for me.”
“I’m scared to eat _____ (fill in the blank), I will gain weight.”
“I’d love to eat _____ (fill in the blank), but I won’t fit into my pants tomorrow.”

Most of this fear is around weight gain. Yes, sometimes it’s about health. But often even that is under the guise of weight loss.

No one, and I mean no one, no matter what shape or size, should be afraid of food and made to feel that they are wrong or “bad” for eating certain food.

Freedom from Food Fear

One of the ways to get rid of food fear is to learn to build trust around that food. That means that you eat that food, see that nothing “terrible” happened (i.e. you didn’t gain 5 pounds over night), and then eat it again.

I am not talking about binge eating on these foods. Nor am I speaking about “see it, want it, eat it” without any thought given to eat.

That is a BIG misconception about Intuitive Eating. Those who are hesitant to begin this journey think they will “lose control” (their words) around foods. I’ve said this multiple times but it is worth repeating:

Intuitive Eating is NOT about instant gratification!

When you embark on the journey towards giving up dieting to reclaim WholeBody Trust™ through intuitive eating, you are learning to be rid of the food fear and body worry that has plagued you for so many years and decades. It’s a feeling of freedom of not being bound to the chains of dieting! It’s about having pleasure and satisfaction in your meals, without guilt. It’s about learning to tune inward to listen to what your body needs and wants. And to be able to trust it.

For how many more years will you be at war with food and your body? Isn’t it time you gave yourself the gift of peace around food?

Click HERE to schedule a complementary call with me and let’s figure out the best way for you to start this journey.

3 No Diet Day Action Steps (and a Free Online Workshop)

Today is International No Diet Day! At first, this may sound like “yay, I can go off my diet today and eat whatever I want, how awesome!”. But it doesn’t mean that at all!

International No Diet Day is a worldwide celebration of body acceptance and a day to declare a life free from dieting.

Mary Evans Young started this movement in 1992 after battling anorexia and body image issues. She wanted to help herself and her friends to fully embrace their bodies for a day! Little did she know that it would become a global movement!

Stop what you’re doing right now, look into your eyes in the mirror, and declare this the first day of NO MORE DIETING, NO MORE RESTRICTION, NO MORE BODY SHAMING! You got this!

Drowning in Diet Culture

In this age of social media, it’s almost impossible to go a day without hearing about a celebrity’s new diet miracle or seeing pictures of famous new moms strolling out of the hospital in skinny jeans and stilettos just days after giving birth.

Everywhere you turn, there are people trying to lose weight either by dieting, over-exercising, or both. There is an entire diet culture focused on highlighting the lives of famous people in order to feed your insecurities.

This is all a marketing ploy! The Diet Culture is a multi-billion dollar industry designed to make you feel bad about yourself. The diet companies aren’t interested in your well-being; they’re interested in how they can get you to hate yourself so you’re willing to pay them to make everything better. It’s a scam; you don’t need them – you’re fabulous just as you are!

Debunking the Diet Myth

Diets are set up to make it seem as if it’s your fault they don’t work, but the truth is, it’s them.

Dieting is a cycle of weight loss followed by weight gain, which leads to negative body image and the resolution to try harder next time. So you try again. And the same thing happens. So you try again. And so on, with some people dieting for decades without “success.”

Is that you?

As you know, I have dedicated my career to teaching people how to respect and love their bodies without continuing the chronic dieting lifestyle.

3 No Diet Day Action Steps

Today, I ask that you take part in this effort to change the mentality you have about dieting.

  1. Challenge the idea that there is a “perfect” body for everyone. Appreciate the beauty in everyone, including yourself.
  2. Look past the smoke and mirrors of the diet industry. Question the validity of their claims and scrutinize who benefits the most from chronic dieting.
  3. Commit to this day being free of diets, restriction, weight obsession, food worry…and the first day towards true food freedom!

I know this is a scary thought! But I do have faith in you! And, you know that I am here to take this journey with you; I will walk with you hand-in-hand! Reach out HERE if you’d like to jump on the phone for a quick call to explore this further!

FREE ONLINE WORKSHOP

If you’re experiencing emotional eating, know that diet restriction will only make it worse!

Learn how to triumph over emotional eating in my 5 Day FREE Online Workshop, starting Monday May 11, 2020!

There will be daily live training, an online community of support and PRIZES!!

Learn more and register at THIS LINK!

4 Ways to Incorporate Gentle Nutrition

After years of dieting you may feel like your life is ruled by food. The dieting mindset has taught you that food is meant to be consumed under strict guidelines without enjoyment. However, you probably realize now that this is just not true!

 

Remember back to when you were a child, there were so many exciting things to experience every day, and meals and snacks were just a part of the routine.  Day-to-day life was not driven by whether or not you ate the “right” or “wrong” foods.

 

When you focus too much on eating and dieting, food begins to control your life rather than being a part of your day.  You find yourself cancelling your lunch date with your friends because you’re afraid there will be nothing on the menu that you “can” eat. Following food rules to hopefully lose weight removes the pleasurable experiences from your life.

 

The good news is that when you finally give up dieting you do not need to follow external food rules anymore. When you start the intuitive eating journey  you learn how to eat based on your body’s hunger and fullness cues. And, when you rely on your body’s signals, you enjoy each and every eating experience.

 

The concept of “Gentle Nutrition” can be confusing for you. In truth, if you are still dismantling diet culture messages that have flooded your mind, you may not be ready to learn how to incorporate nutrition into your journey in a gentle way. And that’s okay. Your time will come. But if you are ready, then here are some gentle ways for you to do so from a lens of self-care!

 

4 Tips to Incorporate Gentle Nutrition

 

1. Start Your Day with Breakfast

When you wake up in the morning, your body calls for fuel. If you ignore this call, you will likely overeat later in the day. Instead of focusing on food as a tool for weight loss, focus on it as a tool for fueling your body to get your day started. As a past dieter, you likely skipped breakfast because you either claimed you weren’t hungry or that it caused you to eat more throughout the day. On the contrary, when you skip breakfast, you set yourself up to be overly hungry which then leads to overeating. Enjoy a hearty nutritious breakfast such as oatmeal with fruit and nuts or a veggie omelet in a whole grain tortilla.  You will see how much energy you have to start your day and will find you are not “starving” by lunchtime.

 

2. Be Prepared – Bring Healthy Snacks with You

If you approach mealtime feeling ravenous, you may eat beyond comfortable fullness to the point that you feel stuffed and sick. When you begin to feel the first signals of hunger, the only way to answer that call is to eat, which you can only do if you have food with you. This is the reason why I always carry some snacks when I leave the house and I recommend you do too. Having snacks on hand will prevent you from making a trip to the vending machine and can even save you some money.

 

3. Be Creative with Produce

If you’ve been a dieter, you have probably had your fill of fruits and veggies. Maybe so much so that you avoid them at this point (“carrot sticks, no thanks!”) Do a quick audit of the food you eat in a day. If you’re falling short on produce, then you are falling short on valuable nutrients and antioxidants for good health. Instead of reluctantly adding steamed broccoli to your menu, get creative. Make a spinach lasagna, stuffed peppers or a roasted eggplant salad.

 

For more recipes and intuitive eating wisdom, check out this resource!

 

4. Approach Your Meal with Positivity

By making food a positive force in your life, you will end that unhappy relationship you’ve had with food and be on the road to optimal health and wellness. Approach each meal as an opportunity to show respect to your body. Keeping the intuitive eating principles (https://dietfreeradiantme.com/intuitive-eating-for-adults/) top of mind will ensure you have full satisfaction in your meals.

 

What is one food rule you might still be holding onto that is preventing you from enjoying gentle nutrition for your health.

 

What’s for Dinner?

How do you decide what to eat for dinner (or any meal)?

 

It seems like a simple question, but for the chronic dieter who has lost all trust in their body and ability to make food decisions, this is actually a very difficult question that is faced with anguish.

 

There’s the food that you think you “should” eat, and the food that you really want to eat. You have 2 voices in your head. Voice #1 – “Eat this, you know you should, it’s what your diet prescribes, it’ll help you lose weight”. Voice #2 – “No, choose this because you know it’s really what you want. You haven’t eaten this in ages.”

 

Either decision you make creates a negative feeling around food. If you follow voice #1 and eat what the diet tells you to eat, you have minimal to zero satisfaction when you are done. The entire time you are eating, you are thinking about the pizza you could have been eating. Your belly may be full, but your mind is not satisfied. You now look around the kitchen, open all the cabinets for something just to “finish off the meal”. You are searching for something to fill your psychological void. You are not happy.

 

However, if you follow voice #2 and eat the pizza, you fall into the diet mentality trap of “I messed up, I shouldn’t have eaten the pizza. Okay, I’ll just have one more piece and I promise I won’t eat it again for a long time.” You end up eating several slices, feel physically uncomfortable and emotionally guilty, full of shame, disappointment in yourself and disgust. You did it again. In the end, you didn’t derive the satisfaction you were looking for because the physical and emotional distress took over.

 

What’s the answer to this dilemma?

 

Pausing long enough to remind yourself that you are learning to give yourself unconditional permission to eat when you are hungry. This means all foods are available to you. Once you take the “should’s” and “shouldn’ts” off your food, you will realize that you can eat the foods you love without the worry of overeating.

 

This takes time, especially if you’ve been dieting for decades. But you have to start somewhere, so why not start today, with this very meal.

 

What is one food or meal that you would LOVE to eat for dinner tonight but would never dream of allowing yourself to have?

 

Go out and buy that food or make it for yourself for dinner tonight. Sit down without distraction and savor every bite knowing that eating this food now does not mean you could never eat it again. It means that you could eat it now, later, tomorrow, next week…whenever you want it. Just knowing this will help you stop when you are comfortably full.

 

Stuffed Potato Skins, Spinach Parmesan Lasagna, Pita Pizza, Fettuccini with Vegetables, Peanut Butter Bran Muffins, Double Chocolate Chews, Cinnamon Coffee Cake…

these are just a few of the recipes in my new book: Enjoying Food Peace: Recipes and Intuitive Eating Wisdom to Nourish Your Body and Mind.

 

Start to eat what you love without a side of guilt!

Enjoying Food Peace Book

Get your copy today on AMAZON!

 

Or, get a SIGNED COPY directly from me HERE!

Intuitive Eating is Not Giving Up

What feeling comes to mind when you decide to never diet again? For many people, an immediate “weight” (no pun intended) is lifted off their shoulders. They use words such as:

 

Freedom

Excitement

Exhilaration

Relief

Joy

 

(What’s your word, comment below!)

 

But for others, I know this isn’t the case. When you’re in the contemplation stage of thinking about no longer dieting and instead to “try” intuitive eating, you have a feeling as if you are “giving up”.

 

But why is that?

 

Diets don’t work. I’m not just talking about the formalized diets like Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, Slim Fast etc. I’m also talking about your own self-designed diets. You know the ones where you make a set of rules for yourself, the “do’s and don’ts” of eating and you follow those rules. This doesn’t work either. And when I say “work”, I’m speaking your language because you determine success by a number on the scale.

 

Sure, when you restrict your eating for a period of time and you exercise your buns off, you will likely lose weight. But you and I know that that weight does not stay off. When you start to feel deprived of not eating the foods you love, and when you get tired of killing yourself at the gym, you give up these set of rules and the weight returns.

 

That is, until you get fed up with yourself and you are disgusted with your body and how you feel, well, then you write up another set of rules to follow for the next few weeks.

 

And on and on you go.

 

I think that you realize it’s time to change. It’s time to finally say no more dieting. But you feel that if you don’t at least “try” to “control” your weight, then it’s like giving up. You feel that if you embrace the intuitive eating journey and don’t focus on your weight, then you are giving up. That if you don’t try to lose weight, then you’ve given up.

 

Committing to the intuitive eating journey is NOT you giving up. It is you showing respect to your body and telling yourself that you are worth more than the food obsession that’s become the sole purpose of your every day.

 

I am not telling you to eat a dozen donuts for breakfast every morning (but if you want a donut, heck go ahead and enjoy it!). What I am telling you is that intuitive eating is not dieting. Don’t let your past dieting “failures” lead you to think that you will “fail” at intuitive eating too.

 

First, there is no failure in intuitive eating. It’s just not possible.

 

Second, intuitive eating is you giving yourself a chance to finally be a peace with food and your body and come home to the body that you were born in.

 

So on the contrary, intuitive eating is not giving up. It’s giving you the gift of life.

 

If you’re ready to give it a go, learn more about my Intuitive Eating for Adults Programs HERE. If you’d like to get started either working 1-1 with me, or you prefer the online program, just reach out to me.

 

Isn’t it time?