This Can Be A Game-Changer For You in 2023

New year, new you? The new year often feels like a fresh start and an amazing opportunity to break bad habits and establish new routines, but many of us can get stuck in the diet culture trap. 

These trendy diets, magic weight-loss pills, and detoxes you see all over the media set you up to fail and can take you further away from reaching your goals. The diet industry will also tell you “they’re not a diet”, but if that even has to be said, it’s a probable red flag.

But here’s your reminder: the new year does not require a new diet!!! 

I know how difficult it may be to go against the grain or what you know. The diet-cycle is something some clients have been stuck in since their teenage years.

When it feels like everyone around you is on a mission to lose weight for the new year, you can almost feel left out choosing to do something different. 

But we want you to remind yourself what going back to diets and detoxes has gotten you: 

• An obsession with the scale to the point where your mood is based on the number you see.
• Never feeling good enough, no matter how small you get.
• Ending each day with guilt, shame, and tears after binge eating .
• Missing out on memories with friends or family members because you’re ashamed of how you look, just binged, or are worried about sticking to your calorie goal. 
• Consistently ripping yourself apart in the mirror. 

I could go on and on…I’ve seen it first hand with too many people which is why I am approaching wellness a different way. It’s what brought me to learn intuitive eating more in depth and have been practicing myself. I have used it with my clients this past year and am so passionate about people learning more about it, I co-founded a new business East Coast Intuitive Eaters! My clients are calling it a game-changer and it has helped them tremendously, they wish they knew about some of the principles sooner. 

Break the cycle this year by learning how to eat intuitively and improve your relationship with food & your body!

Intuitive eating is more than a health trend. Unlike a typical diet, intuitive eating involves trusting your inner body wisdom to make food choices that feel good in your body, without judgment or influence from diet culture. It's all about understanding your own hunger cues and knowing when you're hungry and full. It may appear simple, but depending on your relationship with your body and food, it can be a difficult practice to implement. It takes a lot of self-reflection, thought work and then putting what you learn into practice. You sometimes have to get uncomfortable to grow, but it’s worth it! 

Think about it… When we were babies, we made NOISE to let people know we were hungry, and we didn't feel the least bit ashamed about it. We demanded that our needs be met. We accepted those needs as valid and did not question them. We took charge of our hunger, and nobody had to show us how to do it, it was written into our DNA.

We can all get closer to a place where our relationship with food is as simple as they were when we were babies. Where hunger and enjoyment are not to be judged, and where fullness is a sign that we can shift our focus away from food for a while, while knowing that it will be available again when we need it.

A lot of things mess with our default mode that can turn our naturally healthy relationship with food to a poor one such as dieting, poverty, food insecurity, and last but not least, shame. According to Brené Brown, nearly all women feel ashamed of their bodies at one time or another. Here is a great read on shame & body image. 

Diet culture is the root cause as to why we feel shameful about our food choices and our body. 

• It tells us that we’re “wrong,” for feeling hungry and that we “should just drink more water instead” because god forbid you honor your hunger cues. 
• It tells us that weight gain and larger bodies are “bad,” and that weight loss and smaller bodies are “good.” (Not to mention, 150 years ago, Western culture and other societies around the world were saying the exact opposite).
• It tells us that satisfaction and pleasure will destroy our health. Shame on you for eating chips on the weekend and falling off plan!
• It demonizes fullness, telling us that it’s a sign we’ve eaten “too much.”
• It convinces us that we’re “good” or “bad” for choosing to eat certain foods.
• It tells us that in order to be “healthy” you must be thin. 
• It tells us that our instincts—the innate signals encoded into our DNA—are bad and wrong. 

So in turn, we go on diets or detoxes, and the diet industry profits from our insecurities. They are marketing towards them as well. Diet culture doesn’t care about your health, it cares about your money. Weight loss sells. #realtalk

The good news: now that we learned how diet culture led us astray, we don't have to buy into it anymore.

You CAN start to rebuild your relationship with food and your body. 

Of course, it will take some time to unlearn everything diet culture has taught you, but with a little help and self-compassion, you’ll get there! 

If you need some extra support in 2023, apply to work with me 1:1 here. I am also launching a 12-week group coaching program on Jan. 16th called “Break the Cycle”. I posted more details on my Instagram and saved them as a highlight on my main profile if you want to know more about the program! You may have insurance coverage for a registered dietitian that can help pay for some of the cost!