diet frustration

Diet frustration

Wendy is a focussed and successful woman. Everything she wants to achieve works out. She goes for it, fights for it and gets the results. Her life goes the way she wants it to go. Apart from……….her waistline.

For as long as Wendy can remember she has been haunted by an expanding waistline. Regardless of her endless attempts to keep her weight down, the only way was up. And coming to 40, she is physically bordering on obese and emotionally touching on desperation. Her diet frustration has reached its peak.

She is sitting opposite me, crying her eyes out and begging for a solution. She feels like two persons, the successful one and the failing one. How does that work?

In her approach to life Wendy has embraced a pro-actiye and active approach, whenever there was a challenge. ‘Put your shoulders under it and push through. It cost energy, but no pain no gain …’

And that’s where it goes wrong when it comes to Wendy’s body weight. She has been fighting and fighting to lose the pounds, but what worked in other parts of her life didn’t work.

Taking practical hurdles is easy for Wendy. But weight loss is not practical, it’s emotional, so no wonder that her usual approach doesn’t work. It’s not about fighting and pushing through, it’s about accepting, belief she can do it and that she is worth it.

From time to time, we all face challenges, which represent emotions, where a practical approach is not successful. Think about the wish for more money, better health, more success…….

Tips on how to approach an emotional (diet stress) challenge

  1. Recognise your struggle is about emotions
  2. Accept your situation – for this moment in time
  3. Be kind to yourself
  4. Find out what your current situation represents – being overweight often links to low self-worth, anger, low-self esteem. Lack of money could stand for feeling a failure or being the black sheep of the family.
  5. Define baby steps on how to make changes to the emotional representations
  6. Once you haye changed your emotions, think of how you can make practical changes

Fascinating thing is that once Wendy started to change how she treated herself – she stopped beating herself up and started to be kinder and loving – her behayiour around food changed and as a result she started to lose weight.

I have been bulimic for over 20 years and I know the challenge of emotions around diets and weight loss. Do you need support with losing weight and do you recognise the emotional battle? Book a FREE Clarity Call with me and get a better understanding of your emotions.

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