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Beyond the Food Blog

A catalog of evidence-based articles written by Stephanie Dodier Clinical Nutritionist on all topics supporting the non-diet approach to health. 

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A catalog of evidence-based articles written by Stephanie Dodier Clinical Nutritionist on all topics supporting the non-diet approach to health. 

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What is Diet Culture and 4 Steps to Navigate It

What is Diet Culture and 4 Steps to Navigate It

Dec 2, 2019 | , , , , , , | 0 Comments

If you’ve been following me on social media or reading my blog, you certainly have come across the term “diet culture.” I’ve mentioned it many times before. But what is diet culture? How does it impact your life? And what should you do about it?

This article tackles this topic and teaches you how to opt-out of it. Also, I offer some resources that will help you start a new life outside of this oppressive belief system. Here’s what you’re going to learn from this blog post:

What is diet culture?

How to navigate the diet culture

Diet culture educational resources

Now, let’s begin exploring the diet culture so you can take your first steps to freedom!

diet culture

What is diet culture?

From the sound of it, you might think the term “diet culture” refers to a group of people who are on a diet. But it actually has a different meaning.

Christy Harrison, a colleague of mine, has the best diet culture definition. She defines it as a system of belief that worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue. It’s now prevalent in our society and oppresses women from all over the world!

How does this impact your life?

This means you may have spent your entire life thinking that you’re broken just because you don’t look like the impossibly thin ideal.

That’s just one angle. You can also look at the diet culture from three other angles:

The second angle is that it promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status. It makes you feel compelled, almost obligated, to spend massive amounts of time, energy, and resources, trying to shrink your body so you can fit into this thin ideal. Now, research is very clear that the dieting model has a 95 percent failure rate, so it might as well be an exercise in futility.

The next angle is it demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others. It forces you to be hyper-vigilant about your eating, shames you for making certain food choices, and distracts you from the pleasure of eating as well as from your purpose and power.

Last but not least, it oppresses people who don’t match the supposed picture of health or the thin ideal. This affects us most particularly as women, although it’s starting to affect men.

My 25-year journey inside diet culture

As you probably know, I used to have a love-hate relationship with food and my body. A 25-year career in dieting left me obsessed, frustrated and confused about food. I was also at a loss on how to take care of my body.

Dieting was stealing my life and at 39. Then I decided that I had enough… I finally chose to take my power back and free myself from dieting and body shaming. The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ was born out of my personal journey.

Now, as a health professional, I’ve helped hundreds of women work their way out of this oppressive culture and develop a healthier relationship with food using intuitive eating and body neutrality.

Is diet culture affecting you, too? I invite you to consider its impact on your life. Take our quick self-assessment tool we created to help women determine if intuitive eating is the right solution for them.

How to navigate the diet culture

how to navigate diet culture

I invite you, and honestly all women, to become diet culture dropouts! Below are the four steps you need to take in your journey towards freedom:

  1. Understand that you have a choice. 

Now is the best time to be a woman. Unlike the generations before us, we’re liberated and empowered! You have to understand that diet culture is a tool that the patriarchy uses to keep us from being in our power. It keeps us busy minding our calories and macros. It induces guilt and so we feel inclined to punish ourselves when we fail.

Whether you want to stay in the diet culture and be oppressed or to break away from it and change your life, it’s totally up to you. But you should know that you have the power to make that choice.

  1. Take responsibility.

With great power comes great responsibility. Now, that sounds like a quote from a Spiderman movie, but as an empowered woman, you are responsible for your life. No one else is!

Now, you can be the victim of diet culture and drown yourself in self-pity and helplessness. Or you can say, “Screw this! I’m going to take responsibility, and I’m going to work myself out of it and change my life.”

It’s your call.

  1. Educate yourself. 

Read books and blogs. Listen to podcasts. Consume content that supports the choice that you’ve made for yourself. Be on guard against the content that might suck you right back into the diet culture. As I’ve said before, beware of diet culture programs disguised as wellness practices.

I’ve made it my personal mission to empower women by educating them so they don’t allow themselves to be oppressed. And so, I have put together some resources for you.

We have anti-diet culture podcast episodes on the Going Beyond the Food Show, where I interview health professionals. I invite you to listen as they share their expert insights and opinions on our relationship with our bodies and with food.

You can also read our anti-diet culture blog posts on this website. Here, we go deep into the research and the studies around diet culture as well as dieting and its impact on health.

If you’re looking for an anti-diet culture book, I recommend Health At Every Size by Linda Bacon, PhD. Dr. Bacon does research around health and dieting. It’s a book that gave me a lot of “aha moments” and subsequently changed my life.

  1. Find a framework to help you reconstruct your relationship with food and with your body.

You’re going to shift from the way of life that diet culture has taught you to a more empowering way of thinking and doing things. This means there’s a lot for you to unlearn and relearn, so you’re going to need all the support you can get.

The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is a 5-step strategic process to help women move out of diet mentality and into self-care. Our 5 pillars are: mindset, emotional wellness, mindfulness, body neutrality and intuitive eating.

Diet culture educational resources

diet culture resources

As a clinical nutritionist, I’ve found that intuitive eating is the most effective tool for developing a healthy relationship with food and your body. Intuitive eating teaches you to tap into your innate hunger and fullness cues. It requires you to relearn how to engage with food without restriction and without labeling food as “good” or “bad.”

The trauma around body image is more powerful than the one around food. What I have found over the years is that when we work through our relationship with food, it’s a lot easier and faster to heal body image issues.

We offer a variety of programs that will help you should you decide to opt-out of diet culture:

1) The Intuitive Eating Project – This is a self-study program that will help you relearn how to eat intuitively at your own pace.

2) The Going Beyond the Food Academy – This is group coaching program where we teach the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ and offer support and coaching in a more in-depth approach. In this program, we talk about mindset, emotions, body image, intuitive eating, and mindfulness.

3) Conquer and Thrive– This is a six-month, high-touch intensive program where you work one-on-one with me. Here, you learn how to work your way out of the diet culture and heal your relationship with food, your body, and yourself.

Diet Culture FAQs

What is diet culture?

Christy Harrison defines it as a system of belief that worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue. It’s now prevalent in our society and oppresses women from all over the world!

How to navigate the diet culture?

1. Understand that you have a choice.

2. Take responsibility.

3. Educate yourself.

4. Find a framework to help you reconstruct your relationship with food and with your body.

What are the diet culture educational resources?

Intuitive Eating Project – This is a self-study program that will help you relearn how to eat intuitively at your own pace.

The Going Beyond the Food Academy – This is a group coaching program where we teach the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ and offer support and coaching in a more in-depth approach. In this program, we talk about mindset, emotions, body image, intuitive eating, and mindfulness.

Conquer and Thrive – This is a six-month, high-touch intensive program where you work one-on-one with me. Here, you learn how to work your way out of the diet culture and heal your relationship with food, your body, and yourself.

read more
Intuitive Eating Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide

Intuitive Eating Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide

Nov 25, 2019 | , | 0 Comments

Intuitive eating is increasingly becoming popular among women for a number of good reasons. For one, it’s been proven to lead to positive health outcomes. Also, it’s an approach to eating that puts you in control of your eating behavior. You’re the expert of your body and the boss of you.

But how do you start eating intuitively? How do you make it work? This blog post aims to answer these questions by introducing you to the 10 key principles of intuitive eating that Evelyn Tribole developed. Here, I also show you how to get started in five easy steps. This guide is virtually intuitive eating made simple for you!

Intuitive eating Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide

Here’s what you’ll learn from this blog post:

What is Intuitive Eating?

10 Key Principles of Intuitive Eating

Research–Based Health Benefits

Intuitive Eating and Weight Loss

What’s the difference Between Mindful Eating and Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive Eating Made Simple: How to Get Started 

Intuitive Eating Free Resources

Ready to learn how to get started with intuitive eating and make it work? Let’s dive in!

What is Intuitive Eating?

When people ask me what eating intuitively means, this is the definition that usually comes to mind: “a self-care eating framework that uses your body’s internal cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction to guide your eating behavior.” It’s literally trusting your gut! Note that this intuitive eating definition emphasizes self-care and not weight loss.

Intuitive eating an evidence-based approach to eating that allows you to be the expert of your own body. This approach enables you to develop a healthy relationship with food and your body. It teaches you to trust your ability to meet your own needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger, and ultimately develop body wisdom.

Eating Intuitively is well –research and proven health framework supported by more than 100 studies as of 2019.

10 Key Principles of Intuitive Eating

So how do you make intuitive eating a part of your life? Here are the 10 key principles of intuitive eating that will guide your journey towards a natural way of eating.

1. Reject the diet mentality.

Get rid of all the diet books, articles, videos, and other materials that give you the false hope that you’ll lose weight easily, quickly, and permanently. Scoff at the lies that try to convince you that you’re a failure or something is broken in you just because another diet has failed you and you gained back the weight that you lost. Never allow yourself to be deceived again.

2. Honor your hunger.

Keep your body well-nourished and provide it with enough calories to keep it energized. Depriving your body of food can kick the drive to overeat into high gear. On the other hand, honoring your hunger lays the foundation for learning to trust your body’s messages.

3. Make peace with food. 

Allow yourself to eat without any conditions. Telling yourself that you can’t eat a particular food because it’s “bad” for you will do you more harm than good. It can lead to an intense feeling of deprivation that can result in uncontrollable cravings and binge eating. And if you give into the “temptation” to eat what you think is “bad” for you, you’ll experience intense guilt. You don’t need any of that B.S.! Stop labelling food as good or bad and instead make peace with it.

4. Challenge the food police. 

When a voice inside your head says you’re “good” for minding your calories or “bad because you ate some French fries, tell it to shut up! The diet culture is insidious. It deploys the food police into your psyche. Every time you allow yourself to enjoy the pleasure of eating, the police induce guilt and the fear of weight gain. It may also call you unsavory names. If you want to make eating intuitively a part of your life, you have to drive the food police away and tell it to never come back!

5. Respect your fullness.

Be aware of your body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. When you feel comfortably full, pause in the middle of eating and ask yourself:

  • How does the food taste?
  • How full are you?

6. Discover the satisfaction factor.

You’re meant to eat, not just to live, but also to enjoy the pleasure of eating. The ability to enjoy the experience of eating is a gift. Sadly, because the diet culture pressures us to fit into the thin ideal, we often forgo this wonderful gift. The truth is the pleasure of eating is a powerful force that will help you feel satisfied sooner. Thus, the more you enjoy the experience of eating, the less food it takes to satisfy you.

7. Honor your feelings without using food. 

There are ways to comfort yourself and resolve your issues other than food. We all experience uncomfortable emotions throughout our lives. While food provides temporary relief, it won’t fix the underlying problems that cause uncomfortable emotions. If you eat to relieve emotional discomfort, you’ll only feel worse if you don’t deal with the source of the emotion.

8. Respect your body.

Let’s say you had a shoe size of 9. Would you waste your time wishing you could wear a size 7 shoe? It just doesn’t make sense, does it? Well, the same is true for dress sizes. It doesn’t make sense to try to fit into a size 2 dress if you weren’t born with the genetic makeup for that size! Every person has a genetically predetermined body size and shape. Stop trying to fit into the thin ideal that the diet culture worships and start respecting your body. You’re perfect just the way you are.

9. Exercise—feel the difference.

You don’t have to spend countless hours at the gym and do a particular type of workout. You can just go outside for a brisk walk or turn on your favourite dance playlist and bust some moves! Just get your body moving. And move your focus from the calorie-burning effect of exercise to how you feel while moving your body. Exercise releases endorphins, your body’s “feel-good” hormones. It also energizes you. So make feeling good your motivation to exercise rather than losing weight.

 10. Honor your health.

Choose foods that support your health and please your taste buds. But remember that you don’t have to eat a perfect diet to stay healthy. What you eat consistently over time is what truly matters. Aim for progress, not perfection.

But is intuitive eating really healthy?

Research–Based Health Benefits

intuitive-eating-benefits-1

Intuitive eating is not a diet fad. It is an approach to eating that’s backed by scientific research. In 2014, an intuitive eating research study involving 1,600 middle-aged women showed strong links between eating intuitively and having a lower body mass index and positive emotional health.

I’ve written a complete guide that walks you thru all the evidence-based health benefits of intuitive eating.

  • Improved cholesterol levels
  • Lower stress levels
  • Increased energy
  • Improved mental health
  • Lower eating disorder occurrence
  • Improved body awareness
  • Enhanced self-esteem
  • Improved level of happiness

Intuitive Eating and Weight Loss

Weight loss is the be-all and end-all of all diet and exercise programs, thanks to diet culture. The end goal of eating intuitively is not weight loss, period.

Rather, it is developing a healthy relationship with food and one’s body. This healthy relationship then leads to optimum physical and mental health. In other words, when you eat intuitively, you chase health rather than weight loss.

Weight loss may be one of the many outcomes of becoming an intuitive eater as much as it may not be. Your weight may also remain stable.

Caution: If anyone attempts to sell intuitive eating as a way for you to lose weight… run the other way. Eating intuitively isn’t compatible with intentional weight loss. Losing weight intentionally will prevent you from attuning to your innate eating cues and instead keep you focused on controlling how much you eat and what food you eat.

You can read more in this article, Intuitive Eating Before and After: My Story, where I share my personal journey of becoming an intuitive eater.

What’s the difference Between Mindful Eating and Intuitive Eating?

You might be wondering if mindful eating is the same as intuitive eating. Certainly, the answer is no, they’re distinct from each other. Mindful eating is part of eating intuitively.

Mindful eating is being fully present while you eat. It’s being present in your entire eating experience on purpose.

On the other hand, intuitive eating is an entire eating framework and philosophy. It includes physical activities, how you engage with your body image, and gentle nutrition. Mindful eating is an important component of intuitive eating, which is not limited to simply being mindful.

Intuitive Eating Made Simple: How to Get Started

Eating intuitively in 5 easy steps is possible! You can start your intuitive eating journey and build a healthier relationship with food following the next steps:

 

how to eat intuiri

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Step 1: Understand the diet culture and your power to choose.

The diet culture worships the thin ideal and equates thinness with good health and moral virtue. It’s prevalent in the world today. But you don’t have to be a part of it. You have a choice!

Step 2: Reject the diet culture.

Refuse to be controlled by this oppressive culture. Unfollow social media accounts that use the weight loss lingo and uphold dieting myths. Throw out the books and delete videos, apps, and e-books that support the diet culture. Beware of diet-culture programs that masquerade as wellness programs.

Step 3: Be present with your food.

Practice mindful eating. First, turn off all distractions such as your phone and the television. Then, use your five senses to enjoy the experience of eating.

Step 4: Shift from external eating cues to your body’s internal eating cues.

Stop counting calories and macros. Instead of following dieting rules, use your body’s innate hunger and fullness cues to guide your eating behavior.

Step 5: Seek satisfaction from food.

Eat foods that you like. Get attuned to your body and notice how certain foods make you feel. Eat more of those that make you feel good.

Intuitive Eating Free Resources

Want to have a better relationship with food and become healthier in the process? I’ve put together some free resources to help you begin your intuitive eating journey:

1. Is intuitive eating right for you?

2. Get Started with our free intuitive eating guide

3. Listen to our Intuitive Eating podcast episodes on the Going Beyond the Food Show.

4. Get some tips and more information from my Intuitive eating blog.

Most frequently asked questions about Intuitive Eating

Does intuitive eating really work?

Yes, eating intuitively is a well–researched and proven health framework supported by more than 100 studies as of 2019.

What are the 10 principles of intuitive eating?

1. Reject the diet mentality.

2. Honor your hunger.

3. Make peace with food.

4. Challenge the food police.

5. Respect your fullness.

6. Discover the satisfaction factor.

7. Honor your feelings without using food.

8. Respect your body.

9. Exercise—feel the difference.

10. Honor your health.

How to get started with Intuitive Eating?

Step 1: Understand the diet culture and your power to choose.

Step 2: Reject the diet culture.

Step 3: Be present with your food.

Step 4: Shift from external eating cues to your body’s internal eating cues.

Step 5: Seek satisfaction from food.

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The Powerful Gift of Emotional Eating

The Powerful Gift of Emotional Eating

Nov 19, 2019 | | 0 Comments

What is the gift of emotional eating?

Thinking of emotional eating as a gift may seem to be a strange concept as the prevalent diet culture demonizes this same eating behavior. Diet culture teaches us not to give in to emotional cravings as it may be a sign that we lack willpower and discipline. Yet almost every human being eats emotionally.

One of the foundational aspects of the Going Beyond the Food Method is to see our relationship with food and our body as a message. Seeking to understand our eating behaviors instead of fighting them is what will allow us to see the gift of emotional eating. If we fail to see the gift behind emotional eating, we miss out on the guidance and opportunity for growth that it has to offer.

This article aims to help you understand emotional eating and how it can empower you instead of sending you down the path of shame and self-loathing.

It also answers these questions about emotional eating:

What is Emotional Eating?

What is Emotional Eating versus Binge Eating versus Overeating?

What is the gift of eating emotionally?

Why do we want to stop eating emotionally? 

How do we stop emotional eating?

gift-of-emotional-eating-1

What is Emotional Eating?

Emotional eating is the act of using food to reinforce positive emotions such as joy, love, and celebration or to soothe negative feelings such as anxiety, stress, fear, anger, boredom, shame, etc.

A shorter and simpler emotional eating definition that I can give you is “eating for reasons other than satisfying one’s physical hunger.”

Most women can relate to emotional eating in some way. 99.9% percent of us are emotional eaters. Emotional eating is more common in women partly because we are more emotionally sensitive than men.

What is Emotional Eating versus Binge Eating versus Overeating?

People often describe emotional eating as mindless eating. It’s consuming food when you’re not hungry or when you’re trying to satisfy an emotional need.

On the other hand, binge eating involves eating a large amount of food within a short period of time. This eating behavior is usually accompanied by the feeling of a lack of control over the eating episode as well as intense shame about the behavior.

Binge and emotional eating aren’t necessarily two separate and distinct processes. Instead, they are one process that occurs in a continuum. What may start as casual emotional eating may lead to eating past the point of comfort (simply overeating).

(To better understand the underlying neurological and biological reasons why we turn to binge eating, you can listen to my interview with Dr. Kari Anderson in the binge eating podcast episode of the Beyond the Food Show.)

How do you know when you’re moving further into the continuum of emotional eating? By paying attention to the “3-how’s”:

  1. How much are you eating?
  2. How often do you use eating as a coping strategy?
  3. How else are you coping with difficult emotions?

Overeating is interesting. The word clearly means “eating over a certain amount.” What is that certain amount? Who determines it?

The concept is 100% created by the diet culture. It’s a term used to shame someone who’s not following a prescribed meal plan, diet, etc.

When you ditch the diet culture and practice intuitive eating, you’ll find that there’s no such thing as overeating. That’s because you let your internal hunger and fullness cues guide you when it comes to how much you should eat instead of following a dictated amount from an external guide.

what is emotional eating

Why do we want to stop eating emotionally? 

Diet culture is the primary driving force that promotes the concept that emotional eating should be first controlled and then avoided. It puts a negative spin on emotional eating as it leads people to eat more than the ideal amount it prescribes. And when you eat more than the prescribed amount, it tries to shame you and labels your behavior as “overeating.” Diet culture then provides tips and tricks to stop emotional eating as a way to ensure that you “stick to your diet”.

The second reason why people so badly want to stop emotional eating is that they don’t understand it.

Diet culture leads you to be afraid of gaining weight or not losing weight. It’s when you begin to understand that there is a gift behind emotional eating that you can finally get out of that state of fear and start engaging with your desire to eat emotionally with curiosity instead of judgment.

What is the gift of emotional eating? 

Now, I’m going to get a little bit science-y here. Let’s break down emotional eating.

Let’s start by understanding what is an emotion. Emotions are created by your thoughts and communicated to the rest of your body via a burst of electric energy in your nervous system. Think of this burst of energy as a signal for the rest of your body to act or behave in a certain way. These bursts of energy are simply signals or messages that are felt in your body as sensations. You feel these sensations (aka emotions) deep down in your body both consciously and unconsciously.

Sometimes, these sensations can be uncomfortable. Emotions such as anxiety or stress are often deeply uncomfortable and food can be an antidote for this emotional discomfort. To help this emotional discomfort, food will release dopamine in our brain to offset the discomfort of stress or anxiety, making you forget for a while that you are anxious or stressed.

And so, over time, you may start building a pattern of reaching for food when you feel uncomfortable emotions. Think of this behavior as protective; you are simply trying to feel better. Humans are wired to seek comfort and pleasure and to avoid pain and discomfort.

But once you understand how your emotions relate to your eating behavior, you’ll begin to see emotional eating as a radar for your life and as a way of getting to know yourself better. Emotional eating allows you to ask powerful questions that can put you back in control and help you change your life.

The gift of emotional eating is that it’s a window into your truth and growth.

eating emotionally

How do we stop?

Do you really want to learn how to stop emotional eating? Or do you want to understand your emotional eating behavior?

The first place to start is to shift from judging your eating behaviors to being curious about them. See emotional eating for what it is – a gift.

Ask yourself questions like:

“I wonder why I eat every night after 8 o’clock?”

“I wonder why I crave chocolate every morning around 11 am? What is that all about?”

“Why is that when I have a fight with my partner all I want is chips?”

“Why am I so afraid of gaining weight? What am I really afraid of?”

When you ask yourself questions like these, only then will you be able to start the process of understanding what is hidden behind your emotional cravings.

As the term itself suggests, emotional eating is eating in response to emotions. An emotion is a mood, a state of mind derived from our thoughts and our perspective in life. All of your emotions are the outcome of the way you think.

If you want to stop emotional eating, the best way to do that is by changing the way you think. Emotions are produced by our thoughts, therefore if we change our thoughts, we change our emotions.

(To better understand how events, thoughts, and emotions influence your actions, you can listen to my self-coaching podcast episode or read my self-coaching article where I discuss how the brain works.)

Seeking to understand your emotional eating behavior will help you understand yourself better. By understanding yourself and your life better, you will start making different choices and interrupting patterns that create emotional discomfort.

That’s when you stop needing to eat emotionally.

help with emotional eating

My biggest shift

For me, shifting my perspective of emotional eating has been a turning point in my life. It’s been a gift. It sent me down the path of healing. I use my relationship with food, weight, and my body as a way of seeing what’s going on in my life.

Shifting from judging my eating behavior and my body weight to being curious has been a journey. That journey wasn’t easy. I made some mistakes along the way, which I discuss in an emotional eating podcast episode. But it led me to understand myself and why I had been struggling with food and my body since the age of 12.  After dieting for 25 years, I finally understand the real reason why diets never worked for me.

It was never about the food or my body…

Need help with emotional eating?

Perhaps you came across this article because you’re looking for ways on how to overcome emotional eating. It’s mostly about understanding the gift behind it, and harnessing this gift to develop a healthier relationship with food.

I have some resources to help you with that:

First, download the Crave Cure Guide. This will help you better understand food cravings and find solutions to achieve food freedom.

Then, you can take the emotional eating quiz to know the right solution for you.

For more guidance and support, I invite you to the Going Beyond the Food Academy. It’s a program that will help you overcome emotional eating without dieting so you can finally be at peace with food and your body. Go check it out now!

Most frequently asked questions about eating emotionally

What is Emotional Eating?

Emotional eating is the act of using food to reinforce positive emotions such as joy, love, and celebration or to soothe negative feelings such as anxiety, stress, fear, anger, boredom, shame, etc.

What is Emotional Eating versus Binge Eating versus Overeating?

People often describe emotional eating as mindless eating. It’s consuming food when you’re not hungry or when you’re trying to satisfy an emotional need. On the other hand, binge eating involves eating a large amount of food within a short period of time.

Why do we want to stop emotional eating?

Diet culture is the primary driving force that promotes the concept that emotional eating should be first controlled and then avoided. It puts a negative spin on emotional eating as it leads people to eat more than the ideal amount it prescribes. And when you eat more than the prescribed amount, it tries to shame you and labels your behavior as “overeating.” Diet culture then provides tips and tricks to stop emotional eating as a way to ensure that you “stick to your diet”.

What is the gift of emotional eating?

Once you understand how your emotions relate to your eating behavior, you’ll begin to see emotional eating as a radar for your life and as a way of getting to know yourself better. Emotional eating allows you to ask powerful questions that can put you back in control and help you change your life. The gift of emotional eating is that it’s a window into your truth and growth.

How to stop emotional eating?

If you want to stop emotional eating, the best way to do that is by changing the way you think. Emotions are produced by our thoughts, therefore if we change our thoughts, we change our emotions.

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Women Food and Power

Women Food and Power

Nov 11, 2019 | | 0 Comments

My life was pretty good: I had food on the table, a home, a car, a great career that brought in enough money, cool friends, a supportive family.

I thought of myself as an independent fierce woman. 

But I also wondered, “… is that what life is really about?”

While by society standards I was doing all the right things I kept, wondering if every other woman was as anxious as I was about how I looked. Were they as overwhelmed as me at the thought of not losing or worse gaining weight? Is it normal to feel this frustrated with food and not being able to eat like everyone else?

Everyone around me reflected that it was all ok, but secretly, I knew something wasn’t right. So, I kept going making sure I was checking all the boxes:

        My partner: Making sure he was happy, satisfied, that he felt loved.

        The boss: I was delivering the results expected. 

        Social circle: Making sure I was there for them and was pleasant.

        My parents: Striving to be #1, working hard and making money to ensure my safety.

        Society: being a good girl and kept striving for the female beauty standards of thinness

women food and power-1

And then the forties came along

It wasn’t one thing one moment… one day. It was a series of little things that collectively lead me to realize I was living the illusion of a happy life based on others’ beliefs. 

That’s why I was eating… 

I was years in the making. In fact, I was a pretty smart child and wasn’t afraid of speaking my mind. I played with boys as much as I played with girls. Certainly, a tough little girl. 

But at 13, the society led me to believe that I was too much. Too tall. Too big. That if I wanted to be a good girl from now on, I needed to be less. Smaller. Thinner and also quieter. To achieve this goal of being a good little girl, food was going to be the weapon of choice. Over the next few years, I learned to diet and that shrinking my body was the gateway for me to manage my “too muchness”. 

By the end of my teenage years,  I learned that my power was food because I was so into diet culture. I learned that for society to accept women, she must conform to its standards. Unfortunately, I wasn’t born with a body & spirit that naturally conform to the norm so I accepted that I would need to work hard at fitting in for the rest of my life.

That’s exactly what I did for nearly 27 years until my forties came along. I started to read self-improvement books and questioning the beauty ideal imposed on women.

Women Food and Power: My journey

Up to then, my power was food (and the attempted control of weight) all to fulfill the illusion that being smaller would deliver better. I thought if I couldn’t control my height at least I could control my weight.

It turns out that controlling my weight wasn’t an easy task. It worked and then it didn’t but I learned quickly to be a “good fat person” by at least trying to lose weight and making sure everyone knew I was trying hard. That’s when I started to eat in secret.

By the time I hit my mid-twenties, I had a strong coping mechanism in place to cope with my inability to conform to what my body should look like.

  1. People-pleasing: I sought external validation so I made sure I wasn’t rejected
  2. All or nothing: On and off the diet. It’s my fault it doesn’t work so try harder
  3. Perfectionism: To compensate my “not enoughness” and “too muchness”, I needed to strive to achieve everything perfectly
  4. Mental filtering: Life is about controlling my body, therefore, my food.

That’s what I call today Diet Brain. Diet brain was the way my subconscious mind evolved to cope with the world that I felt rejected me and my body.

But something happened in my late thirties. I had this resounding secret thought “I can’t do it anymore”. I felt exhausted and the excitement of the latest diet has vanished. Soon enough, my body followed suit and wouldn’t cooperate anymore.  I was anxious, depressed, and sick.

I couldn’t imagine that the rest of my life was going to be just another “diet”. Is that what life was about? Really just managing my weight?

women food and power-2

I was born worthy

The truth was that my life focus had been on chasing my self-worth. I was failing at the task but always trying and I was failing because self-worth was never going to come from being smaller.

I was born worthy but somewhere along the line of my life, someone or something led me to believe that I needed to earn my worth through my body size.

Although I had chased my self-worth for over 27 years through my body size and had yet to find it, I never questioned this belief. The indoctrination from diet culture early on in my life was still creating my reality today at 40. That’s the magic of the subconscious mind.

That is until I started to question my beliefs. Could I be enough without being in a smaller body? Is it possible to be loved and supported without being smaller? Could I be successful without being quieter?

I always had a choice

Yes: It was a possibility. I could be loved, supported, and accepted at any size.

I started to notice women in my life that were “enough” without being smaller. Women who were successful, happy, and confident in non-conforming bodies. Women whose power wasn’t wrapped around food. New people came into my life reinforcing the possibility. Books, blogs, videos… over months I had plenty of evidence.

Yet I was still stuck. I had made different choices. By then I knew it wasn’t my fault that I was the way I was but it was my fault if I stayed like that.

I needed to go from wanting to change to deciding to change. The problem was I was afraid. Scared of the perceived work it takes to change. I didn’t have time. I didn’t have the resources…

The pain of doing the work appeared to be greater than the pain of staying in the “not enough”. So, I chose to stay put. I kept lurking on what was possible.

I had so many stories in my head that keep me from not making the choice to change. Let’s face it, when it came to my ability to change my subconscious mind was telling me: “You are a failure” or “ You’ll never be able to do it” or “Why would this be any different than your attempt to manage your weight?”.

My subconscious mind was on a mission to keep me safe and secure in my comfort zone. Not believing in myself was my comfort zone. I wasn’t worthy enough to believe in myself.

women empowerment

What if you couldn’t fail?

I believe in paying to be held at a higher standard that I can conceive for myself. So, I committed myself to have someone show me the way.

The greatest achievements I had in my life up to this point came from being taught by a great teacher or coach: sport, business, and adulting. I knew that if I was going to make it happen it was not going to be on my own…

“What if you couldn’t fail, Stephanie?” she asked.

In every other part of my life, failure was not an issue… would have learned from my mistake and tried again. Likely tried something different but nevertheless, failure wasn’t fear.

Why wasn’t it different from food and weight? I don’t have the answer just yet but it was. I think it’s because I had so many traumatic experiences in that sphere of my life that fear of failure paralyzed me.

“You are wildly capable, Stephanie. Look at yourself, you have dieted for 25 years, starving yourself, depriving yourself, overworking your physical body… you’ve done it all! You are so capable to do the work and make peace with food & your body so you can reconnect with your innate power!”

So, I got over myself and went for it.

Women Food and Power: The tools I found

I learned to manage my mind, mostly my subconscious mind and the many stories trying to hold me back. I now decide what stories play in my head.

At the same time, I learned to be present in my body not to what others think of my body. I’m present in the moment in my body. I’m no longer afraid of being with myself.

I learned to interact with my body as my best friend and be neutral. My physical body no longer is the filter through which I see my life. That’s body neutrality.

Lastly, I learned that I had the power within me to feed myself. My body and I are “good enough” to be our own nutrition expert. That was a turning point for me… through intuitive eating, I shifted the relationship of power with food.

Food was no longer about being less… food was about being ME.

That was the work and I did it.

Empowering yourself

How you engage with food is how you engage with your life. If you feel powerless around food you feel powerless with your life.
How you think about our body is how you think about yourself. When you hate your body, you hate yourself.

There’s a basic formula for life: Our thoughts create the way we feel, our feelings drive the action we choose to take, our actions forge our results, therefore, our thoughts become our reality.

If right now you think you aren’t good and/or worthy enough to have what other women have, that’s exactly the reality you’ll keep creating for yourself.

The most effective way to feel disempowered is to give your power of choice to something else, someone else than you. That’s what millions of us, women do when we decide to buy into the beauty ideal consequently, diet culture. The path of less resistance is to conform not to question.

Being empowered is recognizing that you do have the power to affect your life. It’s simply recognizing that you have the power to choose.

On the other side of fear is freedom.

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” -Anais Nin

girl power

It starts today

No matter how anxious you may feel right now, pay attention to suggestions and opportunities that suddenly present themselves in your life… new people, new books, this article. This time, make a choice from a place of love.

Take the first step in the direction toward something that feels right and see where it leads you. And do it NOW. That’s empowerment.

If you are serious about changing, you’ll find a way. If you are not, you’ll find an excuse to stay in your comfort zone.

Will you keep choosing fear instead of love?

PS: If you decide to choose love and want to be held to a higher standard and taught the easiest way to get “there”, I can help you…. that’s what I do now. Help other women get “there”. Going Beyond The Food Academy & Conquer and Thrive.

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“… But I need to lose weight”

“… But I need to lose weight”

Nov 6, 2019 | | 0 Comments

Me: “… but I need to lose weight”.

Her: “Ok… I can see how you can think that.”

Me: “Everything you are sharing with me makes so much sense and I can feel it inside of me, that it’s what I need [pause & sigh]… but I need to lose weight”.

The tears started to roll off my cheeks. Uncontrollably crying. The tears were coming from the depth of my gut. It was one of those moments when you want to stop crying because you really don’t want to cry in front of strangers but you can’t… it’s not in your control.

Her: “Stephanie, your desires to lose weight are valid. It’s normal that you want to lose weight. The society in which we live, an environment that is full of weight stigma, body size discrimination, and fatphobia encourages these desires every day. It makes perfect sense that you want to lose weight.”

I was deeply confused.

But I need to lose weight

But I need to lose weight…

I was 38 years old and the last 25 years of my personal life had been a series of pressing “pause” and “play”.  I only allowed myself to “play” my personal life when I was at a weight that others recognized to be ok. If I was gaining weight or not working hard to lose the “abnormal excess weight”, my personal life was on “pause”.

Her: “So, let’s work through this, Stephanie. Why do you want to lose weight? What do you feel will happen when you lose weight?”

Me: “ Uhhh….. “

No one ever asked me this question. I never asked myself this question either. My brain was stumped… blank.

Her: “It’s normal that you don’t know how to answer this question. You likely never thought of the desire to lose weight as optional therefore never considered why you desired it.”

She was right. At that point, it had been 27 years. Since my teens, I had lived on and off diets always chasing “another body”. My happiness was conditional to the way my body looked. Even when my body looked “ok”, it was such a battle to keep it up that I didn’t have the mental space or time to fully enjoy my now “allowed happy life”.

Me: “I guess you’re right...”

Her: “Until we see each other again, I want you to ask yourself these questions: Where is the desire to lose weight coming from? What do you feel will happen if you lose weight? Will you be treated differently? Will you feel beautiful? Worthy? Healthy? “

As a good perfectionist, I did my homework.

I had so many Ah Ah moments… so many realizations. It took me a while to fully accept what these questions forced me to see: As a strong, independent & feminist woman, I had given away my power.

But I need to lose weight

My power was in my body size

The way others view my body affected my capacity to be myself. My power was in my body… size. Over time, I had acquired a deep sense that “I wasn’t good enough” so nearly everything I did was serving the purpose of proving to the world that I was enough even though my body wasn’t.

It was hard to prove my worth all the time. I had to strive for perfection, be sure to make choices that would appease and please others around me not to give them another reason to reject me beyond my body.

I was working so hard that my health had collapsed 2 years earlier. It was the time that I was trying to feel better, be healthier but nothing was working, not even… weight loss.  I had spent a lot of $$$$ with many health professionals trying to “find and fix” my weight loss resistance without success. My body didn’t want to collaborate anymore… no matter how hard I worked: nothing.

Love versus fear

“Maybe it’s time for another approach…” That’s what my very expensive functional medicine doctor told me after doing all the tests and protocols possible. She said to me, “Maybe there’s nothing wrong with your body… what if you try to love it?”.

To be honest, I was pissed when she said this. I invested a lot on her. “Loving my body? WTF… that’s not a solution.” It took me time to accept these words and gave it a try. But I did.

By now, you might have guessed HER was a professional I was seeing to teach me how to “love my body”. When I sat and reflected on the questions, she had left me with after our first appointment, I realized that I was living in fear.

Fear of not being good enough, being rejected, not being loved, not being promoted at work, not being healthy and live a long life, …. I was powerless in the face of my body.

The journey back to my power

The hard truth was that patriarchal social conditioning had kept me very busy dieting and chasing after the false currency of beauty instead of chasing my dreams. Diet Culture taught me how being consumed by the fear of my body not being “thin’ enough was the way to be a woman… and that indoctrination kept me quiet, and most importantly, conform to patriarchy.

For 27 years, I had fully embraced the lie that my power as a woman was in the looks of my physical body. That lie was the real reason why I was struggling, anxious, and secretly depressed.

Her: “So now you are ready to do the work, sister?”

Me: “ F*ck yesss… let’s do this!”.

The journey to conquer and thrive

But I need to lose weight-2

The first layover was to conquer my mind. All that societal conditioning was showing up in my negative self-talk. What I now call Diet Brain had to be reprogrammed. From there, I was able to conquer my beliefs around food and let my innate power guide my food choices instead of some “weight loss guru” tell me what my body needed. My body and I are smart enough to know what to eat.

The most powerful part of the journey was becoming emotionally intelligent. I had to shift from being the victim of my emotions to using my emotions as a source of information to make the best possible choice for ME. That’s how anxiety and depression left and confidence and compassion came into my life.

That led me to thrive in my relationship with my body. What I sought in my life was no longer the outcome of my body’s look… that gave me freedom. I could care for myself unconditionally and beyond dieting which is the key to bringing back my health.

I now have a relationship of trust and respect with my body. My female body wisdom is my power. I love myself, care for myself, and I thrive in my relationship with myself.

I found my power. The power to live my life now. I gave myself the permission to be enough unconditionally to what my body looks like or weight.

That’s my true power.

Are you ready to do YOUR work?

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Health Beyond Dieting: Chasing Health With Intuitive Eating

Health Beyond Dieting: Chasing Health With Intuitive Eating

Oct 28, 2019 | | 0 Comments

Health beyond dieting seems to be a foreign concept to most people.

As I’ve always said, the prevalent diet culture conditioned us to believe that thinner is better in all aspects of life including our health. We’ve always heard that thin equals healthy, and that dieting is the way to a thinner body.

We’ve also been brainwashed into thinking that a thinner body is more attractive because it is associated with health.

This is a belief that’s hard to let go.

health-beyond-dieting-1

Why It’s Hard to Change Your Beliefs About Weight and Health

Your reptilian brain is the reason why it’s not easy to let go of beliefs. It’s the most primal part of your brain that has the survival instinct. It seeks to protect you from danger. Because the diet culture has programmed your reptilian brain into believing that fat people aren’t healthy, you’ve since associated health with thinness.

But as you’ll see, there is evidence that proves that your body size has little do with your health outcome. That said, it’s going to require some effort to reprogram your reptilian brain to fully accept the belief about health beyond dieting.

In this article, you’ll find answers to the following questions regarding health beyond dieting and the Going Beyond The Food Method:

What does it mean to be healthy? 

We all grew up with the idea that health is the absence of illness. But the World Health Organization has a definition of health that’s different from what we’re all used to. WHO defines health as “a complete state of physical, emotional and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

Good health is essential to being able to handle stress and live a long and active life. It doesn’t just refer to the absence of disease, but also to the ability to recover from illness, to adapt to life challenges in general.

When you’re healthy, it doesn’t mean you’re never sick. Humans have the innate capacity to adapt and recover from sickness and health issues. That is to say, being healthy allows you to recover and bounce back quickly.

Does “obesity” cause one to be unhealthy? 

The keyword here is CAUSE. Before we can answer the question, we must first understand the difference between Correlation and Causation. For example, smoking is correlated with alcoholism, but it doesn’t cause alcoholism. However, smoking causes an increased risk of developing lung cancer.

As of 2019, there isn’t any evidence that directly points to obesity as a causative factor in a disease. That said, many studies link or correlate obesity to health risks. Even when body weight is correlated to health risks, it is never the sole factor of any health condition.

For example, research also found that obesity does not affect the risk of having coronary heart disease and stroke “Metabolic status is relatively stable despite rising BMI”. (However, it does increase the risk of developing diabetes)

But if the question is, “Is obesity associated or correlated with health risks?” the answer would be yes.  If the question is “Is obesity causing disease?”  the answer would be no. That’s where the big difference lies.

Here’s where it gets interesting – one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are actually metabolically healthy. Being metabolically healthy means having your blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose levels, and other metabolic markers within the normal range.

Is health beyond dieting possible?

Yes, and scientific research proves it!

A  2016 study by researchers at UCLA studied 40,420 adult participants in the most recent U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Researchers looked at the participants’ health as measured by six accepted metrics (not including BMI). These metrics are  blood pressure, cholesterol, triglyceride, glucose, insulin resistance, and C-reactive protein.

The study found that 47% of people classified as overweight by BMI and 29% of those qualified as obese were healthy based on at least five of those other metrics.

Meanwhile, 31% of normal-weight people were unhealthy by two or more of the same measures.

A number of research studies show that weight loss is not necessary to improve physical health. Studies have also found that fitness is more predictive for mortality than weight. This study defined ‘fit’ as 3-4 hrs per week of walking.

health-beyond-dieting-2

Source: JAMA. 1999 Oct 27;282(16):1547-53.

Note: “Fit” is not synonymous with “thin” or “lean.” That’s Diet Culture. Being fit means being in good health, especially because of regular physical movement.

Furthermore, trying to change your health status simply by losing weight has not only proven to be an ineffective approach but also carries potential negative side effects to your health. The focus on intentional weight loss via dieting can be harmful. Multiple studies demonstrate negative side effects of dieting behaviors. The three most documented negative effects are weight cycling, disordered eating, and weight stigma.

What is Health At Every Size? 

As a response to the failure of the traditional weight-loss model of health, the Health at Every Size (HAES) movement emerged over the last decades.

Health At Every Size is a philosophy and an approach to health. Linda Bacon, PhD, an advocate for body positivity, wrote the book Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight. It shows through research that health behaviors influence health more than weight.

The HAES movement promotes the simple truth that all bodies are good bodies. It shifts the focus away from dieting for weight control. Instead, it steers you toward self-care practices that support your body’s natural wisdom and vitality.

Chasing health at any size is possible. Dr. Bacon had led research to support the Health At Every Size approach to health with positive outcomes over the traditional model of intentional weight loss.

Honoring your body, and being able to understand your body’s needs, leads to meaningful changes in health behaviors.

HAES subscribes to the idea of health as stated by the World Health Organization—that it is more than just the absence of disease. It also sees health as a continuum that varies throughout one’s life span. Health, in this model, is from a holistic perspective (physical, psychological, relational, and spiritual).

In fact, the Health At Every Size approach discourages judging others and oneself regarding their health status. It acknowledges that shame and oppression can have significant negative effects on one’s health and wellness.

health beyond weight loss

What is a weight-neutral approach to health? 

A weight-neutral approach to health is based on the idea that your health status or risk level can’t be determined solely by your weight.

It acknowledges that your weight is determined by a complex set of genetic, metabolic, physiological, cultural, social, and behavioral determinants. Many of these factors are either difficult or impossible to change.

Instead of focusing on a weight-oriented outcome, weight-neutral programs teach you to take charge of the factors within your control. These factors include your thoughts and behaviors. Taking charge of these factors will help you improve your well-being, regardless of your weight.

Weight-neutral approaches to health have significantly decreased body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and depression. They’ve also increased sustainable, enjoyable self-care behaviors such as eating and moving well in the long term.

weight-neutral

Body dissatisfaction and shame: Their effect on health behaviors

Weight stigma (also known as body shaming, or weight shaming) is the social devaluation, denigration, and discrimination of people perceived to carry extra weight based on their weight.

It originated from the “old school” model of inducing behavioral changes through punishment or shaming. A common example today is the “before and after” pictures we often see on social media.

It’s a common belief that weight stigma or shaming will motivate people who don’t meet body size ideals to change their behaviors so as to avoid further stigma.

As a result, many women internalize weight stigma and become increasingly dissatisfied with their bodies.

A 2013 study published by the Journal of Obesity found no link between body weight and the way women feel about themselves. However, the findings show a link between how women feel about themselves and their health behaviors. In other words, the better they feel about their bodies, the more likely they are to take care of themselves leading to a better health outcome.

Conversely, body dissatisfaction discourages women from taking part in certain health-related activities and from eating properly to fuel their bodies. These behaviors could eventually lead to weight gain… cynical right?

Shifting from weight management to health behaviors

Instead of focusing on weight management to improve your health, what if you shifted your focus to health behaviors?

For example, what if you cared more about the quality instead of the quantity of the food you eat?

What if you improve your mindset and thoughts so you can be better motivated to move your body every day?

What if you take steps to reduce and manage stress so that you can enjoy a better quality of sleep?

Research associated healthy lifestyle habits to a significant decrease in mortality regardless of baseline body mass index. Therefore, all BMI groups can benefit from practicing healthy habits. Interestingly, the greatest benefit is seen within the BMI “obese” group.

health beyond weight loss 1

The Going Beyond The Food Method️ is a weight-neutral and non-diet health framework composed of eight core elements. Our health framework is grounded in holistic principles and functional medicine approach to health. It also follows Health at Every Size principles.

What happens if we take the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ approach to health?

The Going Beyond The Food Method is a proprietary methodology that I created. The program is primarily designed to help women make peace with food and their body. As a result, women are able to focus their efforts on health outcomes beyond dieting and weight loss. Certainly, it’s a five-step process that includes mindset, emotional regulation, mindfulness, body neutrality, and intuitive eating.

The method️ is based on four core pillars: Body Wisdom, Body Trust, Body Respect, and Body Neutrality.

The health behaviors we teach inside our programs center around intuitive eating, a well-researched self-care eating framework. Moreover, it teaches Body Neutrality, a framework that neutralizes body dissatisfaction.

going-beyond-the-food-method

Sustainability and health beyond dieting

The single most powerful advantage of a weight-neutral and non-diet approach like the Going Beyond The Food Method️ is sustainability. It helps you develop the ability to sustain health-promoting behaviors throughout your life. Our unique approach, combined with the evidence-based health benefits of intuitive eating, is very powerful!

Certainly, when it comes to health, consistency is significantly more powerful than short-term results. One of the secrets to consistency is self-compassion.

A 2015 study systematically reviewed a weight-neutral and no-diet approach to health. It determined the overall effects on factors including weight, biochemical measures, food, activity, behavior, body image, and mental health.

    • Weight stability (in 5 yrs)
    • Improved biochemical markers
    • Cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, CRP
    • Sustained healthy behaviors
    • Improvement in:
      1.  Dietary quality
      2. Psychological states
      3. Disordered eating patterns
      4. Self-esteem
      5. Depression

The Going Beyond The Food Method framework supports health-promoting behaviors and makes health beyond dieting possible. It encourages the increase of fruit and vegetable intake and variety in diet. In addition, the framework aims to encourage health behaviors such as physical activity, stress management, sleep quality, and digestive health.

intuitive-eating-and-health

Who is an ideal candidate for the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ approach to health? 

Truly anyone! Individuals who’ll benefit most from this approach are:

  • Chronic dieters.
  • Women who are overly concerned with weight and shape (a.k.a. body image issues).
  • Women who are repeatedly trying to lose weight and restricting food for two years or more.
  • Women who have had enough of dieting and regaining the weight that they lost.
  • Women who are intuitive eaters.
  • Women who have disordered eating behaviors.

If you have an eating disorder, I recommend that you work with a qualified health practitioner first. Bring yourself to safety and lay the groundwork with a health practitioner in a one-on-one setting.

Then you can come to one of our programs to learn the mindset piece of health beyond dieting.

Health beyond dieting: How to get started with a weight-neutral approach to health

You can begin by reading Dr. Linda Bacon’s book, Health At Every Size. If you need more support in the process, you can enroll in one of our programs.

We work with women throughout the world, helping them to make peace with food and with their bodies. Moreover, we help them chase health through a weight-neutral approach. The Going Beyond The Food Health Mastery program will take you through our eight-element framework towards health. It will show you how to chase health without having to diet or lose weight.

Our program is open all year round anywhere in the world. Moreover, we also have other programs to help you with other aspects of healing your relationship with food and with your body.

Health Beyond Dieting FAQs

What does it mean to be healthy?

WHO defines health as “a complete state of physical, emotional and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Good health is essential to being able to handle stress and live a long and active life. It doesn’t just refer to the absence of disease, but also to the ability to recover from illness, to adapt to life challenges in general.

Does “obesity” cause one to be unhealthy?

The keyword here is CAUSE. Before we can answer the question, we must first understand the difference between Correlation and Causation. For example, smoking is correlated with alcoholism, but it doesn’t cause alcoholism. However, smoking causes an increased risk of developing lung cancer. But if the question is, “Is obesity associated or correlated with health risks?” the answer would be yes. If the question is “Is obesity causing disease?” the answer would be no. That’s where the big difference lies.

Is Health Beyond Dieting Possible?

Yes, and scientific research proves it! A  2016 study by researchers at UCLA studied 40,420 adult participants in the most recent U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Researchers looked at the participants’ health as measured by six accepted metrics (not including BMI). These metrics are  blood pressure, cholesterol, triglyceride, glucose, insulin resistance, and C-reactive protein.

What is health at every size®?

Health At Every Size is a philosophy and an approach to health. Linda Bacon PhD, an advocate for body positivity, wrote the book Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight. It shows through research that health behavior influences health more than weight.

What is a weight-neutral approach to health?

A weight-neutral approach to health is based on the idea that your health status or risk level can’t be determined solely by your weight.

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Intuitive Eating Before and After: My Story

Intuitive Eating Before and After: My Story

Oct 21, 2019 | , | 0 Comments

I’ve always shared my journey to my followers, but only a few people know about my intuitive eating before and after story. Since I started eating intuitively, I’ve learned a lot of lessons that I’m eager to share. So I think it’s time for me to update my narrative.

If you’ve been on the fence about intuitive eating or you’ve been struggling with body image issues, these lessons will prove to be valuable to you.

But first, let me explain what intuitive eating is.

Intuitive-eating-before-and-after-1

What does eating intuitively mean? 

This is the most concise intuitive eating definition I can give you: “a self-care framework that uses your body’s internal cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction to guide your eating behavior.” It emphasizes self-care and attunement to one’s body cues.

Scientific research has proven intuitive eating to be healthy and safe. I have a blog post that describes all the intuitive eating health benefits. Read this article if you want to know how eating intuitively can help you become healthier.

As for me, eating intuitively has changed my life for the better. I’d like to share all the lessons I learned from my intuitive eating experience, hoping that they’ll inspire you to start your own intuitive eating journey.

Here is a quick rundown of the lessons I learned in my intuitive eating journey:

Lesson 1:  Weight stigma is real and freakin’ powerful. 

Lesson 2: Diet culture is a powerful motherfriggin’ monster but it’s optional. 

Lesson 3: Repeat or evolve…It’s your choice.   

Lesson 4: It’s beyond the food! 

Lesson 5: The wellness diet and healthy body are BS  

Lesson 6: You can’t hate yourself to happiness 

Lesson 7:  Intuitive eating is the gateway to health and happiness. 

You can click the links or scroll down to go over the lessons and to learn about my intuitive eating before and after story in greater detail:

Lesson 1: Weight stigma is real and freakin’ powerful.

When I was 9 or 10 years old, my body was different. I was taller, heavier, and bigger than most kids in my school. My classmates bullied me…a lot. I didn’t know it yet, but I was dealing with weight stigma.

Then I grew up. The bullying became less frequent, and after some time, it stopped altogether. But there was a voice inside me, shaming me for the way I looked. For 25 years, I was brutal with myself because I thought that was the only way I could change.

I internalized the stigma that I dealt with as a kid.

Weight stigma, defined by the National Eating Disorders Association, is discrimination or stereotyping based on a person’s weight. Scientific research on weight stigma reveals that it has a huge effect on stress levels, hormones, and eating habits.

There are two types of weight stigma: externalized and internalized. Mind you, internalized weight stigma is more powerful than externalized weight stigma. Why? You can avoid the people who taunt you, but you’re with your body 24/7.

It was only when I overcame my internalized stigma that real transformation began. I became happier and more confident than ever before.

Intuitive-eating-before-and-after-2

Lesson 2: Diet culture is a powerful motherfriggin’ monster but it’s optional.

The diet culture is an insidious monster that crept into my life when I was very young. It affected how I saw and treated myself. It also influenced my mother who, out of love and concern for me, sent me to Weight Watchers.

For 25 years, I was a slave to this oppressive monster. I tried one diet after another. Nothing worked. I thought there was something wrong with me and I needed to be fixed.

You might be wondering, “What the heck is diet culture?”

Diet culture is a system of belief that worships thinness and equates it with health and moral virtue. It makes you believe that you’re broken just because you don’t look like the “thin ideal.”

I had no clue that the diet culture existed. I thought that pursuing weight loss and thinness was the norm. When somebody presented me with the idea that I could actually live my life without aiming to lose weight or to become thin, it didn’t even sink in.

Fortunately, I came to realize that being part of the diet culture is a choice. Whether we want a thinner body or just lovingly accept ourselves–it’s completely up to us. The suffering that comes from wanting to be thinner is completely optional.

This led me to lesson number three…

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Lesson 3: Repeat or evolve… It’s your choice.   

A significant turning point in my life happened when I was in my late 30s and at the peak of my corporate career. I was about to deliver a speech before a large crowd when I suddenly collapsed. Shortly after that, I found myself in the ER.

Subsequently, the doctor diagnosed me with five chronic conditions: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, anxiety, panic disorder, and depression. The doctors prescribed a medication for each condition.

Medication was the solution that these doctors had for me. But I decided to take a different route in my pursuit of health. I took responsibility into my own hands. However, I knew that I needed support, so I hired a coach.

It was during this time that I experienced a huge shift in mindset. I stopped being a victim and began to think that life happens for me instead of to me. I realized I could choose to either repeat my actions and have the same results. Or I could change my choices and make progress. Because I had the freedom to choose, I also had to be responsible for the consequences of my choices.

If you find yourself in a situation or condition that you don’t like, remember this: You can stay wherever you are and just keep repeating your old patterns. Or you can create new patterns of behavior and evolve.

Either way, it’s your decision and you’re responsible for it.

Lesson 4: It’s beyond the food! 

Geneen Roth is the person who taught me the emotional and spiritual aspects of food. She is the bestselling author of Women, Food, and God I had the privilege of interviewing her in one of my emotional eating podcast episodes.

I remember the time I was reading Geneen’s book, at a poolside in Florida. One concept struck me so hard that I had what I now call a “holy shit” moment.

“Holy shit! It’s beyond the food!” my brain screamed.

This realization deeply changed my relationship with food. I became aware that I was using food to numb discomfort, because I hated being uncomfortable. Using food is just one of the behavioral patterns I developed when dealing with discomfort. There were other things, too, such as people-pleasing, perfectionism, etc.

These unhealthy behavioral patterns offered me a way for me to avoid change and stay comfortable. Realizing this, I became aware that it’s really not about the food.

Lesson 5: The wellness diet and healthy body are BS  

What does eating intuitively mean

When I realized that I had to go beyond the food, I decided to stop dieting forever.

But then I learned about the paleo diet. Paleo doesn’t require you to eat less. You only have to make sure that everything you eat followed the guidelines.

I convinced myself that going on paleo wasn’t about losing weight. Instead, it was about balancing my hormones and fixing my body.

Then I encountered the Ketogenic Diet and decided to adopt it into my lifestyle.

The truth is I was still chasing weight loss, but I didn’t see that. Paleo and keto are deceptively packaged as tools for achieving health. But really, they’re products of the diet culture.

Because it was so restrictive, the keto diet sent me down the path of binge eating. My body was so angry with me for restricting food and chasing a thinner body, although I couldn’t admit it to myself.

Later, someone sent me a book called Health at Every Size. It pretty much says you can be healthy regardless of your weight. To me, it meant that everything that I was doing wasn’t going to get me where I wanted to be.

I was so offended that I couldn’t go beyond the first chapter.

It took a while before I finally accepted what it teaches. But after that, I felt a sense of freedom and relief.

I later learned that the pursuit of thinness has devastating consequences on mental and emotional health. In contrast, the Health at Every Size approach to eating emphasizes self-acceptance rather than weight loss.

Does it work? Research on Health at Every Size shows that this approach improves eating attitudes and practices, perception of body image, and health among other things.

(Read the Health at Every Size Manifesto to learn more about it.)

Lesson 6: You can’t hate yourself to happiness

After learning that I can be healthy regardless of my weight, I quit the Keto Diet and  I realized that I had to accept my body just as it is.

Now, body acceptance requires some work. This work is different from dieting. It’s not physically, emotionally, or mentally harder. It’s just different. But again, it’s uncomfortable.

I had to learn new tools to work through body acceptance–the mirror exercise, journaling, and breathing. I had to deal with the discomfort of being a beginner again. But that got me to this beautiful place of embracing body neutrality, which I now teach.

Body neutrality empowers you to embrace yourself as you are, including the parts you don’t like about yourself.  Its focus is to avoid self-hate while simultaneously relieving you from the pressure of having to love your body.  The goal is to respect and accept your body for what it is – and that’s it.

Lesson 7:  Intuitive eating is the gateway to health and happiness.

intuitive eating experience

I encountered the concept of intuitive eating a few times. To be honest, at first, I wasn’t convinced that intuitive eating was any good. My colleagues sent me a book and some links to articles, but I refused to read anything about it. I simply said, “Nope, it’s not for me.”

Until Evelyn Tribole came into my life. Evelyn is one of the two coauthors of the ground-breaking book, Intuitive Eating. She is now my mentor. Through her, I learned that healing my relationship with food is necessary so I can make peace with my body.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Evelyn in my intuitive eating podcast. If you want to learn more about what she teaches about eating intuitively, listen to the episode.

Intuitive eating teaches you to respect your innate body messages such as hunger and fullness so you can have a healthy and respectful relationship with your body.  This kind of relationship with my body is exactly what I’ve been enjoying since I started eating intuitively.

Wondering how to start eating intuitively?

We’re here to help! You can read my article that will walk you through the step-by-step process of integrating intuitive eating into your life.

The Going Beyond The Food Academy is our intuitive eating online program that can help you, not just develop a healthy relationship with food, but also to embrace your current body. Go check us out.

Lessons learned from intuitive eating

Lesson 1:  Weight stigma is real and freakin’ powerful.

Lesson 2: Diet culture is a powerful motherfriggin’ monster but it’s optional.

Lesson 3: Repeat or evolve…It’s your choice.

Lesson 4: It’s beyond the food!

Lesson 5: The wellness diet and healthy body are BS

Lesson 6: You can’t hate yourself to happiness

Lesson 7:  Intuitive eating is the gateway to health and happiness.

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Intuitive Eating: 8 Evidence-Based Health Benefits

Intuitive Eating: 8 Evidence-Based Health Benefits

Sep 25, 2019 | , | 0 Comments

Does intuitive eating really have health benefits?

That’s not an unusual question for people getting started with intuitive eating. The answer is a resounding YES, and its amazing health benefits are backed by science.

In fact, intuitive eating is picking up popularity, not only among former dieters but also with researchers. As of 2019, there are more than 100 research studies looking at intuitive eating. These studies demonstrate that intuitive eating has many positive health outcomes like:

Have you been dieting for quite some time, but keep finding yourself right where you started?

Intuitive eating can help you break out of that cycle. And unlike dieting, it lets you enjoy eating without regret, guilt, or shame about your food choices.

What is Intuitive Eating?

Perhaps the best intuitive eating definition I can give you is, “a self-care framework that uses your body’s internal cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction to guide your eating behavior.”

This definition emphasizes self-care and implies reconnecting with the body. That is to say, you need to be attuned to your body to follow its cues.

As I discussed in my intuitive eating podcast episode of The Beyond The Food Show, eating intuitively is innate in all human beings. When you were a baby, you’d cry when you were hungry, and you’d be fed. You knew when you needed to eat. When you were full, you’d just stop feeding and go back to sleep. We just moved away from this natural state when we were immersed in the diet culture.

Does Intuitive Eating Really Work?

Yes. Hundreds of intuitive eating research studies prove that it does work. It isn’t another fad diet.

Registered Dietician Nutritionists (RDNs) in the U.S. agree. A 2017 study found that RDNs are using an intuitive eating approach more often than traditional weight management practices.

If you’re wondering “How does intuitive eating work?” you may want to read my blog post that answers that question.

Is Intuitive Eating Healthy?

Intuitive eating is both healthy and safe. It’s based on being attuned and aligned with your body’s natural hunger and fullness cues. What could be healthier than that?

But don’t take my word for it. Scientific studies do confirm the health benefits of intuitive eating. Here are a couple of examples:

A study participated by 1,600 middle-aged women links intuitive eating to lower body mass index and positive emotional health. It also showed potential benefits on nutritional and cardiovascular health.

Another study found that chronic dieters can benefit from size acceptance and intuitive eating. It also supports long-term behavioral change. Size acceptance, reducing dieting behavior, and increased awareness and response to the body’s internal cues improved health risk indicators for the study participants.

Certainly, intuitive eating is not only safe; it promotes your overall health!

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What are the Benefits of Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive eating teaches you to have a healthy relationship with food by empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs. It helps you distinguish between physical hunger and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom. This results in improved overall health.

Let’s look at the specific benefits intuitive eating has to offer:

1. Improved Cholesterol Levels

Intuitive eaters have been found to have lower triglyceride levels, higher levels of high-density lipoproteins (HDL), and lower cardiovascular risk. One of the possible reasons for the improved cardiovascular health of intuitive eaters is the improvement in the inflammation marker, C-reactive protein (CRP).

In fact, anyone can benefit from intuitive eating, including those with health challenges. Moreover, it can also help prevent certain health conditions.

2. Lower Stress Levels

In my opinion, this is the most important benefit of eating intuitively. One of the most notable transformations demonstrated in studies that look into intuitive eating is with the psychological health indicators such as better body image and lower incidence of depression and anxiety.

Ditching the diet mentality and breaking free from the cycle of “getting on and off the wagon” will tremendously reduce your stress around food.

intuitive-eating-benefits-lower-stress-levels

3. Increased Energy

Intuitive eating increases your energy by creating a lot of mental space for you. By worrying less about eating, you have more headspace to focus on other priorities in your life.

Research also links intuitive eating with increased motivation to engage in regular physical activity. Women who say that they are internally motivated to eat are more likely to participate in physical activity for pleasure. Therefore, they see themselves as physically active.

In other words, when you eat intuitively, you’ll have more energy and you’ll want to move more. Ultimately, that leads to better health and greater productivity.

4. Improved Mental Health

One of the reasons why diets often fail is that they make you feel bad. Food restriction is associated with negative mood, decreased cognitive functioning, eating disorders, weight obsession, and body dissatisfaction.

On the other hand, a study published in the Cambridge University Press website reveals that there is a substantial and consistent relationship between intuitive eating and improved mental health.

If dieting has made you feel bad about yourself, eating intuitively will make you feel better. Therefore, helping you get into a better mental state.

5. Lower Eating Disorder Occurrence

Those who suffer from eating disorders either restrict food or overindulge. In contrast, intuitive eating resets and balances your eating habits.

Researchers analyzed the eating habits of 2,287 young adults. They found that the participants who followed their hunger and fullness cues were less likely to have eating disorder behaviors than those who didn’t.

Your body instinctively knows what, when, and how much you should eat. In like manner, when you eat intuitively, you trust your body’s wisdom to guide you. You can’t go wrong with that.

6. Improved Body Awareness

Your body has a way of giving subtle signals that are meant to guide you in making the best choices for your health. (We call these signals “body messages” in the Going Beyond the Food community.)

It also lets you know when you have a health problem coming up through the symptoms that you experience. This way, you can take the appropriate steps to deal with the problem before it becomes a crisis.

Intuitive eating is based on interoception-the ability to feel the small sensations in the body such as hunger, fullness, and satisfaction cues. Researchers have found that those who follow their internal eating cues are more sensitive to interoceptive signals.

This means that when you eat intuitively, you get more attuned to those body signals. This will help you with your relationship to food and will enable you to make the right decisions for your overall health.

7. Improved Self-Esteem

The diet culture promotes the “thin ideal.” It assumes that you that if you’re not thin enough and you don’t look a certain way, you’re broken. Therefore, you need to be fixed. It also equates food restriction with moral virtue. Obviously, it’s oppressive and can damage your self-esteem.

In contrast, intuitive eating results in positive body image, better body satisfaction, and improved self-esteem. A positive body image and high self-esteem motivate you to make better choices concerning your health while relying less on willpower.

Inside the Going Beyond The Food Method, we teach our students a unique approach to body image: Body Neutrality. For people who have lived through years of internalized and perhaps externalized body shame for years, body neutrality is the bridge from body hate to body positivity.

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8. Increased Level of Happiness

As you can see, intuitive eating can benefit your mental and physical health, and scientific studies prove this. When you become both physically and mentally healthier, your quality of life improves. This translates to an increased level of happiness and contentment.

How to Get Started with Intuitive Eating

Do you want to give Intuitive eating a try? If you are ready to eat better, feel better, and be healthier, we can help you!

We have created an introductory intuitive eating course. Five days, five short videos, and a guide-all free for you!

 

Intuitive Eating Benefits FAQ

Does intuitive eating improve cholesterol levels?

Intuitive eaters have been found to have lower triglyceride levels, higher levels of high density lipoproteins (HDL aka ‘good’ cholesterol), and lower cardiovascular risk.

Does intuitive eating lower stress level?

One of the most notable transformations demonstrated in studies that look into intuitive eating is with the psychological health indicators such as better body image and lower incidence of depression and anxiety.

Will I have increased energy with intuitive eating?

Intuitive eating increases your energy by creating a lot of mental space for you. By worrying less about eating, you have more headspace to focus on other priorities in your life.

Does intuitive eating improve mental health?

A study published on the Cambridge University Press website reveals that there is a substantial and consistent relationship between intuitive eating and improved mental health.

Does intuitive eating lower eating disorder occurrence?

Those who suffer from eating disorders either restrict food or overindulge. Intuitive eating resets and balances your eating habits.

Does intuitive eating improve body awareness?

When you eat intuitively, you get more attuned to those body signals. This will help you with your relationship to food and will enable you to make the right decisions for your overall health.

Does intuitive eating improve self-esteem?

Intuitive eating results in positive body image, better body satisfaction, and improved self-esteem.

Does intuitive eating increase level of happiness?

Intuitive eating can benefit your mental and physical health. When you become both physically and mentally healthier, your quality of life improves. This translates to an increased level of happiness and contentment.

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What is Body Neutrality?

What is Body Neutrality?

Jun 4, 2019 | | 0 Comments

What is Body Neutrality and how is body neutrality going to help me ? That one of the most frequent question from client inquiring to work with us. before I answer this let’s consider the following statistics…

In Glamour Magazine study found that 97% of women are “cruel to their bodies” every day.

Research released by Dove, for their ‘Self-Esteem Project’, found that 96% of women in the UK reported feeling anxious about the way they look, compared with 86% in China, 72% in Brazil and 61% in the US. Only 4% of the women in all the countries surveyed would consider themselves ‘beautiful’, and by the time girls reach 17, 78% will be ‘unhappy with their bodies’.

In fact, current media ideals are achievable by less than 5% of the population – and that’s only if we’re thinking about weight and size. When we add shape, face, muscle tone etc into the messed-up mix, it’s probably going to be around 1%. 1 percent

Are you a statistic?

I was for years until I discover Body Neutrality.

That’s a question I receive very frequently… we are somewhat used to term body positivity but body neutrality not so much.

What is body neutrality?

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What is body neutrality?

Body Neutrality empowers you to embrace yourself as you are, including the parts you don’t like about yourself.

Its focus is to avoid self-hate while simultaneously reliving you from the pressure of having to love your body.

The goal is to respect and accept your body for what it is – and that’s it.

Body Neutrality recognizes that not everyone is going to love every part of themselves all the time because that’s  an unrealistic expectation to say the least.

The reality is that some days you’re going to look in the mirror like ‘Dam it, yeah, thank you legs for letting me travel, thank you arms for allowing me to type this inspirational post and thank you belly for creating life!

And then there’ll be those days where you stand in front of the very same mirror, focusing on that cellulite you hate or the wrinkle that suddenly seems so obvious.

Body neutrality versus body positivity

Embracing Body Neutrality over Body Positivity allows you to experience negative feelings about yourself, but without the pressure that comes with having to be positive all the time.

In other words, it’s a middle ground between positivity and negativity (shaming) – that’s neutrality.

Body Neutrality is the safe bridge between body shaming and body positivity. It’s about being grateful for your body and everything that it does for you because it does a lot. You are alive right now right!

So Body Neutrality is centric to the process of accepting your body.

Body neutrality & intuitive Eating

For many of us we’ve have years of suffering thru body shaming and along the way we’ve picked up coping behaviours to neutralize the pain the pain associated with body image struggles.

Being the victim of body shaming, most of it from our own mind, is difficult to say the list so now wonder that many of us have become along the way emotional eater or binge eater.

Combine the suffering that comes along with body shaming with the notion that food is the gateway to “loving our life and body” food has become this enemy that we need to control in order to end the suffering.

Healing our relationship to food is necessary in order to make peace with our body. Intuitive eating is the way in which you can achieve both: body neutrality and peace with food.

Intuitive eating teaches to respect your body.

Intuitive eating teaches to respect your innate body messages such as hunger and fullness so you can have a healthy and respectful relationship with your body.

What is intuitive eating?

Intuitive eating is proven and well-researched self-care eating framework that makes YOU the boss of YOU.

Intuitive eating teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.

Get started with intuitive eating

If you’d like to explore intuitive eating and discover how it can help you make peace with food download our Get Started with Intuitive Eating Guide.

This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps ).

Get Started with Intuitive Eating- Click Here

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Body Neutrality

Body Neutrality

May 26, 2019 | | 0 Comments

Body Neutrality empowers you to embrace yourself as you are, including the parts you don’t like about yourself.

The focus of body neutrality focus is to avoid self-hate whilst simultaneously alleviating the pressure of having to love your body. The goal is to respect and accept your body for what it is – and that’s it.

Body neutrality recognizes that not everyone is going to love every part of themselves all the time. The reality is that some days you’re going to look in the mirror like ‘yess, thank you legs for taking me places, thank you arms for allowing me to reach for the biscuit tin, and thank you stomach for keeping my organs where they should be’, but then there’ll be those days where you stand in front of the very same mirror, focusing on that cellulite you hate, or the belly rolls that suddenly seem so obvious

Body Respect

My physical body is a vehicle for me to experience my life.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The moment I realize that I had my self-worth all tangled up with the appearance of my body is the day that my new life began.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The notion of body respect came into my life. Respecting my body was essential for me to feel better about myself. To increase my self-worth.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Body Neutrality is the safe bridge between body shaming and body positivity. It’s about being grateful for your body and everything that it does for you because it does a lot. You are alive right??.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

My body neutrality journey

To say that accepting my body was easy is a wild understatement…

The act of accepting my body required of me to be courageous. To be vulnerable and lots of tears.

Choosing to make peace with my body was scary. Scary as shit to be honest!
Frightening to be a health professional in a larger body. In a fat body. In an “overweight body” as my colleagues like to categorize my body.

Nerve-racking to stand up in front of my audience and say that I no longer recommended to chase weight loss. That the most efficient path to health was thru acceptance.

Body neutrality and intuitive eating

Going Beyond The Food has taught me that courage is not the absence of fear rather the ability to act in the presence of fear. That’s what accepting your body requires in a society controlled by diet culture and the concept of thinness=happiness & health.

Intuitive eating teaches to respect your body. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Intuitive eating switches our perspective from wanting to control our body to need to respect our body. We can’t respect what we hate right?!?

No matter, where you are now sister on your path of body acceptance, know that I feel you.

I hear you. I see you. I know how you feel and the fear of what could happen…. You aren’t alone.
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Be reminded of one universal law: Love always win in the end. Not hate, shame or fear.💞

“Show up, be seen, answer the call to courage… ’cause you’re worth it. You’re worth being brave.”

Brene Brown

What is intuitive eating?

Intuitive eating is proven and well-researched self-care eating framework that make YOU the boss of YOU. 

Intuitive eating teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food  empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.

Get started with intuitive eating

If you’d like to explore intuitive eating and discover how it can help you make peace with food download our Get Started with Intuitive Eating Guide. 

This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps ). 

Get Started with Intuitive Eating- Click Here

 

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Body Acceptance is a challenge and it’s real….

Body Acceptance is a challenge and it’s real….

May 19, 2019 | , | 0 Comments

Body acceptance is a challenge it’s real… Body acceptance has been a challenge for me for 25+ years.

I’ve lost and gained weight my whole life always chasing body confidence and every time, I failed to understand something really important

Every spring, I used to recommit myself to a new diet and/or lifestyle. What I was seeking in weight loss was already available for me to grab. It was in me and I just didn’t know it.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Every time I engaged in a new diet: paleo, keto, low calories… it didn’t matter which one since my intention was to fix myself so that I would finally be ok and accept my body. 

I need to lose weight to accept my body

I thought a diet would help me be confident enough to find love, be acceptable enough to wear any clothes I wanted, be thin enough so that I could blend in.

I’ve lost and gained weight my whole life and every time, I failed to understand something really important.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Seeking the answer fuelled nearly 30 years of my life.  I was successful in most area of my life: career, finances, friendship… but I considered myself a failure when it came to my body (which for me meant my weight which meant food).

My life goal wasn’t to lose weight… weight loss was a tool to get to my end goal. What I really wanted the most was just to be normal and not have to worry about what I looked like and what “people” thought of me. I deeply desired to become “normal”… I wanted to blend in.

Why the heck was I able to be successful with everything else and not with my body?

Today I know why…. it was right there in front of me but invisible to my eyes.

The body confidence I was seeking wasn’t in a thinner body. Confidence was in acceptance. Confidence was in being at peace. Confidence was in my mind. 

The truth is there is has many “thin body” women that aren’t confident in their “thin” body that there is “big body” who aren’t confident in their body. Look around you… if confidence came as a result of body weight then all “thin bodied” women would be confident and we all know this isn’t the case.

but I need to lose weight to be healthy

that was my come back to ” body confidence isn’t the outcome of body weight”. 

To be healthy your body weight must be in the “normal” BMI range. That was my core belief since I can remember and this core belief was validated through my formal education in nutrition. That’s also the core pillar of Diet Culture and I know many us believe this too… right?

I strived hard, hustled and spent a whole lot of time and money figuring out how to be healthy.

The truth you and I can chase health at any size. Look around you… you and I have life long thin people around us who been diagnosed with health conditions at the same rate as “overweight” people. Diet Culture fuel on our fear of weight to sale us $67 billions of product in 2017. If dieting was the solution would we have “an obesity epidemic”? Did I make my point yet?

As my level of health knowledge evolved the purpose of my hustle change to: “be healthy and you’ll release the weight”  because a healthy body doesn’t hold on to weight. That’s the core of Wellness Diet.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

The truth is becoming healthy doesn’t mean you’ll release the weight. There is little something call “Set Point” that Diet Culture forget to mention when making the promise that a healthy body will release unnecessary weight. That’s what is called the “Wellness Diet”. That’s just another form of dieting beliefs aka Diet Culture.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

I’m healthier today than when I was 50 lbs lighter. I’m healthier today than when I consumed 20+ supplements a day. I’m healthier today than when I was Keto, Paleo or Fasting. How can this be? I focus my attention on all the other health factors that impact health and the most important being stress and non-acceptance of my body was very stressful.⠀⠀⠀

Finding Body Acceptance

Body acceptance is buried below years of saying to yourself  “I’m not good enough and I need to work harder!”

Body acceptance is hidden behind “What the heck is wrong with my body?”.

Body acceptance that we are seeking thru weight loss can be found within us… right now without losing any weight.

Body acceptance is self-acceptance. Self-Acceptance is the platform for you to create permanent change (and no it doesn’t mean giving up).

Without acknowledging your current state and station, it’s impossible to know what’s going on with yourself. You have to accept your current reality and the way things are to be able to move on. Self-acceptance lets you take stock and make changes at your own pace without ultimatums and makes them an actual, conscious choice that you make. Accepting something for how it is now doesn’t mean it will never change, it just means that it doesn’t have to for you to see value in it.

By accepting yourself you move from love to fear. From that place of love, you’ll be able to find and heal what is really holding you back. What is really the issue… instead of what everyone else thinks is the issue.

5 Day Body Acceptance Challenge

Ready to beging the journey towards body acceptance?

Ready to make peace with your body?

I’d love to invite you to join me and hundreds of other women in our 5-day Body Acceptance Challenge. This free (and highly transformative) 5-Day Body Acceptance Challenge will get you started with accepting your body right now unconditionally (without having to lose any weight! 😀).

I’m going to share what I’ve discovered after years of studying eating & body image psychology combined with personal practice is what I’ll be sharing inside the Body Acceptance Challenge. 

I’d love to invite you to join me and hundreds of other women in this 5-day journey. 

 

Hope that I’ll get to meet you inside the Body Acceptance Challenge.

with love,

Stephanie

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Religion and Self-Empowerment: A Letter to Christian Women

Religion and Self-Empowerment: A Letter to Christian Women

Sep 26, 2018 | | 0 Comments

RELIGION AND SELF-EMPOWERMENT

If you are a practicing Christian, you know that one of the greatest teachings of God is selflessness. As servants of our Creator, we should be enhancing our spirituality by selfless acts like helping our neighbors, forgiving people, loving our enemies and serving God, and less emphasis on our physical body and material things in this life.

Some people think that what I impart through my works about self-appreciation and self-empowerment does not sit well with the teachings of Christianity. One might think that by following the lessons I teach about loving yourself and knowing yourself better, they are doing the exact opposite of what God wants us to do.

I’m not an expert in religion, but I think there are important connections between what we practice inside the Going Beyond the Food Academy and the teachings of Christianity.  That’s why I want to share this letter from Susan Sledge, one of the students of Going Beyond the Food Academy to all Christian women who are doing the same work inside the Academy.

Written to Stephanie Dodier on August 1, 2018. It is a letter of clarification from me, as a student in the Going Beyond the Food Academy, to another Christian in the program who may be questioning the Academy’s teachings in light of Christian beliefs.

Dear Sister,

We have a mutual friend in Stephanie Dodier and I’m assuming a similar food freedom journey. I have spent the last couple of years reconciling what the Bible and Spirit of God has to say about our body, soul, and spirit. I’m passing along what I have come to understand in hopes that it will encourage you and enhance your walk.

Four Bodies, One Image of God

There is an excellent study by Andrew Womack on Body, Soul, and Spirit that you can get through his website or listen to by podcast. Materials are free and I think it is an excellent place to start. If you want the summary version then I suggest watching this Youtube video. Although the study goes into great depth proving three forms of our being, I have summarized it below:

1) Body – Physical body made of up bones, muscle, tissue, brain matter
2) Soul – Includes your mind, will, and emotions; Some think of it as your personality, how you think, how you process the world
3) Spirit (with a little s)– Innermost, eternal part of you. The part that God breathed into Adam at creation. After you became a believer, your spirit (little s) was perfected and you became a “new creation”.
4) Spirit (with a big S) – God’s Spirit that was promised to you as a believer. It was fused with your (little s) spirit. They are inseparable and form the new creation. His guidance is within you and part of you. He resides in you and your spirit.

In eastern medicine, Stephanie will teach you that there are 4 bodies. It is similar to Biblical teaching, but soul is a term used in the Bible to encompass both the mind/logic and emotions/will. In Christian thinking they are not delineated but so entwined that they utilize one term. Instinctively though, we know there is a difference between our “heart” and our “head” which is more in line with eastern teaching.

Every man is made in His image which includes Jesus, Father, and Holy Spirit. We are like beautiful diamonds that are multifaceted, multidimensional as He is. We all contain aspects of Him and in glorious moments, we demonstrate to the world who the creator is. Glorious moments can include spectacular moments or simply everyday life like, smiling at a stranger, the squeezing of someone’s hand to communicate love, passing on wisdom to another, being a helpmate, or interceding for someone’s need. We all, regardless of our religious beliefs, exhibit characteristics of God because he made us in His image.

In the Godhead, you will see Jesus who represents God’s bodily form. He had a form when walking around in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3). Jesus/God wrestled with Jacob (Gen 32) and of course was born into a human body which was later crucified. His body was resurrected, and he functions in it today. Father God is representative of divine thinking, wisdom, and emotions. It is the being that loves, protects, and provides for us. He is the one who administers justice. Holy Spirit is a gift. Holy Spirit is the creative, helpful teacher full of wisdom and guidance. Our three bodies (body, soul, spirit) have a purpose and together, we are able to move through life in communion with this world (Jesus). We are able to process past, present, and future to make decisions and to act (Father). We are able to learn from our innermost being to heal ourselves and others and live an abundant life (Holy Spirit).

Love Our Neighbors by Loving Ourselves

In my religious background, loving myself was a selfish act. I’m not sure if you can identify with that or not, but the higher calling was to love others and not to focus on self. I have come to believe that message is skewed.

When Jesus speaks of the Father and Spirit, it is with great love and adoration. When the Father speaks of Jesus and the Spirit, it is also with love and adoration. The Spirit also testifies of the same with regards to Father and Jesus. They love each other AND they are one being. So, it is fair to say that God (Father, Jesus, Spirit) loves Himself. Out of that love, He created man.

Jesus said the greatest commandment was to “love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind (Matt 22:37)”. The second commandment is similar, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:39). Jesus was answering a religious lawyer who was trying to entangle him in legalistic, right/wrong thinking. Jesus knew the hardest part about keeping a law was that which the soul processes (heart, soul, mind) and if we focus on loving God, our creator/father/friend/savior then everything else falls into place in due time.

When Jesus told us to love others as ourselves, there as a HUGE assumption on His part that we love ourselves. That sentence can be rewritten to say “as you have come to love yourself, love others in the same way”. What does that mean?
It is what Stephanie teaches in the form of self-compassion, body neutrality, meditation to calm the mind, mindful movement to honor the body, nutrition to feed our body, and spiritual practice to nurture the spirit and commune with God.

Self-Sabotaging Behaviors Shut Spirit Flow

Womack’ study speaks of the body, soul, and spirit being a pipeline. He uses the analogy of a valve between the spirit and soul that we control the flow. We can either shut it off completely and not interact with the spirit’s wisdom or we can let it flow like a raging river. When spirit knowledge comes into contact with the soul there is a renewing of the mind (mind, will, and emotions) that takes place and when it is complete, it will be demonstrated in the body. So, the flow goes from spirit to soul then to body.

Sometimes, when we don’t see God’s promises manifest in our bodies, it is because we have turned down the flow or our minds haven’t yet fully embraced it as truth. Stephanie’s work is about helping us evaluate our valve control or belief system in the renewing of the mind. When she talks about the subconscious or self-sabotaging behaviors, I liken it to the pipeline analogy. Sometimes we know we are limiting the flow and other times, our soul is acting on our behalf because of what it believes to be best.

There are inner healing ministries dedicated to uncovering the lies we have believed and asking God to heal them. Beyond the Food program is about finding the lies we are believing about ourselves and being open to healing from different sources (self, food, higher power, breath, mindful movement). For me, I am able to easily transform the imagery from the different tools Stephanie presents to God’s provision and all the tools He has provided me on this freedom journey.

When God created Adam, He commanded Adam and Eve to take dominion and rule over all they had been given. Believers are given authority in spiritual matters. We are entrusted with the care of ourselves and His people. I think I understood it well when ministering to others, but I don’t know that I took dominion in my own life when it came to self-care. I placed others need above mine and I had come to believe that I was incapable of permanent change and because of past performance, I might not be worthy of it.

Of course, they are lies, but when we believe a lie, it becomes our truth, in a sense, and it’s not until the renewing of the mind that we have an “ah-ha moment” and the lie is replaced by truth and the valve opens up the flow a little bit more. It is difficult to stop moving water. As we get truth flowing through us, it is hard to stop the healing that transpires. When we know better, we do better whether we really intend to or not.

This is why Jesus is called the truth and because of it, He is the way, the truth, and the life. When He (Jesus, Father, Spirit = God) flows in us things truly change. When we see a dry, barren area (because of the exercises, reflections, journaling, meditation, etc), we can signal to Jesus that we have a dry spot. He will reroute the truth flow over that spot. Old will pass away and the new is now in the current. This is dominion.

Because our spirit and God’s Spirit are fused together and perfected, this search and rescue mission is symbiotic. It may feel like He is pointing out the dry spots while other times we are doing the excavation. Either way, spirit/Spirit are working in tandem to provide healing and life abundant.

Reaching God from Within Ourselves

Let’s talk about meditation and yoga. In Christian circles, we are taught to not go inward because we are taking our focus off God and onto us. I subscribed to this thought for many years because of the amount of scriptures speaking to focus and reliance on Him. I have had a few “a-ha” moments over the last couple of years that have changed my thinking.

First, if God, through His Spirit resides in us, then wouldn’t we go inward to seek Him in addition to other ways to access Him? Second, have you ever done a “soaking” session or silent retreat? The whole point of these sessions are to quiet the world, quiet the mind so we can hear from Him. Having this internal navigator was the miracle of the cross.

Old Testament believers couldn’t fathom the concept of God residing within us….actually taking up residence. Meditation, which can also be a part of yoga, is a prayerful act of calming the body and soul so that the spirit can speak. This includes your little S spirit and His big S Spirit. If the word meditation wigs you out, then try substituting the word prayer. If I recommended 10 minutes of prayer every night, you wouldn’t argue with it, would you?

In worship, there is a release where your mind is not racing around but focused on God. You release your cares for one moment (soul), let your body experience the movement (body), and your spirit has a moment to connect with the body/soul and God. Sometimes in worship, we get moments of clarity because the mind is focused and released for all other obligations, much like the act of meditation. If you speak in tongues, you have experienced how your spirit by-passes your mind to commune with God. It is a release, encouragement, and “reset” much like meditation.

He made us Capable of Self-Healing

Healing breath is another topic for discussion. When Stephanie says to send your breath to an area to break up anxiety, I say try it and see what happens. It is nothing short of a miracle. Scripture says that every good thing comes from God. Holy Spirit is described as a wind and fire. Breathing stirs up something in us. It purifies within us. When we circulate breath, we are circulating a healing power that God breathed into all men.

So God’s gifts are for everyone and not just us Christians? Whoa, now! I’m probably stepping on some toes. When He created man, he created them and said it was “good”. His relationship to them was perfect and the world was created for them.

After sin entered the world, there has been a continual process on behalf of God to restore us back to original design and relationship. Through Jesus, he took care of the relationship piece. Your spirit is in perfect unity with His but your body and soul are still in process of being restored back to perfection.

Think of it this way…..if you were stupid before believing in Jesus, you were stupid after, but over time, you learned more and got a little less stupid. If God is the creator of all good things, then He created them for all people not just Christians. Some people are able to recognize God’s gifts better than others and believers should be quicker at it because of the relationship they have with the Godhead and practice over time.

Wisdom is a God-given Gift

Wisdom is something that God gave the world and to every man. Wisdom is personified in the Bible as “she”. She cries out in the marketplace meaning she speaks in the busiest of places. This could be the nightly news, your business, your children’s school, a friend, and cultural trends. Wisdom has always been here.

I imagine wisdom was shouting at Eve when she started talking with Lucifer in the garden but with free will, she chose to ignore it. Wisdom wasn’t just in the middle east, it was everywhere. Could a man in China hear wisdom and apply it to his life in 1000 B.C.? If you have ever visited a museum of ancient cultures, you would have to confirm that wisdom must have been present and the people grabbed it.

What about eastern medicine and integrative medicine? Could it be that they have had their ears attuned to wisdom and picked up what she has been putting out? I believe this is why you see nuggets of truth in every world religion. They are picking up wisdom from God.

Jesus is the issue, however. Who we believe Jesus is….Son of God/God Himself removing all barriers between Himself and man….is the core issue of our belief and the monumental divide with other belief systems. Wisdom, however, is God’s gift to all of mankind.

I have gone on and one, but felt the need to share this with Stephanie in case she wants to pass it along to another curious, Christian mind. Feel free to reach out to me if you want to discuss this further.

Hugs,

Susan Sledge
[email protected]
817-219-7801

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I’m Stephanie Dodier - Clinical Nutritionist, Intuitive Eating expert, Podcast host, and Creator of the Going Beyond The Food Method™️, which was born from my own journey with chronic dieting & body image and has since grown into a global movement.

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