There was a time in my life that I was gripped so tightly by fear around weight gain.
Because I cycled through periods of binge eating and eating very clean, I felt I had evidence that I simply could not trust myself.
So in an effort to manage my out-of-control cycles of eating, I did what almost every western woman has been taught: control, mange, use willpower, count, and track.
I got caught in small questions that didn’t get me very far.
Questions like:
How many calories can I eat today? (I’d track them in a notebook)
Did I get my workout in? (Anything less than 30 minutes of vigorous exercise didn’t count in my opinion)
Did I burn more than I ate today? (Enter basic math)
How do my “skinny pants” fit? (I was so anxious to get rid of these pants because I felt I would just ‘let myself go’ without a goal)
What’s the best way to eat? (I’d research and get all the fancy new books to help me on my way)
I still have those old notebooks.
Instead of being filled with my innermost longings, feelings, and desires, they were filled with rough estimates on calorie amounts and food plans for the coming days.
Those questions of mine weren’t helping me in the slightest.
They kept me wading on the surface of things.
What about your own questions?
Do you tend to cycle through the same ones again and again?
Many women are trying new dietary theories, going to different exercise classes, but the underlying questions are the same as they’ve ever been.
And (like I experienced personally,) asking the same old questions usually results in the same old strategies with the same old results.
It’s time to ask different sorts of questions.
Questions like:
How does this body weight make perfect sense given my current life situation?
What am I willing and unwilling to do in my journey with food?
What is most important to me in all this?
If I want to lose weight, what feeling do I imagine I will finally attain once I get there?
What beliefs about health and weight are actually sabotaging my best efforts?
Does any part of me feel nervous, afraid, or anxious about living in a different body?
What’s my actual job in all this?
Do I have a certain body weight number in mind? How did it get there?
If I stopped over-efforting and instead moved towards what is natural what would reveal itself?
What might my health/weight/eating concerns really pointing to?
How is this challenge calling me into evolution?
I find slowing down and holding space for these sorts of questions with my clients gets to the heart of things in a way that coming up with a new list of desirable and non-desirable foods to eat never could.
The questions make all the difference.
This is the work!
I hope this inspires you to expand your inquiry.
Big love, Laura
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