Y’all know I love good food. Real food. As much as I can get it & work it into my meals.
And, I love teaching people how to live a healthier life— but here’s the key: it has to be without the all-or-nothing mentality.
And by “healthier”, just to be clear: I mean healthy physically (in your body), but also healthy mentally (in your thoughts) and health emotionally too (in your beliefs, processing your daily feelings, the stories that you tell yourself, etc).
It’s something we’re never really taught– especially as women– how to do in our culture: how to put all these pieces together. And that they actually can’t exist in silos and compartments.
At least if you want your health and your life to feel more effortless, free and enjoyable throughout your daily life. Which IMHO, is the whole point– to feel better in your daily life. To operate at a higher level. To be the best version of yourself.
In all my years of mentoring and coaching women to experience true joy and freedom with their food and bodies and health, one of the biggest mistakes I see so many women make is that, exactly:
That in trying to get and be healthier, they only focus on the physical stuff: their FOOD and/or their WORKOUTS.
And trying to make just those things as “perfect” as possible (read: they sign up for trendy classes or start another crash diet, even though it ends up being unsustainable). The fads, trends, programs or plans that are built on the all-or-nothing mentality say that you have to do it perfectly for it to work or give you results.
… without ever going deeper.
Or looking at the other two GIANT but often unspoken components to creating a healthy life that lasts: the mental and emotional parts of us.
The inner work.
But without the inner work– going deeper to understanding your internal thoughts, feelings, emotions, how your brain is wired, your limiting beliefs– nothing you do on the outside will stick.
Because it’s our deeper, inner wiring that’s creating the results we’re getting in our lives, not the external stuff.
But so many of us women (myself included for decades of my life) have culturally been taught or programmed (through diets, marketing, family, friends, celebrities, the media) to believe that picking something extreme and one-size-fits-all is the only way they’ll actually see a change in their appearance, weight, confidence and how they feel. So that’s all they do.
Over and over again, each time getting more frustrated, down on themselves, discouraged and exhausted.
We have to take a step back here and look at what’s really going on. The bigger picture. The old way of being “healthy” is depleting us, and taking so much mental energy and time away from our lives.
What I believe is this: to experience full health, you have to look at your thoughts, how well you can feel and process your emotions, how you handle stress, your mentality, limiting beliefs, secret fears.
Without addressing these things, any changes you make to your food will never last. These are the actual pillars that matter to making any shift in your life. It has to start with your MIND & EMOTIONAL state first, and getting your mentality clear of all the old programming, beliefs and stuck emotions first.
Then you’ll have the mental capacity and knowledge more deeply of yourself– who you are, what you thrive with, what you love, what you need, what is helpful for you– which will then help you finally get clear on smaller things, like your food and how to eat best for YOU, and what workouts work best for YOU … but in a long-term way that can last and create a beautiful and sustainable and joyful relationship to it. Not a quick fix or fad diet kind of way.
It’s about making changes in your daily life that reflect both of those things— your mind, your heart, and then your body.
If not done in that order (tackling the mental & emotional, before the physical), all that effort is often wasted.
And it’s exactly what creates cycles of “being bad” and “being really good” with food. Cycles that end in more guilt and disappointment each time, leaving women thinking that the only thing that can help cure them is something else that’s extreme or a quick fix. But the cycle continues deeper and harder with each failed diet or “bad food day.”
It can make us feel like failures.
And it keeps us stuck in the same pattern, not letting us go deeper to discover what’s really at the core that needs our attention.
It’s perpetuated by every marketing campaign, diet campaign and trend. That the only way out— to calm and peace and joy with your body— is through punishment. Which is just SO backwards.
And in fact, all that does is cover up and further distract the real problem, which is what’s going on inside that head and heart of yours. Those are the things that keep us stuck.
Fix that first, and everything else gets so much easier and effortless, and yup— even fun.
Bottom line: there is no one-size-fits-all way to eat.
But there is one way to get to the actual core issue here— and it’s learning how to tune in to your own mind AND body.
To stop paying attention to what everyone is doing or saying and use all that energy to actually focus in on the root core of things that make a true change to your brain: your own thoughts, emotions, habits, limiting beliefs and fears. And clearing out anything old that’s keeping you stuck in the same cycles.
And then, learning the foods your body loves and does best with. And the daily cadence of life that it thrives with.
This is the stuff we’re never taught as women. But in learning it, it can change you into a powerhouse in your own life. It’s a very different kind of work— from the inside out, but so much more fruitful than the up and down of crash diets and exercise as punishment.
It’s leaving the all-or-nothing extremes, and instead finding a place of better alignment for yourself with more grace and balance.
It’s my favorite thing in the world, and the thing that’s changed my own life, my relationship to food, and my health the most.
It’s why I spend most of the year teaching and coaching women through Simply Real Life: The Method (that is about to open soon again): because it’s the step-by-step process to help walk women through this process of re-wiring their brain, bodies and life to better and more lasting JOYFUL health, from the inside out. About learning how to tune in to their own bodies: including their own thoughts, emotions, food, etc to lead more intentional and aligned lives. Join the waitlist here if you want to know more.
photo by Carina Skrobecki