chronic dieting Archives - Diet Free Radiant Me | Intuitive Eating | Emotional Eating

Why I Wrote My Book, Enjoying Food Peace (Coming Soon)

For years I’ve been helping clients and patients make the changes necessary to live a healthier life. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, it’s an amazing feeling to hear from a client how I’ve impacted them in a positive way.

Yes, I make a difference and I help people. Man, this feels good.

But one day it occurred to me. While many of my clients were making lifelong changes, there was a group of individuals who were struggling. After digging deeper, I realized why.

These wonderful and caring individuals were not at peace with food or their bodies. They were striving to live up to society’s standards of the “thin ideal” and would do anything to achieve this unreasonable goal, all the while being miserable. They were eating foods that they thought they should eat, and not foods they loved. And, if they ate something they loved, they often felt guilty afterwards telling themselves “now I’m going to gain weight.”

If you’re here reading my blog, I imagine you resonate with what I’m talking about. Food is not something to be feared, food is to be enjoyed. Yet, too many people in this world are brainwashed to believe that there are “good-for-you” foods and “bad-for-you” foods and it wreaks havoc on their lives.

Labeling Food

Good/bad, healthy/unhealthy, legal/illegal etc. It doesn’t matter what label you give food, just the fact that you put a label on a food is elevating some foods and demonizing others.

Of course, there are some foods that are more nutrient-rich than others, I don’t argue that. But there is a purpose for all foods. Some foods fuel you and some foods give you great taste pleasure. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Making Peace with Food

I’ve been in private practice for over 30 years! I’ve seen a lot of people lose weight and regain that weight plus more through some form of dieting. It was time for them to stop relying on what others told them to eat and start to eat what they truly wanted.

So, for the last 8 years I’ve helped chronic dieters and emotional eaters make peace with food through my Intuitive Eating Program. Once the food fear was gone, they were able to enjoy all types of foods made in all types of ways from all types of cuisine. They truly recaptured the pleasures of eating.

Enjoying Food Peace Was Born

I wanted this peace for people all over the world that were struggling with their food. So, I decided to write a cookbook called, Enjoying Food Peace: Recipes and Intuitive Eating Wisdom to Nourish Your Body and Mind.

Get a sneak peek here!

This book is not just for chronic dieters looking for food peace. It’s also for people who are obsessed with “eating healthy” to the point where they have cut out major food groups or nutrients and have just a small selection of foods they feel safe eating. It’s a segue back to balanced eating.

Enjoying Food Peace is also for everyone who enjoys a good meal.

It’s taken me 6 years to write this book! I put together an amazing team of nutrition interns who helped test the recipes. We met every Tuesday in my test kitchen to taste the foods that were prepared that week. Then we would evaluate and critique. “It needs a little more of that, a little less of this, ah, it’s perfect!”

The Wisdoms

After completing the recipes and putting together the book, I felt I wanted to add more. One night it came to me…write a chapter introducing intuitive eating and share some “Intuitive Eating Wisdoms” throughout the book. So, that’s exactly what I did! Not only will the recipes nourish your body, but the wisdoms will nourish your mind.

The creative genius and photographer behind the design of the book and the color photos you’ll see inside is my amazing assistant Samantha Baturin. This book would not be coming to life if it wasn’t for Samantha! I am forever grateful to her!!

Enjoying Food Peace provides the reader with over 150 tasty recipes and Intuitive Eating Wisdom to eat what you love, without a side of guilt.

I hope you’re as excited as I am for March 20^th launch day! Keep your eyes peeled so you can get your copy!

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at what’s inside Enjoying Food Peace (free recipe included!).

3 Ways to Push Past Fear (So it No Longer Holds You Back)

Fear is a paralyzing feeling. It keeps you from trying new experiences, making change and truly living a fulfilling life.

Fear is real. Nobody should make you feel “less than” for having fear. On the contrary, if someone really cares about you, they should help you overcome your fear.

In my world of working with chronic dieters and emotional eaters, the two big fears I hear almost daily is giving up the food rules and the fear of failing at intuitive eating.

No More Food Rules?

Giving up dieting means that you no longer follow external rules of “eat this, not that, in this way, at this time”. Yikes, that’s a scary thought. For decades you’ve been following the rules of what and how to eat by some arbitrary source other than yourself. So the thought of not having this direction is scary.

“How will I know what to eat?”

“How will I know when to eat?”

“How will I know how much to eat?”

Great questions! You will instinctively know the answer to each of these questions once you learn to listen to your innate body wisdom. This will take time. But it is possible.

Fear of Failing

The fear of failing is real. I know it. You’ve been on countless diets and while you may have had some success, as measured only by weight loss, that success was short-lived. Yet, you repeated the cycle over and over again, and each time, you considered yourself a failure.

Who wants to experience failure?

No one!

Well, the beautiful part of intuitive eating is there’s no failure in intuitive eating. You are not on or off anything, so there’s no falling “off track” or “off the wagon”. There are no rules for you to feel like you are “breaking”. What you once thought of as a slip up is truly an opportunity of growth and moving forward.

Intuitive eating is a whole new way of looking at your relationship with food. I promise you, if you are willing to do the work, then you will not fail.

Food is meant to bring you pleasure, not torture. Don’t let fear hold you back.

3 Ways to Push Past the Fear

Take a leap of faith. While the unknown is scary, it can also be exciting. Remind yourself that what you’ve been doing over and over again has not brought you the peace you want. But maybe, just maybe, it is within reach if you just take that leap of faith.

Believe in yourself. You have been put on this earth for a purpose. Your food and body worry has taken up so much brain space and time that it is preventing you from living your purpose. Believe that you are capable of change and change will come.

Just decide its time. Let this moment be the moment that you decide that its time to stop struggling. You’ve had enough, your done, and you are ready for the next chapter. Making a decision is powerful. Once you do it, the fear lifts up and floats away.

Isn’t it time for you to put your fear behind you?

I vote yes. And I’m here to help you!

How Can You Tell When You’re Feeling Satisfied?

This week’s Intuitive Eating Wednesday Question comes from Kristy, a member in my online community.

She asks:

“How can you tell when you’re satisfied??”

A short straight to the point question. But often so difficult for someone to figure out.

Kristy is referring here to when she is eating a meal, how does she determine when she is satisfied enough to stop eating.

If you’re someone who has dieted for quite some time, then likely you’re also struggling with not being able to hear your fullness signals. The mere act of dieting causes your signals to atrophy.

Why?

Because you aren’t using them. You are stopping your meal when the diet plan tells you that you have had enough. You are pushing the plate away when it’s empty. You are putting your fork down based on a limit imposed on you by an outside source. This means, it’s a source external from your internal signals that truly guide your eating.

Remember, you were born an intuitive eater. You were born knowing when you were hungry to start eating, and when you felt satisfied to stop eating. You didn’t need to ask this question, because it was just a feeling you had. And, you TRUSTED it, because you knew no other way but to trust your body.

All these years and oh so many diets later, you no longer feel those signals. And, you don’t have that trust in yourself either.

Which makes it so difficult to know when you’re truly satisfied enough to stop eating.

Okay, so you get this. But now what?

I’m not going to tell you how to feel your signals. This is something you need to relearn. And it IS POSSIBLE, with the right support, as you travel down your intuitive eating journey.

But before you do, you must do these 5 things:

Make the commitment to never diet again.

Re-affirm this commitment to never diet again.

Stay strong in this commitment even though you are surrounded by diet culture and its harmful messages (and family and friends that might be dieting and want some company).

Move away from determining success on your journey based on a number on a scale.

Re-affirm your commitment to never diet again

You see, if there’s any part of you that is still holding on to “maybe that will help me lose a few pounds”, then you will turn intuitive eating into the hunger-fullness diet (aka ‘The Intuitive Eating Diet’).

I’ve seen this happen way too many times. So, check in with yourself and ask yourself if you’re truly ready to leave your dieting habit and the scale behind.

Let me know in the comments below.

I’m Dieting But I’m Still Gaining Weight

You’re standing in front of the mirror having changed your clothes three times already this morning. Nothing seems to fit right. You are discouraged and start with the negative self-talk you are all too familiar with. “Why can’t I just stick to my diet”, you say to yourself. “I am such a failure; I will never succeed at weight loss”. “Tomorrow I will start my diet again”.

Does this sound familiar to you? If you have been battling your weight for some time, then likely you have been on countless diets that have not worked long term and you have gotten very good at berating yourself for your failures. The commercials all sound so promising! The radio ads promise fat burning powers of the miracle pills you just bought at the health food store. Why aren’t you able to lose weight?

The answer lies in the fact that you are dieting.

Let me repeat that!

The answer lies in the fact that you are dieting.

You see, nobody lives on a diet. One goes on a diet but eventually goes off the diet.

The Stats You Know

Forty to 50% of American women are trying to lose weight and are on a diet at any point in time. Half of pre-teen and teenage girls are on diets. However, 95% -97% of all dieters regain their lost weight and more within 1 to 5 years.

These are very alarming statistics because dieting clearly doesn’t work and repeated “yo-yo” dieting has been shown to have negative health effects, including an increased risk of heart disease and long-lasting effects on the metabolism.

The Side Effects of Dieting

Dieting makes you preoccupied with food; what you ate yesterday, this morning, 1 hour ago, and what you will eat later and tomorrow. Dieting makes food the enemy and causes guilty feelings when you don’t eat diet-type foods.

When you go on a diet, you are in essence putting your body into a short-term starvation state. When given the first opportunity to really eat what you desire, you will often experience a feeling of such intensity that any initial thoughts of wanting to be thin fly out the window. You feel out of control, guilty, and view yourself as having no willpower.

However, listen up!

This type of eating in response to semi-starvation is actually normal. It has nothing to do with willpower! When you are underfed, you will obsess about food. Period!

The best solution to achieving peace with food and your body is to embrace an intuitive eating approach to food. Intuitive eating is eating based on your physiological hunger and satiety cues not based on situations or emotional cues. So, that means eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are satisfied or comfortably full.

Now, I recognize that for the chronic yo-yo dieter, this is not necessarily easy. It requires you to explore how you got to where you are today in your eating habits and understand deeply what it means to become an intuitive eater. During this process, it is important for you to begin to get rid of the diet mentality that you have, and to truly believe that you will never diet again. If you continue to think there is “just one more diet, this time I’ll be good”, then you won’t be able to move forward to becoming an intuitive eater. You will continue to have foods that are “good” and “bad” and you will continue to think of yourself as being “on” or “off”.

To help you get started on the path of intuitive eating, commit to the following 3 steps:

Throw out all the diet books and pre-printed menus from magazines that you have tried over the years. Make a commitment to yourself that you will no longer be tempted by new diets that come out because you are committed to learning to listen to your body.

Get rid of the bathroom scale. Do you weigh yourself every morning or even several times per day? Does the number on the scale influence your mood for the day? Most likely it does, even if you don’t consciously realize it. Your weight fluctuates day to day and is a measure of more than just fat. It includes your bones, organs, muscle and substances such as water, food and waste that pass through your system. Begin to measure your success by other factors other than the scale such as improved blood work, blood pressure, mood, energy level and overall satisfaction with your progress toward becoming an intuitive eater.

Seek out caring support to help you on your journey. Becoming an intuitive eater is a process and the amount of time it takes will depend on how long you have been dieting, how strong your diet mentality is, how long you have been using food to cope with your emotions and how willing you are to trust yourself. It is very important for you to surround yourself with like-minded people who can provide positive feedback and support.

You were born with the natural instinct to eat when hungry and stop when full. Chances are you lost this ability due to all the diets you tried and the media exposure to quick-fixes. You can reclaim what you were born with and achieve guilt-free eating, a body you love and a life free of dieting. Intuitive eating is the answer you have been looking for.

Reach out to me if you are interested in going from Dieter to Intuitive Eater! There’s no shame in asking for help!

How to Love Your Body Just As It Is

If you’ve been searching for the perfect diet to get the body you’ve always dreamed of, chances are you are still searching.

The truth is, chronic dieting and yo-yo dieting will not give you a body you love.

Diets are not maintainable.

Dieting to drop the last 10, 20 or 50 pounds can only backfire. It is only a short-term solution to a problem that needs a long-term solution. Chances are, when you reach your “ideal weight” (What is considered ideal anyway? A topic for another blog), you won’t be able to stay there for long. The reason for your need to overeat or feed your emotions will still be there.

You may be asking yourself, “If diets won’t get me the body I love, what will?”

Here’s the solution: learning to love your body right now.

The way to start loving your body is to step away from diets. If all you’ve ever known is dieting, this might seem a little scary. But, when you stop dieting, you become more in tune with your body’s internal hunger cues. You are able to listen to your body and feed it when and what it wants.

Here are 3 steps you can take now to start loving your body:

Respect your body. Respecting your body does not mean accepting your body how it is now and thinking you have to stay this way the rest of your life. It means accepting your here and now body. When you respect your body, treat it with dignity and provide your body with what it needs, then you’ll make room for loving every aspect of your body and what it does for you.

Trust your body. Start listening to your body’s inner hunger cues and feed them. Your body has the ability to tell you when it’s hungry, when it’s full and what it wants to eat. When you listen to what your body wants, you’ll start to change your relationship with your body and see it differently.

Stand in front of the mirror and tell your body what you love about it, whether it’s a physical trait or something your body has done for Use this as a way to show your body the same support that it has given you over the years- I love my ears, eyelashes, smile, butt or stomach.

I love how strong my arms are.

I love the freckles across my cheeks.

I love my legs because they take me where I need to go.

I love my hips because they help me carry my child.

When you love and respect your body, something wonderful happens. You no longer obsess over it and see weight release happen without all the worry. Having the ability to do this will help you succeed on your intuitive eating journey and you might be surprised to learn what your body is capable of when you show it love!

If you’re looking for more tools and techniques to learn how to love your body, come join my Love Yourself, Love Your Body free giveaway event happening now until September 30^th. I have complied 25+ experts who are giving away programs and gifts to help you make peace with food, enjoy guilt-free eating, a life free of dieting and a body you love. Grab your free gifts here.

If you’d like help on learning to love your body again, contact me here. I can help you.

Freedom From Dieting….Finally!

Here we are again! Mid January, the start of a new year and the media bombardment of promises to help you fulfill your weight loss goals for this year.

Click here to watch and listen , or read below.

You can’t read a magazine, listen to the radio or watch TV without a commercial or advertisement touting the latest diet, meal replacement drink, detox program or miracle pill to help you lose the weight in the new year.

http://www.youtube.com/edit?video_referrer=watch&video_id=ilA9ohhy2vc

If you suffer with emotional eating, yo-yo dieting and just feel lost, trying another diet this year is NOT your answer. Time and time again it has been proven that diets don’t work for long term weight loss. They work great short term if you are good at “following” what someone else tells you to do, what to eat and how and when to eat. But by now you’ve realized it’s not your FOREVER.

The solution to your struggles is reclaiming what you were born with…and that’s the ability to become an intuitive eater. That means learning to eat when you are hungry and stop when you are comfortably full. If you’ve been ignoring your inner signals for some time now, this might sound difficult to do.

But the ability to be an intuitive eater is buried inside of you and I would be honored to help you bring it back up to the surface so you can live your life free of food worry and free of the pain of diet failure.

Sounds great, but you want to know HOW, right?

Join me in my new program called Freedom from Dieting Inner Circle

This is a small intimate group coaching program; I’m only taking 6 people max so you can get the attention you need.

It’s perfect for you if you are ready to take action and realize you’ll accomplish more by having the accountability, structure, and support you need to succeed.

What to hear all the details?

I’m offering a FREE Break Free of Dieting Strategy Session for you where we will discuss your biggest challenges preventing you from achieving your weight loss goals, and we will see if the Freedom from Dieting Inner Circle program is right for you.

Click here and submit your request for this Free Session.

4 Dangers of Chronic Dieting

While many people can admit to dieting at some point in their lives, there is a difference between wanting to lose 1. weight the healthy way (slow and steady) or relying on fad diets that promise quick fixes.

The problem with fad diets is that they will most likely last just as long as it took you to lose the weight. Instead of losing weight gradually over time and being able to maintain the weight loss, these short-lived diets will actually end up costing you more than you bargained for.

Because of their quick-fix results, many people unfortunately get caught up in the cycle of dieting for a specific event, gaining the weight back, and then trying a new fad the next time. This is known as chronic dieting.

While these may work in the short-term, there can be negative long-term effects!

4 Side Effects of Dieting

1.Slowed Metabolism– When dieting consists of a drastic decrease in caloric intake, your body will compensate for this “starvation mode”, which will slow the rate of your metabolism. While many diets claim to speed up metabolism, they are actually doing the opposite.

2.More Challenging to Lose Weight– Over time, after numerous fad diet episodes, it will be harder for your body to lose excess weight, and even harder to gain back the lean muscle mass that you have lost. After a quick-fix diet, youhave lost mostly water weight and muscle, so when you do gain weight back, it is not muscle, it is fat. Therefore, although you may lose initial weight, the chances of you gaining even more fat back after your success is extremely high.

3.Altered Mood– What happens when you get hungry? You get angry! Not having the appropriate amount of food in your system can affect your mood because of hormonal changes and a lower level of blood sugar. With less energy being consumed, the more tired you become as well. Is losing weight in an unhealthy fashion worth being tired and in a bad mood for?

4.Nutrient Deficiencies– Some diets restrict certain nutrients such as carbohydrates or complete food groups, such as dairy. When you aren’t eating well-balanced meals, you are likely missing some essential nutrients that can lead to deficiencies and disease.

The next time you hear of a fad diet that is too good to be true, it probably is! There are many ways to lose weight fast, but they certainly are not healthy and over time can lead to further health complications. Eating well-balanced meals and letting your body guide you while incorporating consistent exercise and movement that feels joyful and gentle is the true way to feeling at home in your body and living a happier and healthier lifestyle.

Your turn to take action: Want off the diet roller coaster? Sign up below to Break the Spell of Diets in 3 Days! You’ll be amazed at the feeling of freedom!

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