It’s time to stop blaming yourself and understand what’s really happening
Your fridge is filled with healthy foods, yet you snack on salty treats from the pantry. You have all the fixings for a salad, yet you order take-out. You’ve been trying hard to avoid certain foods. Yet, after a few weeks, days, or hours, you decide that one handful won’t hurt. Then one turns into too many.
According to popular diet advice, you’re doing all the right things. You’re meal planning and removing the “bad” foods from your kitchen. Yet, something seems to stop you.
It’s frustrating when you work so hard toward something and you don’t get the results you’re looking for.
Especially when diet culture tells us that diets will work when we work hard enough. Diet companies show us before and after weight loss pictures. We read testimonials from folks that have finally lost weight because they stuck to the plan. They were driven and focused.
If they can do it, why can’t I?
When you feel derailed, again and again, it’s not surprising for you to conclude that you must be missing something. You take your diet failures personally. After all, if Mary Jo from Arkansas can drop 40 pounds, why can’t you? You conclude that you must be lacking willpower.
Weight loss companies play the blame game
If your car doesn’t drive, it’s not because you’re a bad driver. Your car needs repair.
If your doctor prescribed a medication that was supposed to improve your health and it didn’t, you wouldn’t blame yourself. It’s the wrong medication for you.
Yet, when folks regain weight after being on a diet, they don’t blame the diet. They blame themselves.
Weight loss companies profit when dieters continue to try their programs again and again. They purposefully design their marketing material to make you believe their product works by giving you proof.
What they don’t tell us is that their program is only designed for short-term (one year or less) success. They don’t ever tell you that the research is clear. Dieting leads to long-term weight gain.
Consider the study done on participants of the Season 8 Biggest Loser reality TV show. Thirteen of the fourteen contestants regained weight after 6 years. Four of the contestants regained all of their weight loss and now weigh more than they did at the start of the competition.
The blame is subtle because the promises of weight loss are loud and the truth is hidden in the fine print.
Let’s consider the truth
I’m willing to bet you have plenty of willpower. Most of my clients are driven, motivated women that know how to get shit done. They often say to me, “why can’t I just figure this ONE thing out?” They are juggling work, family and personal time. They’re at the top of their class and continue to climb their professional ladder.
When it comes to dieting and weight loss, the adage “the harder you work the luckier you get” does not apply.
You’re not sabotaging or lacking anything. There is something else happening inside of you.
When you are tempted to eat forbidden foods, do you notice a voice that says:
“Come on. You deserve to eat that.”
“Oh no! Don’t eat that. You know you can’t control yourself around that food.”
“You want that, go ahead and eat it.”
Those might sound like unmotivated words. This voice taunts you and coaxes you to eat the foods you’re trying to avoid and to keep eating when there is a part of you that wants to stop.
This voice is your inner food rebel
It ignites a battle within yourself. You may naturally want to argue with this voice or silence it. After all, on the surface, it’s this voice that leads you down an undesirable path. But it’s important to understand where the inner food rebel comes from.
Humans want to make their own choices and decisions. One of the most basic needs humans have is autonomy. We want to have a say in what happens to us and not be controlled or told what to do.
Growing up, I recall saying to myself “You can’t be the boss of me.” I’d literally and figuratively stomp my foot and plant my hands firmly on my hips when anyone or anything tried to tell me what to do or what I couldn’t do. I was hell-bent on not being pushed around.
Where the inner food rebel was created
Yet, that’s exactly what a diet does.
Dieting takes away our autonomy and our own choices around what to eat and when to eat it.
Yes, I know. We are generally the ones that put ourselves on a diet. No one is making us count calories or eliminate sugar.
In many ways, our dieting and weight loss efforts did feel mandatory. We’ve been told our body needs to be slimmer to be more attractive. We see our slimmer friends and want to fit in. In our society, dieting has been considered a worthy sacrifice.
Yet, what’s really happening is we’re sacrificing our free will. Humans are designed to be free, and freedom can’t be sacrificed. This is why your inner food rebel was created.
Inner food rebel reframed
Many of my clients describe the age and tone of their inner food rebel as a young version of themselves. Often because the voice was created during a time when their choices were taken away, as early as 8 or 9 years old.
During this time in our life, we experienced inner conflict. A part of us was so eager to fit in and follow the rules. Another part wanted complete autonomy over what she eats and when she eats it.
The inner food rebel was created to protect your independence and free will. It’s there to assert yourself when it wasn’t safe to do so. The inner food rebel isn’t your enemy. It’s your protector and the part of you that wants to be expressed. It wanted to protect you from losing yourself, from not having a say, and from being trapped into doing what you didn’t want to do.
It’s understandable to confuse your inner food rebel as a lack of willpower.
Get to know your inner food rebel
Your inner food rebel doesn’t need to be silenced for you to make choices that serve you best. That’s the good news. You can work with your inner food rebel to move forward to changing your relationship with food.
Start to tune into this voice. Listen for it with curiosity. There may be an opportunity here to heal some of your past hurts in your relationship with food and your body.
You can co-exist with this voice without making it your enemy or see it as a character defect. Allow your inner food rebel to have her space on the stage and you can still make a different choice around what, when and how much you eat.
It’s not your fault that you’ve been blaming yourself for having a lack of willpower. Your inner food rebel is a complicated mechanism. On one hand, she doesn’t appear to have your best interests in mind. But really, when you understand her better, she’s been advocating for your needs from the very beginning.