You’re determined and ready to eat in alignment with your food goals, but something always seems to get in the way. And it isn’t just that you’re lacking willpower!
Often, when working towards our healthy eating goals, we’re told the more effort we put in, the more results we’ll see. Just have more self-control or willpower and then you’ll know you’re doing it right! But what if the solution isn’t really about willpower, brushing your teeth after dinner and resisting food?
Instead, getting to the bottom of why you self-sabotage and eat when you aren’t hungry are keys to transforming your relationship with food.
So, how do you know if Truce with Food (Appetizer) is right for you?
* You have a lot of information and know what you “should” be doing, but for some reason you’re unable to consistently stick with it.
You’re sick of obsessing about food and having it take up most of your mental energy.
You’re open and ready to get to the bottom of WHY you self-sabotage and “fall off track” so you can take back control of your eating.
You have a suspicion that maybe your weight and relationship with food aren't really because of the food. You think there must be something else to it!
You’ve invested a lot of time and money into addressing this “food thing" and are hesitant about if this process will work for you. The 4-month program is a great way to dip your toe in the water and see what kind of results you can start to experience.
This process is NOT for you if you’re:
* Looking for a meal plan and for someone to tell you what you should and shouldn’t eat.
Searching for a quick-fix or formula with more tactics to resist food.
Not able or willing to do deep emotional work (if that’s where you are right now, that’s OK!)
Feeling behind and like you needed to lose all the weight yesterday
What's really happening when you're in a cycle of self-sabotage?
If you’re often “good” during the day and eat in alignment with your goals but then at night find yourself eating a whole bag of chips or a pint of ice cream, traditional dieting would tell you to just pick yourself up and get back on track tomorrow, which is easier said than done.
Do you ever wonder WHY that happens?
Most likely it's because you're in this unconscious cycle:
Trigger: You experience emotional discomfort from a trigger such as tired, anxious, inadequate, or lonely. This may happen after receiving an email from your boss you perceive as negative feedback about a project you messed up on. Your stomach drops and your shoulders tense up. What’s happening isn’t actually stressful or depressing, we have an internal emotional trigger, so we focus on food or our bodies.
Story: Your triggered emotion can feel “unsafe” because it was unsafe in the past. So, you fall back on this powerful (and often unconscious) story that creates stress and tension. Thinking back to the email from your boss, your story might be that you felt misunderstood, you’ve failed and are at risk of losing your job.
Stress Reaction: You protect yourself with the emotional versions of fight, flight, or freeze mode, which are to compete, avoid, or accommodate. Once you feel like you’ve failed from the email, you immediately think about finding a new job. This is part of the avoid stress response where you want to get out of the uncomfortable situation ASAP.
Behavior: The stress reactions lead to behaviors that create a self-fulfilling prophecy. As a result, you feel stuck, unfulfilled, or isolated. With the sudden desire to start looking for a new job, you search job sites, or draft a defensive email back to your boss. You get up from your desk and beeline it to the candy stash at your co-worker’s desk.
Eat Out of Alignment with Your Goals: You mindlessly eat, stress eat, or emotionally eat, hoping the food will help “save the day.”
Lose Self-Trust: You start to question your ability with food and your body. Once you inhale the candy, you feel like you failed again and didn’t stick with the healthy eating plan you started out with in the morning.
Loops Back to the Trigger: You become triggered again because you’re less resilient and creative about other choices you have. As a result, you become more stressed and start to lose hope.
Now you might be wondering, ‘so now that I know this cycle exists, how do I change it?’
During this program, you will gain clarity around the external factors causing your cravings because once you’re aware of them, the pull of food can decrease. Through our sessions, you’ll also strengthen your self-trust, which will lead to being more in tune with what works best for you, your body and your lifestyle.
If it feels like you’ve been in a long, constant and never-ending battle with food, the Truce with Food (Appetizer) program will help you gain clarity, relief and results.