Tag Archive for: inner body wisdom

The 3 Biggest Mistakes that Keep You Yo-Yo Dieting

It’s really tough to stop dieting when you’ve been dieting for so long. Even if you intellectually know that the diets have never “worked” long term for you, you are still afraid to stop.

 

This isn’t your fault. The diet industry has you believing that you have failed the diets, yet it is the other way around. The diets have failed you.

 

The data is strong. Ninety-five to 98% of dieters regain the weight they lost within 1-5 years and 1/3-2/3’s regain even more. Are you included in this statistic?

 

Weight cycling (losing and gaining, losing and gaining) is more detrimental to your health than staying at a stable weight even if that weight is “higher” than what society deems “acceptable”.

 

Yet, you continue to diet.

 

There are 3 big mistakes that keep you yo-yo dieting.

 

Here they are:

 

Mistake #1: You are Stuck in Diet Mentality

Diets can be very tempting as they promise to help you see results quickly or with a magical ingredient that helps you lose weight without even trying. Even if you think you’ve given up dieting, keep in mind that the diet mentality is very sneaky and can show up in ways you wouldn’t have thought.

For example, if you skip carbs at dinner because you ate them for breakfast and lunch, you are still dieting. If you eat a smaller lunch because you ate a larger breakfast, you are still dieting. If you skip the cocktail hour at the wedding for fear you will overeat, you are still dieting. The list goes on and on.

See if you can identify the ways the diet mentality is sneaking up on you.

 

Mistake #2: You Put Your Self-Care on the Back Burner

In the hustle and bustle of day-to-day responsibilities, do you often forget to take the time to care for yourself? Do you feel guilty if you do take care of your own needs?

I get it. You have people that rely on you. But the problem is that when you tend to others needs and ignore your own, you are serving from an empty vessel. Instead, if you fill up your own cup first, you are serving others from a place of abundance.

It’s not being selfish to take care of yourself. Does it take practice? Yes, for some people more than others. But that’s okay. You have to start somewhere.

What is one act of self-care that you will start doing for yourself?

 

Mistake #3: You Don’t Trust Your Inner Wisdom

You were born knowing exactly how to eat. We all were. But over the years, you’ve moved away from listening to that inner wisdom and instead, allowed diets and gurus to tell you what, when and how much to eat. This caused you to lose trust in yourself.

But you know what? You can learn to trust again. It takes practice, support and accountability. And it takes someone who cares about you to guide the way.

 

Let’s stop making these mistakes. Start by popping your name and email in the boxes below to Break the Spell of Diets in 3 Days.

 

Let me know if you have any questions along the way.

 

 

Intuitive Eating is Your “Factory-Installed” Mode

More times than not, a client will sit opposite me (in my office or on video chat) when the light bulb goes on! The light bulb that I’m referring to is the fact that being an intuitive eater came along with their body when they were born. It’s “factory installed” but unfortunately over the years, it became faulty. Today I’d like to explore the reasons why.

Well-Meaning Parents

By no means am I looking to blame your parents. Most parents are well-meaning, although I do recognize that this is not the case all the time. But in most instances, parents want their children to eat well and grow well, and they believe the latter is determined by the former. So, as a baby, if you pushed away breast or bottle as a sign to mom that you had enough, but she felt that you didn’t, she would encourage you to nurse a little longer or drink a little more from the bottle.

As a toddler, when you were more interested in playing than eating, perhaps your mom forced you to sit at the table until you had x amount of bites, or she’d run after you with a forkful of food. In each of these instances (and others that I’m sure you can share), you are getting the message at a young age that you cannot trust what your body is telling you. Mom must be right after all. It’s no surprise then that now, as an adult, you continue to have mistrust in your body’s signals.

The Diet Industry

You decided that it was time to lose weight and you followed a diet because that is the cultural paradigm on how to “manage” your weight. But with each diet you followed, you lost further trust in your own body’s signals. You ate when, how much and what the diet told you to, regardless of whether you were hungry or not. You played by the rules, but with each diet game you played, you moved further and further away from your “factory installed mode” of eating.

Quick story: I have a friend who was on a diet. We were out together and at 11 am she pulled out a bar to eat. She said, “I’m not hungry now, but this diet I’m on says I must eat every 2-3 hours, so I am”. That sounded so wrong to me, but it wasn’t my place to say anything to her.

Have you found yourself in this type of situation too?

The Thin Ideal

It’s very likely that you’ve been effected by society’s messages of the thin ideal, the concept of the ideal body of a woman being thin and slender. That to be worthy in this world, you need to possess a thin body. This concept has led to many disordered eating patterns and eating disorders in young girls and women of all ages.

If you’ve been striving to achieve this body, then more than likely you’ve been ignoring your “factory installed” mode of being intuitive and eating when hungry and stopping when comfortably full.

Resetting to Factory Installed Mode

When the light bulb goes on for my clients, their immediate thought is “we need to come with an instruction manual”, but then they follow that with “wait, we do, It’s inborn.

Yep!

So how do you get back to the way you were born?

  • Step 1: Say NO to Diets – Recognize that diets don’t work long term. Sure, maybe you lost a few pounds (or more than a few) when you were “strict” and “following” the diet. But it wasn’t sustainable and for the majority of people, it never will be.

 

  • Step 2: Tune Inward, Not Outward – Decide today that you will no longer base your eating on external sources, whether that be a diet, a health coach or a guru you find on the internet. If you stop and listen to the signals your body gives you, you will become acquainted with them again. Do know, however, that it takes time. If you’ve been dieting for decades, those signals have likely silenced. Be patient. You’ll be glad you did.

 

  • Step 3: Reject the Thin Ideal – As hard as this step might be, come to terms that your genetic blueprint probably isn’t for that thin body you’ve been chasing after all these years. Give up the chase, work on respecting your body wherever it is now, and allow nature to take its course. Only your body knows what shape, size and weight is natural for it, so take the pressure off your body (and yourself) and enjoy the life you are living.

 

I have many resources that can help you as we move into 2020. Schedule a complementary call with me and let’s restore your body to it’s “factory installed mode” of intuitive eating.

You Mean I Don’t Have to Ever Diet Again?

“Why haven’t I heard about intuitive eating before today?”

 

This is a common question that I get from clients who sit opposite me in my office (or on Skype) when I share with them how they don’t ever have to restrict or deprive themselves of their favorite food again.

 

They don’t quite get it at first. They come to see me because they don’t feel well in their bodies, they are carrying around excess weight, and they figure they need another diet to help them achieve the weight loss that they’ve been chasing after for years. They expect me to give them a list of foods to eat and those to avoid and a “meal plan” for them to follow.

 

When I tell them that I won’t do that, they look at me in shock. But then when I explain to them that they have it within them to make food decisions for themselves, they perk up and want to hear more. By the end of the session, they are SO RELIEVED that I am NOT giving them a meal plan it’s palpable.

 

It’s not surprising to me that many women still haven’t heard about intuitive eating. This is because they are surrounded by diet culture every where they turn. At home, at work, in school, in temple, in church, and in the local park. Add to that magazines, television shows, movies, radio, social media, and the list goes on and on. It’s hard to escape the idea that you need to be thin to be worthy, and if you are in a larger body, then you must be lazy, unhealthy, and undisciplined.

 

This has led you to continuously strive to lose weight through dieting and “be better”.

 

But dieting is exhausting. All the counting, tracking, weighing and measuring, it gets to be too much at some point. Yet that’s what you know and that’s what you continue to do.

 

There is another way! It’s called Intuitive Eating.

 

Intuitive eating is eating based on your physiological need to eat, not eating based on situations you find yourself in or emotions you may be feeling. Intuitive eating is learning to eat based on your hunger cues and to stop eating based on your fullness cues.

 

You are born with this ability yet its buried deep within you from all your years of dieting.

 

The good news is that you can reclaim being an intuitive eater and recapture the pleasures of eating. It will take time but it IS possible and quite honestly, is the only way to end your battle with food and your body.

 

I invite you to reach out to me to get started on your intuitive eating journey. We can work together privately, or you can join my online program where you work through the process with group support.

 

Just click HERE to send me a message that you are ready to end dieting for good. We’ll figure out together which is the best option for you.