If it weren’t for fear of gaining weight, people would have no problem with the 3rd principle of Intuitive Eating: Make Peace with Food.
This principle is probably the most difficult for diet culture people to understand and for clients to believe in because it requires an unwavering belief that your self-worth is NOT based on your food choices. The rub of this is people’s value in society is determined by their size. Skinny = beautiful. Beautiful = worthy of attention. Attention = privilege and health. Privilege and health = opportunity. And opportunity, my friends, is the key to success.
In summary: Skinny = Success. Fat = Failure.
That’s society's take on it, not mine. Not Intuitive Eating practitioners. Not non-diet nutritionists. But influencers are selling the skinny = success lifestyle and it has to end. Fat people deserve the same treatment and opportunity as skinny folks.
Crazy idea, I know. Yet, here we are.
For me to sit here and ask you to make peace with food feels like I’m asking you to fail in the world.
My friend, nope.
You will become an advocate for yourself. You will learn identifying hunger is the same as identifying your desire to go back to school and get your degree. Once you recognize what you want, the world is your oyster.
Once you make peace with food. You fall out of the diet trap.
What’s that? Let me explain...
The tired dance of: on a diet, off a diet, on a diet, off a diet. Being good vs. being bad. Can’t eat that because I will feel guilty. Trigger foods? That’s the diet trap.
The diet trap is an abusive cycle that starts over and over again. It’s the “I fell off the wagon" so it’s time to start thinking about whatever new diet is on the market. Your desire to be thin, beautiful, successful, and healthy will draw you to buy another book, swallow more pills, skip dinners out with friends, and miss dinner with your kids. And because the diet is miserable you’ll “fall off the wagon, again.”
What if there was no wagon? Just solid ground? That’s Intuitive Eating. You are always on solid ground.
Once you understand how dieting has trapped you, the easier it is to make peace with food.
When I work with clients on this principle, I'm training them to hold the discomfort of their fear of gaining weight, becoming unhealthy, failure, trusting their bodies to stop eating trigger foods, and family/friends' snarky remarks. Thought work, mindset training, or whatever you call it is magic. It’s the secret sauce to life. And it’s a great skill to learn.
You might be thinking to yourself, sure Amanda, this all sounds great, but I’m too addicted to food to be trusted to break free from dieting.
Well my friend, dieting is exactly why you can’t be trusted around food. It’s your beliefs about food that is causing you to eat the way you do. See the charts above to see how this works.
Here’s the deal, food addiction is NOT a real thing. You can’t become addicted to food. Yep, even sugar. Sweet, sweet, sugar. Fluffy chocolate buttercream frosting is not addicting. Nor are sour patch kids. Sugar has an effect on our bodies, true. But not like drugs and alcohol.
And that’s a good thing because that would be a huge design flaw in the system, don’t cha think?
Don’t worry, I supply my clients with all the research and studies to back this up. You don’t have to believe me. You get to see the research and learn for yourself. Because you can trust yourself to make your own conclusions about food research. You don’t need GOOP to tell you what’s true.
Are you ready to make peace with food? Trust your body to guide your food decisions. So you can finally break free of dieting and start living your life again? Ready to be the mom you’ve always wanted to be? Have the energy you need to create the family life you’ve always hoped for?
Making peace with food will be part of the journey that gets you there.
If you are a mom who is experiencing burnout from striving for the perfect body and constantly yo-yo dieting, I can help you break free.
It all starts with one click right HERE to book a consult.
One click, one decision, one act will completely change your life. And YOU won’t fail because, girl, this ain’t another damn diet, it’s the road map of how to stop dieting once and for all.