Set Yourself Free from the Diet Mentality

Welcome to Part 3 of the series on Building a New Relationship with Food. (You can find Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE)

As part of the process of reclaiming your freedom around food, let’s look at one of the key principles: Step aside from the diet mentality.
Everyone has intuitive guidance in all aspects of their life all the time. There is nothing special about having it around food….it is just part of how we’re set up. In order to be in touch with your internal guidance around food you need to make yourself available to it.

​This means stepping away from externally dictated, conflicting, fear-inducing rules that live in your mind and manage your relationship with food. Here are 4 way that you can start to do that:

1.  When you are choosing what to eat, notice the thoughts “Should I?  How many carbs does it have?  What have I eaten today?  Have I been “good” lately? Is this a good food or a bad food (code words such as healthy and unhealthy are often used instead)?  You are probably aware of other similar thoughts that habitually come up in your mind.  Step away from them.  Instead, check in with yourself to discover:  Am I hungry?  If so, on a scale of 1 to 10, how hungry am I? What food would taste best right now?  Is it possible for me to put the fork down between each bite?  What would that do for me? Use these questions as a springboard to explore and discover. If you’re not really hungry, ask yourself, what I am looking for?  Take a few minutes to explore the question…let it be answered from the deeper part of you. Take a few more minutes to sense and feel how you might let that experience into your day.
2. If you find yourself in despair over your weight and looking at ads for diets, pills and supplements as a remedy, step back from the fear in your mind. Ask yourself, and answer honestly:  What has happened when I’ve been on diets before?  If I lost weight, how long did the weight stay off?  What happened last time I took supplements or diet pills?  Did I end up with a peaceful and empowering relationship with food?  Or did it add to my sense of fear and confusion?   Ask yourself: Have I had enough? Am I ready yet to go for peace and acceptance in my relationship with food and body?
3. Discontinue your practice of participating in conversations around good foods, bad foods, how fat you are (or someone else is), how much weight you’ve lost (or someone else has).  What you can’t fit into anymore, or what you can fit into now that you couldn’t before and other diet mentality conversations.  If this conversation is happening around you, remind yourself quietly in your mind that you are exploring a new way of being with food.  That you are beginning to nourish a relationship that will empower and delight you and that it feels better to focus on that than old ways of relating.
4. Ask your Inner Wisdom, “How you can I serve?”  This will take you into a much bigger world and a much more joyful one.  There is a unique purpose for your time on this planet.  Are you curious about what it is?  As you connect with it and begin to move into it the food game will start to pinch and bind and eventually become far too small to hold your attention.

 
Practice these 4 things, one at a time, slowly and consistently and observe the results in your life.
 
Bonus post coming up: Many of you are familiar with how powerful the Choose Again Six Step Process is.  In our next bonus post we will be talking about how to use the Six Step Process as a tool to heal your relationship with food.
 
Love to you,
Dawn
(Dawn is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counsellor, and has worked with Choose Again for many years. She is currently at our centre in Costa Rica, and is available for Online sessions. Contact Dawn at [email protected], or visit her website at www.dawngreen.org)