About 10 years ago, I enrolled in a Weight Loss Coaching Certification program. I was already certified as a Health Coach with ACE, but that program didn’t teach about the mindset of weight loss. The new program was ALL about mindset. During my certification, I was asked to assess any overeating I did. What did I overeat? What were my sabotaging thoughts? But, I DID NOT DO IT. Why? Because I was beating myself up for not being perfect instead. I was too busy swimming in shame + comparison + judgement. How can a Health Coach possibly make mistakes?I’m supposed to be the example.Who would hire a coach that overate sometimes (or GASP, gained weight)? I tried SO HARD to do it all perfectly so I wouldn’t have to feel the … [Read more...] about Messing Up is Part of the Process
Awareness
I Gained Weight
I gained a few pounds this year. And this was the BEST GIFT for so many reasons. I lost my weight 20 years ago. About 50 pounds. And since then, I’ve kept within my healthy range. But I recently crept into a place where I just didn’t feel good in my body. The last few months have been a bit rough. My father in law died in December + my Dad died three weeks later + COVID. Note: This is not a plea for sympathy. Life is just hard sometimes. And when shit gets hard, my husband bakes bread like he is feeding an army. FOR REAL. Over the past few months, I was eating too much fresh bread + drinking too many gin and tonics + generally snacking more frequently than usual. This is probably a good time to share a … [Read more...] about I Gained Weight
You Probably Won’t “Conquer” Emotional Eating – and That’s Okay
Many of my clients tell me they want to eliminate emotional eating forever. As someone who has struggled with emotional eating, I completely understand the desire to make this behavior go away forever. To never feel compelled to turn to food for soothing or stress relief or out of boredom again. Some people get there, but most don’t – and that’s okay. You can make mountains of progress without conquering emotional eating altogether. In my opinion, it makes more sense to work towards less frequent and less intense episodes of emotional overeating. Attempting to “end” emotional overeating once and for all sets us up for disappointment. Any time we overeat, we feel as though we’ve failed. And feeling like a failure is not … [Read more...] about You Probably Won’t “Conquer” Emotional Eating – and That’s Okay
Eliminating Triggers
The path to changing our behavior has very little to do with resolve. We achieve control, not through willpower but by finding ways to take willpower entirely out of the equation. The central force for eliminating bad habits, according to social psychologist Wendy Wood, author of “Good Habits, Bad Habits,” is friction. In other words, making bad habits inconvenient. She cites the ways in which increased friction has produced a decline in smoking: laws that ban it in restaurants, bars, airplanes, and trains; taxes that have helped triple the price of cigarettes in the U.S. in the past twenty years; the purge of cigarettes from vending machines, and of tobacco ads from TV and the radio. We can apply the same concept to eating … [Read more...] about Eliminating Triggers