Tag Archive for: intuitive eating journey

4 Ways to Refocus Yourself on the Intuitive Eating Journey

If there is anything that you have learned in the past two years, it’s that things will happen in your life that you cannot control. As the saying goes, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Even on the intuitive eating journey, you will find at times that things do not go as planned and you lose focus. 

 

When life becomes stressful you may be tempted to fall back to old habits and divert from your intuitive eating journey. However, it is important to take a step back and refocus. Shift the focus back onto your health and don’t let the stressors in your life take control. 

 

There are ways in which you can control the stress in your life without turning to comfort foods, as tempting as it may be. Find ways to express your anxiety that benefit your well-being rather than hurt it. From yoga to journaling to talking to a professional, there are options, 

 

However, finding other outlets for your stress and utilizing them when you need to is a task easier said than done. When you are feeling overwhelmed, there are some steps you can take to guide you back onto your intuitive eating journey. 

 

Here are the four ways you can refocus yourself to stay on the intuitive eating journey: 

 

1. Ask Yourself Why 

Remember back to when you first decided to start this journey. What was the reason you decided to embark on your intuitive eating journey, the “why”? Did you do it to feel better about yourself and to be kinder to your body? Or maybe you did it to be healthy for your family. 

 

Chances are your “why” still resonates somewhere within you, even on your darkest days. Use it as the extra fuel to keep going on this path. Some days are easier than others but if you keep your “why” in focus, you can navigate the bumps along the way. Instead of letting the bad times discourage you from working to better your health and yourself, use mindfulness to clear your headspace and find peace within yourself.

 

 

2. Prioritize Your Needs  

When you have a family, or even if you’re single, putting your needs first can be challenging. It is human instinct to want to help others, however, you need to make yourself a priority. You can make the most of each day by scheduling time for your priorities into your daily routine. There is a time for work, a time for taking care of the needs of others, and a time to care for yourself. This includes time to sit down for meals and to be engaged, mindful, and do nothing but focus on your food.

 

3. Find Ways to Unwind

Life is hectic, even on the slowest of days, there is something to stress or worry about. Find an activity that you can use to unwind each day. It can be exercise, taking a bath, catching the newest episode of your favorite TV show, or talking with a friend. Remember that you do not have to navigate life alone. At times, life is too much to balance on your own so reach out to friends, coworkers, family, and loved ones for support when you need it. 

 

 4. Listen to Your Body 

When you are unwinding and allowing yourself to have some much-needed rest, take a few extra moments to check in with your body. Write down your motivation and the messages your body is sending you. You will gain clarity and feel motivated to trek on this journey.

 

Always remember, when you are feeling low, there is nowhere to go but up! If you keep your focus and mindfulness, you will find inner peace on even your worst days.

3 Strategies to Keep Moving Forward on Your Intuitive Eating Journey (even when life gets tough)

If you have learned one thing in the past two years, it’s to expect the unexpected. You may think that you have everything under control and then something unexpected happens and throws you off course. As they say, life happens.

 

These unforeseen changes can affect every aspect of your life, including your Intuitive Eating journey. No matter where you are on your Intuitive Eating journey, stressful life events are bound to occur. It’s okay to feel stressed or anxious, but you don’t want to lose yourself to life’s surprises.

 

For many, food is a coping mechanism for stress. Turning to comfort foods and ignoring your hunger and satiety signals however is not the answer. I encourage you to stay focused on your health rather than slipping back into old ways. So next time you find yourself in this situation, what can you do to keep going?

 

Try these 3 Strategies:

 

  1. Remind Yourself Why You Started this Journey

 

Remind yourself why you decided to start on this journey. Instead of taking time to make excuses as to why you cannot do this or that, put that energy towards focusing on the reasons you embarked on your Intuitive Eating journey. Write down your motivation and the messages your body is sending you. You will gain clarity and feel motivated to continue moving forward.

 

Why did you embark on your Intuitive Eating journey?

 

Was it to feel better in your body?

 

Was it to improve your overall health?

 

Chances are your “why” still resonates somewhere within you, even on your darkest days. Let this motivate you. Some days are easier than others but if you keep your “why” in focus, you can navigate the bumps along the way.

 

  1. Prioritize Your Needs

 

When life gets hectic it can be easy to prioritize work or your significant other’s wants and put your own needs on the backburner. You can only help others once you have helped yourself. Become the best you that you can be by prioritizing your own needs. That may mean making a list of goals, tasks to tackle, or taking a mental health day. Each step in the right direction is an important one.

 

You can make the most of each day by scheduling time for your priorities into your daily routine. There is a time for work, a time for taking care of the needs of others, and a time to care for yourself. This includes time to sit down for meals and to be engaged, mindful, and do nothing but focus on your food.

 

  1. Find a New Outlet for Stress

 

There are many healthy ways to deal with stress that does not entail food. Take time to unwind each day, whether that is exercising, taking a bath, or catching up with a friend. You may need to try several activities before you find one that helps you relax. Even just taking 15 minutes to vent to a friend or to decompress your thoughts onto paper will benefit your day and your overall goals. When you let go of pent-up emotions, you will clear your mind and allow more room for mindfulness.

 

The truth is life comes at you fast. You cannot go back in time, but you can make the most of your present and future. Homing in on your Intuitive Eating and mindfulness will help you navigate through life’s obstacles and keep you on the path to being the best version of yourself.

 

Always remember, when you are feeling low, there is nowhere to go but up! If you keep your focus and mindfulness, you will find inner peace.

 

Intuitive Eating and Weight Gain—How Do I Handle This?

You’ve given up dieting for good, you’re ready to make peace with food and have embarked on a new, exciting journey with Intuitive Eating—sounds pretty good right?

Of course, it does! But with any new journey there are realities we must accept—one of those being “yes, it’s true. You may gain weight when you start practicing Intuitive Eating!”

But how can you learn to be okay with this new reality after struggling with food and trusting your body?

Let’s start with the WHY

Why does weight gain even happen to some people when embarking on an Intuitive Eating journey?

First, it’s important to mention that when beginning any kind of journey, you never know how your body is going to react. Each person comes into this journey at different points.

For example: some may come from a place of food restriction and an eating disorder, some as a chronic yo-yo dieter, and others from years of being stuck in a binge-restrict cycle.

Therefore, given each of those examples—the body is going to react completely different when you begin to listen to it and provide it what it needs!

If you’ve been suppressing your weight through restriction, it actually makes total sense that once you begin to lift the restrictions and learn to listen to your body, that you might gain weight simply by eating enough food to meet your body’s needs.

This idea of weight gain and Intuitive Eating also revolves around the concept of “set point weight theory”, defined as “the weight your body wishes to be at in order to function and be at its best”.

Therefore, when embarking on this journey, weight gain may occur because it’s what your body WANTS and NEEDS to do in order to be at its best for YOU.

This requires trust in yourself and your body, which is something that can be difficult to do when you are new to Intuitive Eating. But it IS possible to regain this trust.

Another important point to make is that if you’ve been chronically dieting with a long list of “can’t have” foods, once you begin allowing these foods back into your eating world, you may overdo it for a while, eating beyond comfortable fullness. This may cause some temporary weight gain. But as you normalize your eating of these foods, your weight will normalize too.

Navigating the Fear

In order to be at peace with allowing your body to do what it needs to do to ultimately regain its trust, here are a few things to keep in mind:

(1) There’s nothing wrong with weight.

A practice within Intuitive Eating is to neutralize all foods—let go of the “good” and “bad” labels you place on food. The same concept applies to weight gain—it’s time to neutralize, or destigmatize, the idea that weight gain is a “bad thing”.

This can be hard to accept because of the toxic diet culture messages we’ve heard for many, many years— “gaining weight is unhealthy”, “if you gain weight, you have no self-control”, etc.

Whatever weight your body ends up at, whether it’s less, more or remains the same, that is the weight your body feels safest and best.

If weight gain happens, take a moment to embrace it and reflect on if it’s a sign that you were previously NOT caring for yourself in the way your body needs to be.

(2) Turn away (and off) the diet culture messages.

Diet culture is unfortunately all around us—on television, in the news, on social media, and even within our own environment (family, friends, workplace).

It’s time to remove those toxic diet culture messages from your mental and physical space. It can be hard to do but take some time to reflect on how years of dieting and restriction has negatively impacted your life, your relationship with others, your relationship with food and your body, etc.

Start by:

  • Unfollowing social media accounts that promote diet culture and instead following body positive accounts
  • Throwing away your scale, or other weight loss tools (measuring tapes, etc.)
  • Removing yourself from conversation that revolves around weight loss, restriction, or anything that negatively impacts how you feel about yourself.

(3) Shift your focus.

Instead of focusing on the fact that weight gain is, or may be, a possibility, think about what else you are gaining by practicing Intuitive Eating consistently.

For example…

  • Peace with food and food freedom
  • No longer letting food and food decisions control your life
  • A positive relationship with food
  • Better sleep, mood, and outlook on life
  • A better social life with more spontaneous plans
  • More energy
  • A positive community and support system

Shift your focus to highlight the wins or little victories that you are gaining from practicing Intuitive Eating.

(4) Practice self-compassion.

Self-compassion is another important part of Intuitive Eating. Practice self-compassion by approaching weight gain in a new way:

  • Choose to support and care for your here and now body
  • Nourish yourself consistently
  • Dress and wear clothes that are meant for your current body
  • Provide yourself with adequate rest
  • Remind yourself of the long term, overarching reason you’ve adopted this new way of living and eating

Get the tools and strategies to redefine your self-worth away from your body weight or number. And, join a community of women who have started their Intuitive Eating journey! Want to find out how?

 

YES, Bonnie, show me how!

 

 

3 Tips to Leaving the Clean the Plate Club Behind

Picture this, you’re sitting at the dinner table with your whole family after spending the last hour cooking a meal. The meal has just started; however, you have only taken a few bites and you are already starting to feel full. You look around the table and everyone else is still eagerly digging into their food. You put your fork down and realize you are already at the point of comfortable fullness. You begin to feel a little guilty about spending all that time cooking to only eat a few forkfuls of the meal, so you continue you eat until you reach uncomfortable fullness.

Or, you are enjoying your meal, you get to a point of feeling comfortable, but you don’t want to leave any food over because you believe it’s wrong to waste food and/or money.

Many people have experienced that guilt or peer pressure that makes them clean their plate. As a child you might have heard the familiar line, “Clean your plate, there are children that are starving.” This mindset can lead to overeating and ultimately leave you feeling unwell and still guilty, for a different reason.

This mindset of “clean plate club” directly goes against the Intuitive Eating journey. You are ignoring your natural hunger and fullness cues. While in the scenario above, the person tried to tune into their fullness cues, they ultimately ignored them to clean their plate.

There are some tips and tricks that you can try to leave the clean plate club behind. Here are my top 3:

1. Eat Slowly 

Slow down the pace of your eating so you can achieve pleasure in every bite. Try not to rush through your meal, instead savor the food in front of you. When you have full satisfaction, it’s  easier to stop when you sense you have had enough. Put your fork down between bites to allow yourself the time to check in with your hunger and fullness cues.

2. Consider Leftovers 

Promise yourself that you will pack up whatever you leave over (even if it’s a small amount) so you can eat it tomorrow. You will then enjoy this wonderful meal again. Sometimes leftovers can be just as good, if not better, than the original meal. You can even try reworking your leftovers into a completely new meal, get creative in the kitchen.

3.Reflect on your meal.

Once you have completed your meal, take some time to reflect. Did you reach a level of comfortable fullness? Did you pass the level of comfortable fullness and now feel uncomfortable? Asking these questions will surely help you respect your fullness regardless if there’s food left on the plate or not.

Say no to the clean plate club and instead focus inward on how you are feeling. There are so many reasons to honor your fullness and your Intuitive Eating journey.

Want to learn all about the origin of the “clean the plate club”? It’s actually fascinating. Join me today at 12:15 pm EST for a live training HERE or HERE

It’s Okay if You’re Not Ready to Give Up Dieting

Not everybody is ready to hear that “diets don’t work”. For years, you’ve been trying all the different diets that hit the market in hopes of losing weight and keeping it off. But each time, you gain back most, if not all, of the weight you lost, and you are back at square one.

The Dieter’s Dilemma

The Dieter’s Dilemma starts with the desire to be thin. This desire leads to the start of your diet. Eventually, you experience cravings for foods you’ve been restricting. This leads to having a “loss of control” and “overeating”, maybe even binge eating on these foods. You regain the weight you lost, with a side dish of guilt and shame.

But then, the desire to be thin becomes strong again, and you start your next diet.

The cycle continues, until you acknowledge that diets don’t work, and there must be a better way to exist. There is.

Reject the Diet Mentality

The first step to no longer dieting is to reject the diet mentality. That means learning to acknowledge when the Food Police is shouting food rules at you, as well as barbs, criticisms, and judgement about you “not following the rules”.

This step will take time. Think about it. You’ve been following diet food rules for years. You’ve been listening to others tell you when to eat, how much to eat and what to eat. These rules have created cognitive distortions and it takes practice to learn to reframe these thoughts into more rational thoughts.

Tip: Every time you hear a diet thought pop up, pause and call it out. Challenge that thought right then and there!! Within time, you will see that the Food Police is losing it’s hold over you.

Intuitive Eating

If you consider the words Intuitive Eating, you can come to understand that you have the natural inborn instinct to know when you are hungry and full, and what you truly want to eat in that moment. You are born with that instinct.

According to the creators of Intuitive Eating, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, Intuitive Eating is a “self-care eating framework, which integrates instinct, emotion, and rational thought.”

There are 10 principles of Intuitive Eating which work in 2 main ways:

  1. They help you cultivate attunement to the physical sensations in your body so you can meet both your biological and psychological needs. These are sensations that you have likely not been paying attention to in regard to eating, because you were focused on following rules external to your body.
  2. They help remove the obstacles that may be present that interfere with you cultivating this attunement. These obstacles generally come from your mind and the beliefs and thoughts you have around food, eating and your body.

I express to my clients that it’s very important to begin the process of giving up dieting by working on mindset first, rather than trying to attune to the inner signals. When you still have a diet mindset running in the back of your mind, then it’s much harder to learn to eat when hungry and stop when full because the rules are still running the show.

But What About Weight?

Great question!

I know that you are unhappy with your current body (weight). That’s why you’ve been on and off multiple diets over your lifetime. But if you continue to pursue intentional weight loss, then you are continuing to diet. It’s not possible to learn to reject the diet mentality while also trying to lose weight.

Will you lose weight? The honest answer is, I don’t know. Only your body knows what it will do when you stop restricting and allow your body to land where it is genetically pre-determined to land.

Are you able to put the desire to change your body on the side for a little while? To acknowledge that the desire for weight loss is there, but you won’t actively pursue it?

If you are able to do that, then you are ready for the Intuitive Eating journey. If you are not ready to put weight loss on the sideline, then you’re not ready to begin your Intuitive Eating journey.

And that is okay! It may take you some time to come around to it. And when you do, please know that I am here for you.

To get a taste of what it’s like to break free of diets, pop your name and email in the boxes below to a 3 day experience like no other!

 

 

Intuitive Eating: I Don’t Know Where to Start

It’s Intuitive Eating Wednesday when I answer your questions and troubleshoot your challenges around intuitive eating and emotional eating.

 

This week’s Intuitive Eating Wednesday Question comes from Sandy, and it is:

“Bonnie, I have decided not to start a diet in the New Year! And while I’m excited about this, I just don’t know where to begin my intuitive eating journey. I have the original Intuitive Eating book, which I’ve read twice, but I just feel overwhelmed. Can you help me?”

 

Yes, of course, thank you Sandy for writing in to me.

 

As I started to put together some steps for Sandy, I thought about you.

 

Are you in the same place as Sandy?

 

Have you historically started a new diet or “healthy way of life” (a.k.a. diet) every January 1st?

 

Have you decided that this year it will be different….no more dieting, but you don’t know where to start your intuitive eating journey?

 

First, let me congratulate you for making the commitment to yourself to not diet in 2018! That is huge! I realize that it might have been a difficult decision with all the diet ads and marketing of the ‘right’ way to eat and exercise to shrink or sculpt your body (into something that is not sustainable anyway)!

 

Second, I feel your overwhelm. There is so much information on the internet about how “to do” intuitive eating, but often these suggestions contradict one another.

 

Most of my clients that finally reach out to me for help have already dabbled in intuitive eating. That dabbling can look like a few things:

  1. They’ve read the book Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elsye Resch.
  2. They’ve taken an online course in intuitive eating.
  3. They’ve been receiving support in the myriad of free private Facebook groups that offer intuitive eating support (by the way, if you’re not a member of my group yet, click here).

 

So the question is, with all this ‘dabbling’, why are you still feeling overwhelmed and questioning “where do I start”?

 

I believe the answer lies in the following reasons:

  1. You’ve read the intuitive eating book, but are having trouble implementing the principles because while reading the book helps you become familiar with intuitive eating, for most people (I’m not saying all people, but most people), they need more structure and coaching to help implement the principles into their daily life. Is this you too?

 

  1. You’ve taken an online course but admittedly didn’t show up for yourself by taking appropriate action. Or, the course lacked the private coaching that you really need to take this to the next level. Or, the course was marketed as an intuitive eating course, but in fact once you got into it, it was really dieting.

 

  1. You’re a member of a number of free Facebook groups but you aren’t receiving individualized coaching by certified intuitive eating counselors in these settings, nor should they be giving you coaching for free. This would be a disservice to you and to their clients who have invested in themselves. The free groups can only take you so far.

 

So what’s your next ‘first’ step?

 

Grab your freebie here: 5 Steps to a Body You Love Without Dieting. This will give you the step-by-step approach I take my clients through.

 

Then, if you want me to walk you through this step-by-step journey, contact me here.

 

5 Tips to Get Your Spouse on Board Your Intuitive Eating Journey

There are many women that I coach in my 5 Step Intuitive Eating Program who complain to me that their spouse is not supportive of their journey. This is either because they just don’t get it or they think that you should be able to “do it on your own”.

 

They may say to you, “just stop eating”, and don’t understand it often isn’t even about the food.

 

Do you find this to be true about your spouse?

 

Let’s explore this further…..

 

Perhaps your spouse himself is a dieter and isn’t ready to stop dieting.

 

Or, he doesn’t see an issue with your eating and doesn’t understand your need to make changes.

 

If we go even deeper, he may fear that your relationship will change once your relationship with food changes. After all, who will he binge eat at night with while watching TV?

 

Whatever the reason, there are ways to get your spouse on board with your intuitive eating journey. And, there are ways you can approach the topic of support with him without him getting defensive.

 

5 Tips to Get Your Spouse on Board:

 

1. Share your BIG WHY with him – This will help him understand why you’ve made the decision to no longer diet and why you are making changes in the house. If you explain to him your desire to be more in tune with your body and why this is important to you, he’ll know more of what you need, i.e. no T.V. while you eat dinner.

 

2. Be open with your struggles – Sometimes your spouse can be threatened by your new way of living because as we said, he may be a yo-yo dieter and is not ready to stop dieting.  It can be helpful to show him that it’s not that you’re better than him; it’s that you are ready to end your struggle as you’ve come to the realization that diets don’t work for you. And, you need help. Explain to him that you are struggling with your relationship with food and need to make changes in your own life to help form a stronger, and healthier relationship with food.

 

3. Be specific with the support you need from him – Remember that your spouse isn’t a mind reader!       If you want help from him, you need to specifically ask him for it. The more specific you are, the more support and help he will be able to give. If he always suggest to go out to dinner for happy and sad occasions, ask him if you guys can do something else together that doesn’t revolve around food for those same occasions.   Whatever it is, just be specific!

 

4. Understand it’s not about you, it’s often about him – Unfortunately, your spouse may not understand what you are going through and won’t want to make changes in his own life, even if they are better for you. If that’s the case, remember it’s about him and has nothing to do with you. You can still change your relationship with food and look for support from friends and others on the same journey as you. Hopefully once he sees how happy you are with your changes, he’ll get on board too! (If you are looking for support on your intuitive eating journey, join us in my Intuitive Eating Mastery Circle. Find out more here!)

 

5. Don’t try to change him, that will never work – You can’t force your spouse to change his lifestyle just because you want him too. Although it would be nice and better for you, he doesn’t need to change.  You are still able to change your own relationship with food, even if he doesn’t change his.

 

If you are looking for more help on how to get your spouse on board, please reach out to me. I can help you. Answer a few questions at TalkWithBonnie.com and I’ll be in touch to set up a time to talk.

 

Your Turn to Take Action: What steps will you take this week to get your spouse on board with your intuitive eating journey? Let me know in the comments below!

 

Can I Fail on My Intuitive Eating Journey?

No failures in IEI was thinking about a conversation I had with a new client a few weeks ago. She was really fed up with dieting and was looking for a solution to help her finally be at peace with food and her body.  We talked about the process of intuitive eating and it resonated with her greatly, but she had one big fear:  would she fail at this process, like she failed at dieting?

 

Her fear of failure was initially holding her back from saying yes to embarking on the intuitive eating process.  So we talked about that fear and one of the things I helped her to understand is that you cannot fail at intuitive eating.

 

You see, dieting is something you go on and you go off. Dieting is what actually triggers overeating.  Dieting is what causes the feelings of failure.

 

With intuitive eating, there is no failure. Intuitive eating is this process where you’re learning to become an intuitive eater, which is an ability you are born with.  That ability is already within you.   Every step along the path, is a lesson learned.  Every experience you have will be another lesson learned.

 

So what you might have thought of as a “failure” or “setback” on your diet, is now going to be thought of as a lesson learned.  Its growth and progress.

 

If you can view the process of intuitive eating from this place, a place of growth, a place of learning new things and new experiences, it will help propel you forward towards reclaiming being an intuitive eater. Here you will realize that you will always learn something from the process and you will never fail.

 

Once my client realized that she is not embarking on another diet, she realized she cannot fail on this journey.  This process is not something that ends.  You learn to live as an intuitive eater, it’s a practice.

 

And so when there is no endpoint, there’s no failure and no fear that’s attached to that.

 

Once she was able to let go of that fear, she was able to say “YES, let’s do this.  Let’s go on this journey together so I can reclaim being an intuitive eater”. She’s on that journey now and really enjoying it.

 

I say the same to you.

 

There are lessons learned in every experience you have on this intuitive eating journey.

 

If you come upon an obstacle or you think you have fallen off the wagon, let’s change that thought process and just think of it as a lesson learned that’s given you growth so you can continue along your journey.

 

As always, if you need me, I am here.

 

 

Abolishing the “Eat This, Don’t Eat That” Rule

Portion control is something that is always stressed when discussing weight loss and healthy eating.  It is undeniable that the portions of food people eat are much larger than they were years ago, which is a direct contributor to the obesity epidemic this country is facing.

 

Several experiments have recently been conducted at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.  It was discovered that people have a “taste-health balance point” – a proportion of unhealthy and healthy foods in each meal – which they find satisfactory.  Thus, eating a smaller portion of a food you love (that might not be deemed the healthiest), rather than eliminating it completely, and pairing it with a healthy food choice allows the person to be satisfied with a smaller amount without feeling deprived.

 

Yet, in most commercial diet plans, along with portion control, there are “eat this, don’t eat that” rules.  Inevitably, the dieter can only stand not eating a favorite food on the “don’t eat” list for so long.  Cravings then lead to overeating and the diet is foregone.

 

Is this sounding familiar to you?

 

This is one of the reasons that I stress to my clients the importance of really understanding the concept of providing yourself with the unconditional permission to eat when hungry what food you desire. It takes the “taboo” label off foods that you would otherwise deem as “bad”.  It eliminates the desire to overeat on these foods and creates room for healthier food options.

 

So, if you are stuck in the diet mindset, try balancing your next meal with healthy wholesome foods plus those that you might deem “not as healthy” but are your favorite. See if you are satisfied with less and let me know in the comment section below.

 

To learn more about becoming an intuitive eater and How to Break Free from the Pain of Dieting and Get the Body You Love Without Feeling Deprived, join me for a Free Webinar on Tuesday September 16,2014 at 8 pm EST. Click here to register for FREE.

 

 

 

We’re All Human

Older women dancingThis week’s blog post will be a bit different.  I am sharing with you a story told to me by a very close friend who happens to also assist me in my office.  For anonymity, I will call her Mary.  Mary was instrumental in helping me launch my iEat Mindfully™ Intuitive Eating Program.  At the time, she was in her final year of college preparing to enter into her dietetic internship to eventually become a registered dietitian.

Mary had shared with me early on that one of the reasons she had gotten into the nutrition field was because of her experience with her dieting history.  She had a strong diet mentality throughout her early twenties. Despite a healthy body weight, she was addicted to seeing the number on the scale go down, and to trying whatever diet of the moment was around so she can lose weight.  She would always end up starving by the end of the 6-14 day trial period, gaining back any weight she lost and then some with a vengeance.

Lucky for her, through her studies in personal training and then even more so in nutrition, she began to learn not just the science behind how food works in the body, but the mentality with which to truly approach healthy eating.  Mindful eating in particular appealed to Mary because so much of her difficulties with weight stemmed from not trusting her own intuition about food.

Despite her knowledge of nutrition, Mary recently went through a stressful time in her life.  She was in the midst of her dietetic internship program, and between the stress of the program and other things going on in her life, she found herself deflecting that stress into disliking her appearance.  An unflattering dressing room light and a glimpse in the mirror while trying on clothes spiraled her thoughts into a whirlwind of, “How can I lose weight quickly, I need to get back on track.”

Fortunately for Mary, she sat down with herself and had a clarifying moment.  She thought about the idea of jumping into a fad diet, but realized she knew better.  She also knew that she had been out of touch with her intuitive eating and instead was eating to decrease stress instead of listening to her body and eating to nourish it.

Mary decided to be positive and invest in a gym membership, and started collecting healthy recipes she wanted to try.  She treated herself to new cooking appliances and reminded herself what it means to be healthy, and also reminded herself of some of the things she liked about her body.

Mary wanted me to share this story with you to remind you that roadblocks are inevitable, but they don’t have to derail you.  We are all human and there will be times when we forget the things we have learned, and want to jump back into a negative place.  If you can take a breath and refocus, whatever “damage” you may have felt you did, you can learn from it. Remember this all part of the journey which will lead you to where you want to be.

Your turn to take action: Have a heart to heart talk with yourself. If you have been having a difficult time on your intuitive eating journey, try to figure out why. Please share your thoughts with me and together we can help you get back on the road to a body you love without dieting!