Tag Archive for: self-compassion

Rebound Eating- What is it & how do I stop?

You may have heard the term “rebound eating” and find yourself asking “what is this”?

 

In a nutshell, when you restrict the foods you really enjoy eating until you’ve reaching a your breaking point, the backlash is rebound eating.

 

Think of it as your body’s last ditch effort to get your attention after you’ve decided to ignore what it’s trying to tell you—it’s also saying, “Hey! You’re seriously depriving me over here!”

 

As a chronic dieter, rebound eating is something you may have experienced in the past. Does this cycle sound familiar?

 

Reducing the number of calories you consume to less than what your body needs > deprive, deprive, deprive > hit a wall where you can’t take the deprivation anymore and your restriction takes a nose dive > binge, binge, binge > compensate with intense exercise—“I need to work this off!”> REPEAT!

 

This common cycle is harmful to your physical and mental health, and truly take a toll on your body. It leads to disordered eating patterns, and if not responded to immediately could lead to other health complications (i.e., dehydration, brittle hair/nails, fatigue, brain fog, and more).

 

How to Stop Rebound Eating

 

The only way to put an end to this cycle of rebound eating is to stop the restriction. That means to stop dieting. So what is the alternative you might ask?

 

Intuitive eating!

 

Making peace with food and giving yourself full permission to eat while connecting to your inner wisdom to guide you is the way to stop this destructive cycle. When you embrace intuitive eating and bring all foods back into your eating world, you no longer obsess about those foods.

 

Intuitive eating is a practice you are cultivating, and it’s a lifelong journey (it’s not a quick fix!). If you truly want to end the cycle of restriction-deprivation-rebound eating/binge eating – repeat, then consider committing to stop dieting.

 

Pop your name and email into the boxes below for a free experience to Break the Spell of Diets in 3 Days.

 

Want more? Join an amazing supportive community of women inside my membership called The Intuitive Nutrition Circle (aka The IN Circle) where the are learning to integrate gentle nutrition into their intuitive eating practice. Click here for all the deets.

Practicing Intuitive Eating During Challenging Times

We all experience challenges within our lifetime. These challenges often make us stronger. Yet, while we are in the midst of the challenge, we often feel the very opposite of strong.

If we stop and think for a moment what those challenges are, we see there are many. Divorce, job loss, relationship turmoil, and illness to name a few. Everyone reacts and acts differently in these situations. But what I’d like you to think about is how does it affect your Intuitive Eating practice?

If you’re just at the beginning of your Intuitive Eating journey or you’re a seasoned Intuitive Eater, when life throws us curve balls, it can impact how intuitive we are in our eating and food decisions. Suddenly it doesn’t seem so important anymore. You might be thinking:

  • “I don’t care, I’m just going to go through the drive -thru”, why does it matter?”
  • “I deserve to eat xxx, I’m so sad.”
  • “I can’t deal with paying attention to my eating during this time, I just don’t have the head space.”

I get it! Sometimes when what you are going through is so overwhelming, it’s easier to move away from being present, to distract yourself from what’s going on around you, and to just zone out.

But how do you feel afterwards? How does being distracted and not paying attention to what you need impact how you handle this curve ball? Most of the time, it makes it more difficult.

Here are 3 ways to stay true to your Intuitive Eating journey during challenging times:

1.Engage in self-care: Sit down and brainstorm how you can take the best care of yourself during this time. What is it that you need? Connection with others? Time to relax and unwind? Boundary setting? Spiritual connection? Movement? Once you tap into what you need, make a plan and block out time each day to meet those needs.

2.Practice self-compassion: Ask yourself how would you speak and/or what would you do for a friend who was experiencing this challenge. Then extend that same compassion to yourself. This is the hardest thing to do if you’ve never practiced self-compassion. Being kind and gentle with yourself has been shown to decrease anxiety and depression and enables you to be more present with yourself in a soothing way.

3.Nourish yourself consistently: Your appetite might be affected when you are under stress. For some, they turn to food to numb out and to protect themselves from feeling pain. For others, they turn away from food as the stress response decreases appetite and they just “don’t feel like eating”.

It’s most important in these situations to consider nourishment as a self-care act. Even though your hunger signals might be blunted during times of stress, you still need to eat. Remember, the Intuitive Eating principle of Honor Your Hunger is NOT A RULE. There are times when we need to eat, even in the absence of hunger. And this is one of those times.

Consider setting an alarm to ring at various internals during the day as a reminder to eat. When things settle down, you will likely see that your hunger signals have returned.

There are always going to be difficult times. Taking the best care of yourself during these times will help you get through it.

If you are experiencing something tough going on in your life now, let’s connect to see how I can support you.

Thinking of you…

 

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!

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

5 Mindful Living Tips to Cultivate a Healthy Relationship with Food and Body

I’m really enjoying my focus of Mindful Living so far. I wrote about this intention for myself in last week’s blog…if you didn’t read it yet, click here.

I am making a concerted effort to be present in everything I do. Last Saturday night, my husband and I went out with some friends. I told my husband that I planned to NOT look at my phone the entire night so I can be present with my friends. I invited him to do the same. We had a great time, engaging in the conversation and laughing…A LOT! Laughter is so good for the soul, let me tell you. It was great.

I gave some thought as to what other areas I can be more mindful and I am sharing them with you in today’s blog. You may find these helpful for yourself on your journey towards a healthier relationship with food and body.

5 Mindful Living Tips

Tip #1. Be Present While Prepping Your Meals

In truth, when I am cooking, I am often listening to a podcast, talking on the phone or daydreaming. Very rarely am I engaging with the actual food prep. I’ve decided to change that. I’m practicing being fully present while chopping the veggies for the salad and hearing their crispness, stir-frying the onions and peppers and listening to the sizzle, and taking in the wonderful aroma of the simmering chili. All this awareness has increased the satisfaction of my meals.

Tip #2. Get More Quality Sleep

I find that doctors don’t talk enough about sleep, but sleep is critical to well-being. While the general recommendation is to get 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night, each person is individual and some need more or less. Sufficient sleep allows your body to rest and repair and be more attentive and productive the next day.

I’ve had some trouble sleeping lately and it’s really affected my energy level. My husband surprised me and bought me a weighted blanket. I had never really heard of them, and when I did some research, I found that weighted blankets are useful for a number of conditions, including difficulty sleeping.
It took me some time to get used to it, but I have to say that it has helped my sleep. It’s not only quantity of sleep (in other words how many hours you get) that’s important, but it’s also quality of sleep. This weighted blanket is allowing me a deeper, more peaceful sleep. I’ll keep you updated as to how this progresses for me.

Tip #3. Find a Physical Activity You Enjoy

Moving your body in a way that feels good for you is very important. If you exercise because you think you “should”, chances are you’re not really loving it and you’re going to burn out. For me, I love exercise and moving my body. But I have found over the years that the type of exercise I enjoy has changed.

As part of my mindful living intention, I’ve been staying fully present during my workout sessions. When my mind wanders (which is does!), I gently bring it back to the present moment. What I’m finding is that by being fully present in this manner, I am more tuned in to how I feel during and after the exercise.

Just today when I finished my workout at the gym, I thought to myself, “I really don’t enjoy the treadmill and elliptical anymore”. I generally mix up my workouts during the week…sometimes I take a class at the gym, sometimes I walk/run on the treadmill/elliptical and sometimes I work out at home using my DVDs. I used to really enjoy my time on the treadmill/elliptical because it was a time that I can catch up on my TV shows that I don’t get a chance to watch. But today, I realized that I don’t enjoy that anymore. My body feels so much better after I take a class, be it kickboxing, dance, weight training etc. I love moving to the music and the comradery of the other ladies in the class.

My new mindfulness practice has made me aware of this, and I will be making a change in how I move my body.

What about you? What feels right in your body?

Top #4. Experiment with Meditation

As much as I talk about the benefits of meditation, I’ve had trouble getting into a consistent practice. My initial vision of meditation years ago was sitting on a cushion, feet crossed , thumb and pointer finger pinched together – you get the idea. But I’ve since learned that there is no one way to mediate. Do what feels right for you.

I’ve used some apps such as Calm and Headspace, but nothing regularly. So I will be experimenting with using these apps more consistently, likely before I get under my weighted blanket in the evening.

Do you have any tips for meditation? Let me know in the comments please!

Tip #5. Put an End to Negative Body Talk

When we talk to ourselves, we can be our own worst critic, do you agree? Most often, when we are being harsh with ourselves, we say things that we would never think of saying to a friend.

Why is that okay? It’s not!

In my experience working with my clients, this negative talk comes up mostly around body shape and size. Thinking of your body in a negative, shameful manner causes damage to your self-esteem. Your body’s job is to keep you alive, and it works hard to do so.

What if you tried to treat yourself and your body with pure compassion and kindness? Pay yourself a compliment each day about your amazing characteristics that others love about you.

In my quest to live more mindfully, if I try on an outfit and don’t like the way it looks, I will pay attention to the words I say. It’s not my body that is the problem. This dress, pants, or outfit is just not cut for my body. Period, end of story.

There you have it. Five mindful living tips to help you cultivate a healthy relationship with food and body in this new year. Which will you join me in? Comment below?

 

Need help living your life more mindfully? Click HERE to schedule a complementary chat. Looking forward to connecting.

When Others Judge Your Body

Healing your negative body image is an important part of your journey towards WholeBody Trust. And, contrary to popular belief, this piece doesn’t have to wait until the last leg of your journey. This is a common misconception by many.

“I’ve made peace with food, now I have to work on my body image.” is something I hear often. And, to be totally honest, that’s what I initially thought as well. But as I myself dove into learning how to heal my own body image and learned how to guide others, it became more apparent that healing your relationship with food and your body go hand-in-hand.

Your negative body image didn’t happen overnight. And while I’m not going to go into detail here about how to heal your body image, I will say that there are a lot of facets to how your body image developed (more on this in my Body Image Healing Course, free to you when you join Intuitive Eating Mastery Circle).

Let me tell you about Amanda (name changed to protect the privacy of my client). Amanda came to me for help after many decades of yo-yo dieting. She was fed up with losing and gaining weight, ultimately ending up weighing more than when she started her dieting career. She knew dieting wasn’t the answer, but she was still afraid to give it up.

Amanda took a leap of faith and we began working on intuitive eating, a self-care framework for eating and nourishing the body that includes 10 principles. As we worked through my 5 step process and the intuitive eating principles, one theme kept coming up – her negative body image.

Amanda spend so much time over the years hating on her body, that she was having a difficult time accepting that she may not lose weight. She worked hard on really appreciating and respecting her body for all it does for her daily to keep her alive, and this helped her tremendously. But there was one thing that was still a big issue, and this was her perception that others are judging her for being in a larger body.

Can you relate to this? You are starting to feel okay with where your body has landed on this journey, but you still worry what others will think of you?

Truth be told, we don’t know if others are thinking or saying anything about your body. We cannot control other people’s thoughts but what we CAN control are our own, and how we care for our body.

Amanda worked hard on taking the best care of her body as she could, and that included nourishing it regularly, engaging in gentle movement and exercises that felt good in her body, getting enough sleep each night and managing her stress levels. She bought some new stylish clothes that fit comfortably and she started getting out more with friends, laughing, and living her life without a focus on her body.

And you know what she found?

Amanda realized that she has so many blessings in her life with good health, wonderful family and amazing friends. She no longer wanted to waste hours upon hours worrying if others were judging her body. Once she made this commitment to herself, her confidence started to increase, and she no longer cared what others might think or say about her body.

We live in a culture where we are surrounded daily with messages that we need to shrink our bodies and while I hope that this will change in the very near future, the fact remains that we need to be okay with who we are no matter what others think.

Now, this might mean taking some steps to change your habits and behaviors and that’s okay! You deserve to take the time and make the investment in yourself so you can live your best healthy life.

And as far as other people judging you/your body? As you work towards healing your negative body image and cultivating a positive body image using self compassion and mindfulness strategies (among others), you will come to feel better in your body and love all of yourself without regard to anyone else. And, this will show as you carry yourself through the world.

If I can support you in any way to come to this place of peace with food and your body, please reach out to me here or email me at Bonnie@DietFreeRadiantMe.com. It’s my mission in life to help women (and men) such as you!

 

When the Diet Mentality Creeps Back

The diet mentality is sneaky. If you’ve committed to giving up dieting and are working through the process of intuitive eating, I’m so happy for you. But you might have noticed something that’s disturbing – the way the diet mentality and food police show up when you least expect it.

As a person who is no longer dieting, you may not realize that at times, you are actually still dieting. This is called pseudo, or unconscious dieting. You may not think you are dieting, but in actuality, your dieting thoughts translate into dieting behaviors.

Examples of Pseudo Dieting

  1. You mentally track how many calories or carbs you are eating per day.
  2. You make a decision to buy or eat a certain food based on the calories it contains.
  3. You don’t eat past _______ time even if you are hungry.
  4. You feel badly because you ate ___________.
  5. You have a list of 10 or so foods that you feel safe eating without a worry of overeating.
  6. You feel hungry now, but just ate 1 ½ hours ago, so you drink water instead of eating (“how can I be hungry?”)
  7. You only eat carbs in the early part of the day, rarely or never with dinner.
  8. You eat dinner before you go to a wedding.
  9. You eat a light lunch because you ate a larger breakfast.
  10. You avoid gluten, just because.

There may also be certain situations in your life that trigger your diet mentality. These may be new experiences that make you feel uncomfortable, unsure of your place in the world, or bring up uncomfortable emotions.

Examples of Life Situations that Trigger Diet Mentality

  1. Moving to a new community where you don’t know anyone.
  2. Starting a new job.
  3. Separating from your spouse or getting a divorce.
  4. Becoming a mom for the first time.
  5. Becoming a grandma for the first time.
  6. Losing a loved one.
  7. Getting fired from your job.
  8. Marrying off your first child.
  9. Retiring after decades of working.
  10. Dealing with a troubled family member.

All these situations point to new phases in your life, new experiences or challenging times in which you haven’t yet had to learn coping strategies. So, you fall back into diet mentality and try to control your food, since that’s been so familiar to you for so many years.

Be Gentle with Yourself

When the diet mentality rears it’s ugly head, please be gentle with yourself. If you allow your inner critical voice to bash yourself, telling you that you’ll never “succeed” at intuitive eating, you will harm yourself more than help yourself because this will be your entryway back into the dieting world.

I once had a client who told me that if she gains even ¼ pound, she talks harshly to herself because that’ll get her to “be better”.

On the contrary, this type of talk causes you to feel beat up, abused and running right back onto the diet treadmill.

Instead, remind yourself that you are doing the best you can at this very moment. And, the fact that you have recognized the sneaky diet mentality is actually a WIN! The more you call out these diet-y thoughts, the sooner you will continue to recognize them before they do damage and be able to shoo them away.

Support and Guidance

In order to handle these curve balls that life throws your way, it’s important to have support! That support can come in any variety of ways from an accountability partner, online support group or a private coach.

End of Summer Special on Intuitive Eating Support

Take advantage of my End of Summer Special and grab 50-75% off my most popular intuitive eating programs. Choose one or both, whatever feels right for you.

Check it out here. But hurry, this offer expires on Monday, September 2, 2019 at midnight Eastern.

3 Powerful Approaches to Defying Diet Culture

Last week I called out the 3 biggest crimes of Diet Culture. If you didn’t read that blog yet, check it out here!

 

As a quick review, the 3 biggest crimes of Diet Culture are: Dishonesty, Disregard, and Destruction!

 

Any eating pattern that emphasizes how you look over your mental and physical well-being is detrimental. Diet Culture thrives on dichotomous thinking, also known as black-and-white thinking. Eat foods on the good list and you’ll be “thin” (good); eat foods on the bad list and you’ll be “fat” (bad). Thin = win!

 

In reality, no one food has the power to make you “thin” or “fat”.

 

I realize this might not be a popular belief among dieters or programs and people that spew dieting information. But if you think about it long and hard (and re-read that sentence multiple times), I believe you’ll come to this realization – eventually.

 

So what can you do NOW to help you come to this realization before you jump back onto the diet bandwagon?

 

3 Powerful Approaches to Defying Diet Culture

 Let’s address 3 very powerful impactful approaches that can help you defy diet culture.

 

  1. Non-Diet Living and Intuitive Eating

Non-diet living and intuitive eating used to be less traveled paths, but more people are choosing these with great success. Dieting is physically and mentally exhausting and people are simply tired – tired of dieting and tired of hating themselves, 2 things which go hand-in-hand.

 

Intuitive eating, along with the Health at Every Size movement, are striving to shift the focus away from body weight and demonizing food. They are displacing the current definition of healthy, broadening it to encompass more than simply a number on the scale. This shifts the perspective inward, focusing on listening to what your body is telling you, and on habits and behaviors for improved long-term health, versus how many pounds you’ve lost. More and more research is finding practices such as intuitive eating helping people with disordered eating habits become more in tune with their bodies again.

 

I recognize that the idea of no longer dieting is a scary thought if you’ve been dieting for many years. Logically you realize that the diets have never given you long term weight loss. In fact, you weigh more now than when you started dieting all those years ago. Research will back that up. Diets lead to weight gain, end of story.

 

So what would help you on this journey? This takes us to approach #2…

 

  1. Self-Compassion

Diet Culture thrives on you hating yourself. If that sounds harsh, it’s because it is. Dieting is about willpower and when you don’t have enough willpower, you start beating yourself up, telling yourself you’ll always fail.

 

Try something different. Try using self-compassion.

 

You’ll find that treating yourself with kindness is much more satisfying because it’s impossible to hate yourself into positive change. You’d never dream of speaking to your friend the way you speak to yourself, yet Diet Culture has taught you to do just that. After decades of believing it, be gentle with yourself in your escape from that mentality. It took time to build and it will take a long time to break down. It’s important to remember there is no perfection in the healing process. It will most certainly be challenging but you are most certainly worth that effort.

 

Sounds logical, right? When asked if you’d speak to your friend who is struggling with her food that way you speak to yourself, of course the answer is no, you would not.

 

Part of this journey is body acceptance. And a very important part of accepting your body where it is now is the 3rd approach to defying Diet Culture.

 

  1. Weight Inclusivity

Accepting and respecting the shapes and sizes ALL human beings come in defies the perfectionist ideology of Diet Culture. There is no one height/shape/weight everyone should be. Our culture needs to move further toward a mindset where judgement is no longer passed on people who don’t meet Diet Culture’s moving target of “perfection.”

 

More and more research is supporting the idea that being a certain weight or looking a certain way does not equate to being “healthy” or “not healthy.” Intuitive eating and Health at Every Size are teaching internal acceptance as well as acceptance of others, appreciating the diversity. They temper the internal diet wars being waged.

 

The principles of intuitive eating remind you how different everyone is and helps you to accept and respect your body where it is right now.  It is key to stop passing judgement on others which will make it easier to stop passing judgement on yourself.

 

So how do you mesh these 3 approaches together, so you can defy Diet Culture?

 

Start with having a heart-to-heart sit down with yourself. Ask yourself the tough questions:

  1. Has all the dieting I’ve done helped me achieve weight loss that I can maintain for a lifetime? No.
  2. Do I bash my body every day, maybe even multiple times per day? Yes.
  3. Do I wish food could just be a “non-issue” and meal time can be relaxed? Yes.
  4. Am I afraid to try this new approach of intuitive eating? Yes.
  5. Do I need support and a partner to walk the journey with me? Yes.

 

Great job! Contact me here and let’s defy Diet Culture together!