We need to have a conversation about self-love and self-acceptance and how we treat ourselves. Diet mentality often includes a belief that you aren’t deserving of certain things (confidence, self-care, even acceptance) UNTIL you reach your goal (whatever that is).
Too many women have put self-acceptance and self-love on hold because they don’t believe they “deserve it” yet. And this sets them up for problems, vicious cycles, and even overeating and emotional eating.
Let’s discuss.
In this episode:
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Full episode transcript:
You all, I have sat down to attempt to record this episode so many times so many times, I can't even tell you. Well, actually I haven't even gotten to the sitting down to record it part. Because, I would sit down to make some notes about this topic and every single time I would overwhelm myself. Because this topic is so important and it goes so deep and there's so many pieces to it that I would start to put down some notes about what it was I wanted to cover, and I would think I cannot possibly do an adequate job of this. I cannot possibly talk about this in its entirety. And if I don't do that, I won't be doing a good job.
Then I realized, well, it wasn't this instantaneously, but the other day I realized that I'm doing exactly the thing that I'm coaching people on all the time, which is letting perfectionism get in the way of me moving forward. And of me making progress towards the thing I want to do. And so, consider this a first pass on this topic. Because the other thing is that this topic is not a one and done kind of topic. This isn't a topic that where you get the information and you're like, "oh okay, now I see." And you are forever changed.
We will be talking about this more. Absolutely. And the other thing I realized is that I can't start talking about this until I start talking about it. So today we are beginning an important conversation. But first I want to back up a little bit.
Recently I was on a flight, an airline flight, and there was a baby on the plane right in front of me. And I ended up on the plane. You ever do that thing where you're playing peek-a-boo with the baby, where the baby is like hanging onto that seat in front of you and they come up and they look at you and they're so excited to see you. And then they go back down and, and I had a mask on, so he couldn't see my face, but it was all this eye contact. And you know, that moment where the baby realizes that they've got you and they've made contact and their whole face lights up and then your face lights up. And we were having this back and forth with peek ABO and this baby was just adorable. So lovable, not the entire flight. I mean, there was some of course human baby fussiness that happened and I'm sure the parents were exhausted when the flight was over, but this baby was just, just lovable.
And this baby is still just a baby. This baby is incomplete in all the things that this baby is going to go on and do. And probably since the time I've taken that flight, that baby, well, for sure this baby is doing new things that it couldn't do when he was on the plane with me. But can you imagine if somebody had the attitude toward this baby that well, I'll love you after you learn to walk.
Or I'll love you after you've started eating solid foods or I'll love you after we know what your favorite color is. Can you imagine? Now this is not a perfect comparison. That baby, any baby doesn't earn its lovableness. A baby doesn't earn its lovableness. A baby doesn't earn its worthiness. A baby doesn't earn its enoughness. We love them because they are. And guess what. You were born a baby, too. But do you know, you probably do how many women put conditions on their enoughness on their worthiness? Do you know how many times I have heard women say that I'll like myself so much more after I lose the weight?
I can't date right now. I can't date until after I lose the 10 pounds or the 50 pounds or the 75 pounds. I just, I just don't feel sexy right now. I can't be open to a partner. Nobody would love me this way. Or I'm so mad at myself. I just need to prove to myself that I can do this. And I'm going to love myself so much more. I will be so much more confident after I have lost the weight.
The way that so many women have been conditioned have been taught to think about themselves. And these are just thoughts. This is really important. These are just thoughts. These are not facts. But so many women have thoughts. Like I am not enough. I don't deserve any kindness. I don't deserve my kindness. I don't deserve my respect. I don't deserve my own love and my adoration until. Until I change my eating. Until I lose the weight. Until I figure this thing out. I don't get the nice things. I don't get the nice thoughts. I don't get that stuff until after I do this thing.
And then when I do this thing, I will be deserving. I will be worthy. I will be lovable and I will love myself and feel confident. And then I will feel unstoppable. Do you know what this is? This is putting yourself on hold. This is keeping yourself in limbo in self-love purgatory. Living until. I can't do, until. I can't be, until. Because I am not enough. I am not deserving, until. Again, these are thoughts and beliefs. These are not facts.
When we walk around telling ourselves and believing all day or most of the day that we are insufficient, that we're wrong. That we're not enough, or we're not acceptable or we're not deserving of our own love or our, our own self care or our own positive energy or our own time.
Just picture how this feels. I want you to, even if you are, if you are saying, well, I know how it feels. I'm living with this. If you're living with a constant stream of thoughts and feelings and beliefs like this, I want you to take a moment to see it from outside yourself. Try to step outside and look at it. Get the big picture view of what this is like. And also get a big picture of you, of the trap that it creates for. Because these thoughts and these beliefs, they not only create a lot of misery, these thoughts and beliefs, they keep you trapped. They keep you trapped in a false belief generated cycle of self blame. And that cycle tells you that the only way out is to work harder and harder while at the same time, not giving yourself the care and the compassion, the things that you really need, because you're a human being. In this cycle where you've decided that you're not enough yet, then you don't get the things that you need yet. Because you don't deserve them yet.
That is the cycle of the belief of insufficiency, of not being enough of not being lovable and acceptable yet. In this whole faulty belief cycle, you don't deserve the love and the compassion and the nurturing until after you get to your destination. But can you see it? The things that these self-hating and self denying beliefs deny you are exactly the things that you need to nurture the changes you want to create.
We eat for a reason, we overeat for a reason. We emotionally eat for reasons. And often these reasons involve not getting or not giving ourselves the other things that we need. Love or a break, reassurance, compassion, stress relief, kindness, support. And on top of this, living in this dead end place of self blame and guilt and feeling like you don't deserve to be kind and giving to yourself yet. Or in some cases, living with the belief that you won't even like yourself until after you lose weight or change your eating. This often creates the exact situation that leads to feeling and then eating exactly the way and exactly the things that you don't want to. Guilt eating, night binges, eating to numb, or to comfort or to stuff down your feelings, eating because in the moment it all just feels impossible. It all just feels unsolvable because within these thoughts and beliefs, you are not entitled to give yourself the kindness and the compassion and to respond to yourself in the ways that you really need.
Here's the thing freedom from overeating does not happen by hating on yourself. Over and over again, I see this false belief that you can hate on yourself and then push yourself really hard to follow this deprivation based plan that requires tons of discipline and willpower. And then after weeks and months of gritting your teeth and gutting it out, then finally you are in this place of being really hungry. You're looking down at the scale and you see this magic number. And when that happens, you'll look up and music will play and you're going to feel this pure bliss and freedom. And you're going to feel peaceful with food for the rest of your life. I mean, it sounds kind of ridiculous, but a lot of people walk around with this fantasy and that's not how it works. Peace with food and freedom. That feeling of freedom from overeating that happens when you learn how to be the woman, when you learn to be the woman you want to be. And treat her the way you want to be treated.
When you learn to be the woman you desire to be. When you are that woman with food and with life. No deprivation path, no self denying, no self-loathing or self-hating path sets you up for that. That kind of treating yourself that way and denying yourself and telling yourself you're insufficient and being unkind to yourself and not loving yourself is not a setup for peace with food and freedom from overeating. These things just aren't compatible.
You become the woman that you want to be with food and with your hidden hungers. And that by, by extension is in, in terms of how you take care of yourself and how you live your life. You become the woman you want to be by being her now, not waiting until some arbitrary place. You love yourself first. You work at nurturing and connecting with your own vibrance. Now. You focus on giving yourself the things that light you up. Today. The things that really energize you, the things that really nourish you, you practice paying attention to your feelings and your needs. Now. Because they're important now. Because you're worth it now. You treat yourself as deserving. Now. Today, not tomorrow, not Monday when you get back on track. You treat yourself as the deserving human being that you already are. You taste and you savor the food that you eat because you give yourself permission to enjoy it. You give yourself permission to have hungers. You give yourself permission to have joy and to have pleasure.
You can't create peace with food and freedom from overeating in a vacuum. If you want this, then you make it a priority to practice or to learn how to like yourself and to love yourself. You do it now, this is the place to start. It's not an until or later or when I deserve it kind of thing.
When you put this off, you are moving in exactly the opposite direction from creating peace and freedom. Whether it's with food or weight or anything else in your life. Stop waiting until. Stop waiting until. Make it your plan to start living the life of the woman who's at her goal, today. Make it your practice to start being her and treating yourself as her.
Stop waiting until. Be her now. Give yourself the experiences and the kindness that you have been telling yourself that this future self of yours deserves. The things that that future self gets to have, give them to yourself. Now. Start appreciating yourself in that way every day. Ask yourself every single day, what is one small thing or one big thing that I can do or think, or practice believing just to be her. Because you know what? You already are. You were born a deserving lovable baby too. You were born entitled to having your needs responded to. You were born enough.
Remember this is not a one and done conversation. So if figuring this out, if figuring out how to do this feels completely baffling, do not abandon the mission. This is so important. Keep working on it. I'm going to keep coming back to that baby, because I just have that adorable face in my mind. Just keep working on it. Because just like that adorable little guy. You're enough. You don't have to earn it.
Getting back in touch with our power, getting back in touch with your belief in yourself and your ability to see your own enoughness is such a key piece of solving this puzzle. So don't give up your mission. It's so important and do not wait until, until, until, until
And if you want help and coaching and community, as you work and learn how to step into the reality of you actually getting what you need and not using food as a band aid or a substandard replacement, then come check out Your Missing Peace. I'll put the link in the show notes. Your Missing Peace is my coaching program, where we do this work together. There's an amazing group of women there who are learning how to embrace their power. Learning how to step into their unstoppable deservingness. And learning how to take back their relationship with food.
Okay. You are enough. You were born enough. Stop waiting until. And start giving yourself what you deserve. Now.
I'll talk to you soon.
Sign up to receive email updates
Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast.
You all, I have sat down to attempt to record this episode so many times so many times, I can't even tell you. Well, actually I haven't even gotten to the sitting down to record it part. Because, I would sit down to make some notes about this topic and every single time I would overwhelm myself. Because this topic is so important and it goes so deep and there's so many pieces to it that I would start to put down some notes about what it was I wanted to cover, and I would think I cannot possibly do an adequate job of this. I cannot possibly talk about this in its entirety. And if I don't do that, I won't be doing a good job.
Then I realized, well, it wasn't this instantaneously, but the other day I realized that I'm doing exactly the thing that I'm coaching people on all the time, which is letting perfectionism get in the way of me moving forward. And of me making progress towards the thing I want to do. And so, consider this a first pass on this topic. Because the other thing is that this topic is not a one and done kind of topic. This isn't a topic that where you get the information and you're like, "oh okay, now I see." And you are forever changed.
We will be talking about this more. Absolutely. And the other thing I realized is that I can't start talking about this until I start talking about it. So today we are beginning an important conversation. But first I want to back up a little bit.
Recently I was on a flight, an airline flight, and there was a baby on the plane right in front of me. And I ended up on the plane. You ever do that thing where you're playing peek-a-boo with the baby, where the baby is like hanging onto that seat in front of you and they come up and they look at you and they're so excited to see you. And then they go back down and, and I had a mask on, so he couldn't see my face, but it was all this eye contact. And you know, that moment where the baby realizes that they've got you and they've made contact and their whole face lights up and then your face lights up. And we were having this back and forth with peek ABO and this baby was just adorable. So lovable, not the entire flight. I mean, there was some of course human baby fussiness that happened and I'm sure the parents were exhausted when the flight was over, but this baby was just, just lovable.
And this baby is still just a baby. This baby is incomplete in all the things that this baby is going to go on and do. And probably since the time I've taken that flight, that baby, well, for sure this baby is doing new things that it couldn't do when he was on the plane with me. But can you imagine if somebody had the attitude toward this baby that well, I'll love you after you learn to walk.
Or I'll love you after you've started eating solid foods or I'll love you after we know what your favorite color is. Can you imagine? Now this is not a perfect comparison. That baby, any baby doesn't earn its lovableness. A baby doesn't earn its lovableness. A baby doesn't earn its worthiness. A baby doesn't earn its enoughness. We love them because they are. And guess what. You were born a baby, too. But do you know, you probably do how many women put conditions on their enoughness on their worthiness? Do you know how many times I have heard women say that I'll like myself so much more after I lose the weight?
I can't date right now. I can't date until after I lose the 10 pounds or the 50 pounds or the 75 pounds. I just, I just don't feel sexy right now. I can't be open to a partner. Nobody would love me this way. Or I'm so mad at myself. I just need to prove to myself that I can do this. And I'm going to love myself so much more. I will be so much more confident after I have lost the weight.
The way that so many women have been conditioned have been taught to think about themselves. And these are just thoughts. This is really important. These are just thoughts. These are not facts. But so many women have thoughts. Like I am not enough. I don't deserve any kindness. I don't deserve my kindness. I don't deserve my respect. I don't deserve my own love and my adoration until. Until I change my eating. Until I lose the weight. Until I figure this thing out. I don't get the nice things. I don't get the nice thoughts. I don't get that stuff until after I do this thing.
And then when I do this thing, I will be deserving. I will be worthy. I will be lovable and I will love myself and feel confident. And then I will feel unstoppable. Do you know what this is? This is putting yourself on hold. This is keeping yourself in limbo in self-love purgatory. Living until. I can't do, until. I can't be, until. Because I am not enough. I am not deserving, until. Again, these are thoughts and beliefs. These are not facts.
When we walk around telling ourselves and believing all day or most of the day that we are insufficient, that we're wrong. That we're not enough, or we're not acceptable or we're not deserving of our own love or our, our own self care or our own positive energy or our own time.
Just picture how this feels. I want you to, even if you are, if you are saying, well, I know how it feels. I'm living with this. If you're living with a constant stream of thoughts and feelings and beliefs like this, I want you to take a moment to see it from outside yourself. Try to step outside and look at it. Get the big picture view of what this is like. And also get a big picture of you, of the trap that it creates for. Because these thoughts and these beliefs, they not only create a lot of misery, these thoughts and beliefs, they keep you trapped. They keep you trapped in a false belief generated cycle of self blame. And that cycle tells you that the only way out is to work harder and harder while at the same time, not giving yourself the care and the compassion, the things that you really need, because you're a human being. In this cycle where you've decided that you're not enough yet, then you don't get the things that you need yet. Because you don't deserve them yet.
That is the cycle of the belief of insufficiency, of not being enough of not being lovable and acceptable yet. In this whole faulty belief cycle, you don't deserve the love and the compassion and the nurturing until after you get to your destination. But can you see it? The things that these self-hating and self denying beliefs deny you are exactly the things that you need to nurture the changes you want to create.
We eat for a reason, we overeat for a reason. We emotionally eat for reasons. And often these reasons involve not getting or not giving ourselves the other things that we need. Love or a break, reassurance, compassion, stress relief, kindness, support. And on top of this, living in this dead end place of self blame and guilt and feeling like you don't deserve to be kind and giving to yourself yet. Or in some cases, living with the belief that you won't even like yourself until after you lose weight or change your eating. This often creates the exact situation that leads to feeling and then eating exactly the way and exactly the things that you don't want to. Guilt eating, night binges, eating to numb, or to comfort or to stuff down your feelings, eating because in the moment it all just feels impossible. It all just feels unsolvable because within these thoughts and beliefs, you are not entitled to give yourself the kindness and the compassion and to respond to yourself in the ways that you really need.
Here's the thing freedom from overeating does not happen by hating on yourself. Over and over again, I see this false belief that you can hate on yourself and then push yourself really hard to follow this deprivation based plan that requires tons of discipline and willpower. And then after weeks and months of gritting your teeth and gutting it out, then finally you are in this place of being really hungry. You're looking down at the scale and you see this magic number. And when that happens, you'll look up and music will play and you're going to feel this pure bliss and freedom. And you're going to feel peaceful with food for the rest of your life. I mean, it sounds kind of ridiculous, but a lot of people walk around with this fantasy and that's not how it works. Peace with food and freedom. That feeling of freedom from overeating that happens when you learn how to be the woman, when you learn to be the woman you want to be. And treat her the way you want to be treated.
When you learn to be the woman you desire to be. When you are that woman with food and with life. No deprivation path, no self denying, no self-loathing or self-hating path sets you up for that. That kind of treating yourself that way and denying yourself and telling yourself you're insufficient and being unkind to yourself and not loving yourself is not a setup for peace with food and freedom from overeating. These things just aren't compatible.
You become the woman that you want to be with food and with your hidden hungers. And that by, by extension is in, in terms of how you take care of yourself and how you live your life. You become the woman you want to be by being her now, not waiting until some arbitrary place. You love yourself first. You work at nurturing and connecting with your own vibrance. Now. You focus on giving yourself the things that light you up. Today. The things that really energize you, the things that really nourish you, you practice paying attention to your feelings and your needs. Now. Because they're important now. Because you're worth it now. You treat yourself as deserving. Now. Today, not tomorrow, not Monday when you get back on track. You treat yourself as the deserving human being that you already are. You taste and you savor the food that you eat because you give yourself permission to enjoy it. You give yourself permission to have hungers. You give yourself permission to have joy and to have pleasure.
You can't create peace with food and freedom from overeating in a vacuum. If you want this, then you make it a priority to practice or to learn how to like yourself and to love yourself. You do it now, this is the place to start. It's not an until or later or when I deserve it kind of thing.
When you put this off, you are moving in exactly the opposite direction from creating peace and freedom. Whether it's with food or weight or anything else in your life. Stop waiting until. Stop waiting until. Make it your plan to start living the life of the woman who's at her goal, today. Make it your practice to start being her and treating yourself as her.
Stop waiting until. Be her now. Give yourself the experiences and the kindness that you have been telling yourself that this future self of yours deserves. The things that that future self gets to have, give them to yourself. Now. Start appreciating yourself in that way every day. Ask yourself every single day, what is one small thing or one big thing that I can do or think, or practice believing just to be her. Because you know what? You already are. You were born a deserving lovable baby too. You were born entitled to having your needs responded to. You were born enough.
Remember this is not a one and done conversation. So if figuring this out, if figuring out how to do this feels completely baffling, do not abandon the mission. This is so important. Keep working on it. I'm going to keep coming back to that baby, because I just have that adorable face in my mind. Just keep working on it. Because just like that adorable little guy. You're enough. You don't have to earn it.
Getting back in touch with our power, getting back in touch with your belief in yourself and your ability to see your own enoughness is such a key piece of solving this puzzle. So don't give up your mission. It's so important and do not wait until, until, until, until
And if you want help and coaching and community, as you work and learn how to step into the reality of you actually getting what you need and not using food as a band aid or a substandard replacement, then come check out Your Missing Peace. I'll put the link in the show notes. Your Missing Peace is my coaching program, where we do this work together. There's an amazing group of women there who are learning how to embrace their power. Learning how to step into their unstoppable deservingness. And learning how to take back their relationship with food.
Okay. You are enough. You were born enough. Stop waiting until. And start giving yourself what you deserve. Now.
I'll talk to you soon.
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Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast.
