Tag Archive for: intuitive eating

“Eat this, Don’t Eat That” Never Works: 2 Case Studies

After years of being told “eat this, don’t eat that”, it’s logical that you just want to be in charge of your own eating decisions. Yet, that can be a scary proposition if you aren’t sure any longer how to eat. It’s more than likely all the food rules you’ve been given have been for the end goal of weight loss, and mostly under the guise of “for your health”.

But what if we put weight loss on the side for now. What if learning how to eat to manage blood glucose levels, lower cholesterol levels and improve energy can be done without the worry of your weight?

That would be amazing.

Charles’s Story

Let me share a story with you. Charles (name changed for privacy) came to see me with a diagnosis of uncontrolled diabetes. He has type 2 diabetes for many years, is on several medications but is still having a hard time getting his blood glucose into target range. He’s been focusing all these years on losing weight to manage diabetes and has been busy counting calories and restricting his intake of wholesome food that he was told to avoid if he wants to lose weight. “Eat this, don’t eat that” became a mantra he heard all too often. So, he chose pre-portioned meals and snacks that were marketed for weight loss. He didn’t lose weight, nor was he able to bring his blood glucose down.

I suggested he put the worry of weight loss on the side for now and instead focus on understanding what is happening is his body in terms of glucose tolerance and insulin resistance. He started working with my in my Healthy Living with Diabetes Program™ and he quickly learned how his body processes carbs, how to plan meals to match this ability, and the many variables aside from food that can impact his blood glucose.

Fast forward 4 months and Charles’s blood glucose and A1C are well within target range and he has minimized his risk of diabetes complications. Did he lose weight? It just so happens he did, but the weight loss was an OUTCOME of his habit and behaviors changes. It was never the focus.

James’s Story

Now let’s look at another client, also with type 2 diabetes, not well-managed. His lovely wife reached out to me for help. She is so worried about James’s health (name changed for privacy), she’s at her wits end.

James had a history of yo-yo dieting, having lost and gained 100 pounds a few times in his life. But now things are different. He was diagnosed with diabetes yet he’s not taking responsibility to learn how to manage his blood glucose levels. She made an appointment to see me, and I asked her to speak with James about joining the session. He did.

While James was reluctant to share too much in session, he did listen as I shared with him the process I use to educate and empower my clients to learn about their diabetes, and how to best care for themselves. He did seem somewhat interested but was unable to commit to stop dieting in an effort to get healthier.

James’s wife told me after the session that he doesn’t like people telling him what to do, which is what happened his whole life when dieting. I assured her that in weight-neutral diabetes care, it’s the exact opposite. The client is in the driver’s seat. I am a passenger and act as a co-pilot in teaching and educating.

Letting Go of the Diet Mentality

Whether you have diabetes or not, if you’ve been dieting to lose weight with hopes of getting “healthier”, chances are you are still dieting and on the proverbial diet roller coaster (and not much healthier!). Getting out of the diet mentality is not easy, but it IS possible. It means trying something you’ve never tried before – that is to learn to trust yourself to make the best decisions for yourself around food and eating.

Free Resource if You Have Diabetes

If you have diabetes and want to learn how to manage your blood glucose without restriction and dieting, download my free eBook: 5 Keys to Manage Diabetes Without Dieting.

Free Resource if You’ve Been Yo-Yo Dieting

If you’ve been chronically dieting and are at your wits end, take this short journey towards Breaking the Spell of Diets in 3 Days Online Experience (or pop your name and email in below).

And, if have any questions along the way, be sure to reach out.

3 Ways to Stop the Food Shaming

Do you find yourself feeling “guilty” or “bad” after eating certain foods? Do you categorize these foods as ‘fattening” or “cheat meals”?

Or are you the one judging others based on what they eat?

Either way, you may be experiencing food shame. The concept of classifying food as “good” or “bad” and then judging others, or yourself, based on what you eat is called food shaming.  This can negatively impact your health.

Food-shaming is criticizing or judging someone (or yourself) for eating something that doesn’t match your definition of what food is “good”.

Examples of food shaming include judging your girlfriend for choosing pizza over a salad or making comments to your partner who has skipped breakfast, or shaming your colleague for being a vegetarian.

Food shaming can also be internal, when you shop at the grocery store and deprive yourself of buying ice cream because it’s “bad”, or you beat yourself up for purchasing the chips.

This is just a short list of the common types of food shaming that happens every day. The reality is that we need to watch what we are saying to others and to ourselves about food choices.

When You Shame Yourself for Your Food Choices

Judging yourself and speaking negatively about your food choices stems from influences and messages that you receive throughout life. These messages come early in life from parents and build throughout your years from the media, friends and even healthcare professionals.

Food shaming can lead to further problems down the road. Food shaming can create such a strong fear of what to eat that you become so rigid that you risk your physical and emotional health from either malnutrition, disordered eating, or eating disorders.

3 Ways to Stop the Food Shaming

  1. Embrace Intuitive Eating: Learning to break the spell that diets have over you and dismantling diet culture messages will help you relearn to trust your food choices again. Tuning into your physiological cues to eating is only one part of the journey. Developing a strong backbone to the culture you live in while learning to neutralize all foods will help you stop the food shaming.
  2. Acknowledge and Reframe Negative Self-Talk: When you find yourself going down the rabbit hole of negative self-talk around what you ate, immediately push pause, and recognize your inner critic at work. Let your inner critic know that you hear her but don’t value what she has to say any longer. Reframe into a more positive accurate statement that is aligned with who you are and the goals you have set forth for yourself.
  3. Remove All Judgement Around Food: When you label foods as “good” or “bad”, you essentially are giving power to these foods and placing them on a pedestal. This is why when you have a trigger and reach for these foods, you tend to overeat on them followed by judgement, guilt and shame. By removing the labels from all foods and taking the conditions off these foods, you neutralize them and they lose their allure.

Defend yourself from food shaming by breaking the cycle of dieting, stop labeling foods as good and bad, and reach out for support when you need it. You don’t have to do this alone!

Over time, you will find yourself more at peace with food so you can live your life to the fullest!

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.

3 Big Reasons to Take Down Diet Culture

How many times have you seen, heard, or gotten into a heated discussion on the topic of the latest diet trends or weight loss tricks?  It’s everywhere these days, on TV, social media, books, and people claiming they have the hot new approach to help you shed weight fast!

Being a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, I am constantly asked what I think about the latest diet trend that has been pushed on us.  I have spent the last many years of my career helping clients break the spell of diets and dismantle Diet Culture beliefs.  And, when I’m asked those questions about recommending a new diet, it reminds me that there is so much more work to do to help people learn to trust in themselves again.

A major reason that I am so passionate about helping people break free from diets is because of the harm that Diet Culture causes.  Diet Culture is a system of beliefs that focuses on and values weight, shape and size over health, and it equates thinness with higher status and worthiness.

I see the damages of Diet Culture starting younger and younger. Little girls just 9 and 10 years old asking their moms for a diet. These little girls covering themselves up with sweaters and baggie clothes because they are ashamed of their bodies.

This makes me sad. But it also makes me angry at Diet Culture and lights the fire under me to continue to push back against Diet Culture and help women, and these young girls, love themselves for the beautiful person that they are  and respect their bodies for the amazing things it does every day to keep them alive.

3 Reasons to Shut Down Diet Culture

#1: Diet Culture is Dishonest

“Stay away from carbs, they make you fat”.

“The reason you aren’t losing weight is because of all the dairy you consume”.

“Cut out gluten from your diet, it’s really bad for you”.

Diet Culture has spent a lot of time and money trying to convince you that there are certain foods out there that are “good” or “bad’ for you. The food they characterize as “good” will help you lose weight, while the “bad” foods will make you gain weight.

Food fads are encouraged by Diet Culture with the support of the food industry. When scientific research is published, Diet Culture cherry-picks the information that best supports their agenda and launches campaigns to herd consumers to jump on their bandwagon, spending money on their products, lining their pockets.

Listen, there is a difference between implementing nutrition guidelines for your health, and demonizing foods because of the belief that it’ll make you gain weight (or prevent you from losing weight). Now, you might say “no, I’m avoiding this food because it’s not good for my health”. If in fact, this belief is not tied in any way to your thoughts about your weight, then yes, perhaps not eating that food might be in your best interest. But if that belief is tied in any way into your body size, then it is being co-opted by Diet Culture.

If you need further clarity on this, just hit reply!

#2: Diet Culture Disregards Your Best Interest

Any eating pattern that emphasizes how you look over your mental and physical well-being is detrimental. Diet Culture thrives on black-and-white thinking. Eat foods on the “good” list and you’ll lose weight (“good”); eat foods on the “bad” list and you’ll get fat (“bad”). Thin = win in Diet Culture’s mind.

Here’s the thing – people are literally dying to be thin and Diet Culture completely disregards this. Maybe you have suffered with an eating disorder or know someone that is. It destroys your life. Every waking moment is spent worrying about what you’re eating, wearing, how you look, how other people are looking at you etc. It is all consuming. Yet Diet Culture continues to push and push and push.

Your body does so many amazing things for you every day. Just imagine if you didn’t have the use of your hands, legs, or eyes. Would how small your body is be important then?

There is peace in accepting your body as it is in this very moment. This doesn’t mean that you’re “giving up”. This just means that you refuse to let Diet Culture push you any longer. And, instead, you will focus on giving your loving body the respect it deserves, while feeding it well and moving in a way that feels good.

#3: Diet Culture Destroys Your Self-Worth

One of the biggest reasons to shut down Diet Culture is because it’s constantly giving you the message that you’re not good enough. It makes you question your self-worth, often calling attention to things you never considered flaws before.

“Got a muffin top? Never eat these 5 foods again to get rid of it!”

“Do your thighs touch? Do this cleanse to fix that problem!”

Messages like these are toxic to women of all ages. It’s teaching them from a young age that they are nothing more than a sum of their parts and if those parts don’t add up to an unrealistic ideal, they need to do whatever it takes to get there. This has the potential to lead them into a dangerous relationship with food and exercise, twisting their self-perception. Diet Culture destroys your self-esteem and ultimately your self-worth. You come to believe that you are not worthy of love, not worthy of that job you are going for, not worthy of friendship, kindness etc. Diet culture steals your happiness and breaks you down.

It’s Time to Defy Diet Culture

The truth is that body size doesn’t always equate with health. There are plenty of people who are in smaller bodies who have a plethora of health issues. On the flip side, there are people in larger bodies that have no medical issues at all. Diet Culture wants you to be at war with your body because that’s how companies who support it make their billions of dollars every year.  Don’t fall for these tricks, it’s time to break free of Diet Culture and get off the hamster wheel of dieting, for good!

Do you want to join me in shutting down Diet Culture? Let me know in the comments below

The Truth About Weight Loss that you NEED to Know

Fear of weight gain is one of the biggest obstacles people face when they are deciding whether to begin their intuitive eating journey. And I understand this fear!

If you’ve been dieting for years working hard to lose weight to achieve a body shape and size that you’ve wanted for so long, the idea of NOT dieting anymore is very scary.

I uncover the truth about weight loss in this episode of the Diet Free Zone Show.

 

If you haven’t yet subscribed to my YouTube channel, you can subscribe HERE. New shows coming!

And if you have a suggestion for a topic, just comment below and I will add it to the show content roster.

 

Why You Don’t Need Willpower in Intuitive Eating

In speaking with prospective clients, there’s one comment that comes up a lot in the many conversations we have. That is “I just need more willpower”.

I really do understand the reason behind this comment from so many women who have been struggling with their weight and on diet after diet. It’s because diets require you to have willpower.

You have your lists of “legal” and “illegal” food. But at some point, you want to eat something that’s on that “illegal” list. But you can’t, the diet says NO! You white knuckle it as long as you can, you have willpower! Until you don’t anymore.

So, when one of my email subscribers emailed me the following questions, I just knew I HAD to address it. Here’s the question…

“I’ve been trying intuitive eating, but I just don’t have the willpower to stick with it. How can I strengthen my willpower backbone?”

Before I get to the answer, let’s get clear on your dieting history. It probably goes something like this:

You’ve tried them all. Weight Watchers, Atkins, Weight Watchers, the Blood Type Diet, Weight Watchers, The Scarsdale Diet, Weight Watchers, the HCG Diet, Weight Watchers. Oh, did I mention Weight Watchers?!

It is SO easy to get sucked into sensational claims that come with each of these diets. But what you are finding is that they don’t work. Well, they do “work” if by working you mean losing weight, only to gain it back.

Yes, I won’t disagree. All diets can work in helping you lose weight. But can we agree that they ultimately don’t work, seeing you are here looking for another way?

Throughout all the diets you’ve been on, you’ve tried SO hard to have SO much willpower so you can resist your favorite food that the diets deem bad for you. And, the reason you’ve been sucked into many fad diets is because you only have to endure them for a short period of time and therefore only need to have a little willpower until the diet is over. 

Many diets proudly state “Lose 30 pounds in 30 days”, or “6 weeks to flat abs”. I know this is very tempting. And you think to yourself “ok, I need to have willpower for 30 days (or 6 weeks) and that’s it…I’ll reach my goal and the diet and misery will be over.”

But we know that you can only resist your favorite food for so long. Maybe you can last the 30 days or 6 weeks. Or maybe you can’t. Either way, what happens? When your willpower weakens and you have an emotional trigger, you cave and have the very food you’ve been longing yet been restricting. And now you don’t just have a serving, you have several servings, and it eventually turns into a binge. Next thing that happens >>> feelings of guilt, shame, hopelessness, failure and the negative self-talk and body bashing.

Well, the good news is this.

In the practice of intuitive eating, there is no willpower required. Yay! You learn to take all the conditions off your food and when you do, the power those foods hold over you are no more. Even better, once you learn to trust in your inner signals as your guide to eating, you will no longer need to rebel against the diets that are telling you what to eat and not to eat.

Because YOU are in charge!

So, back to the original question that came in from one of my followers:

“I’ve been trying intuitive eating, but I just don’t have the willpower to stick with it. How can I strengthen my willpower backbone?”

There is no willpower in intuitive eating. What I want you to recognize is if you are still relying on willpower, then you are still harboring a diet mentality. And this will cause you to continue to stumble on your intuitive eating journey.

Give thought to how many times a day or week you think to yourself that you need to have willpower to resist a food.

How many times do you call up your willpower before heading out to a party or dinner with friends?

Call yourself out on it. Recognize it. The more you do and the more you remind yourself that you don’t need willpower in intuitive eating, the more you will see the diet mentality dissipate.

Need help? Just pop your name and email in the boxes below and get started on your FREE 3 day online Break the Spell of Diets Experience. These 3 days will be the starting point you need to start regaining body trust and never rely on willpower again.

 

 

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!

 

  1. 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!

 

  1. 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

3 Tips to Help You Eat Mindfully

“I think before I eat now”.

This is a quote from my client Melinda (name changed to protect her privacy) who I’ve been working with. She originally came to see me with some GI disturbances. But as we got into a discussion in that very first session, it was apparent that she was stuck in a diet mentality with lots of food rules.

Melinda is a busy working mom. She’s constantly trying to balance her family life and work schedules, not an easy feat. She found that her eating was haphazard, and she wasn’t feeling at her best. While she wanted to make changes, she also wanted me to tell her exactly what to eat, when to eat and how much to eat. She told me that she’s a very good “rule follower”. But I proposed something different to Melinda, learning the art of mindful eating.

I introduced Melinda to the concept of mindfulness, the state of being present in the moment without judgement. First we started with mindfulness in her every day activities, and then we moved into mindfulness in her eating. As she began practicing mindful eating, she realized it’s not just about what she’s eating (as she always thought), but how she is eating.

Mindful Eating

Mindful eating encourages you to think about your food choice, consider the taste, texture, aroma and temperature of your food, and stay aware of how eating this food makes you feel during and after the eating experience. It helps you stay tuned in to hunger, satiety and satisfaction.

While mindful eating is something you can learn, the reality is that when life throws you a curve ball (i.e. a pandemic, death, job change etc), it’s easy to fall back into the rushed, haphazard, grab-and-go lifestyle you were doing for a while. However, it IS possible to continue your mindful eating practice during these times.

Here are some tips to help:

  1. Set up your home environment to support mindful eating practices. This means put all food away in the cabinets and pantry and not laying around on the table or counters. You will be less apt to grab on your way in and out of the kitchen.

 

  1. Avoid distractions during mealtime. While it may be tempting to catch up on the news while eating dinner, this takes your attention away from the food you are eating. Make a commitment to keep the television off and keep all phones away from the table (this goes for your family members too).

 

  1. Pause mid-meal to check in. A quick break mid-meal can help you determine if you are enjoying the food you are eating, and if you are starting to get satisfied. This practice will help you stay mindful and honor your body and taste buds.

 

You don’t need food rules. All you need is to slow down and be aware of your surroundings and food choices. You will find that you have a greater satisfaction with the foods you are eating, and you’ll feel a renewed energy.

 

Here’s How to NOT Eat Your Emotions (and a Free Master Class Friday 5/15/2020)

A few years ago, I had oral surgery. I had a tooth extracted, and then an implant placed.

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced having a tooth pulled or an implant placed, but I’ll tell you this is a very long process. And not very pleasant.

During one of many visits to the oral surgeon, she told me that we had to delay finishing the procedure. I was so upset. I wanted to be done with this already. And here she is telling me we cannot move forward for about 2 months.

I was upset, frustrated, and irritated…and you know what the oral surgeon told me to do as I was leaving her office? She said:

“Bonnie, stop at the bakery and pick up a treat. You’ll feel better!”

Whaaattt?

I swiftly turned around to look at her. For a moment, I was inclined to go into a speech about how I don’t feed my emotions. But I thought the better of it and decided to smile and leave.

The surgeon’s immediate response to my feelings of disappointment is not uncommon for many people. Experiencing an uncomfortable emotion? Feed it. It’s easier to feed the emotion that to feel the emotion.

But is this in your absolute best interest? Is numbing the pain or stuffing it down with food the best way for you to take care of you?

No.

Many times, your eating response to an uncomfortable emotion can feel impulsive.

Let’s examine this further.

The definition of the word impulsive me

ans “actions based on sudden desires rather than careful thought; based on emotional impulses; acting under stress or emotion.”

When acting impulsively, you are acting quickly or acting without fully examining the consequences.

So, for example:

  • when you impulsively grab for the cookie when you walk in from work because it was sitting on the counter

 

  • or you impulsively reach for the ice cream in the freezer after you have an argument with your partner

 

These are examples of you acting without fully examining the consequences. And it’s only after you finish the cookie(s) or the pint of chocolate fudge ice cream that you stop and wonder “why did I do that, again?”

Does this resonate with you?

Do you suddenly find yourself eating without even thinking about it first?

Then you feel guilty and the negative self-talk starts (“there you go again, you just can’t’ control  yourself”) and you start to criticize yourself for “not wanting IT bad enough”? And we know what IT is, right? Weight loss!

Impulsive eating can be an emotional roller coaster with triggers at almost every meal or time of day that can lead you to overindulge.

And more often than not, there is some emotional reason behind that impulsive decision to eat. It’s just that sometimes it’s not so easy for you to figure it out.

But, you have the power within you to identify the WHY behind your impulsive and emotional eating. You must first become aware in order to have change.

I’m going to show you how to start this process in my FREE Master Class called ‘Your 3 Step Plan to End Emotional Eating’. This master class will lay out the exact 3 steps that I take my private clients through to help end emotional eating.

In this class, you will discover:

  • The real reason behind emotional eating (and it has nothing to do with food)
  • What kind of emotional eater you are, and the specific strategies that will work for you
  • The 3 steps to break free from emotional eating

Click HERE to save your spot!

3 No Diet Day Action Steps (and a Free Online Workshop)

Today is International No Diet Day! At first, this may sound like “yay, I can go off my diet today and eat whatever I want, how awesome!”. But it doesn’t mean that at all!

International No Diet Day is a worldwide celebration of body acceptance and a day to declare a life free from dieting.

Mary Evans Young started this movement in 1992 after battling anorexia and body image issues. She wanted to help herself and her friends to fully embrace their bodies for a day! Little did she know that it would become a global movement!

Stop what you’re doing right now, look into your eyes in the mirror, and declare this the first day of NO MORE DIETING, NO MORE RESTRICTION, NO MORE BODY SHAMING! You got this!

Drowning in Diet Culture

In this age of social media, it’s almost impossible to go a day without hearing about a celebrity’s new diet miracle or seeing pictures of famous new moms strolling out of the hospital in skinny jeans and stilettos just days after giving birth.

Everywhere you turn, there are people trying to lose weight either by dieting, over-exercising, or both. There is an entire diet culture focused on highlighting the lives of famous people in order to feed your insecurities.

This is all a marketing ploy! The Diet Culture is a multi-billion dollar industry designed to make you feel bad about yourself. The diet companies aren’t interested in your well-being; they’re interested in how they can get you to hate yourself so you’re willing to pay them to make everything better. It’s a scam; you don’t need them – you’re fabulous just as you are!

Debunking the Diet Myth

Diets are set up to make it seem as if it’s your fault they don’t work, but the truth is, it’s them.

Dieting is a cycle of weight loss followed by weight gain, which leads to negative body image and the resolution to try harder next time. So you try again. And the same thing happens. So you try again. And so on, with some people dieting for decades without “success.”

Is that you?

As you know, I have dedicated my career to teaching people how to respect and love their bodies without continuing the chronic dieting lifestyle.

3 No Diet Day Action Steps

Today, I ask that you take part in this effort to change the mentality you have about dieting.

  1. Challenge the idea that there is a “perfect” body for everyone. Appreciate the beauty in everyone, including yourself.
  2. Look past the smoke and mirrors of the diet industry. Question the validity of their claims and scrutinize who benefits the most from chronic dieting.
  3. Commit to this day being free of diets, restriction, weight obsession, food worry…and the first day towards true food freedom!

I know this is a scary thought! But I do have faith in you! And, you know that I am here to take this journey with you; I will walk with you hand-in-hand! Reach out HERE if you’d like to jump on the phone for a quick call to explore this further!

FREE ONLINE WORKSHOP

If you’re experiencing emotional eating, know that diet restriction will only make it worse!

Learn how to triumph over emotional eating in my 5 Day FREE Online Workshop, starting Monday May 11, 2020!

There will be daily live training, an online community of support and PRIZES!!

Learn more and register at THIS LINK!