In last week’s post about being in a (not the) food story, you realize you didn’t come out of the birth canal counting carbs. Something happened along the way to make food a battle and you live in a culture eager to retell and glorify this story. With America more secular, Adam and Eve have been replaced by Bob and Jillian to redeem your food sins. The Biggest Loser (BL) ranch has replaced the garden and heaven is now a makeover and a size 4 dress that isn’t black.
Yet apparently heaven isn’t what it used to be. The majority of BL contestants gain all their weight back and crash their metabolisms. And for the rest of us? Jillian Michaels said on Anderson, “I don’t know how I keep selling books to you guys. Eat less, move more, it is that frigging simple!”
The problem is 1. The latest, functional medicine research explains it’s not that simple and 2. Change, the kind necessary to stop battling food, requires a completely different skill set beyond being trained in how to count calories.
When you hear weight-loss success stories, just about everyone says the same thing: “I stopped beating myself up for slip ups” or “I finally got that it wasn’t just about food”. What they aren’t saying is how they arrived there. “There” being how they changed how they saw themselves and food.
A big problem with most health and weight-loss experts: they don’t understand the change process. They don’t realize that everyone arrives there in a different way.
I don’t know anyone alive where food is just food. You have your own memories, demons and hopes attached to food. And, a unique biochemistry too. The biggest flaw in your current food story is thinking someone else can know your body better than you.
Your food needs are unique to you. In reclaiming your inner authority, you learn how to learn. This sustains your health and weight-loss success because you feel empowered walking the lifetime spiral staircase of wellness.
The real breakthrough in nutrition isn’t another new food or nutrition study. It’s ending the flawed patriarchal idea of an authority figure and subject.
No one is a weight-loss whisperer who can magically tell you what you need. That’s why Jillian Michaels keeps selling books. She and the convention she represents don’t allow you to come to your own food conclusions. If anything, the major stories being told confirm your worst fears: you are weak, and should be ashamed and insecure.
On the flip side is my approach, Truce with Food™, where I show you how to identify the foods and lifestyle changes for yourself. I assume you are smart, capable and, with the right guidance, can propel yourself. When I see my clients years later, they are often in exponentially better places than when we worked together. For one example, look at Karen who lost 60 pounds and was featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer for her sustained success.
Researchers and academics used to believe adult brains didn’t change much after adolescence. However, it’s generally accepted this isn’t true anymore. Food and diet advice is given in the least effective way adults change, by “training”.
But training doesn’t change you on the level you need to change. Think of the standard corporate diversity training program: people do not generally leave suddenly tolerant, or wanting to give women raises so they aren’t making $0.77 on the dollar to men. Just as reading about 10 New SuperFoods that also CLEAN LAUNDRY to Lose 10 Pounds in 10 Weeks makes you buy a magazine, but not buy into enough change to make a difference.
I created Truce with Food™ to help people through the four stages of change necessary to bridge the gap from fighting themselves and nutrition information to the simplicity of eating real, whole food in a peaceful way.
You don’t need more information – you do need more understanding. Not only does Truce with Food™ integrate the most current nutritional science, but it is delivered in a way to shift your internal story of food. You then have a worldview that provides the expert inner knowing and confidence that travels to the grocery store, work, parties and vacations.
If Eve didn’t give Adam the apple, she probably would have been accused of starving him. I’m more curious why Adam wasn’t responsible for himself or what’s the protective wisdom in your bad eating? You’ll start to see that how you frame the story and question determines your answers and behavior.
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