“Why is it so hard for me to lose weight?”
Do you ask yourself this question?
Or what about these…
“I want to lose weight so bad, why can’t you stick with it?”
“I do so well and then, I totally fall off the wagon! Why?”
“I think my body is broken, I am doing everything and never lose weight!”
“Why can’t I stop bingeing. I feel so out of control around food!”
If you struggle with your weight and questions sound familiar, rest assured you are absolutely normal!
You and your body are not broken. You are not faulty, in your body, mind, and emotions, in fact, they are doing exactly what they have been programed to do, which is to survive and feel comfortable.
My guess is, you have been on many diets that can tell me exactly how many carbs or points or calories are in nearly every food you see. My guess is you have read a lot about food, diets and the body, but you just can’t seem to make anything stick.
You know that you “should” only have 12 tortilla chips, but you end up eating half the bag. Or you know you should “stay away” from bread but find that you having 6 pieces at the restaurant. You know you “should” have the healthy lunch you brought for lunch, but just feel compelled to go down the street to get a burger and fries.
It’s because, you can have all the knowledge in the world and bullet-proof plan, but if haven’t addressed the reasons why you overeating in the first place, you will always fall off the diet wagon.
Our external life is a direct result of our internal life; our conscious and subconscious thoughts and the emotions our thoughts create, drive our action or inaction.
Every action we take (or don’t take) is a product patterns (habits) and coping tools we have created in our life to make our selves comfortable and “safe”.
The problem is, many of these thought patterns and coping tools were created a long time ago, and they worked back then (to make us feel comfortable), but the fact is, they are not be working for us now.
And this is why we overeat and binge and find it hard to stay on diets.
So how do we change this?
By understanding and changing the thought patterns that keep us stuck in the dieting cycle and by creating a new relationship with food that is nourishing and comfortable, instead of numbing and controlling and by developing a new relationship with yourself and your body that is unconditionally loving and compassionate, instead of hateful and cruel.
So how do you do this? How do you change your relationship with food and your body?
Identify your current patterns and habits, I encourage all of my clients to start keeping a Nourish Journal (nourishing mind, body, and spirit), where you write down a what you eat and drink throughout the day and (most important piece), you write down your thoughts and feelings throughout the day, especially around meal time. Writing it down allows you to see patterns more easily.
Start tuning into your body and understanding it’s cues. This is especially hard for women who have become detached from their body and feelings because their body and its signals have been enemy #1 for years. And where hunger is both a good think and terribly scary. Simply start by taking note of how hungry and full you are before, during and after meals. This is the first step in allowing your body and hunger to regulate the amount you eat, be free of dieting, deprivation and overeating for ever! But keep in mind, this takes time to practice to even start identifying the subtle signals, especially if you have a long history of dieting or restricting. Use this Hunger Scale as a Resource.
Notice how your emotions affect your food choices. When most people think of emotional eating, they picture someone crying into their Haagen Daz,. but sadness is only one of the common emotions we use food to regulate . We eat because we are bored, tired, stressed, and even happy. In fact, emotional eating is something we all do and it’s actually part of our normal human experience. Who hasn’t had birthday cake even when they are full, just because it’s fun and you are celebrating? Emotional eating only becomes a problem, if you do it too often and leads to unwanted weight gain and a swirl of bad feelings.
Become a more mindful. Mindfulness is simply being present and being aware of what is happening in a nonjudgmental way. Unconscious eating is a huge factor in unwanted weight gain, because if we aren’t aware of what we are eating, we have less choice and can’t regulate the amount we eat very well.
Focus on Nourishing your body As I said before, the why of what we are eating is how we create real and long-lasting weight loss, but before we can start have long lasting weight loss, we must first start losing weight.. So we need to focus eating good nourishing food so we can eliminate or decrease our cravings. So we can eat the way we want to without feeling deprived. Let’s talk about cravings for a sec…cravings are part emotion and part physical. Processed and pre-packaged foods and high sugar foods, are craving producers because they are specially formulated (in a lab) to cause you to crave it, so you will buy more. The tastes so good, you can’t have just one…right? This is especially true for people who are hard wired to have a strong emotional response to eating, especially when eating sugars and refined grains. This is actually very similar to other addictions like drugs and alcohol, it’s just for some people food (the over-eating or restricting of food) is their drug of choice. But before you can tackle the cravings and compulsion around food, you need to decrease the physical food cravings. To do this you need to detox from all sugar and refined grains for 1 month (at least 2 weeks) to help your hormones and taste buds normalize. And only when you aren’t having physical cravings can you start changing the thoughts and triggers that are causes you to emotional eat and binge.
As you can see, only 1 of my steps towards weight loss had anything to do with actually changing your diet. Because to create real change in your life, you have to change your mind and master your thoughts and the weight loss (and so much more) will follow!
You can do it. I believe in you.
Be well,
Sally
P.S. If you want to lose weight, stop overeating and create a new relationship with food and your body, I can help you! Schedule a 15-minute mini-coaching session with me, we can talk about your goals, your struggles and help you start creating the results you want. If you want to find out more, schedule yourself on my calendar HERE so we can find out if coaching will benefit you right now.
