Overcoming Resistance to Improving Our Health

Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.

• Facebook: www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
• Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych

#psychologyofeating #foodpsychology #eatingpsychology #nutrionist #nutritionexpert #weightloss #weightlossdiet #supplements #nutritionalsupplement #weightgain #empoweryourself #overcomingresistance #eatingchallenges #foodchallenges #foodrestriction #maturewoman #healthchoices #healthcoach #functionalnutrition 

Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.

• Facebook: www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
• Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych

#psychologyofeating #foodpsychology #eatingpsychology #nutritionexpert #weightloss #weightlossdiet #ayurveda  #perfectionism #dieting #detox #detoxthemind #innerwisdom #bodywisdom #bodyimage #bodyimagehealing #healingjourney #healthcoach #mindbodynutrition #intuitiveeating #healthyweight #naturalbodyweight #voiceofwisdom

Discovering the Rhythm of Life: One Woman’s Journey

• A lot of people try to manipulate the body instead of being with and present for the body. However, controlling the body is not the same as caring for it.
• Overcoming disordered eating patterns is joyous and liberating. Part of how we do this is by being truly present with ourselves, our feelings, and our needs. And surrounding ourselves with positive energy along the way.  
• Be your body's friend. This means nourishing and supporting the body rather than rigidly controlling intake, exercising punishingly, weighing and timing everything and feeling guilty at every little slip up.
• It is not unreasonable to want to create a new, deeper and more fulfilling connection with a life partner; to look for greater intellectual and emotional fulfillment. This can be done in a gentle, loving way devoid of demand or expectation.
• Learning to find a safe space within oneself is essential for easing stressful situations and improving relationships.

Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.

• Facebook: www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
• Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych

#psychologyofeating #BeYourBestFriend #BodysBestFriend #DeeperConnection #BeautifulDesire #UntangleYourself #BodyTherapy #LooseningUp #LoseTheGuilt #ListenToTheBody #PersonalGrowth #GrowthPath #KnowYourself #BePresentToYou #DropIntoYourBody

A 29-Year-Old Woman Works with Wanting A Different Body

• Sometimes a traumatic incident such as a bad breakup can have us turn to food for comfort. This is a natural coping mechanism that, while not ideal for our health and weight, is understandable. 
• An important first step in changing unwanted eating behaviors is recognizing the usefulness that these patterns can have at difficult times in our lives. As we step away from self-judgment and towards self-compassion, we can more easily establish healthy habits for ourselves.
• Wanting to feel good about yourself at any size or shape is an admirable goal. However, for some of us, there can be an unhelpful thought process that undermines our ability to love our body as it is right now. We often think that we need to totally get rid of the thought, “I need to lose weight for me to be happy.”
• Instead, as Marc invites Lauren to do, the way to let go of any thoughts of needing to lose weight to be happy is to instead tune into other kinds of hopes and wishes that are more interesting. As we create a life we love, letting go of unwanted eating habits or a negative body image happens naturally.
• It’s also important to recognize the natural human desire to take pride in our appearance. That’s not necessarily a “bad” thing. The paradox for all humans is allowing ourselves to be OK with this desire, while also unabashedly embracing ourselves, as we are in any given moment. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.

• Facebook: www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
• Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych

#psychologyofeating #eatingpsychology #nutritionexpert #overcomingtrauma #breakuprecovery #perfectionism #beautystandards #bodyweight #bodypositive #feelingokay #losingweight #relationshipwithfood #selfworth #bodyimage #healthcoach #foodforthought #comfortfood #emotionaleating

A Man Embraces His Power

• Augustine, 49, shares his journey about health goals and life aspirations with Marc David. As the owner of a CrossFit gym, he is eager to learn the strategies and approaches to increasing his longevity. 
• A key concept in the longevity universe is that of our “health span,” which is the length of our lives spent in good health and free from chronic disease. While it’s good to focus on longevity, it’s equally important to consider how we can maintain our health as long into the future as possible.
• As this episode explores, physical fitness is not the only type of fitness that is important. Mental and emotional health, relationships, and spirituality are also vital aspects of one’s wellbeing, and necessary for a long and healthy life.
• When it comes to longevity, it’s easy to stray into perfectionism, which ultimately can hamper our progress with health and well-being. 
• Ironically, the more we learn about longevity (often referred to as “bio-hacking” or “DIY biology”), the easier it is to become hyperfocused on all the strategies we can use to increase it. Getting clear on what your personal goals are, learning how to weed out what’s not useful to your unique longevity quest, and staying out of overwhelm is key.

What Illness is Asking of Us When It Comes to Self-Care

• Being diagnosed with a condition such as diabetes inevitably brings up new and unexpected realities. Among them is the need to prioritize oneself and engage in regular self-care like never before.
• A new health diagnosis represents a certain crossroads. We’re no longer who we were, but we’re not exactly sure yet what our new life will look and feel like. Being mindful of how you talk to yourself about your condition is vital. 
• Diabetes is a condition that is greatly influenced by good nutrition. In some cases, Type II diabetes can be reversed through early diagnosis and key lifestyle changes. 
• When managing diabetes, look for all the help you can get. Find apps to help you organize your day-to-day food plans, get support from family members to help you plan your food shopping, or consider joining a support group.
• For all of us, whether or not we’re dealing with a health condition: let go of the lifetime of conditioning you’ve received that self-care is bad or shameful. Just as you want your loved ones to feel good and enjoy life, learn to embrace your worthiness around self-care. You not only deserve it, you need it … truly.

Allowing Discomfort: A Key to Transforming Emotional Eating

• There’s a massive stigma against emotional eating. We believe it’s bad and that we’re bad for engaging it. But humans are emotional creatures. Eating, by its very nature, is an emotional act. We’re biologically wired to love food, it’s built into our DNA. Part of the solution to emotional eating is to stop believing that loving food is wrong. 
• Another key reframe is emotional eating vs. being an emotional eater. The former is simply a behavior, it doesn’t define who we are as a person. Identifying as an emotional eater puts us into a box, and once we’re in that box, we have a big problem that needs solving. 
• What’s true about emotional eating is that it’s a symptom of a deeper issue, typically unrelated to issues with food. When we find ourselves reaching for food to distract or self-soothe, it’s a good time to stop and ask, “What am I feeling right now? Am I really hungry? Is there something else that I’m needing?”
• Staying present and self-connected is vital. Find positive ways to do this such as walking the dog, talking to your partner, calling a friend, or listening to music. What’s key is finding something that helps you stay connected with yourself.
• Learning to savor and truly relish the food we eat is important. Often when we have eating challenges, we’ll rush and miss the pleasure that makes the experience of eating so wonderful.

A 25-Year Old Releases the Need to Control Food … and Life

• Food and body challenges are deeply intertwined with every area of life, including our spirituality. When one area of our life is challenged, food is an easy substitute to find comfort and balance our nervous system.
• When we perceive ourselves as having lost our spiritual connection, we can feel unmoored and look for things to control so we feel safe. Food is one of the easiest things to control.
• When it comes to healing eating challenges, trusting oneself is a key ingredient. Learning to trust yourself is also multi-layered. It might mean trusting your body’s cravings, for example. At a higher level, it means knowing that no matter what you do, what foods you eat or don’t eat, and how you feel afterward, you know you’ll stand by you and not punish yourself.
• For sensitive souls like Lilja, eating challenges can be a reflection of not knowing how to deal with life’s hardships. For those of you who identify with Lilja’s story, pay particular attention to the part of Marc’s coaching session where he talks about agreeing to be here on planet Earth and learning to allow pain and difficulty.
• Always, always: Self-love and self-forgiveness are essential keys to establishing a healthy relationship with food. Instead of thinking you have to force your body into a certain weight or state, Marc offers us an important reminder that our most important work with our bodies is to simply love them.

A 39-Year Old’s Journey with Food, Loneliness, and Self-Soothing

• Like other unwanted eating challenges, binge eating often develops in childhood as we try to cope with circumstances outside our control.
• Emotionally sensitive children can have a challenging time figuring out how to navigate family challenges - which can sometimes be perceived as a threat to our safety. Some children, like Linda, will try to be the peacemaker in the family. When this doesn’t work, the child can go to despair and hopelessness.
• As adults, we may not see the connection between our childhood experiences and what we’re struggling with currently. Difficulty establishing intimate relationships or caring friendships, a lack of motivation in one’s career, and other similar life challenges are often reflections of unmetabolized childhood feelings.
• Therefore, part of the deeper work in healing our eating challenges is recognizing that these challenges are often a coping mechanism for unresolved feelings that we simply don’t know how to deal with. 
• Progress with our eating challenges accelerates as we stop focusing so much on stopping the unwanted behavior, and begin to instead harness the courage to feel our feelings — including and especially the ones that have been with us a long time. 

• Certain diets like Keto, Paleo, or plant-based diets can be therapeutic for the body — whether we stay on them over the long-term or use them as tools to recalibrate our health. Whatever our approach to eating may be, it’s important to recognize that these diets don’t address the psychological drivers behind our eating challenges.
• Taking this a step further, we can’t fix eating challenges — which stem from our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs — using nutrition alone. To address unwanted eating habits such as binge eating or emotional eating, we need to understand and ultimately transform our psychology.
• A common way we stay stuck in our eating challenges is by self-attacking ourselves that we have these challenges in the first place. This negative self talk can be truly endless. If you find yourself saying things like “why can’t I just get over this already?” or “I’m terrible at controlling myself around food,” it’s time to bring loving attention to these thoughts.
• Look for where you can begin to make small shifts in your internal self talk. Where can you acknowledge your efforts and your progress, no matter how small? Recognizing the shifts you’re making helps solidify those positive changes over time. 
• No matter what your brain may try to convince you of, remember you're a unique and wonderful human. You’re not broken, there’s nothing to fix. Keep reminding yourself of this … eventually, you’ll feel the truth of that in your bones.

Overcoming The Belief That We’re Not Worthy Of Health

• Eating challenges are often strongly correlated with our culture’s unique conditioning. Depending on we’re from, the expectations placed on us to look or eat a certain way can be quite severe.
• Overcoming cultural conditioning first requires an awareness of it. We need to recognize: “there’s something driving me to behave in a certain way or believe in a certain idea, that didn’t originate from me. It came from outside me.” Once we’ve identified unwanted conditioning, we can then start to get to work on letting it go.
• It’s possible to honor and respect our lineage, culture, and parents while still being our own person. Choosing to not meet outside expectations isn’t a rejection of others, it’s simply a decision to honor ourselves and what’s best for us.
• Disembodiment is a strategy for not feeling things we don’t want to feel. It can be related to pressures from others to look or act a certain way, a response to trauma or painful life circumstances, or even just everyday disappointments and let downs.
• We ultimately heal disembodiment by bringing conscious awareness of all the big and small ways we “check out” of the body. We take each day at a time, loving ourselves, our bodies, and our lives as fully as we can. We listen, we tune in, and we respond to the messages our bodies and hearts are sending us.

What’s The Connection Between PTSD & Emotional Eating?

• Regardless of the cause, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can give rise to emotional eating and other unwanted eating challenges. It is the brain’s way of trying to cope with past traumas.
• When under stress, our natural instinct is to self soothe. One of the easiest ways to do this is to turn to food. This is both normal and natural, and this is nothing to beat yourself up about.
• Eating is an emotional experience. From birth, we are hard wired to experience joy, comfort, and nourishment through eating. 
• We often respond to stress by eating. And guess what? This isn’t always a bad thing. It’s time to get off the self-judgment train, while also discovering other ways to create a relaxation response in our bodies. As we do this, the impulse to reach for food in times of stress diminishes.
• Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a powerful therapeutic technique for transforming PTSD. If you’re dealing with persistent PTSD, finding a therapist who specializes in EMDR is highly recommended.

• Contrary to what many believe, binge eating is not a problem. It doesn’t need fixing. It’s simply a strategy to deal with another issue we don’t know how to address.
• An important thing to understand about the binge-purge cycle: binge eating creates physiologic and psychological stress, which purging then relieves. 
• Repressing negative emotions like anger or sadness can lead us to engage in any number of unwanted eating challenges, including binging and purging. Find healthy ways to honor your emotions, such as listening to music that has special meaning for you, or regularly journaling your thoughts and feelings.
• Learning to bring conscious awareness in the moment when we’re about to binge eat is absolutely key to transforming this unwanted behavior. What are we thinking about? What emotions are we feeling? What do we feel in the body? Tune into this.
• Show yourself generosity for the progress you make and celebrate your success. Acknowledge that you’ll have setbacks, and bring the self-forgiveness forward that you so deeply deserve. 

In Session With Marc David: A Naturalist Grandmother Learns to Become Her Own Health Advocate

• Hypothyroidism can lead to a cascade of challenging symptoms, including weight gain, insomnia, low energy, and mood issues.
• Another physiological cause (among many) for unwanted weight gain is undiagnosed diabetes. Undergoing diagnostic testing is important when looking at physiological causes of weight gain.
• Naturopaths or functional medicine practitioners can be a great resource when looking at possible causes of weight issues.
• Learning to become one’s own health advocate is of prime importance when dealing with any health issue — whether related to weight or other challenges.
• Sometimes, our dearest loved ones don’t always know how to best support us in our health and weight challenges. It doesn’t mean they don’t care, however finding the support you need is vital … whether from a friend or a trained professional. 

Menopause & Weight Gain: An Unusual Solution

Healing Family Lineage: A 37-Year Old Man’s Journey with Anger, Weight, & Reparenting

• Your relationship with your same-sex parent can have a huge bearing on your relationship with self, and consequently your relationship with food. Learning to reparent yourself is a vital first step towards resolving food and body issues.
• Bring presence to eating and learning to inhabit your body are important keys to losing weight sustainably. 
• Learn to be comfortable in your body. Love it, accept it, and to give it a hug – literally and figuratively. It is OK to ask for and get the help and support you need, however you need it.
• Inhabiting your body can come through doing physical activities you love … whether through resistance training, dancing, hiking, or any other kind of movement. 
• Anger is a powerful emotion that many of us don’t know how to work with constructively. Honor it, listen to it, learn from it. It’s often pointing us to a place inside ourselves that we need to care for and attend to.

Taking Responsibility for Our Relationship with Food

Many of the challenges people have around food start early, such as during one's teens. Peer pressure or bullying in school can create an unhealthy body image and an adversarial relationship around food. This can be healed even later in life.

Wanting to control what one eats and all other aspects of life is a natural instinct and that control feels good. However, there is a difference between control and taking responsibility, and it is taking responsibility that will help resolve challenges around eating.

Food is a reflection of life. Wanting to be in control of everything one eats then spills over into the need to be in control of every other aspect of life as well. It can be tough to let go, but learning to do this can be freeing.

Remember to savor the process of eating -- to eat the things that give pleasure, taste good and bring satiety to the body. Learn not to rush through the meal either out of habit or because that is what we are taught to do.

Eating can be fun. Wanting that bar of chocolate could actually be the voice of wisdom from inside the body, but we deny ourselves the fun of eating because we fear losing control. Scheduling pre-planned fun treats of those ‘forbidden’ foods could be a solution. 

Discovering the Rhythm of Life: One Woman’s Journey

https://psychologyofeating.online/ss/

Unresolved Grief and Weight Gain - Is There a Connection?

Of the numerous psychological contributors to weight gain or weight loss resistance, grief is often one of the overlooked causal factors. Unacknowledged or unresolved grief can be a key factory underlying our eating challenges.

Losing a parent early in life can mean so much more than just the loss of that parent. Children who have lost a parent early in life often find their other parent struggling to cope with their grief, resulting in the child having to do a lot of self-parenting. This is yet another form of loss — that of an innocent childhood, and can ultimately lead to unresolved grief as an adult.

Sometimes the grieving we need to do in life is that of letting go of who we used to be. Whether it’s a role we used to inhabit, a certain time of life, or having a certain athleticism or healthy body, it can be hard to move on from aspects of ourselves that we took a lot of pleasure or pride in.

Speaking to a therapist or a counselor, particularly a grief counselor, can be a vital first step towards resolving one's past and moving on.

Journaling is another effective way to acknowledge and give expression to grief. Figuratively writing a letter to a deceased parent is another. Writing, in whatever form, can be a powerful way to express, transform, and release emotions that are calling out for our attention. 

A 34-Year-Old Learns To Find Firm Ground in Life – And Her Body

Suffering sexual assault can make a person feel insecure and fearful, and may have a significant bearing on a person’s ability or inability to lose weight. Finding firm ground in life has the happy consequence of finding firm ground within the body.

There are many ways to practice feeling safe. Gather evidence of being and feeling safe and catalog these in some way so that it is possible to let go of the fear and the insecurity.

Sometimes challenges around weight have less to do with the physical weight and more to do with conflicting emotions. Coming to terms with those emotions can be the important first step for a person looking to lose weight.

The body will lose weight when it is ready. Take care of yourself and heal so that the body feels confident in relinquishing the weight that it has been holding on to for so long.

We are conditioned to believe that weight loss is just about creating a caloric deficit -- about eating less and exercising more. However, there’s more to the story of weight and its loss than a simple “calories in, calories out” approach, including our eating psychology and our unique physiology, which is always in an intimate dance with things like stress, connection with others, spirituality, and so much more.

#psychologyofeating #BeautifulAffimation #ImWilling #PersonalBreakthough #PracticeFeelingSafe #WeightLoss #BroadenYourPerspective #BuildTrust #LearningToTrust #SettingBoundaries #HonorYourself #LifeIsShort #LoveLifeLoveFood #CelebrateYourBody #NourishYourself

When Love is Conditional: A 29-Year Old’s Journey with Weight, Her Father, and Life

In Session With Marc David: When Rebelliousness Leads To Binge Eating

A Young Woman Deals with Gluten Sensitivity

Gluten-based foods are everywhere and they can be hard to give up. The first step in dealing with gluten sensitivities is recognizing you have them. This means tuning into your body as you’re eating a given food and noticing how you feel afterward. 

If you suspect you have a sensitivity to gluten, getting tested with your doctor or functional medicine practitioner is an important next step.

Symptoms of gluten sensitivity can include bloating, stomach pain, skin issues like breakouts, mood changes, lethargy, forgetfulness, and difficulty focusing. 

When we binge on food that makes us feel bad, a common response is to beat ourselves up. It’s important to acknowledge that giving up foods we enjoy is tough, and giving ourselves a hard time is counterproductive to changing our eating habits.

Finding support from others is also important as we retool our diet. Sometimes the people we love the most have a hard time supporting us as we make changes. While that doesn’t feel great, that doesn’t mean that others can’t be there for us. Look for those people and find the support you need and deserve.

Coming Into Our Queenly Power Around Body Image

Many of us get fixated on being a certain size or shape, while largely ignoring self-care or engaging in practices that improve our health, energy, and vitality. If this is you, just know you deserve more than trying to get yourself to fit into a certain size. You’re worthy of your love, of which self-care is a direct reflection.

Ironically, those of us who are fitness or health professionals can be particularly prone to obsession around dieting, food restriction, excessive exercise, and the like. So there’s an opportunity to ask ourselves: are we engaging in these activities out of self-love? If not, we must cultivate the wisdom to refine our approach and learn to give our bodies what they need and want.

We’ve all heard it before, but in order to help others, we truly do have to learn how to walk our talk. 

But please understand: this doesn’t mean being perfect. It means opening up our hearts and moving from a place of self and other compassion. It means understanding we’re all humans, here to learn and grow on this journey of life.

Exercising and eating right for our unique bodies should create a kind of natural joy and happiness. If they’re not, it’s time to evaluate our approach. 

Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.

Our Relationship with Food is Like A Dance

Digestive problems, disordered eating, and body image issues have as much to do with why and how we eat, as they do with what we’re eating. 

To become an intuitive and mindful eater, identifying and trusting the body’s hunger cues is key.

Part of trusting our body’s cues is learning to trust ourselves as humans. Give yourself permission to experiment. Listen to what your body is telling you as you make different choices, and then refine those choices as you develop more body awareness.

Our relationship with food is much like dance. When we see eating from a place of self-connection, creative self-expression, and deep presence, we can find ourselves in a natural state of flow, joy, and true health.

Reframing our relationship with food in this way allows us to move away from old thought patterns of “good food” versus “bad food,” or “good choices” versus “bad choices.” This creates so much more internal space for ourselves, and we begin to experience food in an entirely different way.