The most common complaint I hear is that someone “just can’t lose weight.” They believe they’re doing all the right things and they’ve tried “everything” but the scale won’t budge. They’re frustrated and ready to give up. I’ve even been here myself, several times. So what’s going on?

Everyone knows how dieters can get stuck on a plateau that last forever or that chronic dieters have been dieting for so long that their bodies don’t burn calories efficiently anymore. But what are some other reasons you can’t lose weight?

There are lots of them! I’m going to share the ones I think are most common that we tend to ignore! Why do we ignore these? Well, sometimes we’re not aware they could be a problem, and for others, we prefer to go the “easy” route and delving into some of this stuff is a bit harder! Read on – you never know, your solution could be in one of these paragraphs.

Reasons Why You Might Not Be Losing Weight

You have a hormonal or metabolic condition that makes it difficult for your body to burn fat or causes weight gain. Hypothyroidism, PCOS, Metabolic Syndrome, Cushing’s Syndrome and natural hormonal changes like perimenopause and menopause are just a few of the medical/physical conditions that can make weight loss seem impossible (and weight gain seem inevitable).

If you suspect that you have a medical condition that is getting in the way of your goals, talk to your doctor. There are tests that can diagnose all of these conditions and treatments that can help! And the sooner you know if you are dealing with a medical condition, the more effective all your efforts will be.

Food Sensitivities & Weight Gain

You have a food sensitivity. Food sensitivities can cause us to gain weight, but we usually don’t know we have one!

Food sensitivities are not the same thing as a food allergy. If you have an allergy to a food, it will usually show up in a blood test or skin prick test that you can have done by an allergist. When someone eats a food that they are allergic to, the symptoms usually happen relatively quickly (hives, itching, wheezing, etc.) and can be life threatening (such as in the case of someone with a peanut allergy with anaphylaxis). To learn more about food allergies and testing, visit FARE.

While food allergies usually are noticeably caused by the food in question, a food sensitivity can go completely unnoticed, as the symptoms and discomfort that come from the sensitivity happen so slowly over time that we don’t see them as related.  We usually only become aware that there is an issue with that food if we take it out for a period of time (like during an elimination diet) and reintroduce it.

Food sensitivity symptoms can include many things that can appear to be from other conditions (or just a part of getting older) like bloating, body aches and pains, rosacea, asthma, constipation, diarrhea, and weight gain. Food sensitivities are becoming increasingly common today (a few reasons include an increase in gut permeability and exposure to hormones) and many people who have a food sensitivity gain weight because the offending food causes an inflammatory response in the body.

Interestingly enough, the foods we are sensitive to are often foods we eat frequently and have cravings for! Remove the offending food and weight starts to come off easily. If you need help doing an elimination diet to see if you have a sensitivity to the most common ones, let’s chat!

Mental and Emotional Causes

Weight Gain Due to Self-Limiting Beliefs

You have self-limiting beliefs. Do any of these sound familiar? “I’ve always been fat.” “I can’t lose weight.” “Losing weight is too hard for me.” “I’m just a big-boned person.” “Everyone in my family is overweight.” “I’ll never be a normal weight.” For me, the thought was “I’m just a fat girl” – as if being “fat” defined who I was as a person. We make our weight mean something about us. Thoughts that we think over and over again become part of our belief system and when something is ingrained in our beliefs, like it or not, we take actions repeatedly that will provide evidence for that belief.

For example, if you believe that your weight is a direct result of just everyone in your family being naturally heavy or if you believe that it’s not possible for you to lose weight, how much effort do you think you’ll put into eating well or not eating too much? If you are like most people with these beliefs, you’re going to half-ass it! If you already believe you will fail, you won’t give it your all – because why give your all to something you know you can’t have? You’re not a bad person or lazy for doing this – it’s human nature. We won’t work hard at something we know we can’t have.

But you don’t HAVE to believe these things are true. It’s a choice to believe these things about yourself. Change your belief and you will change your future. To open up the door, start asking yourself empowering questions, like: What if I could lose weight? What can I do today to make weight loss more likely? Is eating this food in alignment with the person I want to be? See where that takes you!

Emotional Weight & Physical Weight Gain

You’re holding onto emotional weight. This is where I’m gonna get a little woo-woo and won’t provide scientific facts to back me up – just personal experiences and observations, but I have a feeling you’ll get what I’m talking about.

Sometimes we gain weight and can’t lose it because we are holding on to something that we believe or think about ourselves on such a deep level that it becomes what I like to call “emotional weight.” The belief doesn’t even have to actually be true to weigh us down – it just has to be something that we think must be true!

For example, maybe you got the impression as a child that you weren’t lovable – so to prevent people from loving you, you gained weight to protect yourself from what you saw as inevitable rejection. Or perhaps you got a lot of attention when you were young that made you feel uncomfortable, so you gained weight in the hopes of reducing that unwanted attention.

The weight was a physical way for us to build up a wall around ourselves to keep others out or to keep believing whatever it is we want to believe about ourselves. Emotional weight prevents us from being who we want to be, it gives us an excuse to hold ourselves back, it keeps us playing small and safe. We think it’s protecting us in some way to continue living that story or belief about ourselves, but all it’s really doing is limiting our potential.

You may not even realize there is some deep emotional root to your weight gain – many of us get stuck here and can stay here for years until we recognize that the reason we are unhappy in our bodies is because we are stalling ourselves in other ways.

If you can let go of whatever is weighing you down emotionally, often we start to lose weight. Release whatever is holding you down emotionally and weight loss will happen naturally. Don’t know how to that? Schedule a consult with me to discuss it.

Stress Related Weight Gain

You’re super stressed out. High levels of stress cause us to release lots of cortisol, the “fight or flight” hormone – and when this happens too often we gain weight, especially in the belly. In early times, this release of hormones helped us to stay alive by giving us quick energy to escape predators and increasing fat storage in case we were without food for long periods of time!

Today, many of us enter that fight-or-flight mode daily due to situational stress, (most of which isn’t a threat to our lives), and our body (amazing machine that is is) prepares us to deal with it by making sure the body is prepared for famine or being on alert. When we’re chronically stressed, the body thinks that we’re at risk for starvation so it starts to store fat in case we need it later (because thousands of years ago food wasn’t at our fingertips like today). When this happens on a daily basis, you can see how difficult it will be to lose weight if your body believes you are in danger and need all the fat stores it can make!

Even more annoying is that while under acute stress, most folks lose their appetites, but when the stress is chronic, we actually get the urge to eat more – so you end up with eating more which contributes to the fat storage.

If you’re under high levels of stress, or even moderate stress but don’t handle it well, try making stress relief a priority in your life. Gentle exercise like walking and yoga, movement like tai chi and qigong, deep breathing exercises, massage, evening baths with Epsom salt, journal writing, meditation, and avoiding caffeine may help. As you reduce your stress level, the weight may come off more easily.

Overeating

You’re eating more than your body needs. This is the category that most of us fall into. It’s not something we like to hear, but most of the time, the reason we gain weight and the reason we can’t lose weight is because we are taking in more food than our bodies are using for fuel. This happens for a lot of reasons, a few that you may relate to are:

1. We’ve gotten disconnected from our bodies and don’t listen to hunger and fullness signals to determine when to start and stop eating. This means we eat more and more often! When was the last time you actually felt true hunger?
2. As a society, we eat a lot of foods that are high in refined carbohydrates, these foods make us feel good in the short term but they spike and crash our blood sugar, making us feel ravenous later, again leading to eating more food than we can use.
3. We live sedentary lives, spend too much time driving, on the computer, watching TV and not enough time moving so we don’t burn enough calories.
4. We turn to food when we’re upset, sad, frustrated, lonely, or even happy. When we do this, we usually consume large quantities of food in a short period of time and do it regularly.
5. We eat massive portions that restaurants serve and start serving ourselves those same sized portions at home even though they are way more food than our body needs. It’s just what we’re used to, so we eat it!

How do you deal with this? Take an honest inventory of your habits. Some people may need to try weighing their food with a kitchen food scale (to determine whether they’re having 1 serving or 4) or get back in touch with their bodies natural hunger signals.

Self-Sabotage Dieting

You’re self-sabotaging yourself. You eat well and exercise for a couple of weeks, then decide to reward yourself for your hard work by having a cheat day, but that cheat day turns into you falling off the wagon for three weeks. Or you have been stuck at the same weight for a year, despite exercising 5 days a week and eating well 5 days a week but every Friday and Saturday night you have a few drinks and then after your drinks decide to eat chocolate, ice cream, or whatever else strikes your fancy. You’ll worry about your “diet” on Monday! Or, you drop 20 or 30 pounds and while super excited about your progress, you start to purposely sabotage yourself because there is a part of you that is completely freaked out about going below a certain weight.

We use weight to protect ourselves sometimes and even though consciously we want to lose weight, sometimes we’re more comfortable at the weight we’re at than we want to believe. In fact some of us actually don’t want to lose weight but have been conditioned by society to believe that we need to in order to be happy, so we struggle to lose weight even though it’s not even something we want for ourselves!

So how do you stop sabotaging yourself?

Self sabotage is a complicated beast but for most it goes back to getting in touch with our feelings. Do you feel guilty or berate yourself when you something that isn’t on your “diet”? Then you’re going to self sabotage. Do you use food to comfort or reward yourself? That’s self sabotage. Getting to your why is key to putting an end to it. Find out why you are doing this to yourself and then come up with some good reasons to stop doing it – without judgement and with love!

Go back to why you want to lose weight in the first place – what’s your motivation? How will losing weight change your life? Is there anything that scares you about that? Is there anything that excites you?

Be Honest With Your Habits

Own up, be honest with yourself. This is your ride and you’re in control of it. If you are having a difficult time losing weight and aren’t sure where to turn next,  I sincerely hope you will contact me. I have helped many women get over hurdles that were blocking their success and I’d love to help you do it too.

Would you talk to this little girl the way you talk to yourself now? (and yes, I still sleep like that now!)

I have started to look for what is beautiful about other people’s bodies instead of comparing myself to them and tearing them down. It’s helped my body image in a big way (and I feel like way less of jerk since I’m not criticizing other people because of my own hate for my own body).

Improving Self-Image

It’s just one of many things I’ve been doing on a regular basis to transform the way I feel about my body. Loving or liking your body is a “practice.” We practice yoga, we practice sports, we practice before giving a presentation or dance recital. And yes, changing how we feel about our bodies or how we feel around food requires creating a practice of sorts.

I’ve started to picture myself as a little kid when an urge to say something bad about my body comes up. Sounds a little weird but read on!

A Child's Perspective

Every time a horrible thought about my body comes up or the urge to pinch, pick apart or tear myself down arises, I remind myself that the person I am saying that about is a little girl named Andrea. Andrea loves books, barbies, coloring and helping her mom in the kitchen. She loves Saturday morning cartoons, roller skating, riding her bike and playing in the woods behind her house with her friends. She’s affectionate, curious, and cares about how other people feel. She loves animals and laughing. She’s creative and has a wild imagination.

Would you tell her she’s fat? That she looks “wrong”? That she’s ugly? Of course not. So don’t do it to yourself now.

She’s just a kid.

Would I speak the way I speak to myself to little Andrea if she was standing in front of me?

Absolutely not.

I wouldn’t dare treat a kid the way I treat my adult self.

Why? Because she doesn’t deserve it.

I don’t deserve it either. We’re the same person.

I want to have higher standards for myself. If I wouldn’t talk to a little kid the way I talk to myself, then I can’t continue saying the horrible things I’ve said about myself.

Remember the Child You Once Were

I now immediately picture myself as a kid when these cruel thoughts pop in my head and it now helps me to stop them quickly. Remember the kid you were. How innocent, hopeful, kind, ambitious, gentle, unique and whole you were (and ARE!!). How worthy of love and valued you were (and ARE!!). You deserve better treatment. She deserves better treatment. You are the same now as you were then and you deserve love and acceptance—especially from yourself.

To keep your mind on this idea, try carrying around a picture of yourself when you were little or posting a pic as your desktop background and see if it changes how you think of yourself today. If a picture of yourself doesn’t make you feel compassion or sympathetic, try someone else you care about—a niece, nephew, a friend’s kid—someone else who you wouldn’t dare talk this way to.

Can you have the same compassion for yourself that you would give to a child? Why or why not?

How well fed are you Emotionally, Physically, Spiritually and Creatively? Are you “eating” too much or too little in these areas?

How Balanced Is Your Life?

Something I’ve noticed about myself, but also in the women I work with, is that the way we do one thing, is the way we do everything. The problem with this is that it can lead us to live very unbalanced lives. To give an example, when it comes to making a decision, I’m either spontaneous and impulsive about it or I move at an exhaustingly slow pace. It doesn’t matter if it’s a really big decision or something minute. There’s no middle ground with me.

It has always been the same way with food, relationships and even in my approach to work. It leaves me feeling perennially exhausted and unaccomplished all at the same time. My behaviors tend to leave me virtually starved or completely stuffed.

With food, up until the last three years, I vacillated between eating crazy clean or crazy unhealthily. I couldn’t seem to mix the two into any sort of balance. In college, I either drank heavily or not at all. When I jump into a new project or hobby, I’m either completely enamored and will bury myself in it without coming up for air for days at a time or I grow quickly bored and drop the project as soon as it begins. With people, I either like them instantly or I will keep them at an arm’s distance.

The women I work with have similar traits of doing everything in life the same way (though they may not necessarily bounce back and forth the way I do). They overeat, they overwork, they overcommit themselves. They give everything they have to their friends and family. They never say no. They are physically, emotionally and spiritually stuffed. Or alternatively, they are constantly dieting, avoiding being noticed at work, lonely in their personal lives and uninspired creatively. They are physically, emotionally and spiritually starved.

None of us can live like this forever.

Nourish Your Soul

Everything we do in life “feeds” us in some way. Feeding ourselves with physical food is one way we are nourished, but it’s not the only way. Our souls are nourished or malnourished by our daily actions and interactions. Work, creative pursuits, exercise, joy, social life, relationships, finances, spirituality, and health are just a few of the different areas that we can go overboard on (and feel “stuffed”) or completely ignore (and be “starved”).  You may be “stuffed” in some areas but “starved” in others.

When we spend too much time working and not enough time connecting with others socially, we may find our health affected. We’re stressed, exhausted, and feeling disconnected. When we overeat physically, we may retaliate by depriving ourselves in another way – maybe you don’t allow yourself physical touch, or you spend too much time on social media and you come away feeling both stuffed and utterly ravenous despite your intake of food.

Our goal should be a well fed life – not too much, not too little. Just right. Our hunger in these areas should be satisfied, but we don’t want to feel gluttonous or famished.

I know if you look at your own life, before I go any further into this, you can see the effect your daily choices and actions have on your health and well being. You already have an idea of how stuffed or starved you are. If you are really perceptive and good about self-care, then you are probably one of few who feel sated (and good for you!)!

How to Build a Well Fed Life

I divide the areas we feed ourselves in into 4 categories:  Physical, Emotional, Spiritual and Creative. Below are a few examples of the things in our lives that might fall into these categories and also how it will show up in your life if you are “stuffed”, “starved” or “sated”.

This list obviously doesn’t include everything and some of the items I list in one category could certainly be cross posted in another (but for the sake of brevity and clarity I’m going to avoid that). If there is something big in your life that I didn’t list here, where do you think it fits in?

4 Core Areas We Need to Nourish to Feel Sated

Physical 

Examples:  food (how we eat, how much we eat and quality of what we eat), massage, human touch, sex, exercise/sports, play, movement, rest.

Emotional

Examples:  social life, relationships, alone time, spending time with people you feel safe with and having outlets to express yourself, dealing with personal responsibilities, travel, connecting on social media.

Spiritual

Examples:  prayer, meditation, journaling, yoga, tai chi, volunteer work, spending time in nature, sense of purpose.

Creative

Examples:  work, cooking, art, dance, music, writing, imagination, beauty, decorating, gift giving, attending art/creative performances.

Symptoms of Imbalance

How it shows up in if we’re “eating” too much or too little in any category. OK, so those are the four categories. If you are indulging too much in any one area or not enough, you will find you feel “off” and this is how it may show up:

Symptoms of Being Stuffed

Symptoms of being stuffed include feeling lazy, lethargic, bored, apathetic, uninspired, tired, spent, pulled in too many directions, feeling distracted, feeling empty, overtaxed, unappreciated, indulgent.

Symptoms of Being Starved

Symptoms of being starved include being hungry for something but not sure what, excess nervous energy, depression, anxiety, sad, lonely, unfocused, agitated, tense, disconnected, feeling alone, loss of purpose.

Symptoms of being “Sated”

Symptoms of being sated are feeling light, energetic, at ease, happy, calm, grounded, sure of oneself, focused, comfortable, optimistic, confident, balanced, joie de vivre, satisfied, content, relaxed, at peace.

You may find that when your life is heavily weighted in one area, that you are more likely to feel some of these symptoms more than others. For example, if I’m lacking (or “starved”) in the “Physical” realm – not getting enough movement/exercise, spending too much time sedentary, being sloppy with my eating, I can guarantee that I’ll start to feel anxious, agitated and have excess nervous energy. As far as the other symptoms under starved, I don’t feel those ones so much. You may be different than me! Everyone manifests this stuff a little bit differently! For another example, let’s use the “Emotional” category. If I’ve been “stuffing” myself emotionally – maybe going to a lot of social events and tending to a lot of personal obligations, I tend to feel overtaxed, pulled in too many directions and distracted. You may find that the symptoms that show up for you when you’re stuffed emotionally, aren’t the same symptoms that show up when you are stuffed spiritually. Don’t read too much into this – I think it’s fluid!

Finding Balance in Your Life

Ultimately, your health and wellness is deeply connected to how well you are nourished – physically and emotionally – soulfully. You’ll notice that if you start aiming for more balance in each of these categories, that some of your recurring health concerns seem to be less of a problem – we all sleep better and have more energy when we are taking good care of ourselves. Even emotional eating becomes a much smaller issue when you feel supported, nourished and balanced.

The most important takeaway from this is that it’s important to pay attention to how you are spending your time, who with, and if you are getting enough nourishment physically, emotionally, spiritually and creatively. If you know when you are not getting enough in an area, you can make plans to change that – and that can go a long way in how you feel on a day to day basis.

Writing this post has made me realize that I’m really feeling starved in the creative realm. Yes, I do a lot of writing for work and I certainly do a lot of cooking – but neither have been serving a creative purpose lately (the writing is all business and the cooking is mostly for nutrition).

So, now it’s up to me to go out and change that!

How well fed are you? Which area (Physical, Emotional, Spiritual or Creative) seems to have the biggest pull in your life right now? And how well is your hunger satisfied in that area? What do you think you need to do differently?

Are you prone to self-sabotage?

If you’re human, you’ve probably, at times, sabotaged your own success in an area of your life. Some of us do this once in awhile and learn to stop doing it, and then there are some of us who do it over and over, preventing ourselves from ever achieving what we think we want.

Learning to manage our self-sabotaging ways is crucial to creating a life that we love.

Do any of these scenarios sound or feel familiar?

• You’ve blown up a perfectly good relationship for no good reason.
• You’ve bombed a job interview by purposely avoiding preparing for it.
• You decide to “get healthy” finally this year and after a few good weeks of consistent exercise, you skip a few days and now you can’t seem to get going again.
• You find yourself eating when you’re not hungry and even though you know the reasons you’re doing that, you consciously choose to reach for food instead of the tools that you know would help.
• You say no to opportunities that you want (out of fear).
• You tell yourself that you need more time to analyze the situation before making a decision and end up forced into the only choice left because time ran out. Not deciding becomes your decision.
• You regularly do things that you say you don’t want to do but you do them anyway.

I believe self sabotage is a form of rebellion. We do it to make ourselves feel free. On some level we don’t feel we have the right to have, the ability to get or access to something. We have told ourselves the thing we want is “not for us.” Or someone else told us that we couldn’t do something or have something and we believed them.

We limit ourselves and feel trapped by those limitations.

If there are places in our life where we’ve been held back (by ourselves or by someone else), restricted, stifled, or overburdened we’ll act out with self-sabotage. It might be with food, or maybe it’s by making decisions that feel irresponsible or dangerous. The reason we do it with things we seemingly don’t want is because it’s the only way we give that freedom back to ourselves.

We overeat, eat foods that make us feel rotten, and stop moving our bodies. We hurt the feelings of people we care about. We destroy progress at work, at home and in our relationships. It feels like a release of sorts to “act out” like this. The thinking is “if I can’t have what I want, then I can at least do this thing that feels like a choice of my own doing.”

It doesn’t even matter that we are blowing up things that we actually want. If we’re someone who doesn’t believe we have a lot of potential or choices in life, we’re after that delicious moment of freedom, even if it causes us pain and regret afterwards.

Where in your life do you not feel free? 

Where in your life have you been held back, restricted or stifled? Maybe you had a strict upbringing or were told to be a certain way all your life, so you stuffed down a part of yourself that is only being expressed now through your self-sabotaging actions.

How do you stop self-sabatoge?

One of the ways we stop self-sabotage is to figure out where we don’t feel free and begin taking actions that do make us feel free.  

• Is there a dream that you’ve always want that you won’t let yourself have?
• Have you gone after what you wanted?
• Have you taken risks towards something you desire in your life?
• What dreams did you once have that you didn’t allow yourself to chase? Or were told you couldn’t have?

Give yourself total permission to go after what you want. The actual getting probably isn’t as important as your belief that you deserve to try to go for it. Allow yourself to feel free to choose in your life. When it comes to taking action towards this thing that you want, start small if you have to. The most important thing it to give yourself permission to have it and to believe it. Believe that you have the ability, right and can access whatever it is that you want.

You can do anything. You can be anything. You can have anything. This is all true.

If you’re like most women, you want to feel good in your body more than anything else.

In fact, your desire to feel comfortable in your skin is so strong that you have spent hours upon hours (in all honesty, years!) trying to get your body to cooperate. Countless hours at the gym, endless meal planning, and too many grumbles of hunger in your belly to count. The amount of effort you’ve put in to get your dream body should have been enough to get you what you wanted, but it’s not.

Even if you’ve met and hit your body goals, you still seem to find it all too easy to find something else that is wrong with your body. Nothing is good enough. You are not alone in this.

Ultimately, we all want body acceptance. We want to wake up in the morning and not have a total meltdown over what we see in the mirror. We don’t want one decadent meal to turn into a shame spiral where we overeat and beat ourselves up over it for weeks at a time. But that’s what happens when we spend hours working towards a goal and still not loving what we see in the mirror.

We feel deprived, exhausted, and defeated. And then the cycle starts again.

The only way to get out of this crap is to stop working towards an impossible to reach body state. The way to body acceptance (and self acceptance) isn’t through manipulating your body to impossible standards. Body acceptance comes through working on your thoughts and feelings about your body.

There are few things you have to stop doing if you want to have a chance at getting there, and as long as we go about our day doing these things, we are actively increasing the dissatisfaction we feel about our bodies.

If You Really Do Want Body Acceptance STOP Doing These 3 Things:

Comparing Yourself to Other People

Every body is different. We have different genes, body compositions, health conditions, hormone levels, and personal history that contribute to what our body looks like. Even something like the position and length of our bones contributes to our bodies’ visual features (hence why it’s impossible for many people to ever achieve a thigh gap) or have long legs.

Spending even a minute of your day comparing how your body measures up to the bodies of other women will not help you either a) get closer to looking like them or b) make you feel like your body is worthy.

If you want to accept your body, you can’t compare it to anything other than where it is today.

Checking Out How You Look in Mirrors and Windows at Every Chance You Get.

If you’re looking at yourself in mirrors, windows, and other reflections only to see what’s wrong, stop doing it. You will always see something you don’t like if you are looking for it. If you look in the mirror and like what you see, by all means, keep at it (I’m no stranger to the mirror myself!) – but if it’s making you feel bad . . .then stop doing it. It’s certainly not going to ever help you like what you see. If you have to, cover the mirrors in your house for a period of time.

No amount of shaming or telling yourself something is ugly or needs to be fixed is going to bring you to happiness and acceptance.

If you can’t resist look in the mirror or window, challenge yourself to find something you like or love instead of doing the same old tear down. This is hard at first, but will get easier with practice (just like anything else).

Following People on Social Media Who Want to Sell You a “Better” Body.

If you follow people on social media who are selling weight-loss teas, waist trainers, plastic wrap you slap on your abdomen or vitamin patches to make you thin... unfollow, unlike, click them goodbye as fast as you can. Gross. None of it works and these people know that but they’re making money off of it. They’re getting paid to promote this junk.

Don’t be fooled by the way they look. It’s not the product they’re selling that got them that body. They look the way they do due to genetics, intense exercise, plastic surgery, implants, fillers, and by taking dozens of photos while contouring their body into strange angles. Oh, and let’s not forget the use of PHOTOSHOP and FILTERS. It’s not real life.

And even they don’t actually look the way they do in those photos in person. By following people like this you’re just going to have feelings of not being enough, not looking good enough, and wanting what they have (instead of appreciating and accepting what you’ve already got!). For your sanity and happiness, stop following these folks and add people instead who don’t make you feel like something is wrong with you.

There is a huge world of great people out there who are sharing cool things, beautiful words, and images of variable bodies, diverse ages, backgrounds, ethnicities, etc. When you SEE more images of people who don’t fit in to the cultural standards of beauty, a really neat thing happens where you not only start to see beauty in places you hadn’t noticed it before (You had the power all along, Dorothy!), but you also start to feel more comfortable and appreciative in your own skin.  And when that happens, lady – you will be unstoppable!

One great way to find people to follow is to find one body-positive person on social media whom you respect and like (someone who shares images and articles that make you feel good!) and then check out who they follow. You’ll be bound to find some gems in there!

I personally like folks like Jessamyn Stanley, Christy Harrison, Kelsey Miller, Alysse Dalessandro, Melissa Toler, and Summer Innanen for starters. Fill your feeds with good quality folks and watch how you feel changes!

You've Got This!

Even if accepting your body seems totally impossible right now, please know that you can get there! I know body acceptance is possible because it’s something you were born with. We are all born accepting our bodies the way they are. We don’t question if we measure up – we don’t have any concept of not feeling enough. That junk is taught to us.

Just like you can relearn how to eat according to your hunger and fullness signals, you can also relearn how to accept your incredible body. To make that possible, you’re going to have to take an active role in changing how you decide to interact with the world and with yourself.

When you’re ready to start working on this stuff in more depth, let’s talk. I’d love to be of support to you as you move away from diets and shame and instead towards listening to your true hungers and desires

I want to ask you to question the validity of the stories and myths you tell yourself about your past.

When we’re going through a tough time, we have a tendency to look at our past and see just the pretty parts. We also tend to alter or mythicize the truth in order to make sense of where we are now.

It’s a common theme in our lives.

This happens when we are in a job that isn’t a good fit for us. A previous job that was stressful and draining and all consuming starts to be remembered in a much fonder way.

We’ll find ourselves doing this when we’re single and missing some of the benefits that come with a romantic relationship. We suddenly remember an old boyfriend as being more handsome, more interesting and kind than he was in reality. (He was a dirtbag and you still don’t need him, I promise.)

It’s not hard to find more examples of this in every area of our life. When we’re bored or stressed about the responsibilities of raising families, keeping a home and paying ever mounting bills, we think about how carefree we were in our early 20s. We conveniently forget that we didn’t have health insurance, our car starting was a daily gamble, and our diet consisted of ramen noodles and frozen burritos (that might be a year old) because we often didn’t have any money for food after paying our bills. It was stressful and awful in a different way but we forget that.

We remember eating better (we ate terribly). We slept better (we hardly slept). We had more energy (we napped all the time). We were more fun (we were just as anxious as we are now). We were more outgoing (no, there were just more opportunities to socialize). More interesting (we just liked to hear ourselves talk about everything we were learning).

The list goes on and on.

The way we remember things and the way we view ourselves isn’t always accurate. We glamorize and mythicize to suit a “need.” The thought is that if we can make ourselves feel that the past was better, maybe we’ll be motivated to make changes or take action to change now.

The most common example I see is in glorifying the myth of the girl in the body from our past. Most commonly the smaller body from our past.

You may believe this myth yourself when thinking of your younger days. Or you may have even seen it shared publicly from someone else, as we tend to do things since the advent of social media! Usually it comes in a “I miss this girl” kind of post on social media. Sometimes it comes in the form of a before / current photo and talk of starting their journey back to their pre-x, y or z weight. (complete with a photo of them drinking an expensive powdered shake in a plastic container).

You know exactly what I’m talking about.

Someone posts a photo of themselves in their younger thinner years, usually in a bikini, short shorts, or other various states of light clothing wearing.

It’s always the same.

They’re young. They’re pretty. And they are in a smaller, seemingly imperfection-free body.

They express a desire to get back “there”. (We do this in our heads too – social media isn’t necessary for this kind of myth perpetuation.)

The woman they are today (and that most of us are today) has probably been through a lot and on the way, her body has changed. She’s gained some weight, maybe she has stretch marks and cellulite. Maybe she has wrinkles or gray hairs. She may have dealt with some health issues. Her physical body is overflowing with the marks of time and life.

When I see these photos like this or hear statements of “I miss this girl” and “I was so much better then” it makes me so very sad.

First, because in hindsight, we see the younger, thinner version of ourselves as being free from worry, free from problems, and having the body that we would desire to have now. It must have been so fun to have that body then, right? We must have appreciated it and loved it and treated it with respect and great care.

HAHA!

The sad thing is that we didn’t appreciate it. We didn’t love it. We didn’t respect it.

Those of us who are reeling from our current bodies are partly in the place we are in because we treated our younger bodies abysmally.

Raise your hand if you started dieting as a pre-teen and your entire teenage years were consumed with thoughts of needing to stay small or lose a few pounds so you’d be as small or smaller than your friends.

Raise your hand if your norm in those smaller bodied days was to go as many hours as you could between meals and to eat as little as possible at each meal, filling up on rice cakes, fat-free cottage cheese and cucumber slices or anything else that your teen magazines told you were low-cal.

Raise your hand if you remember the hours you spent in tears because the boy you liked didn’t like you back and you attributed it to your thighs (and how large you thought they were).

Raise your hand if you started smoking to reduce your appetite, started drinking coffee to lose weight (you didn’t need to lose in the first place) and bought jeans a size smaller than you wear so that you would be too uncomfortable to eat.

Raise your hand if most of your actual memories of those years are not of all the fun ways you lived in and enjoyed your body but instead are flashes and pieces of hunger, thoughts about food or feeling badly about your body for various reasons.

We don’t usually land in our today bodies accidentally.

When we spend time fantasizing about the girl in the body from our past, we are indulging in a myth. When we say “I miss that girl” in our thinner and younger photos, what we are really saying is:

• I miss feeling in control of my life and my body.
• I feel invisible and too visible at the same time.
• I want to feel beautiful, powerful, and carefree.
• I want to feel confident and happy.

That girl you were wasn’t necessarily any of those things just because the you of today thinks her old body was better. If we’re unhappy now, we tend to look at our past selves with rose-colored lenses.

Please, don’t make the mistake of glamorizing the past in favor of crapping on your now.

The body you had when you were 16 or 20 was probably treated often with the same disgust and disdain that at times, you have treated your body of today with. That body didn’t bring you joy and you didn’t feel half as confident as the you of today thinks you were.

The problems you see with your body today were likely the same things that bothered you then (even if there is or isn’t a discernible size difference between the two). And these things will always be a problem as long as you believe they are a problem, no matter what diet or workout routine you take on.

The best thing you can do for the you of yesterday and the you of today is to not wish to be someone from another place in time. Instead start practicing love, respect and appreciation (or at least just acceptance) of the body you have right now.

Don’t sugar coat or gloss over your past. Don’t pretend things were perfect. All that does is set you up for failure. If things weren’t perfect then and you weren’t happy and confident then (before bills, before kids, before work, before LIFE), then how in the world do you have a chance of achieving happiness, confidence and perfection now??? The answer is you don’t. So don’t hold yourself to an impossible and imaginary standard.

If you want to radiate the confidence and beauty you think your younger self is the epitome of in old photos, you don’t get there by making yourself feel bad for where you are today.

You get there by practicing kindness to yourself, always, by caring for your body physically in ways that make you feel good (move your body joyfully, feed both its needs and wants) and by removing the pressure on yourself to look a specific way.

You live your life in the present moment.

If the girl you were in your high school days could speak to you today, do you know what she would say?

She’d tell you that she’s always loved you, she just didn’t know how to show you that. She wishes she had spent less time focused on staying thin and being pretty and more time enjoying the freedom those younger years usually bring.

She wishes she had eaten to fullness, laughed with her friends, gone out for ice cream regularly and never started to smoke in the first place.

She wishes that you appreciated all that your body still has to offer you now, exactly as it is and before it’s too late.

She hopes you will stop wishing and missing the girl you were and start paying attention to the woman you are and can still be.

She hopes you raise your own daughters to love, respect, appreciate, and accept their bodies for enabling them to breathe, love, create, dance, run, climb, laugh, and live. She doesn’t want you to miss the girl right in front of you, right now.

Go out and love and appreciate her.

When nothing is off limits to your diet anymore, sometimes you don’t have a clue what you want to eat anymore! You might wonder what to expect when you stop dieting once and for all and how life will be different.

Humans love to collect evidence and data to help influence their decisions, it helps us to feel confident we’re making the right decision. We read reviews before making a big purchase, we research a company before accepting a new job, we ask friends for recommendations when planning a vacation. Sure, some of us like to jump off willy nilly and be spontaneous when trying new things, but more of us like to have as much info a possible! So, for you, my friend, who is currently googling how to stop dieting or what to expect when you go off a diet, this post is for you.

What Happens When You Stop Dieting

Expect people to ask you questions about what you are eating or not eating. When you’ve been dieting for years or eating a certain “way” (i.e. dairy free, vegan, paleo, “clean,” etc.) people come to expect certain behaviors of you. Especially if you were someone who was very vocal about what you were or weren’t eating. Even if you weren’t vocal, if you were someone who ate very differently from everyone around you, people noticed.

People are going to notice changes from what you do normally, even if you don’t want them to. A lot of folks think when they make an eating change it’s something that they will do forever and is permanent, but people change their minds and what foods work best for our bodies change over time too. It’s okay to do things differently.

Be prepared for lots of questions and decide ahead of time if you are interested in sharing about your journey.  If you aren’t comfortable discussing the reasons you are eating the way you are (there are many reasons people don’t want to discuss their eating habits), all you have to do is say “I don’t feel like discussing my eating choices. Thanks for respecting that” or something like it!  You are not obligated to talk about this stuff to anyone you don’t want to, but just know that if you were chatty about it before, people may not “get” that it’s not something you want to discuss now and you may have to repeat yourself a couple of times before people “hear” you.

Know that these questions aren’t usually a judgment about you or your choices, people are just very curious about how others eat. They’re often looking to understand the reasons behind a change. Frequently we think other people must have more information or knowledge about something than we do, especially in this day and age of health information overload so to see someone who others assume is very knowledgeable about food and health eat foods that may have been off limits for years is a big surprise and they’re just trying to make sense of it.

You Might Gain Weight

Know that you might gain weight. Or you might lose weight. Or your weight may stay the same. I think this is the thing that freaks people out the most when they stop counting calories or start eating foods that they haven’t allowed themselves to have for a decade. If they had to do x, y and z to maintain or lose weight before, won’t not doing those things automatically lead to weight gain? That’s not something anyone can have the answer for ahead of time. Everyone is different.

Most often I see people gain weight initially as they start allowing themselves to explore foods they haven’t had in years and as they try to understand their own hunger and fullness signals. Some of those folks do lose that weight naturally over time, but there is no guarantee and it’s not helpful for us to hold onto that goal as we try to get back to eating the way our bodies would prefer us to eat.

The best thing you can do when you decide to stop dieting is to allow your body to do what it needs to do as you start to experience food in a more intuitive way (letting go of the desire to lose weight or control your weight is too big a topic for me to cover in this post). Listen to your body and see what you can learn from it (and try not to judge the changes that may happen during this time period).

You may realize you don’t like some of the foods you thought you liked. How many of us convince ourselves that we like rice cakes instead of bread or crackers? How many of us still buy rice cakes after we stop dieting? A lot! Rice cakes are such a common “diet” food that entire generations of women buy them even when they’re not dieting just because we’re so used to that kind of food.

But when no food is off limits and there aren’t strict rules to follow around food, you start to notice some of the weird diet habits you have and will have to decide if that’s something you want to keep. Rice cakes are just one example but there are tons of other foods that we start eating because of a belief that they are “healthier” or because they are low calorie, but when it comes down to it, we don’t enjoy eating them and they’re not adding anything nutritionally to our diet.

On the other end of the spectrum, last weekend, I ordered a jelly donut for the first time in years while grabbing a coffee at a drive thru. I was really excited to eat that donut as I thought about what it was going to taste like. But in reality, the texture was denser than I was expecting and the filling and dough itself tasted almost salty to me. It was not good and I didn’t finish it. I make a lot of food from scratch and have for many years (including my desserts) so when I eat something heavily and cheaply processed (like from a donut chain) my taste buds say “NO WAY.” Not dieting means every food will feel and taste differently than you remember it!

Your Social Media Strategy

You’re going to unfollow and unfriend lots of people on social media. The “hide” button on Facebook has become my favorite thing these days. The amount of people trying to sell weight loss as the cure for all your problems seems enormous when you stop dieting. And suddenly your whole social media newsfeed is full of smoothie bowls, juice cleanses, and powdered shake before-and-after photos.

You start to notice how often people say terrible things about their bodies (I’ve been no stranger to this myself – always working on it), how often they say terrible things about other people’s bodies and how much energy, effort, and money goes into attempting to achieve a particular body type. It’s all you can see sometimes. Use that unfollow or hide button and start clicking away more on the profiles and people who post the things that matter to you more. Cultivate a social media feed that is more of what you want to see.

You may feel like you have a never-ending hunger and want to eat all the things. Relax! This usually goes away as your brain starts to get the message that there isn’t a famine going on anymore. Allow yourself to eat as much as you need and want. I know that feels terrifying after coming off of a diet but it’s also what your body has been programmed to do. It wants to make sure you get what you need so it will increase the hormone ghrelin so that you feel hungry. Eat. Let your body know that you will satisfy your hunger. Don’t restrict. Don’t try to go hungry (you’ll just keep your body in a bit of panic about getting enough food). Trust your body, fuel it, feed it and listen to what it tells you.

You may experience some digestive discomfort (like bloating and gas) as you introduce foods you haven’t had in years or eat a larger quantity than you are used to. Drink extra water, make sure you get some physical activity (walking is great for digestion), and chew well. Some of this is just your body trying to break down different or a higher quantity of food which can be a little taxing on your system (taking a digestive enzyme at mealtimes can help temporarily). It’s no big deal.

If it keeps up over time, pay it a little more attention. Is it a particular food or food group that is causing you trouble? Is it when you eat it a certain way (for example, raw vs cooked vegetables or fried vs. baked chicken)? Note what might be causing it and decide if the discomfort you feel is worth the enjoyment and experience of eating the food.

For some of us, if we feel terrible after eating something it’s enough to say, ugh, I don’t want that anymore. For others it’s not enough, and it’s up to you to decide what you are willing to deal with. Here’s an example from my own life:  Eating dairy daily triggers my asthma really badly. I no longer eat it daily . . .but eating ice cream once in awhile is totally ok. I have weighed the repercussions of eating it and I’m willing to live with the discomfort that comes with occasional enjoyment because butter crunch and black raspberry are worth it.

You’ll start to feel like you don’t know what you want to eat. Previously, in a lifetime of dieting, there were always foods that you wished you could have or were waiting for a “cheat meal” to enjoy your favorite foods. But now that you will allow yourself whatever you truly want, when you want, after you’ve satisfied that for a while, you’ll find that meal time comes and you often have no clue what you feel like eating. Haha! Nothing will really appeal and ordering off a menu or making a meal plan for home will feel extra arduous. Just go with it, it will pass, like everything else!

You may feel a little bit alone. When you aren’t dieting, you start to notice that every woman around you at any given time is doing at least one of the following:  A) Dieting, B) Doing a LIfestyle Change (like Whole30), C) On a Cleanse/Detox, D) is eating “Clean” or E) Doing some sort of 30-day fitness challenge.

No judgements from me on what other people decide to do (I’ve been everywhere in my eating journey over the years), but when you’ve decide to try to find freedom with food and for you that means no more diets or rules, then all of a sudden having lunch with your coworkers who want to spend the whole time discussing what they AREN’T eating anymore can feel a bit distressing. When you get together with your girlfriends, it can feel like they’re bonding over something they all have in common while you sit there in silence, no longer willing to participate in that kind of conversation. It’s challenging. You’ll feel like you’re sticking out like a sore thumb, because everyone else is doing it but you. But that’s ok!

Find a way to change the conversation to something more helpful, interesting, and positive if you can. Ask people about their families, about the music they like to listen to, if they’ve got any fun upcoming travel plans, or if they believe in past lives. Ask questions that have nothing to do with health, food, or fitness (even though we all currently LOVE to talk about that stuff). A year from now no one will remember what diet details someone shared at lunch but they will remember the engaging and interesting person who asked them lots of questions about their life. You’ll make new relationships and find people who also are on the same path with you this way.

Okay, there are certainly way more things that will happen when you stop dieting than just these but for the sake of brevity I’m going to stop it there! Some of these things may sound like negatives at first, but I think if you stay firm in your desire not to diet anymore and tune in to trusting yourself and your body to lead you, you will find that it’s actually a much better place to be. You’ll start to see that not focusing on how food affects your weight so much actually allows you to experience and enjoy life more fully, and isn’t that what it’s really about anyhow? I think so!

If you go to the market and have these thoughts: “Oh, those tomatoes look so good. Thank goodness, they’re organic! Oh, wait, tomatoes are nightshades. I probably shouldn’t eat them. Oh, and they’re so acidic, should I be eating more alkaline foods? And I better not eat them raw, aren’t tomatoes better for you when you eat them cooked? But cooking destroys so many nutrients, I should probably invest in a dehydrator. Screw it, I’ll just not get them…” then diet culture and the coaches you follow may be failing you.

Two weeks ago I talked about how dieting shouldn’t be our normal state and some of the normalized things that go on in our culture that contribute to entire generations of women being obsessed with getting and staying “small.” This is a huge subject and one that I’ve only scratched the surface of. In this post, I want to talk about another aspect of it and something that may seem a little strange considering my job title.

I think some health coaches are unintentionally contributing to diet culture and might be doing more harm than good.

Before I get stoned by my peers, I want to say that not all coaches are doing this and of those who are doing it, I know it’s mostly with good intentions and in all honesty, I fell into this category when I first started out too.

A little bit of backstory.

Several years ago, I gave up traditional dieting in favor of a healthy “lifestyle” because after a decade plus of dieting I just couldn’t do it anymore. Dieting had turned me into someone who had frequent binges and a lot of shame around my body and food. Embracing a whole foods healthy lifestyle meant I lost weight and had an easier time keeping it off without feeling crazy or deprived. I felt much better eating “cleanly” and I really came to believe that a whole-foods based diet and eating as little processed food as possible was the way to health. My health coaching practice and social media reflected this. I still eat this way for the most part but I have become much more flexible as to what I view as “healthy” and it has more to do with where my head is at than what specifics I’m eating.

If you’ve been following me from the start of my coaching career, you may have noticed I’ve posted very little about actual food specifics the last few years. Gone are the whole food based detox programs, I rarely post photos of food I eat and it’s only on the odd occasion that I share a recipe, whole foods or otherwise. I don’t share much information about pesticides in our foods, how to sprout your own lentils and which health conditions need to avoid cruciferous vegetables. I now push intuition, body and self-trust / knowledge, joyful movement, and other things that sound really wishy-washy but really matter to someone who wants more peace with food.

Hypocrite or Evolving?

As my own relationship with food has evolved over time, I realized that some of what I was teaching and recommending in my early days of coaching conflicted with where I really want to take people – and where I wanted to be myself.

I want and I want others to feel confident in themselves as their only guide to making food choices. I want people to feel less fearful about food and more relaxed around it (and just so you know this does not necessarily mean disregarding nutrition or health). I feel a little hypocritical when I look back at some of my early work but Marie Forleo says that if you don’t look back at your early work and cringe a little, it means you’re not growing (so at least I’m growing)! Growth is good.

Diet culture wants you to feel scared and confused so you keep buying.

One of the things diet culture thrives upon is keeping people confused, keeping them scared of making choices, and teaching us that we can’t trust our bodies. If we’re scared and confused, fearful about our health and our bodies, we will run out to buy whatever it is they’re selling – shakes, exercise programs, food plans, supplements, etc. If we’re not scared and confused, if we trust ourselves as smart creatures who have always known how to feed themselves, there won’t be much we have to buy.

A lot of well-meaning coaches are constantly sharing information that the general public may not be aware of that the coach believes we need to know in order to feel motivated to make better decisions about health (how bad sugar is for us, how glyphosate increases gut permeability, how animal products cause cancer, how our phones are causing brain tumors and increasing ADD etc). The problem is that when we share so much of this kind of scary health information we are making people afraid of food and adding to the confusion that is already out there. After a while, this kind of information sharing creates a feeling that we can’t trust anything and we end up in a food choice paralysis.

More confusion and fear around food is not helping people make better choices.

Feeling afraid of food helps you develop eating disorders (fyi – aiming to eat perfectly clean and healthy all of the time and feeling ashamed and stressed when you can’t or don’t is called “orthorexia“).

Feeling confused around food makes us dependent on diets and diet gurus to tell us what to eat when really we should be dialing down into listening to our bodies’ hunger and satiety signals, paying attention to the way individual foods make us feel, learning about what foods our ancestors ate (it’s in our DNA) and being flexible to change.

In the world of emotional eaters and chronic dieters (where my viewpoint is), fear and confusion is the last thing health coaches should promote. Two of the main lessons we learned in coaching school was that the client has their own answers inside of them and that we have to respect something called “bioindividuality” – the idea that people know what’s best for their bodies and the way of eating that works for one person may not be right for another. 

I see a ton of coaches instilling fear in people because they believe one specific way of eating is correct. I know it has to be hard to coach people towards their own needs when you are a die-hard vegan or strict paleo, but being that rigid about what people should be eating is moving away from coaching territory and into something different (and depending on your state you may need additional certifications to do that). It’s really not our jobs to tell people what to eat in such strict terms.

I’m not knocking all coaches – I’m still a health coach and I have a lot of health coach friends who I respect and I know they are sincerely doing work that is going to change the world. 

Health coaching has been incredibly helpful for tackling my eating struggles, and I have a lot of tools that have helped me make peace with food (and helped me teach my clients the same). 

As a whole I believe the profession’s goals are to help people live healthier so that they can do more amazing things in their lives. This is a good thing but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some big problems! The intent in the health coaching community is good but sometimes the way we go about encouraging change is diametrically opposed to actually being healthy.

Health Coaches with Strict and Extreme Views

There is a faction of coaches who practice extreme vigilance about food and the ideas some of these folks teach contribute to deeper entrenchment into diet culture.

In addition to sharing lots of scary and over complicated info, they promote products and programs that perpetuate us not trusting our bodies to tell us what to eat (powdered shakes, special containers, and super specific and rigid meal plans, etc.) and others that have such high and restrictive standards of what constitutes healthy eating / healthy lifestyle (for example, raw food only, vegan only, paleo only, organic, local, non-irradiated, soaked and sprouted, etc) that by the pure challenges of following everything they recommend, we are set up to fail and become more confused and scared of food.

Let me illustrate how insanely difficult and impossible the way we seem to expect people to eat is (according to the things coaches share on social media). I personally have every opportunity to make this unrealistic healthy food movement come to life in my American home.

I have the knowledge to prepare food the “healthiest” way possible. I have the time and ability. I work from home, love to cook, and I’m a good cook.

I also have the financial means to buy organic, free range, local, grass-fed etc. foods. We prioritize food in my house over many other things.

And I don’t have children who pull at my pant legs and beg to have heavily processed chicken nuggets and hot dogs for dinner (just a cat who is a finicky eater).

This is not a brag, this is to show you how my life and I am well-suited to make this inaccessible and perfect food stuff work. I legit have all the means necessary to make foods the way people are preaching we need to if we want to be healthy and yet even I find I get tired of it, overwhelmed, apathetic, and annoyed and sometimes I wish there were take-out places nearby.

I’ve sometimes thrown all my food edicts out the window and eaten a frozen pizza (yes, even dairy and full of gluten and processed) because I can’t deal with checking all the damn boxes for another day and I want it easy. This is coming from someone who dearly loves food and nutrition.

If I can’t do “it” every day of my life and I’m the perfect candidate, then how can we expect people in other more complicated situations to get in line?

This is not really working guys!

Having a zillion rules about food, how it’s sourced, how to prep it properly and more, causes stress, panic and eating disorders. It does not actually make someone healthy. 

How can you not fall into some type of eating disorder when you no longer know what is SAFE to eat? And if we have to depend on another person more educated than us on food to give us guidelines (that change constantly), then we will never be free and never be healthy.

An overly puritanical “healthy lifestyle” can lead you down an unhealthy path of being overly restrictive with food just as much as the average diet can and all in the name of health, energy and clear skin.

If you’ve had any food struggles in your life, learning to trust yourself and re-engage with the wisdom and intuition we had as babies and toddlers is a better path to health.

Worrying about food all the time is not healthy. Worrying if you’re making the right choices is not healthy. Still feeling like crap even when you’re doing all the “right” things is not the picture of health.

It is much better to trust your body, feel safe with your own knowledge, and listen to your body to tell you what it needs. This leads to better mental health – and when we’re well on an emotional and mental level, we make physical choices we can feel good about too.

I’m not saying that health coaches need to throw out everything they’ve learned about nutrition, health, and how food is produced in this country, but we really need to start asking ourselves if what we’re sharing and recommending is helping people to feel empowered? Is it helping them to feel secure, relaxed and confident? Is it truly making people feel well on an emotional level?

Let’s ease up and help people get back in touch with those answers we know they have inside of themselves.

Today I’m going to share six things I do that have given me more power over my anxiety (and I’ll share some of my struggle too). I hope some of these help you!

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the US, affecting about 18 percent of the adult population. And that’s only those who have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and not including those under 18. 

I’ve had anxiety for years, and while I’m managing it well now, there have been times when it’s been a major issue. Long-term anxiety and stress can lead to health problems, so it’s important to find ways to manage it.

My Anxiety Story

To give you a little background about my anxiety . . . I have a type of medical anxiety that is called “health worries.”  It started shortly after my Mom died in 2001 (though if I’m honest, I’ve always been squeamish about medical stuff, it just snowballed after 2001).  

I remember lying in bed feeling like my heart was going to jump out of my chest. At the time, I was living pretty hard (lots of partying, bad food, crazy hours), and I remember constantly thinking I was having a heart attack or that something else was seriously wrong with my body.

As the years went on, my health anxiety worsened. I was diagnosed with high blood pressure in my early 20s and had to go undergo tests for several months because my doctor was worried my kidneys and heart were damaged. Having to have all those tests when I was already scared about my health put my anxiety in overdrive (thankfully those tests showed everything was OK), and there have been times when I became paralyzed by anxiety.

Every doctor appointment, test, or even a random pain or sensation in my body that was abnormal for me could send me into a multiple-day panic attack. I have had difficulty discerning when a pain or a feeling I have in my body is something that needs immediate attention or is nothing to worry about. And of course, with my anxiety, I’m terrified of going to the doctors (what if they find something terminal?) and also of what happens if I don’t go (what if it is something terrible and I’m ignoring it?). You can see how that loop can be hard to get out of during an episode.

Anxiety as a Quality of Life Issue

A doctor once said to me that people only get help when their quality of life is compromised to the point where they feel it is no longer acceptable. I didn’t understand what she meant at the time, but several years ago I reached a point where I understood.

The amount of mental and emotional energy I was using just to get by was exhausting. I went to therapy, and have also done a ton of work on my own since then. I still have occasional anxious days but nothing that would stop me in my tracks for days like before.

The tools I will be sharing today helped me learn how to halt the progression of my anxiety. I learned how to keep perspective and stay calm and grounded. I would never want to go back to feeling the way I used to (out of control, shaky, and smothered all at the same time).

While my health anxiety manifests differently than other generalized anxiety disorders, the techniques I use to manage it are similar to those used with generalized anxiety—and can be very effective!  Try some of these and let me know if they help.

6 Things You Can Do to Have More Power Over Anxiety

1. Exercise to fight anxiety.


   The first thing to go for me when I’m in the midst of anxiety is my exercise schedule. But exercise is the best way to release stress and get feel-good endorphins going again. It helps take your mind off your worries and gives you something to focus on other than anxiety.

   When my anxiety creeps in, I make sure to stick to my regular exercise schedule. Doing that usually shortens the duration of my anxiety. Even going for a short walk or a 15-minute yoga session at home can enough.  Getting in touch with your body and out of your mind can be immensely helpful.

2. Tell someone about your anxiety.

   This is something I didn’t see the value in until I was in therapy. I used to keep all my worries and fears inside. Part of me felt like my fears would get worse or be realized if I shared them with anyone.  

   When I did finally share with my husband or a friend that something was on my mind, not only did I feel a huge sense of relief, but it also allayed the extra anxiety that comes from thinking you are acting like a weirdo during an attack (since they now knew the reason I was acting like a weirdo).

   Sharing your worries, fears, and anxieties with someone you trust can help put things in perspective. I’m much more likely to think rationally after talking with another person. Hearing their thoughts helps because they can be more objective. Hearing from someone who cares about you that the situation you are having anxiety about isn’t likely to happen can make you feel worlds better. And if the situation is something that may likely happen, those who care about you can also be the ones who support you and help you get through it. Totally helpful either way!

3. Write.

   Journal! Get it all out—say as much as you need to. I recommend pen and paper over typing/computer. When I’m dealing with my medical anxiety, I find writing a journal entry helpful.

   For me, it goes something like this:  What am I feeling? I write down what I’m feeling at that exact moment (for me it’s usually a pain or sensation somewhere in my body).  What do I think it is? I write about what I’m worried it could be. Next I ask myself to get into my rational brain for a minute with: What it is more likely to be? Odds are it’s just constipation or my body being run down, etc. Then I come up with a rational action plan. What and when will I do about it? For me, it might be something like, “If this pain gets worse or lasts longer than three days, I’ll go to the doctor.”

   Once I put it on paper, I feel relief. Having an action plan helps me relax. Sometimes my anxiety brain can’t understand when something is worth investigating and when it’s best to wait; writing helps me make sense of it all. It’s like I get stuck in a loop but writing halts that loop from continuing.

   For general panic/anxiety, your questions and answers might look different—maybe something more like this (but please customize to what makes sense for your type of worries):

   1. What am I feeling? (physical sensations, thoughts, feelings)
   2. What am I having anxiety about, or what do I think I might be anxious about?
   3. Do I have any real evidence that this is likely to be/ happen? If so, what?
   4. What can I do to feel more in control in this situation? And when will I take those actions?

   ---

   Writing in a question/answer format might not feel right for your particular type of anxiety. For some folks, anxiety is a vague feeling of fear or worry (or just something not being right), so writing about specific worries and action plans may not be possible. I still encourage you to write in a freeform style to get all your thoughts and sensations on paper. Take some deep breaths and read it over when you are done. For many people just putting down thoughts can be enough to take us down a notch!

   Doing this will be hard at first—you may not remember to even do it. But if you keep it in the back of your mind as a tool to try the next time you are freaking out, you may be surprised by how helpful it is. I find this one to be cumulative; the more I’ve resorted to it, the faster it resets me to normal.

4. Become aware of your thoughts and make the decision to change them.

   OK, this one deserves its own blog post because it takes a lot of practice, but to be as brief as possible, know this: Ultimately, we’re in control of our thoughts. I know it may not seem like it, but we are the ones coming up with thoughts (good or bad) and those thoughts make us feel a certain way (anxious, happy, jealous, etc). The problem is, most of the time we’re not aware how ingrained our thoughts are. They’re so ingrained that it becomes an automatic response to a situation. This makes it difficult to change it (unless you are willing to notice and call yourself out on it, repeatedly).

   To become more aware of your thoughts, next time you feel anxious, try to recall (write it down) what thoughts made you feel that way. You may not be aware of the conscious thought at first, but it will become more apparent the more you give your brain this task to do. If you don’t want to wait until you’re anxious to do this type of thought work, try it the next time you find yourself feeling down or irritated. Work backward from that feeling and try to find the originating thought that made you feel that way. This kind of work helps us become more aware, which is the starter step for changing your response.

   The good news is once you’re aware you’re the one in control of your thoughts, that you’re the voice inside you that is thinking those things, you can work at managing and changing those thoughts.  

   For me, in the past this meant when an anxious feeling or thought came up that normally would send me into a tailspin, my old way of thinking was to go along with the thought (because our brains like to do what’s easy—and that’s easy) and build on it by looking for evidence of it being true, which would rapidly increase stressful, anxious feelings.

   My current response when an anxious feeling or thought comes up is to notice it, pause, say to myself, “I’m not going to give that thought any power over me right now.”  A statement like that is powerful because it interrupts the natural evidence-building process that goes with anxious thoughts. Now when I feel anxious, and I halt thoughts in this way, I feel almost instant relief. It feels incredible to have some control over your brain.

   It probably won’t work the first time you try this technique. The first few times you try to reroute your brain, you might find that it halts the thought temporarily but then it comes back. Try a powerful statement again (even if you have to go at it a different way), and again, and eventually you’ll find it will have more staying power.

   You are literally retraining your brain how to think in these situations. It may help to practice changing your thoughts in less volatile situations at first. Instead of trying it for the first time during an anxiety attack, try it when you have self-doubt about a situation at work or self-judgement about your body.

   Becoming skilled at managing your thoughts can be helpful in many areas of our lives!

5. Watch what you put (or don’t put) into your body.

   If you’re a naturally anxious person, it’s important to pay attention to how different foods, drinks, and other substances affect you. Sugar (including carbohydrates from refined grain products), alcohol, and caffeine can increase feelings of anxiety, especially in high quantities or in those who are very sensitive.

   Anxiety can also be a symptom of a food sensitivity or intolerance (and one way to determine that is through an elimination diet). Low blood sugar can set off anxiety (if this sounds like you, you may want to keep balanced snacks of protein, fat, and fiber on hand).  I know I’m far more anxious if I’ve drank more alcohol than I should (especially the day after) or if I reach for a third of coffee. Know yourself and what you can tolerate.

   Many supplements are touted to be beneficial for anxiety sufferers, including magnesium, valerian root, kava, chamomile, fish oil, and several of the B vitamins. If you have any medical conditions or are on any medications, check with your doctor or pharmacist before taking supplements (especially if you’re thinking about taking more than one).  

   And lastly, a whole-foods diet rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants and light on heavily processed foods can support your body from your toes, all the way to your head. Is a whole-foods diet going to cure your anxiety? No, I’m not saying that, but if you give your body great nutrition, it’s better equipped to support you in every way, including mental health.

6. Breathwork for anxiety.

   Quiet time with deep and slow controlled breathing is one of the best things you can do during a panic attack or during less acute anxiety. A few minutes of slow diaphragmatic breaths will slow down your heartbeat, reduce your blood pressure, and relax muscles. The intake of fresh oxygen will stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, which will help you feel calmer.

   Unfortunately, breathing is one of the hardest things to do when we’re freaking out, isn’t it? We take shallow breaths, which makes us feel like we can’t get enough air in, we’re breathing too fast, or we have difficulty exhaling fully, all of which increases feelings of panic. If you feel like you’re not getting enough oxygen, it’s hard to think rationally or about anything else so in order to slow the anxiety down, first you have to slow your breathing down.

   To slow yourself down, try this breathing exercise:  Sit in a quiet place and breathe in fully and slowly for a count of four seconds, hold the breath for four seconds (if this is prudent for your body, it may not be if you have heart or respiratory conditions), and then exhale for four seconds. To make sure you are breathing from your diaphragm, put one hand on your belly when you inhale. Your belly should expand on the inhale and retract on the exhale. If you are breathing from your chest alone (too shallow), your belly won’t rise. Try to breathe deeper into your body and try again. Do anywhere from 4 to 10 of these slow breaths and go back to your normal breath if you find you start to get dizzy. Don’t be surprised if you feel sleepy and relaxed after!

Final Note on Anxiety

If you have been suffering from anxiety and aren’t having any luck reducing it on your own, consider speaking with your doctor or a mental health professional. You don’t have to go through it alone, and there are many resources available to improve the quality of your life.