Can I ask how those diets went for you? Maybe you did pretty well for quite sometime, and started to lose weight and feel great. But then, life happened and you went back to your pre-diet ways, gained back all the weight (plus some!) and just ended up feeling discouraged, disappointed, guilty and mad at yourself for having such lack of willpower.
You really start to believe you are a crazy person when it comes to food and that there is no way you will ever eat normally.
What if I told you that the way to get to your ideal weight, to start enjoying food- with pleasure and no guilt- and to start having a life you love rather than being riddled with remorse, does not involve doing yet another diet?
Do you feel relief? Anxiety? Freedom?
Those reactions are actually the key to being able to have success when it comes to your relationship with food. They tell you what aspects of your emotions you need to delve into and explore; where you are feeling lost, scared or afraid.
What you need to do is not change your diet, but change your whole mindset and mentality- not just about the food you eat, but the way you choose to live your life.
I know that it can feel like food controls you and that everything evolves around food. But what if the reason that this was the case for you, is because there are areas of your life that need nourishing which are not your body. It might seem impossible to you right now, but you can have a life where you don’t just think about food all day long.
The moment you start a new diet, then of course everything in your mind centers around food. How many calories or fat grams are you about to eat, and how will this affect your carb-protein-fat ratios? That is all such hard work! What you need is a mental chatter diet instead. And rather than trim back on the food you eat, and going around feeling deprived and hungry, you could instead feel fulfilled, full and satisfied.
What I have come to learn is that the key to permanently changing your relationship with food all comes down to a paradigm shift in the way you live your life and think about your life.
So what are these shifts, I hear you asking?
These shifts are about creating a life you love by doing things that bring you joy and happiness.
I bet when you are involved with things that light you up, you don’t think about food, right?
Imagine yourself doing something you love- it might be shopping with friends or exploring a new city or writing a book, for example. When you are fully immersed and totally engrossed in this activity, it’s unlikely you will be thinking about chocolate cake or brownies, right? You probably will only stop doing this thing because your stomach is grumbling with hunger. So you will go get something really delicious to eat and will have just the right amount so you feel satisfied, and will then hurry back to get back to what you were doing. Instead of being controlled by food cravings, you are being drawn into your passion.
I talked about the hunger and fullness scale in this blog. It is much easier to follow this scale and to eat intuitively and according to your body’s actual need, when you are happy in your life. When you are feeling down, bored, anxious, that is when you are much more likely to make unhealthy choices and to over-eat.
This is where the mindset shift comes in. Rather than thinking about only eating "good" foods, or limiting your calorie intake, or planning how you will be good today when it comes to your food choices, start to think about what you can do to make you feel happy and fulfilled in ways that don’t involve food.
If this seems like it might be tricky- I have you covered. In my free e-book, I share a hundred ways that you can nourish your soul foods. You don’t need to do all of these things- but choose a few from each category that resonate and do these things every day.
