In this article, I share the experience of a client that went through my One-to-One Coaching program.
I’m sharing what her relationship with food was like before we started working together, some of the key components of my coaching that worked for her, and what her experience with food and her body is like now as a way for you to understand what’s possible on the other sides of your struggles with food and your body.
Please know that practicing Intuitive Eating and changing our relationship with our body, while we‘re embedded in cultural messages that tell us our bodies need to be different, is a constant and ever-changing process.
We are never quite finished. There isn’t a finish line to reach. Some healing, like for my client here, dramatically changed the quality of her life.
Know that the process itself is the gift that keeps giving. Healing and insight around food and our bodies trickle through all areas of our life, like our relationship and career.
When I reconnected with Sara (not her real name), she shared with me her very complicated history with food, which included weekly binge eating.
Bright, driven, and insightful, Sara came to me because she wanted to feel peaceful around food.
Before We Started Working Together
Sara thought she was doing the right thing when she ignored her body’s cues around hunger and fullness. She was doing her best to eat the correct way, yet she was bingeing and overeating multiple times a week. Food was always on Sara’s mind.
It Started with Education
Sharing the role that diet culture and the “thin body ideal” had on Sara was critical. She started to see diet culture everywhere and noticed how crappy these messages made her feel.
Sara and I also explored what emotional eating is. She found that she was often eating emotionally to avoid feeling, not because she was feeling. This was huge for her! She thought she was eating emotionally because she was feeling too much.
When she understood this, she practiced sitting with feelings instead of reacting to them.
An Inside Job
Sara questioned why she wanted to lose weight. She started to see that she was believing she NEEDED to be thin to be loved and accepted because of the messages she received from diet culture.
Her work with her body image continues, but now Sara knows how triggered she was when she believed she needed to lose weight. It would set off a chain reaction of wanting to weigh herself, restrict what she was eating, and trying to reduce the size of her body.
She knows how damaging this is. Now, she insulates herself from these messages so she doesn’t need to react to them.
Intuitive Eating
I shared with Sara the principles of Intuitive Eating. One of the most helpful was Principle #3: Making Peace with Food. Sara started allowing herself access to certain foods without guilt or shame. These foods would have triggered her to overeat in the past.
By allowing herself these foods freely, she learned to listen to physical cues and trust her body.
She started with cheese and nut butters. Now, she keeps cheese sticks in her desk drawer to snack on when she’s hungry. In the past, this would not have been possible.
Favorite Tools
The energy sessions (including tapping, Emotion Code, and Reiki) “felt like magic” to Sara and she was often comforted by feeling lighter and clearer afterward.
Sara’s favorite tool was “the pause”. Listen to my podcast episode here. Read my article on The Pause here. This helped her to slow down and recognize she had other ways to comfort herself other than food.
My Unique Approach
Sara shared with me that “If the goal is peace (around food and your body), you fit the bill.”
I supported Sara in other areas of our life, like work, relationships, and other aspects of her health and well-being. I know that how we do one thing is how we do all things.
By supporting Sara with other challenges, and then showing her how they’re impacting her relationship with food, she was able to appreciate the big picture and her practices and mindset shifts were more meaningful.
Guiding Sara to understand her “lie” (which is a belief system she’s been carrying around for most of her life and often evokes her worst fear). We all have a “lie” and often work tirelessly to protect ourselves from that “lie” becoming true.
When Sara understood what her lie was, she gained fresh insight into her most painful patterns and reactions. She felt relieved! This clarity made her feel more empowered to not be ruled by a belief system that was keeping her stuck.
Listening to her Body
Now, most of the time, Sara just thinks about food when she’s hungry. Food is on her mind when it matters. She now has the energy to focus on more meaningful things in her life, like friendships and her career.
Because Sara knows how to listen to her physical hunger and fullness, she immediately can recognize when a part of her wants to soothe with food because of emotional reasons. When this happens, she takes this opportunity to check in to see what her body needs.
A few weeks ago, Sara went out with her friends for margaritas. They shared chips and guac. She was able to relax and enjoy herself, with no guilt.
One of the best outcomes of our work together is the result of Sara’s internal voice. She cares less about the “stupid shit” and focuses on what matters because she’s finally peaceful around food.
If you’d like to explore my One-to-One Coaching program, I invite you to schedule a Clarity Call with me. During these 30 minutes, you can share with me your challenges and goals around food and your body and we will explore if this program is right for you.