Whenever I coach someone about weight loss or about emotional eating, one of the first things we do is take a look at the big picture. I ask my clients to take a step back and use some targeted exercises to look at their life balance and their life satisfaction. Even when a client comes to me with the specific goal of losing weight, we often don’t start out with an immediate focus on calories and fat grams. I’m a huge believer in the importance of understanding what we use food for.
If you are someone who is overweight or struggling to maintain weight loss because you are overusing food to fill in gaps or to make up for deficiencies in other areas of your life, weight lost on any diet is likely to come back–unless those other life areas are addressed.
I ask my coaching clients to begin by examining whether or not they are well fed in the various dimensions of their lives and questioning whether there are places where they might be feeling deprived. One of the first things we do is begin to take a look at how to feed those needs–instead of trying to compensate or avoid thinking about them with a big bowl of ice cream.
One of the topics that has come up recently on my forum has been around getting clear on what members want and don’t want as a part of their holiday celebrations. What will feed them this season (besides the cookies and the turkey and stuffing)? An amazing thing is happening. As people are defining what they want and sharing that with family members–asking for it–they are reporting astounding results.
Mary just reported that she told her family this year she just doesn’t want to spend Thanksgiving day cooking a big meal that she doesn’t even want to eat. She wants to spend the time in a beautiful area outdoors enjoying the company of those she loves. Boy was she thrilled when her family rejected her plan to have the meal catered and declared that this year the men will do the cooking! She’s looking forward to a lovely hike with the females in her family and an incredible meal prepared (and cleaned up!) with love. All she did was ask for what she wanted.
It sounds so simple–and it is so simple that often we overlook it. Sometimes getting out of a stuck spot or making the change we need to make or putting an end to something we really don’t like is as simple as saying it out loud.
What do you want today, this week, this season that you haven’t asked for yet?
