Why do you know what to eat, but don’t eat it? It’s a comment I hear from clients all the time: "I know what to do, but don’t do it." Well my friends, let’s talk about that.
There is always an answer to that question. You might need help to uncover what is really controlling your behavior, specifically what is the driving force behind your thoughts.
Your thoughts determine your behavior. And your beliefs determine your thoughts. So find out what belief is holding you back, you find the why.
I teach clients how to get out of their own way by teaching them how to:
Identify thoughts
Pinpoint the underlying beliefs and where they came from
Reframe the thoughts
Create new habits with ease and confidence
Repeat, learn, repeat, adapt
At this stage, many clients realize how they have been policing their thoughts about food with arbitrary rules that don’t benefit them. One client might binge eat at night, then skip eating all the next day, only to come home to binge eat again because they are so darn hungry. They believe the solution to binging is to never eat again or restrict their calorie intake to make-up for binge eating the night before. This is not how the human body works. Your body needs to eat consistently in order to thrive. Just because you eat a lot the night before doesn’t mean your body will never need more calories until all of those are burned off.
But this rule you’ve created has trapped you. You restrict yourself all day because you think you’re being “good.” Only for you to binge at night because your body is so hungry.
And these crazy food rules come from both your inner food police and the external food police.
Those external rules you've learned come from: click bait media articles, blogs, social media posts, “wellness” influencers, pop culture icons (think Micheal Pollan and Oprah), self-funded research articles (diet food brand pays for study on whether dieting works or not), and family/cultural rules (clean plate club).
What I help clients do is understand what beliefs about food are not helping them, especially the ones that are creating the dysfunctional relationship with food. And it’s not always easy to see at first which of your thoughts are sound nutrition advice (helpful) and which are diet culture food police B.S. (unhelpful).
But that is where I am come in. I’m here to help guide you, give you confidence in your decisions, and cheer you on when it feels too hard and all you want is to fall back into the familiar point system. The point system that is so clear, so rigid, so broken. But our minds want to do what is familiar, because familiar is safe. Safe is easy.
I support you when what you want to do is new and feels too hard, but you know it’s exactly what you need to do.
Some common examples I see in my mom clients are:
Skipping meals to save calories but can’t stop eating after the kids go to bed
Finishing off kids meals because they don’t want to be wasteful
Always snacking, never making time to sit and eat
Believe that all processed food is bad so don’t cook with it...but then picks up fast food for dinner
Only will eat dessert if they work out before
Only drinks sugar-free beverages
Has specific rules about what foods they can eat or cannot eat
Hates cooking
Working together we will challenge your negative thoughts around food and cooking. We will reframe those thoughts so we can silence your inner food critic and bring forth your inner nutritional ally. To start the conversation, book a free consult with me here.