You Could Be Having SO Much More Fun

Many clients come to me with so much post-diet trauma. Some struggle to figure out what to eat when they're working with me to lose weight without dieting.

They're so used to equating “healthy” foods with restriction - eating huge, boring salads to feel full, using as little fat as possible, not embellishing dishes with nuts, cheese, or butter to “save” calories or points.

It's hard to shed that diet mentality.

I get it - I was there, too.

It takes a little bit of courage to prove to yourself that you can lose weight by eating the foods you actually like and crave. That if you practice waiting to eat until you experience true, physical hunger and then stopping when your body signals to you that it's had enough, you can lose weight even while eating all the foods you love.

And, once my clients start to play around with cooking the fun “non-diet” recipes, ordering the stuff they really want when they go out, just having the damn cookie they're craving rather than trying (and failing) to satisfy their sweet tooth with a “healthier” version - this process starts to become fun.

We often work together to “gamify” their approach. Can I really put full-fat cheese on that and lose weight this week? Can I really eat fast food without sabotaging my progress? Can I really ditch my spray oil and instead put stuff on those veggies (nuts! bacon! parm!) that will make them delicious and craveable?

(Spoiler alert: yup, totally, and have at it)

Because, here's what I know to be true. When I was trying to lose weight eating low-fat cheese, fat-free Greek yogurt, unadorned veggies, and other sad, boring diet crap, I thought about food ALL. THE. TIME.

I never felt satisfied. I felt joyless and deprived.

And I would suffer my way through those emotions for a couple of days….maaaaybe a week or two if I was lucky, and then I would give up and totally blow it.

I would always reach a point where I would say f-it and then I would eat as much as I could get of the fun, delicious foods I was craving.

Which felt like SUCH a relief in the moment. And that relief would last for about five minutes before it would turn into shame and regret.

I would spend the rest of the day beating myself up for sabotaging all my hard work, and I would promise myself that I would somehow find the willpower to stay on the restrictive diets again (starting Monday, always..) and then the whole process would repeat over and over and over again.

Until I started doing things differently.

When I started to eat the foods I actually wanted, but in a way that honored my body's inherent hunger and satiety signals, everything changed.

I stopped thinking obsessively about food because my brain and body could finally relax.

I didn't need to eat as much as I could get when I was “off” my diet, because more satisfying food was always available when I got hungry again. In fact, being “on” or “off” stopped being a thing - I was just eating food.

It became easy to strike a balance between food that was nutritious and food that was just fun, because there could be so much overlap between those two categories - I could make food that tasted good AND nourished my body at the same time.

And sometimes I could just have a bowl of ice cream for fun without stressing out that I was derailing all my progress.

I basically taught myself how to become a “normal” eater. Someone who honors her cravings but also nourishes her body, and who doesn't stress much about any of it. Food can be fun and food can be fuel, and it's all just easy and natural.

It's heartbreaking to me how many women spend their lives stressing about food rather than having the easy-breezy relationship they deserve with it. Helping my clients rediscover a fun, satisfying, and stress-free relationship with food is one of my favorite parts of my work.

If you could use some help with this, click on the button below to schedule your free 60-minute Discovery Call. On the call, I'll help you see clearly what's not working for you now, and how much progress is possible for you in just a couple months of working together. Join me there and let's get you having a lot more fun with the food you love.