Overcoming Self sabotage

Things are going great, you’re sticking to the principles, eating only when you’re hungry, stopping when you’re satisfied and you are really enjoying the freedom to eat all foods! And… you’ve lost 3kg in the last 2 weeks – this is incredible!

Then you:

a)      Overeat at one meal and curse yourself for having no willpower

b)      Start thinking this is all a bit too easy, isn’t weight loss supposed to be hard?

c)       Get stressed, angry, sad…whatever emotion has sent you running to the cupboards before and think, here I go again I’m so weak!

d)      All of the above

Your excess weight is not a physical reflection of your weakness, lack of willpower or consistent failings. It is a reflection of how you feel about yourself on the inside and how you talk to yourself. 

For some distorted reason we think that making ourselves feel bad will lead to making ourselves slim..well that’s a lie.

The truth is that practicing unyielding compassion for yourself and giving unconditional love to yourself are key ways out of self sabotage…No, not putting padlocks on the fridge ladies, not asking hubby to tell you off as you reach for the last Tim Tam! Those are just ways to beat yourself up for being, weak, a failure and not able to be trusted! 

Instead of choosing self sabotage today choose to be:

a)      Self supportive

b)      Self loving

c)       Self compassionate

d)      All of the above

What will you choose?

Principle 3 – Eat anything your body truly wants to eat

I love butter, I love cheese, I love crème brulee! Without these foods my life would not be so rich or satisfying. Lysa and I wholeheartedly know and believe that food is not only meant to provide nutrition for our bodies, but pleasure as well. That’s why it tastes so darn good! We also know that it is possible to eat all foods, lose weight and stay slim. 

The third principle to Intuitive Eating is about allowing yourself permission to eat and enjoy all foods. It’s about being guided by your inner wisdom to know what you truly need in the moment. When you eat the food your body truly wants you stop feeling deprived, instead you feel empowered and satisfied. Many of our clients tell us when they start practicing this principle that they stop obsessing about food, about whether they are making the ‘right’ choice, whether they are ‘good or bad’ that day. In reality food is just food; we are the ones who turn it into the enemy when we try to restrict ourselves. Making food the enemy only leads to eating in secret, and or binge eating. 

When teaching this principle we commonly hear, “But I’ll just eat junk food all the time if I’m allowed to eat anything!” As you begin to practice and truly listen intuitively to your body it will guide you to want a wide variety of foods. We’ve had a client not eat vegetables for 6 weeks because she’d been forcing herself to eat them everyday to lose weight.  After 6 weeks what do you think she craved? Yep, vegetables!

Yes we’re telling you to let go of the ‘dieting rules’ about good and bad foods, healthy and unhealthy foods. This will take some practice, as do all three principles. Learning to eat intuitively will require you to place more awareness on what your body feels and less on what your mind or others tell you to do. 

Eating cottage cheese, half a grapefruit or tasteless cereal for breakfast and obsessing over what I should eat all day are thankfully distant memories for me these days. To choose between eating what others tell me I should or eating what, when and how my body tells me to is a no brainer for me.

Which would you rather choose? 

For more information about Lysa & Gina’s Approach – “The Weigh to Freedom” visit www.lysaandgina.co.nz

Principle 2 – Stop Eating When You’re Satisfied

Last week we shared how to eat only when you’re physically hungry. The next step to intuitive eating is to recognise when your body has had enough food to satisfy its needs. When you stop eating at the point of satisfaction, rather than when you’re full, your body perfectly utilises that food, and some that’s in storage in your fat cells, to take it through to the next meal. Combining Principle’s 1 & 2 leads to weight loss.

The way to start practicing principle 2 is to stop eating once the physical sensation of hunger  is gone, you feel comfortable, like the food ‘hit the spot’.   

Placing more awareness on the physical sensations in your body as you eat, will help you recognise when it’s time to stop. Many of the women who work with us also hold unsupportive beliefs around eating, you ‘must eat everything on your plate’ or ‘never waste food’. Obviously these beliefs don’t support stopping when you’re satisfied. Learning to challenge these unsupportive beliefs and instill new habits can also be a significant part of this journey.

If ‘stopping eating when you’re satisfied’ is a hard thing for you to do, or do consistently, then emotional eating is at play.

I don’t remember ever feeling satisfied when I was overweight. Food was the enemy and all I wanted was to be free of needing it. I wished I could live off diet coke and cigarettes (I picked that idea up after reading a book about how an anorexic stayed slim), I honestly thought I’d rather be anorexic than fat.

Food, I told myself, was something I loved; it must be right if I couldn’t stop eating it? But, food wasn’t actually a pleasurable thing in my life, it was just something I used as a weapon to beat away uncomfortable feelings I didn’t want to face.

At my lowest points when I was bingeing and purging I’d prepare by trawling the supermarket, a large packet of Twisties, tub of ice cream, block of chocolate, ooh that mock cream sponge roll looks good…now I need some more savory foods, I know, I’ll stop at KFC on the way home and pick up a quarter pack. Even when I ate to the point of feeling ‘stuffed’ I was still empty. And when I purged I’d just try to fill myself up again. 

Emotional needs will never be satisfied with food.

Emotional eating can’t be rectified with a physical level solution. That’s why we developed materials that support women on the emotional, intellectual and spiritual levels to break free from excess weight, and also why we coach women one on one.

Next week we’ll introduce the third Principle to intuitive eating – Eat anything your body truly wants to eat.

Principle Two - Only Eat When You're Physically Hungry

I woke up this morning; looked at the clock and yep it was breakfast time, so I thought about what I wanted to eat. Maybe some toast with jam or peanut butter, a hot cross bun or two, pancakes perhaps?  Thinking about food I felt the desire to eat; I could even imagine how those foods would taste…yum!

Then I did something many of us (particularly if we struggle with excess weight) have lost touch with doing… I took a moment to check in with my body to ask whether it was hungry or not.  Was I feeling a physical sensation in the area of my stomach?  Um…that would be no. 

I used to struggle with my weight. I was a binge eater, I ate in secret in my room and after eating too much I would try and starve myself to ‘balance’ things out. I was fat, frustrated and miserable.  That was also 10 years ago, and now I am slim. Now I chose to eat like naturally slim people do, and as I believe nature intends for us.  I eat intuitively by listening to and trusting my body to guide me on when, what and how much to eat…

The first principle we teach on the pathway to intuitive eating is to ‘Only Eat When You’re Physically Hungry’.

So why is this important? 

 

Hunger is the physical sensation of desiring to eat food. It is a natural, normal signal that tells our bodies we're getting low on energy and it’s time to refuel. If we eat when we’re physically hungry, our bodies are ready to process and use that energy. Eating when we’re not hungry signals our bodies to store the excess energy as fat.

In our ‘Intuitive Eating’ workshops we often ask people to put up their hands if they felt physical hunger today.  Usually about 20% of the room raise their hands, the rest look about sheepishly to see where they fit in with the group.

In our culture it has become ‘normal’ to eat 3 meals a day, about 8am, 12pm and 6pm sometimes with snacks in between, sometimes not. Instead of using our internal cues to know when to nourish ourselves we are using external cues to guide us. This is leading us to struggle with excess weight and obesity.

So how do I get started?

You need to know what they physical sensation of hunger feels like for you and you need to wait to feel it before you eat.

What does hunger feel like?

Many people describe it as an empty feeling, a gnawing in the stomach, a grumbling or rumbling sensation. Sometimes you can actually hear your stomach ‘growl’. Whatever it is for you, if you haven’t felt it in some time you’ll need to stop eating and wait until you can discern it. This may mean starting the day by skipping breakfast, possibly even lunch too. We’re had women go a whole day just drinking water until they felt true physical hunger. Trust that you’re body will provide a signal and when it does it’s time to eat.

So you’re going to give this a try? Great, you’re on your way to eating like a naturally slim person.  

But…,there are two more guiding principles that you need to know about and practice to be a true intuitive eater.

They are:

2.       Stop eating when you’re satisfied 

3.       Eat anything you’re body truly wants to eat

Next week we’ll talk more about Principle 2.

Intuitive Eating

Ten years ago I was training to become a Dietitian, at the same time I was struggling to shift 10kg. Dieting or starving myself one day, binge eating and gorging the next,  I was trapped in an emotional and physical battle with my mind and my body.  What I wanted more than anything was to be normal, like my size 8 girlfriend who seemed to eat whatever she wanted and still stay slim. I was convinced being slim would make me happy; I desperately envied my tiny friend who I thought had it all.

Four years at University taught me weight loss is about calories in versus calories out. The scientific bottom line….if you use up more calories in a day than you consume, weight loss is the result.  What could be simpler? Yet, in practice what I couldn’t seem to master was how to make that actually happen, let alone sustain it long-term!

I was many years older and a good 10kg’s lighter before I came to understand that there is a way of eating (known to my naturally slim girlfriend) that is simple, sustainable and just makes sense! This I now know is called ‘Intuitive Eating’.

So what is Intuitive Eating?

It’s becoming attuned to our bodies natural hunger and satiety signals to know what, when and how much to eat. It's a process that helps create a healthy relationship with food, mind and body.

We are all born with the ability to discern the physical signs of hunger and satiety that will guide us to know how to attain and maintain a normal, healthy weight. Many of us, particularly if we struggle with excess weight, have lost this natural ability to be self-guided around food and eating because we have been taught to look outside ourselves for the answers.

We want you to know that dieting and struggling with your weight can be a distant memory, as it is now for us.

Intuitive Eating is a big part of the solution and yet our world paradigm remains locked in the old, outdated approach of dieting that teaches us using our willpower to restrict, deprive and override our normal natural eating cues is the answer to being slim.

We have dropped 40kg combined and have stay slim for 16 years. We are passionate about helping others break free from dieting, emotional eating and the battle with excess weight that creates a myriad of pain in all areas of our lives. It is our vision that soon the ‘dieting’ paradigm will be extinct and a new paradigm will reign, one that puts the power back in the individuals’ hands.

So how can I learn Intuitive Eating?

We travel New Zealand teaching ‘Intuitive eating’ in work-shops, we also coach clients one on one in both New Zealand and Australia to help them discover how to apply the philosophy to create weight-loss results. At our workshops we begin by teaching 3 simple principles that will help you begin to learn to eat intuitively.

They are:

1.       Eat only when you are physically hungry

2.       Stop eating when you are satisfied

3.       Eat anything your body truly wants to eat

Over the next 3 weeks we’ll explore each of these principles in greater depth.  In the meantime, ask yourself ….”Am I ready to let go of the struggle with my weight and food? “Am I ready to trust the one person I haven’t been trusting to make decisions about my body and what I put into it?

(Written by Gina)