What to do when the food, supplement, or super-herb doesn’t work

Laura Burkett
May 15, 2016
3 min read

In your effort to lose weight, stop binge eating, start eating more whole foods, or get your eating habits in order, have you found yourself….

Steeped in internet research for an answer late into the evening?

Intently talking to the guy working at the health food store about the new supplement you read about on your Facebook feed?

Picking up the latest book on nutrition and diet with a strong sense of determination?

Paying extra close attention to the women in your world who seem to have it all together nutritionally?

You feel a linear energy course through your body and you’re ready.

You’re ready to get to the bottom of this.

Like a good and responsible student, you’ve done all your research.

You learn that your adrenals may be exhausted. You learn that grains may be causing your fatigue or your cravings. You hear that probiotics will heal your gut. Or that omega fatty acids can balance your nervous system. Or that cutting out dairy will help you lose weight.

So you try something.

You try lots of things.

(And hey, maybe you DO eat more essential fatty acids and your nervous system relaxes. Woohoo!)

But then there’s that one eating challenge that seems to linger. And, at best, you make a tiny dent of improvement on it through your diligence…

What gives?!

If you’ve been working on this challenge for months or years, I want to offer you another perspective (that may feel like it’s from outta left field…) But hear me out!

When a new dietary strategy, supplement, amino acid, or super-herb does not work to heal your eating challenge…

Consider that…

This unwanted eating habit is not physical in origin.

It may be RELATIONAL in origin, meaning something about it is influenced by a kink in the relationship chain and it just so happens to be expressing itself through your eating.

Your job is to witness where these kinks might be.

First, just think about how much you learned through relationship:

How “you” you feel you can be around others
Your ability to say the truth
What an acceptable appearance is
How much time and money is worth investing into food
How eating was modeled to you as a child
Your ability to meet yourself in your own pain or joy (depth of feeling)
How attuned to or trusting of your own body you are
Your basic sense of value and self-worth
The value of self-care
The abundance or scarcity of resources

…all things that can impact your eating.

On some level we understand this relational thing.

Just notice how common it is to say, “I want to heal my relationship with food.”

But when we try and work in the food/nutritional domain alone with little success…

It’s often really about relationship.

More specifically, it’s about getting into “right relationship.”

With who? With what?

I cannot be certain what it is for you, but you may have a sense of it.

Could your eating challenges be inviting you to getting into right relationship with:

Your partner? A parent? Your body? Mother Earth? Your family? Your divinity? Your humanity? Our culture? Your own soul? Your sexuality? Your purpose? Your power? Your vulnerability? Change itself? etc…

When we get in right relationship with whatever or whoever it is that is vying for attention, those pesky painful habits may very well soften in intensity.

In fact, the habits can be markers or sign posts letting you know how close or far off you are from your Real Work.

So yes, leave room for good. practical nutritional work. If you’ve worked with me or have followed my work long enough, you know I work directly with nutritional strategies.

But know I am listening deeply, and holding space for so much more.

I offer this to say, please don’t get too down on yourself if you’re having a hard time sorting through this eating stuff. There can be so much more around it than eating whole foods.

Are you up for this worthwhile inquiry??