I’ve found myself in a sometime-tricky position as a guide facilitating change in this area of food and body-image. I find that ANY type of suggestion to create change around food and eating feels unwelcome… even threatening… to parts of some of the women I work with. I can totally identify with this from when I was mentored through my own early days of finding food freedom.
For some of us, since childhood, food has felt like one of the only things we were able to control in a world where adults did what they did and where life changes, including unwanted ones, happened unbidden. No matter what happened, we discovered, chocolate would always taste like chocolate, and would always have a similar sweet effect.
So when I talk to people about a life of freedom beyond chocolate, parts of them feel like the rug is being pulled out that’s been comfortingly in place since childhood.
I believe the most important ingredient for creating lasting positive change in our food and eating lives is that of NON-JUDGMENTAL AWARENESS, no matter what the response to any suggestion made.
One of the tools I work with is something I call a “Food Feedback Loop”, and the trick is to use it to harvest valuable information for creating positive changes over time, rather than as a stick to beat ourselves up with.
Oftentimes, using this tool starts with an exploration into a woman’s attitude about the concept of reviewing her daily eating, and the parts of her with strong opinions, reactions, and preconceptions about the process. All this information is golden in our paths of freedom around food.
As always, whatever responses and reactions do arise for a woman, I encourage the same thing: to create a consistent daily practice of making a little time and space to get curious, notice, ‘sit with’, journal…. This IS the process of the improving one’s relationship with food … it all starts with getting to one’s own unique relationship – both to food, to change, and to herself – in a kind and relaxed way.
