As we reflect on our health goals this time of year, many of us feel stumped. We know diets don’t work and are, in fact, a root cause of weight gain. But giving up all structure feels scary.
Is there an Option C?
What I know for sure is, wildly creative entrepreneurs, leaders and thinkers burn their creative energy on battling food and make their body their “project” if they aren’t creatively challenged. Creativity is about how we think too. Problem solving, leading teams, and entrepreneurship are creative outlets as much as writing and designing.
This happens because the “brand promise” of weight loss isn’t a small body. Thinness is sold as a quick fix to safe self-expression; weight loss will make it easier to be the real us.
It’s not just getting dressed that’s easier. Dating will be too. And finding time to implement our unconventional ideas at work will also be easier. As one client, who found her strategic creativity on simmer because she was being pulled in too many directions, said, “being thinner makes me feel more confident to honor my boundaries and ideas, like I’m bulletproof.”
Thin-privilege exists. But, thinness alone doesn’t teach us how to find, develop, and take the risks we most want to take. How many of us have lost weight only to find we didn’t feel much different on the inside?
That’s because the “bulletproof” vest my client described isn’t thinness. It’s resilience and courage which alchemize into the freedom to create and express our truth. In whatever form that takes.
Creative self-expression is risky and edgy, the opposite of easy or safe. Our weight loss projects may create some lost pounds, but weight loss can’t give us the resilience and courage to fulfill the possibilities stirring within our souls.
Most of my clients come to me when they’re exhausted by their food battle and hear whispers of a life shift. Life is calling them to reclaim the self-trust that dieting and their story took from them. This feels like permission and freedom to do work, parenting, and relationships our own way. These possibilities feed our creative fire, eliminating the need for junky carbs to stimulate our mind and body.
When I asked my client, Nicole Corcoran, on Insatiable why she stuck with our Truce With Food work even though: 1) It’s challenging; 2) I never promised weight loss; and, 3) It took six months into our work for her to begin to lose 20 pounds, she replied, “it became about so much more than the weight.”
Truce With Food, which is Option C, isn’t about if it’s good or bad to want to lose weight. It’s a research-based, proven process to explore who you need to become to be free to create a life aligned with your truth. Truth only you can express and find by learning how to listen to your body, which houses your rebel soul.
Want to learn more about weight loss as an attempt at safe self-expression? Check out this wildly popular Insatiable episode where we discuss the 3 components of self-expression and how two of my clients have used Truce With Food tools to get super creative with their work and impact in the world. Listen to the audio. Read the transcript.
And consider these two questions to help you craft successful health goals. First, think of the habits you will have to start to achieve your health goals. Instead of pounds lost, think of what it takes to get there like don’t use food to reward myself or becoming more active. And then ask yourself: Who do I have to become to accomplish that goal?
Your answer will orient your path to the adventure life has waiting for you.
P.S. Truce With Food®️ opens for 2019 registration on January 21. Come for the relief, leave with life-changing creative freedom.
Leave a Reply