If you’ve been dieting for many years, you know it can get to be a little “much.” Chronic dieting can leave us frustrated, exhausted, and exasperated. Why does something so simple – weight loss – have to be so hard?
Millions of people around the world are realizing that they’re just plain tired of dieting. So much so that an increasing number of people are deciding to take a break from weight loss altogether.
But taking a diet break doesn’t alleviate the very real fear that many of us experience: that the second we stop dieting, we’re going to gain weight.
In this episode, Marc David works with Stephanie, 47, who has taken a 1-year break from weight loss – but has gained a stone (about 14 pounds) during that time, and is afraid she’ll only gain more.
Nevertheless, she’s given herself this time to move away from “weight loss at all costs” to approaching her weight from a mindset perspective, and doing all the reading and learning she can from self-help experts like Dr. Kristin Neff and Brene Brown.
As Stephanie shares, she’s at an inflection point. She’s been dieting since she was a teenager, often with the help of slimming clubs that are popular in the U.K. She became so disenchanted by her experience in the weight loss world, that she knows she can’t go back.
She believes that her spiritual path lies in trusting her body and accepting it the way it is – but three decades of dieting have lodged deep-seated fears around weight gain.
Stephanie asks, “What can I do to overcome the conditioned fear of weight gain?”
Regardless of where we’re at with our weight, this is one of the very best questions we can ask of ourselves. Because the truth is, we may want to lose weight … but deep down, we’re wanting to love and accept ourselves even more.
Episode highlights:
✅ Why finding the right foundation for ourselves as a person – one based on our true value instead of our weight – is so important.
✅ Why it’s unrealistic to think you’ll 100% accept yourself one day – and why allowing yourself to be imperfect can help you heal and grow.
✅ How our collective judgment around weight clouds the notion of what it means to be truly healthy.
✅ Why BMI science is outdated, and can contribute to our weight gain fears.
✅ The interplay between “self” and “self-improvement” and why we need to sometimes let go and allow ourselves to simply “be.”
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Learn more about us at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating: https://psychologyofeating.com/
Ready to call a ceasefire in your battle with eating, and find peace and freedom with food? Learn more about our newest program, The Emotional Eating Breakthrough! https://learn.psychologyofeating.com/
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.
Follow us on social:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Psychologyofeating
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych
#dietbreak #antidiet #dieting #weight #relationshipwithfood #selfimprovement #selftrust #selfacceptance #eatingpsychology #holisticnutrition #marcdavid #podcast
Emotional eating always has a psychological or biological reason for showing up in our life. It never just “happens” … it’s almost always an unconscious psychological strategy to regulate difficult emotions.
That’s the case for guest coaching client, Katy, who’s going through a period of massive change – and is struggling to manage her feelings about it all. As a newly-turned 30-year old, Katy is figuring out what’s important to her in life, what sort of career she wants to pursue, and how she wants to earn money. She’s hoping to find a life partner, and would one day like to become a mother.
And all this great change is bringing up major uncertainty, as well as feelings of anxiety, fear, and self-doubt.
Amidst all of this, Katy has been experiencing on-off cycles of emotional eating, overeating, and body judgment. She wishes her food habits didn’t feel like such a roller coaster ride, and that she could just feel consistently joyful and positive about her relationship with food and her body.
But as Marc David explores with Katy, it can be pretty difficult to maintain a consistently positive and joyful relationship with food when the rest of our life is in a state of change and upheaval.
The truth is that our relationship with food is a reflection of the rest of our life. If we find ourselves in an uncertain time of life, it’s natural to feel uncertain and inconsistent with food.
Through self-awareness and self-kindness, we can begin to see food as the powerful and effective emotional regulator that it is – and stop making ourselves wrong for turning to it sometimes when we aren’t feeling so good about life.
As Katy looks to the bigger context of her life, she realizes that her love-hate cycles with food and body, and in particular, with emotional eating, are simply reflecting the cycles of change she’s experiencing in her inner and outer worlds. And with this new awareness, she can bring some much-needed forgiveness and self-compassion to herself – which ironically, can begin to free herself from the very unwanted eating patterns that are weighing her down.
Episode highlights:
✅ Why seeking to be in a constant positive state with food can keep us trapped in our eating patterns.
✅ How to find forgiveness and self-acceptance in your relationship with food – and why times of change call for it more than other times of life.
✅ How to know whether fasting or cleansing is right for your body, or when it might exacerbate yo-yo dieting tendencies.
✅ How to take baby steps with mindful eating.
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Learn more about us at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating: https://psychologyofeating.com/
Ready to call a ceasefire in your battle with eating, and find peace and freedom with food? Learn more about our newest program, The Emotional Eating Breakthrough! https://learn.psychologyofeating.com/
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.
Follow us on social:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Psychologyofeating
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych
#emotionaleating #overeating #bodyimage #relationshipwithfood #eatingpsychology #foodfreedom #intuitiveeating #mindfuleating #slowdowndiet #marcdavid #podcast
It’s no surprise that many people around the world would like to lose weight. In fact, between 2017 and 2021, 55% of all Americans have expressed the desire for weight loss. And unfortunately, many people who are single and would like to find love in their life are instead putting it off until they’re at their desired weight.
That’s the case for 41-year old Shawnna, our guest in this episode of the podcast.
Shawnna would like to lose about 50 pounds, and find a more peaceful relationship with food – one where she’s not constantly thinking about what, when, and how much to eat. As she shares, she’s tired of feeling like food and her weight is holding her back from following her dreams, including finding a significant other.
But despite her best efforts, Shawnna has struggled over the last decade to not see her weight as one of the most important aspects of life to overcome.
She’s tried every approach she knows to lose weight. And she’s tried everything to try to forget about her weight, move on, and have a happy life.
No matter what she does, Shawnna feels limited by her relationship with food.
So what should she do next?
As Marc David shares with Shawnna, part of the solution is remembering that our relationship with food is a great teacher – one of the key tenets of eating psychology, otherwise known as food psychology.
When we understand that our eating challenges are here to help us learn and grow, we can then turn to a powerful question: What is my relationship with food and body trying to teach me? What can I learn from this situation?
And for Shawnna – like so many of us, part of the answer lies in being clear about what we truly want from life – and learning how to prioritize and put those things first.
Episode highlights:
✅ How our family “tribe” influences our eating challenges, and what’s important to know as you’re healing your own relationship with food.
✅ Why learning to pay attention to our desires is key to transforming our food and body challenges — and how to start.
✅ How to be the “real” you now and have the life you want, even if the weight isn’t gone yet.
Tune in for a beautiful episode on not waiting to lose weight to find love. Because we all deserve to experience love in our life…
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Learn more about us at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating: https://psychologyofeating.com/
Ready to call a ceasefire in your battle with eating, and find peace and freedom with food? Learn more about our newest program, The Emotional Eating Breakthrough! https://learn.psychologyofeating.com/
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.
Follow us on social:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Psychologyofeating
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych
#weightloss #weightlossjourney #bodyimage #selflove #selfimprovement #foodfreedom #eatingpsychology #foodpsychology #marcdavid