Tag Archive for: dieting

3 Reasons to Say Yes to Intuitive Eating

Every week I receive dozens of phone calls asking me for a meal plan to help them lose weight. Most of my clients have tried the most popular diets on the market with little success. Instead of giving them another meal plan with strict rules to follow, I will instead point them in the direction of Intuitive Eating.

 

Intuitive Eating is not a weight loss program. Unlike diets, the focus is not on weight loss. It’s on creating a healthy relationship with food as you work towards regaining trust in yourself and food choices. Intuitive Eating is the opposite of a diet. You will not follow a set of rules set forth by a money-making corporation but instead, you will learn to listen to your body’s natural hunger and fullness signals.

 

Your relationship with your body is affected by many years of dieting. Marketing campaigns are centered around the theory that everyone needs to look a certain way. However, everyone’s body is different, and we aren’t all going to look the same.

 

Intuitive Eating embraces that idea that everyone is different and that all bodies aren’t meant to look the same. That is why Intuitive Eating does not come with a set of rules and instead, focuses on restoring your relationship with your body.

 

Losing weight may make you happy short term. But when you gain that weight back, you are the opposite of happy. You can find inner peace and restore your relationship with food and your body through Intuitive Eating.

 

Here are 3 reasons to say yes to Intuitive Eating:

 

1. You are in charge

 

After years of dieting, you aren’t listening to your hunger and fullness signals as a guide to your eating, you’ve been listening to external rules. Intuitive Eating reminds you that you are in charge of your food choices and your body. You have the inner wisdom to know when you are hungry and when you are full, when you should start eating and when to stop.

 

2. You will live life guilt-free

 

Every diet has a list of restrictions with the food you can and cannot eat. But what if you happen to want to eat a food that’s on the “avoid” list? You can deny your desire for only so long. So, you indulge, and the guilty feelings and harsh self-talk start. With Intuitive Eating, you learn to enjoy the foods you love without guilt, and without the worry of overeating.

 

3. You will restore trust in yourself 

 

Marketing campaigns for diets want you to think that everything you have done before you start their diet was wrong. Diets will make you think that you have been choosing the “wrong” foods for years or doing the incorrect workout regimen. However, you are in charge of your body and what it needs. The diets have stripped you of trust. But Intuitive Eating can help you regain that trust!

 

WholeBody Trust: Intuitive Eating for a Peaceful Life Program is now open. Click here to learn more!

A Closer Look at What Intuitive Eating Is—and What it is Not!

Have you ever taken a deep dive into understanding what Intuitive Eating really is? There are many misconceptions around the concepts and lessons promoted within Intuitive Eating—but the confusion stops here.

Intuitive eating is a self-care eating framework that helps you attune to your internal body signals, break the cycle of chronic dieting, and heal your relationship with food and your body.

Intuitive Eating is NOT a diet, it is NOT a meal plan, and it is certainly NOT “for weight loss”.

Benefits of Intuitive Eating

There are currently over 120 studies that show Intuitive Eating:

  • Increases body appreciation
  • Improves life satisfaction
  • Increases motivation for movement
  • Increases intake of nourishing foods
  • Improves overall health
  • Decreases disordered eating behaviors (i.e., bingeing)

But What Exactly is Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive Eating was developed by two registered dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. It “integrates instinct, emotion and rational thought”. (www.intuitiveeating.org)

It is a process that enables you to attune to what your body needs and allows you to trust what your body is telling you.

With Intuitive Eating, there is no diet plan, counting calories, macros, weight check-ins, or “off limit” foods—it’s exactly the opposite!

Intuitive Eating instead focuses on teaching you to eat and think OUTSIDE of the diet mentality and diet culture messages.

The focus is on internal cues like your hunger, fullness, and satisfaction, while helping you to move away from the external cues you are so accustomed to using to guide your eating, such as food rules and restriction.

In other words, Intuitive Eating…

 …4 Things that Intuitive Eating Helps You Achieve

(1) Encourages you to become the expert of your own body.

 Believe it or not, we are ALL born Intuitive Eaters! We are all born knowing how much we need to eat, when to eat, and what we would like to eat, yet unfortunately, as we grow up, this ability is clouded by the messages of diet culture and the environment in which we grow up in.

Does this sound familiar?

  • Having to finish your plate at dinner time in order to watch TV or get dessert.
  • Hearing the messages that “thin is best” or “to be thin is to be healthy”
  • Feeling that choosing “good” vs “bad” foods is a direct reflection of how you should feel about yourself.

All these messages, both from your caregivers and diet culture, teaches you to ignore your internal cues and not trust your body.

As you grow older, you often find yourself feeding into these messages, rules and regulations set forth by diet culture.

You are led to believe that in order to “be healthy”, you must follow a diet and/or restrict your foods, but this is not true at all. Your body knows what is needs and wants, it’s just time to listen to its messages.

(2) Helps develop trust in your body and gives you the confidence to make food choices based on your needs.

The diets have stripped the trust you had in your body when you were born. That might sound distressing, but the good news is that you can regain that trust in yourself again!

When you fully ditch the diet rules and give up dieting for good, you will learn to trust your body again, and you will be amazed at what your body is capable of telling you!

 

(3) Allows you to develop a healthy relationship with food.

Intuitive Eating takes the focus off weight loss, the scale, diet plans, cleanses, and everything that has to do with “diet culture” and instead focuses on developing a better relationship with your food choices and your body.

Intuitive Eating is rooted in ten principles to help move you away from the rules and regulations of dieting. These 10 principles help you attune to your thoughts, feelings, and signals, while learning to integrate health recommendations from the outside world.

 

What Intuitive Eating is NOT

Now that you know a little bit about what Intuitive Eating is all about, let’s discuss what Intuitive Eating is NOT!

4 Things Intuitive eating is NOT…

(1) A diet.

With Intuitive Eating, there is no counting calories, daily weigh-ins, lists of foods to eat vs not eat—in fact all of these things are discouraged when practicing Intuitive Eating.

(2) The hunger/fullness diet.

While Intuitive Eaters do check in regularly with their hunger and fullness signals—there is SO MUCH more to it than this!

Intuitive Eaters approach every meal with curiosity—they ask themselves questions such as:

  • How hungry am I today?
  • Do I want a second serving?
  • How will I feel after I eat ____?

Approaching a meal with curiosity versus judgement (like many dieters do) allows you to learn from situations, like getting to a place of overfullness after a meal or allowing yourself to get too hungry at the end of a long day. Important lessons are learned from these experiences.

(3) A non-dieting weight loss approach.

Intuitive Eating places NO emphasis or pressure on losing weight. The conversation around body weight is instead from a weight-neutral lens. In other words, it promotes physical and mental well-being regardless of one’s body size.

Intuitive Eating does not promise weight loss or any expectation of losing weight.

(4) The “eat whatever I want, whenever I want” mindset.

Yes, Intuitive Eating does promote giving yourself unconditional permission to eat and promotes eating in a way that makes you feel your best—but this doesn’t mean it is a free for all.

At the beginning of your Intuitive Eating journey it is very common for people to eat a lot of foods they had previous restricted, however the drive to eat in this way decreases over time.

Over time, you will normalize these once “forbidden foods” and view them (and all foods) as neutral. All the foods you’ve been dying to have will soon become a part of your normal eating pattern in a way that feels great (and not fearful!)

There you have it!

To get a taste of the awesomeness of Intuitive Eating, check out my Intuitive Eating Basics Course. It’s a LOW investment with HIGH returns!!

 

Click HERE to grab this deal!

Busting through 5 Common Myths about Intuitive Eating

By now, the concept of Intuitive Eating is not new. More and more people are hearing about it, but quite a few really don’t know what it’s all about. There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about Intuitive Eating and today, I’d like to bust through some of them.

 

5 Myths about Intuitive Eating

1. Intuitive Eating will help you lose weight if you eat when hungry and stop when full.

Not necessarily! Intuitive Eating is NOT a weight loss program. Unfortunately, some of the Intuitive Eating language had been co-opted by diet culture and is being used to sell weight loss programs! Ideas such as eat when hungry and stop when full, or eat mindfully is framed in a way to promise weight loss.

Intuitive eating is a self-care eating framework to help you heal your relationship with food, mind and body. Focusing on weight loss interferes with mending this relationship. Therefore, it’s in your best interest to ignore those messages of diet culture and using Intuitive Eating for weight loss if you truly want to find true peace with food.

2. The main focus of Intuitive eating is on instinct and your gut.

False! I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “trust your gut”. And I do believe in trusting your gut instinct in many things, including eating. But Intuitive Eating isn’t ONLY about trusting your instinct. Intuitive Eating also interconnects emotion and cognition.

For example, if you want to eat ice cream but you have thoughts swirling around in your mind that is shaming you for wanting this ice cream, this is a product of diet culture. What you want to do is challenge these distorted thoughts while honoring your desire to eat the ice cream.

Thanks to diet culture, there are a boatload of cognitive distortions running rampant in your mind. Part of the Intuitive Eating work I help my clients with is to learn how to reframe these irrational thoughts into more rational, realistic thoughts and beliefs.

3. Intuitive eating means you can eat whatever you want, whenever you want.

Not at all. I always tell people that Intuitive Eating is NOT instant gratification. See it, want it, eat it! Nope! One of the principles of Intuitive Eating that often gets misconstrued is—”giving yourself unconditional permission to eat”. People often assume this concept means to eat anything and everything at any time. However, this is far from the truth!

When you first start the Intuitive Eating journey, this concept of “unconditional permission to eat” can often cause you to have intense cravings and feel “out of control”. But this is quite expected as you’ve been depriving yourself of these foods for so long.

Intuitive Eating encourages you to stop and ask yourself questions before choosing and eating a food. “Am I hungry? Tired? How did this food make me feel last time I ate it”, etc.

This is far from see it, want it, eat it.

4. Weight gain is expected with Intuitive eating.

False! No one knows what your body will do once you give up dieting and embrace Intuitive Eating. Only your body knows this!

Some people gain some weight (generally if they came in to this process at a weight below their set point and/or with an eating disorder); some people lose weight, and some people stabilize their weight, meaning they are no longer weight cycling.

Weight is not a factor in Intuitive Eating. While I know this might be hard for some people to accept, it is important to come to terms with it. It’s impossible to create a healthy, neutral relationship with food AND focus on weight loss. The goal and focus are COMPLETELY opposite.

5. There is no structure to eating with Intuitive Eating.

No way! The truth is there is structure, but that structure is determined by your inner wisdom NOT by dieting.

With traditional dieting there is a “rigid structure”. Someone, or something is telling you what to eat, when to eat and how much to eat. Follow this structure, and you will lose weight (their promise – but as we know, that’s a false promise because the results are short-lived).

While there is no rule book with Intuitive Eating in regards to when, what and how much to eat, it is important to consistently nourish yourself as part of your self-care. For people new to the Intuitive Eating journey, putting a nourishing flexible plan in place might be needed to ensure you are meeting your body’s basic needs. Note the key work there – flexible!  This flexible structure will allow the natural rhythm of your body to shine through, and you will find your “natural structure” for eating will form.

Want to learn about more Intuitive Eating myths? Join me today at 12:15 pm EST for a Facebook Live training where I will unveil even more myths. And, you will have an opportunity to ask me anything about Intuitive Eating! Join me HERE.

I’ve Been “Bad” Today, So I Might as Well…”

If you’ve ever dieted (and you likely have if you’re reading this blog), this statement probably sounds too familiar to you. It goes like this:

I’ve been bad today, so I might as well…

  • “Start again tomorrow.”
  • “Start fresh on Monday.”
  • “Just try to do better tomorrow.”

The “start again tomorrow” mentality is your diet mentality speaking and comes from eating what you consider “bad” foods, and/or not exercising and/or binge eating etc.

Typical Scenario:

 You are being really “good” on your diet, eating healthy all day long. But then, you were triggered by a fight with your partner, and you ended the night in a pint of ice cream. You now say: “My whole day is ruined.”

You feel as though the entire day is “ruined” because while you ate “clean” or “healthy” for the whole day, you canceled all that out with what you ate at night. When you reach this point, you feel defeated and focus on all the “damage” you’ve done. This in turn has you completely abandoning your “healthy eating” habits while engaging in a free-for-all with the foods you’ve deemed “bad”. Until of course, you “start over”.

Starting Over Cycle

The above scenario triggers the responses I mentioned above, which are:

  • “I’ll figure it out later”
  • “I’ll start fresh Monday”
  • “I’ll start again tomorrow”

However, once “tomorrow” or Monday comes, the cycle will repeat itself.

Healthy eating all day > indulge in a “bad” food > free-for-all >“I’ll start again tomorrow.”

This cycle is deeply rooted in diet mentality and can be very dangerous to both your mental and physical health.

Getting Out of the Trap

While you understand this trap you fall into, and you promise yourself you won’t do it again, it inevitably happens.

So how can you NOT fall into this trap?

  1. Get rid of the diet food rules: Yes, the first step is to stop dieting and to throw away all the rules you have around food. Oftentimes, you are fully aware that these rules haven’t served you well, yet it’s a scary thought to give them up. I get it! That’s why support is so important, you don’t have to do this alone. Click here to join my free Facebook community and get help throwing away the rules.

 

  1. Stop trying to eat perfectly. There is no one perfect way to eat! When we strive to be perfect, the moment you deviate by even one bite, you are ready to throw in the towel. This is called the “what the hell effect” (sound familiar?)

 

  1. Acknowledge Nutritional Needs Diversity (yes, I made that term up!). Basically, everyone has unique nutritional needs. No two people are the same, so trying to follow a set of rules and eating pattern that is dictated to you will always lead to you falling “off the wagon” (diet language), and “I’ll start again tomorrow.” The key is to figure out what feels best in your body to meet your unique nutritional needs.

The diet mentality runs deep. But you CAN chip away at this mindset. Have confidence in yourself and have patience!

And, of course, reach out for support if you feel it’ll be helpful:

Free Facebook Group: Intuitive Eating for a Diet Free Life

Free Session: www.talkwithbonnie.com

 

How to Eat Intuitively When Your Partner is Dieting

You’ve done it! You’ve committed to never diet again, to ditch diet culture and to truly learn to trust your inner wisdom as your guide to eating.

 

Congratulations. I know this was a big commitment!

 

And I also know how hard this can be if your partner or significant other has decided to jump on the New Year diet bandwagon.

 

So, how do you stay true to your desires and goals, while your partner is weighing and measuring food, avoiding carbs, and talking about it being a “good” or “bad” day? And worse yet, if they are telling you what YOU should or shouldn’t be eating or doing in relation to your food, body or clothes that you wear.

 

I’m going to break it down for you in 3 simple steps.  

 

1.Communication is Key!

The success in any relationship comes down to communication and respect. Ask your partner if they can set aside time to speak with you, that there is something important you want to discuss. When that time comes, explain that you want to share some things about your past that they may not know or realize. While your partner may know about your past or present food struggles, they may not know to what extent it has impacted your life.

 

Be open and be specific. Share about your dieting history, explain how dieting has made you feel, and the shame you’ve experienced each time you’ve regained the weight you lost.

 

2.Gently Educate About Intuitive Eating:

It’s possible your partner doesn’t understand what Intuitive Eating is. Or, they have misconceptions about it. This is not unusual. There’s a lot of misinformation on the internet about Intuitive Eating. Many people think if you stop dieting and embrace Intuitive Eating, you don’t care about your health.

 

This is a fallacy.

 

Explain to your partner that you are actually TAKING CARE of your health, both physically and mentally, by no longer dieting.

 

It’s important to have compassion for your partner as they have been swimming in the same diet culture toxic waters that you have. Lucky you, you are swimming out of these waters, but your partner may not be ready. At the very least, you’ve planted seeds, and have each agreed to respect each other’s journey.

 

3.Set Boundaries:

It’s possible that after the conversation, your partner will be convinced to join you on your Intuitive Eating journey. That’d be great! But the reality is, they may not be ready for it. And that’s okay too! The important thing is for you to set boundaries.

 

Here are some examples:

  • No talking about good and bad foods
  • No comments about what I am eating, or what you’re not eating
  • No diet talk, at all!
  • No body talk, whether that be body bashing or comments about weight loss

 

Consider what other boundaries you’d like to make. Make a poster board, and hang it in the kitchen/dining room, or any room where these conversations might happen!

 

At the end of the day, it’s always nice to have the support of your significant other. Give them time and space to learn, just like you’ve done. My guess is that over time, they will be right along side you eating intuitively!

 

CLICK HERE to join us at today’s LIVE training.

Missed the Live training? No problem. Replay is available inside the Facebook Group!

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.

What Do You Do When You’re Just Not Hungry?

Interesting question, isn’t it? I teach intuitive eating to women and men who are tired of dieting. And their initial understanding of intuitive eating is to “eat when hungry and stop when full”. But the question I hear all the time is “so if I’m not hungry, I shouldn’t eat?”

The answer is yes, and no. Allow me to explain.

To Eat or Not to Eat

When you are coming off dieting, it’s very possible that your hunger signals are silenced. That means they are there, but you don’t hear them. You probably only hear them when you are realllly hungry and your brain is screaming at you “feed me, feed me, I’m starving.” But when the first signals of hunger begin, you probably don’t hear them.

This means you need time to attune to them, to recognize them and to answer them. So, if several hours have passed since you’ve eaten and you don’t necessarily hear those gentle signs of hunger, then yes, it is important for you to eat anyway as part of your self-care plan of nourishing yourself throughout the day.

On the other hand, if you have become familiar with those gentle signs of hunger and “lunch time” comes around and you don’t feel hunger, then it’s totally cool to wait until you feel and hear the hunger.

Remember, “lunch time” as dictated by a clock is still dieting.

Silenced Hunger Signals

There are several reasons why your hunger signals may have silenced. Here’s the top 3:

  1. Dieting: You’ve been dieting for a while and you begin your meals based on when the diet tells you to eat. Even if you’re not hungry, you stop and eat to “stay on plan”.

 

  1. Numbing: You decide to drink a non or low caloric beverage such as coffee, tea, diet soda or water INSTEAD of eating because even though you are hungry, you’re not “supposed” to eat now so you’ll drink instead. The fluid then numbs your signals and tries to fool your body into thinking you ate. But there’s no fooling your brilliant body.

 

  1. Chaos: You don’t make the time to hear your hunger signals because you are so busy running around working, chauffeuring the kids to their extra curricular activities, shopping etc… So you push off eating and before you know it, you don’t hear those signals anymore.

 

Can Hunger Signals Return?

Yes, absolutely yes! You need to practice listening for them and they will return. It’s important to be patient with yourself as you learn to reacquaint yourself with your body.

First Step?

Pop your name and email into the boxes below and start to break the spell that diets have over you. Then, you’ll have the space to work on reigniting your hunger signals.

 

Food Deprivation Leads to Rebound Eating

Overindulging in a food item that you restrict is common if you are a chronic dieter. It actually makes a ton of sense that you’d have intense cravings for a food you won’t allow yourself to have.

 

When you restrict a food(s) that you really want to eat, at some point the deprivation becomes so great that the backlash is what we call rebound eating.

 

Rebound Eating in Action

You start your diet on Monday and promise yourself you will not eat any chocolate. After all, you’ve been enjoying chocolate almost nightly and find it difficult to stop at just a few squares.

 

Your friend from out of town comes to visit and brings you a box of chocolates. You thank her and think to yourself “I’m not going to eat this; I’m being really good on my diet”. So, you put the box of chocolates away in the cabinet, high up on a shelf.

 

The next day, your partner spots the chocolate, opens the box and enjoys a piece. He puts the box away, but now you know it’s open. You are feeling a little anxious, you want a piece but at the same time you don’t want because you’ve been “so good”.

 

As it turns out, because you’ve been “so good”, you decide you deserve to have a piece of chocolate, almost like a reward for being good on your diet. You take the box down, open it up and pop one into your mouth.

 

You realize you didn’t really taste it; you ate it too quickly. You decide “I’ll just have one more”.

 

And then, the inner critic voice starts to show up. “Oh darn, I blew it. Why can’t I just keep to my diet. I’m just going to finish what’s there, there are only 4 left, and then I promise I won’t have chocolate again! My diet starts tomorrow!!”

 

Once you finish the chocolate, you plop down on the couch and feel miserable. You feel so guilty for eating the chocolate, so disappointed in yourself and decide as a punishment, you will skip dinner. The only problem is, you then find yourself bingeing into the evening.

 

The above example is one way the backlash can happen when you deprive yourself of a food you love.

 

It’s important to know that eating doesn’t have to be this difficult. Learning to eat to honor your body and your health while enjoying all foods (including chocolate) is part of being an intuitive eater.

 

It’s time to make peace with food.

 

Are you ready?

 

Click here to schedule a time to chat about how you can change your relationship with food.

 

Is Your Dieting Harming Your Daughter

Grace walked into my office with her mom by her side. Grace is a 9 year old adorable girl who has been restricting her food intake. She fears getting “fat”.  Due to her restriction, she has lost weight and is now off the bottom of growth chart.

 

I spoke with Grace and her mom for a while to get a bit of the family history and to understand when and how the restriction began. I then asked Grace’s mom to take a seat in the waiting room so I can talk with Grace alone. It was very important for me to build a good rapport with Grace so she will trust me.

 

Grace openly told me that she started restricting for several reasons. She broke it down as follows:

  • Her mom and sisters were dieting. They were speaking about foods that are good and bad, and were replacing foods they once ate, such as pizza, with alternatives such as cauliflower pizza. This made her feel like these foods wouldn’t be good for her either, so she stopped eating them.

 

  • Her friend’s moms were putting them on diets. Grace told me about at least 4 friends who bring only salad to school for lunch because they are on diets. Their moms told them they have to lose weight.

 

  • All the women in Grace’s life seem to hate their bodies. She’d constantly hear comments such as “do I look fat in this dress?”. “Is my butt sticking out of these pants?”. The message is clear. Fat is bad.

 

Grace wanted to be healthy, she really didn’t want to restrict her intake, but she was afraid of gaining weight. Grace started working with me each week to learn how to eat to nourish her body and to regain the trust in her body again.

 

You’re probably thinking that Grace is so young to be dealing with these fears around food and body. Perhaps as a teenager it would seem more common. But more and more young girls are falling into disordered eating patterns and being diagnosed with eating disorders than ever before.

 

The reason?

 

The diet culture that we live in today! The messages that women and young girls receive is that their bodies are not good enough the way they are. They must mold and sculpt them into a thin, model-like figure to have any worth in this world. It is so sad to me that so many women spend so much of their days worrying about what they are eating and how they look to others. And this worry is being passed down to the younger generation.

 

Do you have a daughter(s)?

 

Are you aware that the way you speak to yourself about your body is influencing the way she feels about hers?

 

Are you aware that she watches every move you make when you eat and when you choose to avoid grains/carbs with dinner?

 

I know for me, when I was dieting and restricting, the messages were loud and clear to my two daughters. They knew that I wouldn’t eat dinner until I calculated how much I’d eaten throughout the day. That would determine how much and what I ate for dinner. What kind of messages was I sending to them? It was a very loud message that I couldn’t trust my body to guide my eating. I had to trust a calculator.

 

I was able to break free of this restriction and teach my daughters that their bodies are smart and has all the wisdom housed inside as to what, when and how much to eat. It’s a matter of listening and trusting.

 

Here are 3 things to do right now if you want your daughter(s) to have a future of food peace and body love:

 

1. Stop restricting. Even if you think you are not restricting, you probably are. The diet mentality is very sneaky and shows up in ways you wouldn’t imagine. Be honest with yourself. Are you substituting zoodles for pasta? Are you choosing cauliflower pizza for regular pizza? Are you ordering 2 veggies instead of a potato and veggie at the restaurant? If yes to any of these questions, then you are restricting.

 

2. Watch your language. Be very careful how you speak in the home, especially when your daughter is around. Do not be judgmental of food, such as this is a “good” food and this is a “bad” food. Putting labels on food demonizes food and ups the fear of eating those foods.

 

3. Stop body checking. When you are getting dressed and looking in the mirror, be aware of your comments about yourself and your body. And, be aware of your non-verbal behaviors as well. Looking in the mirror and wincing or grunting are all heard and seen by your daughter. Instead of instilling hatred for your body or body parts, teach what it means to have respect for your body.

 

The truth is, I recognize that this is all easier said than done. It takes time, patience and fighting back against the messages you hear every day. But if you want to save your daughter(s) from going down the rabbit hole of dieting, food fear and body worry, then now’s the time.

 

Do you want a brighter future for your daughter? It all starts with you. Book a call with me www.TalkWithBonnie.com.

 

 

Pushing through Intuitive Eating Resistance

Something I’ve heard several times from potential clients is “I’ve tried intuitive eating already and it didn’t work”. And so, the search for the next diet continues.

 

I get it. With all the messages swirling around you about the body you “should” have, the weight you “should” lose for your “health” and the false promises that once you lose the weight your life will be all sunshine and rainbows, it’s no surprise that when you “tried” intuitive eating before, you treated it like yet another diet.

 

It’s not your fault! If you’ve been dieting for years or even decades, your mindset around food and your body is that of a dieter. You are battling food at every meal and have come to have a love-hate relationship with food.

 

The Reason for the Resistance

Intuitive eating is not a weight loss method. If you’ve tried intuitive eating with the hope that you would lose weight, then more than likely that’s why you were disappointed.

 

Intuitive eating is a practice of listening to your own body signals when making decisions around food, rather than listening to external sources telling you what, when and how much to eat.

 

When beginning your intuitive eating journey, it’s most important to shelve the desire for weight loss. Now I’m not saying to forget about this desire, just acknowledge it’s there but you aren’t acting on it right now. In this way, you are paving the way to changing your relationship with food without a hidden weight loss agenda.

 

Bottom Line

If you’ve “tried” intuitive eating but still secretly hoped you would lose weight, then you didn’t “try” intuitive eating.

 

This small tweak can make all the difference.

 

Ready to give it a go? Just head on over to www.TalkWithBonnie.com and request a complementary phone call.