3 Ways to Be Gentle with Yourself on Your Intuitive Eating Journey

We’re getting ready to ease back into life. Slowly but surely, doctor’s offices, hair salons and retail stores are reopening. While it’s an exciting time, it may also be a bit scary for you, I know it is for me. I can’t wait to go get a haircut (which is happening soon!) and I’ve gone to the dentist and the eye doctor. But things are far from “normal”.

The last 3 months have been hugely different for all of us. It’s been unchartered territory and we are learning to navigate our new normal. While sometimes we might wish that things can go back to the way they were, we know that that is not possible (at least not in the next few months). So, it’s important to be gentle with ourselves as we become comfortable with our new “normal”.

The same holds true for your relationship with food.

Rejecting the Diet Mentality Takes Time

If you’ve hit diet bottom (meaning you have zero bandwidth left to count calories, points, track food, or diet anymore), and you know you want to change your relationship with food, I applaud you. By breaking free of diets and food rules, you will ultimately learn to trust yourself, your body, and your food choices.

Key word is…ultimately!

Rejecting the diet mentality takes time! If you’ve been dieting for years and even decades, please know that even though you’re done with dieting, it’ll take time to move away from relying on food rules and others telling you what, when and how much to eat. You’ve been using that as a safety net for years, even though it backfires time and time again. If you haven’t seen the research on dieting, data shows that 95-97% of people who lose weight via dieting gain it back within 1-5 years, and one third to two thirds gain back even more. [1]

Now you might say “Bonnie, I know people that have lost weight through dieting and have kept it off.”. And I say, yes, likely you do. But the research also points to the 3-5% that keep the weight off often do so with disordered eating behaviors (such as eating less for dinner if they had a larger lunch, avoiding bread/carbs or limiting drastically, brushing their teeth after dinner to avoid eating etc…).

The diet mentality is very sneaky and will show up in places and at times that you least expect it. But if you stay the course, you will find that you will recognize this devil sooner and sooner and eventually, you will be free of this destructive mentality.

Push Back Against Sliding Back

I’ll be upfront with you. When you start the journey towards breaking the spell of diets, there will be times when you say “forget it, it’s too scary to make my own food decisions”. You may even consider throwing in the towel and going back to a diet.

But isn’t that what you’ve always done when you’ve tried a diet and it didn’t “work”? You’ve thrown in the towel and went looking for something else that will “work”. And by “work”, we know you are referring to weight loss.

When you find your mind going back to “I just need a diet”, recognize this as the diet mentality and push back against it with all your might! With practice, you’ll find that it doesn’t have half the power you think it has.

3 Ways to Be Gentle with Yourself on Your Intuitive Eating Journey

1. Realize there is no perfection in Intuitive Eating. You might have strived for perfection when you were dieting, but the good news is there is no perfection when it comes to intuitive eating. This is a major relief when I share this with my clients. It takes a lot of pressure off!

2. View what you once believed was a setback, as growth. When you were dieting, you might have found yourself using language such as “I fell off the wagon”, “I fell off track” or “I messed up”. These were viewed as setbacks (another dieter’s word) and often undid many weeks and months of hard work. In Intuitive Eating, we view these events as experiences for learning and growth. I don’t know about you, but to me, that is way nicer and more gentle!

3. Take care of your self-care needs. Breaking free of the chains of dieting and rejecting the diet mentality is work. I have never, and will never, tell anyone that it’s not. It is work that is well worth it, but it still requires commitment and taking action. To do this, you need to attend to your self-care needs. This includes physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual to name a few. Take the time to jot down what you need to support you on your journey, then go get it. Sometimes this means asking others for help! Don’t be shy! Most people are happy to help.

If you’ve been on your Intuitive Eating journey or you are just starting out, remember that it is a much more fulfilling journey when you are gentle with yourself.

To get started with breaking the spell of diets, just enter your name and email in below for the free online experience – Break the Spell of Diets in 3 Days.

[1] Traci Mann et al., “Medicare’s Search for Effective Obesity Treatments: Diets Are Not the Answer,” American Psychologist 62, no. 3 (April 2007