Dear Gorgeous-
Looking back to the days that I was on the merry-go-round of weight loss, I had quite the vocabulary regarding the food choices I made. I can see clearly now how my mindset towards weight loss was very limited and blocking my weight loss success.
The chatter went something like- “This is bad, I better not,” or “OMG I had so many carbs!” and even “I cannot believe I just ate the whole pint.”
This negative chatter and your beliefs around certain foods will affect how the food you are eating is metabolized.
Let’s take eating a sweet potato for example. Sweet potato is an incredible food-it’s grounding, has loads of Vitamin A that’s great for the skin, but it is a carbohydrate.
I know when I was young I was given sweet potato lots and my mother ate them growing up without any negative beliefs about them because they are sweet and a carb.
What has changed?
The latest ‘bad guy’ in the weight loss world are carbohydrates and a sweet potato falls into that category! Anytime there’s an entire food group being made the villain, you really have to stop and think whether or not this is your best approach towards your weight loss goals.
The negative chatter and limiting beliefs affects our stress hormones which ultimately works against our fat burning efforts.
NEW! LORNA’S CLIENT CASE STUDY:
I had a client who was a vegetarian but was secretly desiring meat a lot. She was not paying attention to the communication her body was sending to her.
She would have tons of shame and guilt over it.
Finally one day I said to her, “What do you think these messages are trying to tell you?”
She really wasn’t sure but by the time I spoke to her on our next session, she went back to eating meat!
Sometimes the body will communicate what it is it needs to maintain balance in the body; you just need to listen.
LORNA’S TIPS TO DISARM YOUR NEGATIVE FOOD BELIEFS:
1. Listen to your body when it’s communicating! The more you are in tune with your body’s needs and what really makes your body feel good, the easier it will be to let what doesn’t serve you fall away.
Let’s say you eat a sweet potato but feel extremely tired after it but when you eat an apple, you feel energetic. Food is information but you need to connect to understand your body’s uniqueness.
2. Bookend your meals: Perhaps you are rushing in the morning or swamped at work and not paying attention to whether or not you are hungry.
Take a moment to tune into your hunger and your fullness. On a scale from 0-5, how hungry are you? If 1 is not very hungry and 5 is starving, understand where you are at and eat only when hungry. You wouldn’t eat if you were a 1 for example.
Then, bookend it by connecting to how full you are. You don’t want to be stuffed, as that doesn’t feel good, so notice when you know you had enough. This will keep you mindful to patterns that are not serving your bottom line.
3. Don’t get stuck in a particular way of eating: High protein, Paleo, vegan, low carb, no fat, etc. will keep you disconnected from your body which is totally the opposite of my message here for you today. There are no ‘shoulds!’
You can take your power back over food!
