I want to be coached on my mind set regarding my weight. I am someone who was a lanky child, very sporty and played lots of competitions. I was fit and generally could eat whatever i wanted and I did not spend a lot of time thinking about food. However, when I was at uni I put on a little weight (probably due to decreased exercise levels, hormones etc) and then freaked out. A well meaning auntie started me on a ‘diet’, which I failed and then started the controlling, bingeing, emotional eating. Since this time my weight has fluctuated by 25 kilos up and down (have had 2 pregnancies, a back injury last year). I am now classed as ‘overweight’ for the first time in my life. The scariest thing is when I thought I was ‘fat’ I was actually in the healthy weight range! I never saw this, I always felt less than, unworthy and unattractive.
In my family, image, particularly physical looks, are very important and I have grown up with a perfectionist, controlling, nasty mother. My family have voiced over the years views on weight.
I feel disgusting, embarrassed and horrible. I feel shame for how I look and how I have let myself ‘go’ and then I feel shame for having such a first world problem. Then I feel worried that I actually do have to lose weight for health now not just vanity.
I get frustrated and overwhelmed by the enormity of the task I face to lose 15 kilos and then feel that i can’t do it. I also feel very insecure, jealous and unworthy when I see friends, colleagues and strangers whom look fit and slim.
I get frustrated when I get slow results if I start a regime. I also feel frustrated by the limitations I need to make to my eating. I am fearful that my daughter will have the same poor relationship with food that I have inherited from my mother and grandmother. I am fearful that if I don’t lose weight I will create health issues and also my back could be assisted by losing weight.
I feel like I just can’t stick to a plan, why can’t I just do it?
What change do I desire? Lose 15 kilograms, be able to wear my wardrobe (any of it!), feel fit and toned not wobbly and fat
Challenge- self belief, emotional and binge eating, mindset
Pressure- I feel pressure to lose weight for health, pressure to get it right
So grateful for your question.
This is a struggle I have known personally.
Many of us have!
A lot of us are focused on the past:
– Want to get back to an old body
– Want to look for things in past to explain current beleifs (parents, diet mentality in family, mother who told us we were chubby etc)
All of us want the process to be easy!
For some reason we think it shouldn’t be hard…
But all worthwhile things tend to be hard!
And the fact is – it is hard.
Slow progress is never a good reason to quit – even though you make it one.
PAST
What has happened in the past – has happened and it was meant to be that way – all of it – being a skinny kid, gaining the weight, diet mentality at home, your back injury, your weight gain post pregnancy…all of it.
Right now you are exactly where you are meant to be – there is nothing wrong with you.
First you have to stop resisting reality.
You have a lot of resistance to where you are at right now. This is manifesting as shame, disgust, fear, disappointment, blame, confusion.
All keeping you from just BEING with who you are in the body you have right now.
In order to change what IS now you have to first be here now…at the moment you are avoiding it in every way you can – you wont even look in the mirror will you?
Lots of resistance to the past – to the diets, to the damage, to perfectionist parents, body image conscious family…all of it is not helping you move forward.
You will recreate the past if you continue to live in it and think like you did back then.
You think you want to go back to long lanky Ondrea.
Even if you get back to the pre weight gain / baby weight – it will look and feel very different today. And the way you got to that weight in the past was not sustainable – so I don’t want you to go back to that old diet, or that one time you lost weight but later put it back on – because that didn’t work.
We have to look forward.
In order to change your body, you first have to change your mindset.
The current result you have right now is an over weight body.
What is the action that is causing this? Overeating?
What is the feeling that drives that action? I want you to really look at what you are thinking and how you are feeling before and when you binge / overeat.
Then I want you to imagine in the future (not back in the past) when you have lost this weight, you have lost the 15 kilos.
How do you think?
How to you feel?
What are you doing?
How are you eating?
Sleeping?
Drinking?
What role does food play in your life?
How are you different?
How are you the same?
What needs to happen right now is you need to live into that future self – you have to start to think, feel and act like that future Ondrea.
First off – be very clear about why you want to lose the weight?
What is the motivation?
Why does it even matter to you?
The create a plan for what you will eat each day, how much and when.
Don’t confuse things here, don’t make it complicated, you are not a professional athlete and we pretend its confusing – it isn’t – eat healthy food, don’t eat too much. If you need advice see a nutritionsit – but don’t make this a reason to delay action.
To stick to it – the plan.
That means when you have the urge to binge, to snack, to eat off the plan – you don’t.
Its adult stuff.
When you have these urges don’t resist them – be curious – notice how you feel, how you are thinking, what you are saying to yourself. Write it down. Take a good look at what is going on.
This is the important work.
You are avoiding emotion – boredom, frustration, anger, sadness…something.
You need to know that this is and realise that you can feel shitty and not eat.
The more do you do this the more confident you will become in your ability to feel an urge, not give in, allow a negative feeling to come and go and then get on with your life.
You expect it not to be hard…which is just unreaslistic
It’s meant to be hard. You can do hard.
In order to succeed, you have to be willing to do things you are resisting, and to be with the discomfort of wanting to give in to your urges.
It’s not easy, and you have to keep your end goal and compelling reason in sight, to help you stay committed when you want to give in to your desire for false pleasure.
Workbooks coming onto extra learning page this month for food and drinking plans and reflections – download these for Feb.
Connect with that future self. Live into that. And remember you can feel bored, shitty and frustrated and not binge – you get to decide what goes in.
“I am feeling an urge to binge right now and I can handle it.”
“I am bored right now and that is Ok.”
You have got this and I am here to help. Post back on this page with your progress.
Xx L