Hi love,
I help a lot of women who struggle with dieting and emotional eating gain confidence in their body and around food.
So today, I want to talk about restriction, dieting and control and why they don’t work. As I write it, it doesn’t sound good to me.
I get it though, we all start out in the same spot; we feel something is wrong with our bodies and/or we need to look a certain way.
So we think “I need to restrict calories”, “I have to restrict the way I eat” or “I can’t have carbs/fats/chocolate/pasta anymore”. We are very controlling around our food and honestly, this is so prevalent in our society. Or we’re always on the hunt to try the next diet because it didn’t work AGAIN.
Guess what, diets have a 95% failure rate.
They don’t work!
Something is off.
Just changing the way you eat, restricting or over-exercising doesn’t work.
Restrictive Mindset
Part of the reason that dieting and restriction doesn’t work and YOU FAIL every-time thinking something is wrong with you but there isn’t.
This is because when you have this mode of restriction your brain is on high alert making sure you don’t go out of control.
The brain goes into high alert which is a stressful state. And so your thinking is so focused that you are in a box (doing everything right) and this creates more stress in the body. Stress doesn’t help us reach our health goals it goes against it. For example, shedding off excess weight or getting our bodies healthy.
Pushing Against a Greater Force
And this is why we can’t get to those goals. We are also pushing against beliefs we might have beneath the surface in our subconscious. Our subconscious mind runs about 95% of our functioning. It’s what lets our hearts beat without us thinking, or to breath. It runs patterns so that we can be efficient as humans.
Our conscious mind has 5% control in any given day. That means even though we are restricting and controlling and stressing ourselves out to fit into this box. A HUGE part of us is in control.
And if we don’t get to those beliefs and start to shift them we won’t get very far in changing our ingrained patterns. That’s why willpower only goes so far. This just sets us up to fail.
We are not looking under the surface at these beliefs. What is sabotaging our efforts. Why don’t we trust our body? Why do we need so much control? Why are we counting calories? Why can’t we let go?
When we let go of restrictions and calorie counting and feeling that there is something wrong with us we open up to a nourishing way of being. We can tune into our bodies and start trusting it.
This might sound out of reach but our bodies know, our bodies are SO intelligent.
A quick story…
When I was restricting and dieting I remember I would eat all the cookies, not just one. I saw this woman eating one cookie and it was an AHA moment. I thought “Maybe I can do that too!” and then wondered “Why is it so hard for me?”.
I decided to figure out how to eat just one cookie. I researched what was happening. That first step was recognizing that I was restricting myself and so would want all the cookies. As I allowed myself cookies and reminded myself I could have them whenever I wanted to I was able to have 1 cookie.
And today, I don’t really care for cookies. They are in my life because I have a young child but I prefer dark chocolate 😉
Cookies have no power over me. I’ve learned to see why I was restricting and learned to trust my body over time.
It is so possible to make changes from a much deeper level. It will help you shift how you feel in your body and you can get out of the pattern of control and dieting!
To true change,
~Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist.
