Redefining Motivation: A Weight-Neutral Approach to Personal Growth

Have you ever found yourself stuck, feeling completely unmotivated and unable to move forward? As a weight-neutral health coach, I’ve worked with countless clients who struggle with motivation across various aspects of their lives. Today, I’m sharing a transformative perspective that can help you break free from motivational paralysis.

The Biggest Misconception About Motivation

Most people believe motivation is something that happens to you—that you’re either naturally motivated or you’re not. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Motivation is an emotion, just like joy, anger, or pleasure. It’s not a mysterious force that randomly appears; it’s a state you actively create through your thoughts and perceptions.

Why We Sabotage Our Own Motivation

Interestingly, what we perceive as a lack of motivation is often a sophisticated self-protection mechanism. When we feel unmotivated, we’re typically:

– Avoiding perceived danger
– Protecting ourselves from potential failure
– Responding to deep-seated fears of judgment or criticism

Weight-Neutral Health Coaching Motivation: Uncovering the Roots of Unmotivation

Let me share a recent coaching experience that illustrates this perfectly. I worked with a client struggling to submit an important assignment. On the surface, it looked like procrastination. But when we dug deeper, we discovered her real challenge: paralyzing fear of failure.

Redefining Failure: A Powerful Mindset Shift

Her family history had taught her that anything less than being in the top 10% was considered a failure—with punishment attached. As an adult, she was still operating from this limiting belief. Together, we reframed failure as something entirely different: an opportunity to learn and grow.

How to Create Motivation: A Step-by-Step Approach

Creating genuine motivation requires honest self-reflection. Here’s my proven strategy:

1. Identify Your Thoughts: Grab a pen and paper. Write down your genuine thoughts about the area where you’re struggling with motivation.

2. Challenge Your Beliefs: For each thought, ask yourself:
– Is this an absolute fact?
– Where did this belief come from?
– Is there another way to interpret this situation?

3. Redefine Your Narrative: Create a new, empowering definition that removes the emotional charge of “failure” or “not good enough.”

Rather watch the video version of this blog? Check out Stephanie’s Instagram live here.

Weight-Neutral Health Coaching Motivation: Real-World Motivation Transformation

In my client’s case, redefining failure from a catastrophic event to a learning opportunity completely changed her approach. Suddenly, submitting the assignment became exciting rather than terrifying.

Your Motivation Toolkit

– Recognize motivation as an emotion you control
– Challenge your existing beliefs
– Create a compassionate, growth-oriented narrative
– View challenges as opportunities for learning

The Courage to Change Your Perspective

Creating motivation takes genuine courage. It means confronting uncomfortable thoughts and choosing a different path. But the reward is immense: you’ll unlock potential you never knew you had.

Final Thoughts

Motivation isn’t something that happens to you—it’s something you create. By understanding your thoughts, challenging your beliefs, and reframing your experiences, you can generate motivation in any area of your life.

Remember, you have the power to shift your perspective and create the motivation you desire.

Need Help with Creating Motivation?

You can access all of our services on our work with us page.  We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:

Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!

Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.

Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become  Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.

This 3-part blog series is designed to help people make peace with setting personal development goals post-diet culture. This is part 3 of 3. Read Part 2 & Part 1 here.

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3 Lessons From 10 Years of Non-Diet Goal Setting

Have you noticed how every January, we’re bombarded with messages about transforming ourselves? Here’s a radical thought: you don’t have to set any New Year’s resolutions at all.

You are enough exactly as you are right now. Diet culture and hustle culture have conditioned us to believe we constantly need to do more and be more. But that stops today.

If You Choose to Set Goals: My 3 Essential Tips

Before sharing my decade-long journey, let me offer three crucial tips for those who do choose to set goals. Remember, this choice should come from a place of empowerment, not obligation.

1. Perfect Achievement Isn’t the Point

The real purpose of setting a goal isn’t to achieve it flawlessly. Instead, focus on:

• Building consistent, imperfect habits aligned with your vision
• Shifting your beliefs about yourself and what’s possible
• Developing an identity as someone who takes regular action
• Understanding that small, imperfect steps create sustainable change

2. Unlearning Old Goal-Setting Patterns

Society has taught us that goals are about deprivation until achievement. This mindset needs unlearning:

• Release the belief that you can’t feel good until you reach your goal
• Challenge the idea that imperfect action equals failure
• Let go of the “all-or-nothing” mentality
• Recognize that the journey is as valuable as the destination

3. Feel Good While Pursuing Your Goals

The key to sustainable change is feeling better now, not later:

• Create positive experiences during the pursuit of your goal
• Release the need for willpower and self-discipline
• Focus on actions that feel good and align with your values
• Remember that self-love creates better results than self-criticism

My Journey to Freedom: A Timeline of Transformation

After spending 20 years trying to “fix” myself, I discovered something life-changing: we don’t need fixing. Here’s how this revelation transformed my entire approach to personal growth:

• 2011: Employment Freedom – Breaking free from the 9-to-5 by starting my own business
• 2014: Food Freedom – Discovering intuitive eating and trusting my body’s wisdom
• 2016: Body Freedom – Embracing body neutrality and unlearning harmful beauty standards
• 2018: Health Freedom – Expanding health beyond physical metrics
• 2020: Exercise Freedom – Finding joy in movement instead of punishment
• Present Day: Financial Freedom – Building wealth with an abundance mindset

3 Lessons From 10 Years of Non-Diet Goal Setting

1. The Power of Constraint

Setting multiple goals simultaneously isn’t a sign of ambition – it’s often a recipe for overwhelm. Limiting yourself to one meaningful goal is a powerful act of self-love because:

• Your brain can focus its resources effectively
• Small, consistent steps add up faster than scattered efforts
• You can fully integrate changes before adding new challenges

2. Clear Goals Create Natural Motivation

The secret to sustainable motivation isn’t willpower or discipline. It’s setting goals free from emotional baggage:

• Define success clearly and objectively
• Remove moral weight from your goals
• Track progress without judgment
• Celebrate small wins consistently

3. Court Your Goals Like a Partnership

Transform your relationship with goals from a battle to a partnership through:

• Regular check-ins and adjustments
• Compassionate self-talk
• Flexible adaptation as you learn
• Building self-trust through small promises kept

3 Lessons From 10 Years of Non-Diet Goal Setting: Common Challenges and Solutions

1. All-or-Nothing Thinking
   • Practice the “1% better” approach
   • Focus on progress, not perfection
2. Loss of Motivation
   • Build systems rather than relying on willpower
   • Create environmental changes that support your goals
3. Fear of Failure
   • Redefine failure as valuable data
   • Use setbacks as learning opportunities

3 Lessons From 10 Years of Non-Diet Goal Setting: Practical Implementation Steps

1. Start With a Goal Audit
   • Is this goal truly yours?
   • Does pursuing it energize you?
   • Can you maintain self-respect while pursuing it?
2. Create a Supportive Environment
   • Curate your social media mindfully
   • Surround yourself with supportive people
   • Set up your space for success

3 Lessons From 10 Years of Non-Diet Goal Setting: Moving Forward with Compassion

Whether you choose to set goals or not, make your decision from a place of self-respect. Remember: Love is always the best choice. You can’t hate yourself into sustainable change.

Ready to Transform Your Relationship with Goals?

You can access all of our services on our work with us page.  We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:

Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!

Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.

Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become  Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.

This post is Part 3 of a 3-part blog series designed to help people make peace with setting personal development goals post-diet culture. Read Part 2 & Part 1 here.

This 3-part blog series is designed to help people make peace with setting personal development goals post-diet culture. This is part 2 of 3. Read Part 1 & Part 3 here.

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Clean Vs Dirty Goals: The Key to Creating Achievable Goals Post-Diet Culture

For many women emerging from the diet culture mindset, goal-setting feels challenging, especially around the New Year when diet culture messaging resurfaces. Often, the struggle stems from years of setting “dirty goals”—those rooted in societal expectations rather than personal fulfillment. This post (part two of a three-part series) explores the difference between clean and dirty goals and guides you in setting achievable, non-diet culture goals.

Achievable Goals Post-Diet Culture: What Are Dirty Goals?

Dirty goals, which often emerge from diet culture, are goals tied to external validation or conditional happiness. These goals make our self-worth dependent on achieving a certain look, number, or outcome. Diet culture teaches us that achieving such goals will make us worthy, happy, or confident, but in reality, they create a continuous cycle of self-judgment. This approach often leaves us feeling like failures if we don’t meet these “perfect” standards, making goal-setting feel heavy rather than empowering.

Achievable Goals Post-Diet Culture: The Foundation of Clean Goals

Clean goals, on the other hand, are rooted in personal growth and internal motivation. Instead of focusing on an outcome that “fixes” something we believe is wrong with us, clean goals focus on the journey itself. They empower us to feel worthy and confident as we work toward them—not just if or when we achieve them. In other words, they are achievable goals post-diet culture.

Characteristics of Dirty Goals and How to Avoid Them

Dirty goals are subtle yet pervasive in the post-diet mindset. Recognizing their characteristics can help in shifting to clean goal-setting.

1. Abstract and Vague Goals

Dirty Goal: “I want to feel more confident.”
Clean Alternative: Create a specific and actionable goal, such as “I’ll practice speaking up once in meetings this month to build confidence.”

Dirty goals lack clear metrics, making progress hard to measure. Clean goals should be specific and measurable, helping you recognize small wins that build self-trust and encourage sustainable growth.

2. Conditional Happiness

Dirty Goal: “I’ll feel safe and confident when I reach a certain weight.”
Clean Alternative: Focus on feeling confident through affirmations, self-care routines, and body neutrality practices now, not later.

When we tie our happiness to reaching a goal, it keeps self-worth on hold. Clean goals help us feel confident and worthy in the present, ensuring self-acceptance becomes part of the journey.

3. All-or-Nothing Thinking

Dirty Goal: “Starting January, I’ll go to the gym every day.”
Clean Alternative: Set a realistic baseline, such as exercising once a week, and gradually increase as you build a sustainable habit.

Dirty goals often set high expectations, making it easy to quit after missing a single target. Clean goals, however, recognize progress over perfection, allowing flexibility and resilience as you work toward them.

4. Fantasizing About a ‘Perfect’ Outcome

Dirty Goal: “Losing weight will attract the right partner.”
Clean Alternative: Cultivate healthy relationships through self-acceptance and open-mindedness, rather than relying on a specific outcome.

When goals hinge on an idealized future, it’s easy to feel unfulfilled if that vision doesn’t materialize. Clean goals encourage progress and enjoyment in the now, creating fulfillment through self-acceptance rather than an imagined “perfect” life.

Setting Clean, Achievable Goals Post-Diet Culture

Once you understand the pitfalls of dirty goals, you can use these tips to create clean goals that align with your true desires and personal growth.

1. Focus on the Process, Not Just the Outcome

Diet culture often pushes goals that revolve around a fixed result. Clean goals are rooted in the process of growth. By valuing the journey over the destination, clean goals allow for flexibility and adaptability. Rather than “I must achieve this by March,” think “I’m excited to explore this new habit and see where it takes me.”

2. Celebrate Small Wins

Dirty goals frequently have us aiming high without celebrating our progress along the way. This can lead to burnout and discouragement. Clean goals embrace incremental progress. Take time to celebrate every small step—each is a sign of commitment to your journey. These small wins are valuable milestones that reinforce your dedication to a healthier relationship with yourself.

3. Trust the Journey

Clean goal-setting reminds us that achieving our dreams doesn’t require certainty. Trusting the journey means allowing ourselves to be open to all outcomes, viewing each as a learning experience. When setbacks happen, as they inevitably will, we don’t let them derail us. Instead, we understand that progress isn’t always linear and that resilience grows through every experience.

Dirty Goals in Disguise: Red Flags to Watch For

Even with the best intentions, dirty goals can sometimes sneak back in, especially during times of stress. Here are a few red flags to watch for:

– Seeking Validation from Others: If the excitement of sharing your goal with others overshadows the goal itself, it may be more about external approval than personal growth.

– Feeling Overwhelmed by the ‘Fantasy’ of the Goal: If the planning process for a goal gives you a dopamine rush but quickly leads to feeling overwhelmed, this is a sign the goal may be too complicated or unrealistic.

By identifying these patterns, you can realign your intentions with clean goal-setting principles, ensuring that your goals reflect your values and desires rather than societal expectations.

Achievable Goals Post-Diet Culture: Practical Steps to Set Clean Goals

If you’re ready to create clean, achievable goals post-diet culture, start by breaking down your goal-setting process into smaller steps:

1. Write Down Your Goal and Motivation: Be clear about why this goal matters to you. Make sure the reason is genuinely yours, not shaped by external influences.

2. Create a Realistic Action Plan: Choose one small, achievable step to take. For example, if you want to feel healthier, start with gentle movement or a morning stretch routine.

3. Check-In Regularly: Schedule time to review your progress and adjust if necessary. Goal-setting is an evolving process, not a one-time commitment.

4. Celebrate Effort, Not Just Results: Acknowledge your effort each step of the way, rather than waiting until the final milestone to reward yourself.

Moving Forward with Clean Goals

In a world saturated with diet culture messaging, shifting from dirty to clean goals is a powerful way to reclaim self-worth. When we set clean goals, we remove the pressure to be “fixed” or “improved.” Instead, we celebrate who we are right now while embracing the journey of personal growth.

As you explore these new approaches to goal-setting, remember that true fulfillment doesn’t require you to meet specific standards. By focusing on goals that honor your inherent worth, you’re choosing a path that nourishes both your body and your soul—free from diet culture’s influence.

Conclusion

Transitioning from diet-culture-driven goals to clean, achievable goals post-diet culture isn’t an overnight shift. But with awareness and a commitment to self-compassion, you’ll find that the goals you set for yourself can lead to sustainable, fulfilling progress. Whether you’re aiming to develop new habits, grow in confidence, or simply live with more intention, clean goals help you get there without sacrificing your well-being.

By reframing goals and moving away from diet culture’s influence, you’re not only creating a healthier mindset—you’re choosing a life that celebrates you, just as you are.

Ready to Set Clean Goals? We Can Help You!

You can access all of our services on our work with us page.  We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:

Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!

Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.

Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become  Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.

This post is part 2 of our 3-part series on making peace with goal setting in your post-diet culture journey. Access Part 1 & Part 3 here.

This 3 part blog series is designed to help people make peace with setting personal development goals post-diet culture. This is part 1 of 3. Read Part 2 & Part 3 here.

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Goal Setting Post-Diet Culture: 5 Strategies to Make Goal Setting Exciting Again!

Are you finding yourself hesitant to set personal development goals after breaking free from diet culture? You’re not alone. Many women discover that their relationship with goal setting becomes complicated once they step away from the rigid world of dieting and food rules.

Why You Might Be Experiencing Goal Rebellion

Just like rebellious eating is a natural response to years of food restriction, goal rebellion is an expected and normal part of your journey beyond diet culture. If you’re experiencing any of these signs, you’re likely in a stage of goal rebellion:

– Feeling anxious at the mere thought of setting new goals
– Believing that goals only lead to more suffering
– Struggling to imagine goal-setting without willpower and strict discipline
– Fearing that any goal failure reflects poorly on your worth
– Worrying that goals will pull you back into diet mentality
– Feeling overwhelmed by the perceived complexity of achieving goals

Understanding Goal Rebellion in Your Post-Diet Journey

After years of using goals to “fix” what society labeled as “problems,” it’s perfectly natural to want to reject goal-setting entirely. Many women find themselves saying “f*ck goals” – and that’s okay! This rebellion can actually be a healing part of your journey.

Try this affirmation to bring safety to your current stage:

“It’s totally normal for me to not want to set any goals in my life after years of using goal setting against myself.”

Goal Setting Post-Diet Culture: Moving Toward Goal Neutrality

The sweet spot lies in what we call “goal neutrality” – when the pendulum stops swinging between obsession and rebellion. This is where you can re-engage with goal-setting in a way that truly serves your growth and possibilities.

5 Powerful Strategies to Make Peace with Goal Setting

1. Redefine What Goals Mean to You

Goals aren’t about achieving perfection. Instead, think of them as building blocks for consistent, imperfect action toward something meaningful. It’s about gradually shifting your beliefs and identity, taking small steps that create sustainable change over time.

2. Own Your Sense of Worth

Goal rebellion often stems from believing that achieving goals is the only path to feeling “enough.” Remember: You don’t need to wait until you’ve reached a goal to feel worthy. Your worth exists independently of your achievements.

3. Break Free from Perfectionism

Ask yourself: Would you rather take consistent imperfect action for a year, or give up after six weeks because you couldn’t maintain “perfect” execution? Progress comes from embracing imperfection and keeping going anyway.

4. Focus on Habit Formation

Real life change happens through building sustainable habits, not through the temporary high of setting ambitious goals. Shift your focus from the end result to the daily practices that will get you there.

5. Commit to Self-Compassion

The journey toward any goal isn’t always exciting. It’s about showing up for yourself imperfectly, day after day, knowing that each small step matters. Having your own back through the process is crucial for sustainable change.

Remember: Your journey with goal setting doesn’t have to mirror your past experiences with diet culture. There’s a gentler, more sustainable way forward – and you get to define what that looks like for you.

Ready to Move Forward?

You can access all of our services on our work with us page.  We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:

Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!

Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.

Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become  Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.

Your Next Steps

This post is part 1 of our 3-part series on making peace with goal setting in your post-diet culture journey. Read Part 2 & Part 3 here.

Diet mindset professional support  to unlearn the diet culture thoughts training was not available when I started my transition to a non-diet approach to nutrition and health as a clinical nutritionist; had to figure it out on my own. Piece it all together…

In this podcast episode First Do No Harm: The Intuitive Eating Mentorship Journey I argued that the current model of practice for a nutrition professional top-down approach is causing more harm to a particular segment of our clients: women on the diet roller coster.

The solution: The bottom-up approach. Start first with addressing the diet mindset so we can move to coach nutrition and health later in the journey. Enter diet mindset professional training!

In this article, we will cover:

Diet Mindset Professional Training

How human make food choices

How the diet mindset develops

Common thought errors

Diet Brain: The adaptation

Self-Coaching for Intuitive eating

If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 3

Links mentioned in the episode…

Non-Diet Coaching Certification

Undiet Your Coaching Podcast

Set Point Podcast 

Self-Coaching Article

Diet Mindset Professional Training

In my professional studies as a clinical nutritionist, we barely touched upon the psychology of eating or diet mindset professional training. We jumped right into the WHAT to eat emphasizing greatly why it was so important to our health with a lot of facts and data.

So, I went into private practice and model what I had learned. Spending hours creating a complex protocol. Very quickly, I realized that wasn’t going to work… clients were overwhelmed and scared of the complexity of what they would have to do. I went to what I was taught: trying to convince them with studies, facts, and data as to why restricting this and that food was essential to their health. That didn’t work either.

Why wasn’t it working? Back then, I had no answer but today after years of independent studies I can tell you why: intellectual knowledge is not what motivates humans to change or make different choices. Especially not with food. The answer diet mindset professional training.

How human make food choices

So, if data points and fear-mongering isn’t an effective tool to help people change their eating habits, what is?

Of course, the primary driver to food choices is hunger however, what we choose to eat is not only our physiological and nutritional needs. Many other factors influence our food choice according to research:

Biological Determinants

For example, our innate eating cues hunger, fullness, and satisfaction which is what is recognized as eating cues in the world of intuitive eating coaching. You can also include here Set Point theory which I discussed in depth with Chris Sandle on our Going Beyond The Food Show podcast series about weight loss.

Economic Determinants

In sum, here we can think of cost, income, availability of food which is truly out of our control as health practitioners. These are major issues with the newest version of diet culture: the Wellness Diet.

Physical Determinants

For example, access, education, skills (e.g. cooking skills), and time availability which are mostly out of our control as health practitioners.

Social Determinants

This aspect of our food choices such as culture, family, peers, and meal patterns are mostly out of reach for us as health practitioners except one that is particularly relevant to our segment of women who have been chronic dieters: weight discrimination.

There is emerging evidence that experiences with weight stigma may lead to different eating behavior. For example, individuals ate more food after exposure to a weight stigmatizing condition. Additionally, in a study, 79 percent of women reported coping with weight stigma on multiple occasions by eating more food.

A properly structured non-diet approach to health engages clients and patients in learning coping skills to help reduce the impact of weight stigma.

Psychological Determinants

This is the world of mind and emotions. Elements such as mood, stress, and guilt are one area that as non-diet health professionals should be included in our approach.

Today, it is widely recognized that food influences our mood, and that mood has a strong influence on our choice of food. For this reason, these determinants are the first 3 pillars of the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ .

Attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge about food

This is where we include intellectual knowledge about food but also include all the constructed food beliefs pass down to us from the weight loss & wellness industries in order to sell their products.

How the diet mindset develops

What’s unique about our eating behaviors, unlike many other biological functions, is too often subject to sophisticated cognitive control.

We consciously manipulate our food choices beyond the need of our bodies to achieve other external gains/ goals in our life. One of the most widely practiced forms of cognitive control over food intake is dieting (cognitive dietary restraint).

In most studies on the topic of food choices, it’s most often observed that women and men behave differently with food. In this study, women reported significantly higher restraint, more guilt after eating in various types of social situations, and more overeating in reaction to unpleasant emotional state mood.

Women’s bodies are imposed on different beauty standards than men’s bodies. Diet Culture reinforces the thin ideals to women leading 91% of women in western societies to dislike their bodies and using dieting (cognitive food restraint) to meet diet culture expectations of their body size and beauty.

With repeated failed attempts at dieting, dieting has a 91%-95% failure rate over 5 years period, women’s brain & body develops coping mechanism as a mean of surviving diet failure and weight stigma. This is why we need diet mindset professional training!

Common thought errors or cognitive distortion

When it comes to how we think, the dieter’s brain adapts using what we know as cognitive distortion or thought errors.

Let’s take a step back first to make sure we all understand how the human brain functions.

When faced with an event or a trigger, labelled in the model below as circumstances then given an interpretation. This interpretation is based on our long-held beliefs, past experiences, values system including diet culture. We then form an opinion, a thought which then ignites an emotion. The emotions we feel then creates the actions or behaviours we take. The collective action we take then creates our result.

Cognitive Behavioral Coaching Model

Over time, the brain, or mind, adopts a “way of thinking” as a means to survive what we perceive as a difficult situation. These flaws in thinking are known as cognitive distortions or thought errors. This is what keeps women in the cycle of dieting and body shaming even though it has proven to be a very ineffective way of living life.

• Mental filtering
• Jumping to conclusions
• Personalization
• Black and white thinking
• Catastrophizing
• Overgeneralization
• Labelling
• Emotional reasoning
• Magnifying/ Minimizing

Over the years of working with women in a non-diet model of care approach, and my personal journey in recovering from 25 years dieting career, I have observed a pattern in cognitive distortion. I coined the term Diet Brain to better express this pattern.

Diet Mindset & Diet Brain

Diet brain, the term I coined a few years back, is the collective of 4-main thought errors. In my clinical observation and personal experience overcoming each one, this pattern that is present in most women chronic dieters I have worked. What are these traits?

All or nothing / Black and White thinking

This can be best described as the on the diet / off the diet lifestyle. The good and bad food dichotomy as dictated by diet culture. With time, it spread these faulty thought patterns to every aspect of our life: exercise, work, career, relationship, how we raised children….

Perfectionism

Simply put: Everything must be perfect to off so we can be worthy of love, acceptance. At first with diet, food, and exercise but as failure cumulated, it becomes a way of life to prevent potential rejection due to “unperfected body”.

This cognitive distortion leads to a perfectionist fantasy. We make our current life so miserable by thinking that solving your problem (aka body size and appearance) will provide us with the happiness we are seeking that we actually never live (and enjoy) our current life.

Mental filtering: It’s my body’s fault

The body and its size take the blame for everything that’s wrong in your life. From health to a relationship, to opportunity, to emotional state… it’s all the body’s fault. Women then consistently compare themselves with others based on beauty and body size.

People-pleasing

This is when women move to external validation because internal validation is absent. As they believe that they are unacceptable, they will attempt to please and comfort everyone around them as a means of avoiding rejection and gaining acceptance.

These four most common cognitive distortions most present with women chronic dieters then strongly influence their eating patterns, ability to practice self-care, and create health-promoting habits.

The non-diet approach will first help the client and the patient with their mindset and emotions before engaging in nutrition education. In our diet mindset professional training, we teach the framework of self-coaching.

Self-Coaching for Intuitive Eating

Self-Coaching is a framework that supports first becoming aware of our thought, observing them without judgment and last to change our thinking. It’s also an effective approach supported by neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.

We’ve developed a unique framework that supports the long-term goal of helping women recover from diet culture and become intuitive eater and body neutral. This is the best tool for diet mindset recovery for a professional approach.  Self-coaching for intuitive eating is applied in 3 steps:

Step 1: Self-observation

The process of self-coaching cultivates the first skill which is about being an observer of our inner world – our thoughts and our emotions. This process helps raise the level of interception that clients will need as they begin to explore their innate eating cues with intuitive eating.

Step 2: Non-judgement

Self-coaching is about exploring your inner world with a “lense of curiosity” instead of judgment. Asking the question “I wonder why I think like this or do this” instead “I’m so stupid because I do this” is empowering and creates deep mental clarity. You can then decide how you want to think about X or what you want to do about Y.

Step 3: Conscious response

The last step of self-coaching is about choosing conscious responses or thoughts that work best for you and your specific situation, problem, or challenge. Self-coaching is ultimately about deciding consciously instead of reacting unconsciously.

Self-coaching as a thought in an intuitive eating mentorship program is about teaching our clients to connect to their innate wisdom and their power. It leads to emotional intelligence by taking charge of your mind and emotions.

That’s the feminist approach to food and health.

Get Started with Diet Mindset Unlearning Professional Training

We have created for you a number of free non-diet professional training resources to help you begin your research in the field of non-diet approach to health. You will find non-diet online training, webinars, podcasts, and articles.

You can access the non-diet coaching professional training here:

Non-Diet Professional Mentorship

Our Non-Diet Coaching Certification is a high-level business mentorship program for health professionals who want to take their business to a non-diet model of care. This program includes diet mindset professional training.

A 6-month journey of business and personal growth exclusively designed for female health entrepreneurs mastering their own journey beyond the food with intuitive eating and body neutrality, while also learning to market their intuitive eating business with a heart so they can have a massive impact on women’s health.