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The Non-Diet Approach: What is it exactly?
But is the non-diet approach addressing the real root cause?
In the first three years of clinical practice, I thought I was addressing the root cause of my patient health concerns. I was asking a lot of questions and doing an in-depth assessment. My goal was uncovering the “real issue” that no other health professional had identified yet. This unidentified root cause was, as per my training in functional medicine, the reason why my clients were “still struggling”.
As I shared in Intuitive eating Mentorship – First do no harm although my patient had short term reliefs…. long term, their health wasn’t better. In fact, in many cases, it was worse.
So, was I really addressing the “real root cause”?
Why healing the root cause is so important
The Non-diet Approach Professional Training
If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 5
Links mentioned in the episode…
Non-Diet Coaching Certification Program
What’s the root cause?
In my training in holistic health & functional medicine, we are trained on addressing the underlying or root cause of chronic disease, taking into account the whole person including their environment, genetics, and lifestyle factors. Addressing the root cause is a fundamental philosophy, and honestly, the pride of alternative health approaches: resolving the root cause vs. just dealing with side effects.
Even beyond the health sector, the root cause is the cause of a problem. If adequately addressed, it will prevent a recurrence of that problem. By asking the question “why” a few times, the root cause of a problem is often identified as a procedural, or management, shortcoming.
For example, imagine you have a lot of weed growing in your lawn. If you remove the weed using a lawnmower, will that solve the problem? Temporarily, yes. Visually, your lawn looks good. However, you probably know that this is only at the surface level. After a short period of time, the weed will grow back. So, how do you fix this long term? If you replied “By removing the weed from the root,” then you are totally right!
As a nutritionist, people came to me to change their eating habits or to address health issues that they thought were caused by food. However, my training had taught me that the root cause was in the: what, when and how they ate.
What I couldn’t understand was why it wasn’t working? Why were my clients not able to adhere to the in-depth protocols? Why were they disappearing after a few sessions? And why, when I would see them a year or two down the road, they had reverted back to their old habits?
Why healing the root cause is so important
If I was healing the root cause, then this shouldn’t be happening. I knew this from my training. So, I started to research and quickly realize I wasn’t addressing the “real root cause” but still just the “ side effects”.
It’s understandable why we are inclined to deal with effects instead of the root cause. Effects are what’s most immediately observable, so it’s easy to act on them. Think here “size of body”. Upon doing so, you see an instantaneous change — an impression that you have progressed in your goals. When you go on a diet, you lose a small amount of weight immediately. That’s until the diet stopped working and you regain all the weight (most often more than the original amount of weight loss).
On the other hand, trying to uncover the root causes can be tedious, complicated, and at times, scary. Sometimes, to the extent where people run away when they realize the root cause problems that are underneath. Subsequently, addressing these root causes often requires a change of thinking and some pain and effort, but the results will be much permanent and higher-value than correcting side effects (symptoms as known in health).
As we touched in our S1 EP3 podcast episode Diet mindset professional training, we unpack how our certain traits of character are the results of dieting.
Here are just some of the real root causes:
- Perfectionism (Effect): Need to have “perfect” diet (Effect): Diet Cycle (Effect): Desire to lose weight (Effect): Body Dissatisfaction (Effect): beliefs about what body should look like (Cause): fatphobia/weight stigma (Cause)
- Low self-confidence (Effect): Need to lose weight (Effect): Perfectionist Body Fantasy(Effect): beliefs about what body should look like (Effect): fatphobia/weight stigma (Cause)
- Binge eating (Effect): food restriction (Effect): Dieting to lose weight (Effect) : fatphobia/weight stigma (Cause)
The root cause wasn’t in the what, when, and how they ate. It was in the why. In my first few years of practice, I stopped asking why too early in my investigation process. Even when I asked “Why do you eat like this?” “Why do you want to lose weight?”…I was blinded by my own fatphobia.
Fatphobia
Fatphobia is the fear and dislike of obese “fat” people and/or “obesity”. I was fatphobic and was profoundly afraid of gaining weight. In fact, I was professionally trained to believe that “fat” was the root cause of most chronic conditions. I was taught that everyone should be or want to be at a “normal BMI”.
Hence, I had to confront my own and discover the truth about body weight, BMI & health to be able to ask the right question with my patient and for my own recovery from diet culture.
Not only was my own fatphobia preventing from being the best health professional I knew I could be, but it also was keeping from accessing my best health. Fatphobia in research is also described as weight stigma. Research recognizes two forms of weight stigma:
Experienced weight stigma
This occurs when people observe or believe that others have made unfair negative assumptions about them or discriminate based on nothing more than their weight or body image.
Internalized weight stigma
This is the process by which people accept weight-based stereotypes and make them true about themselves. People who have internalized weight stigma are the harshest critic of themselves. They have come to believe that they are “less-than” because of their weight/ body image.
Research is pointing out that internalized weight stigma has the greatest impact on physical and mental health over experienced weight stigma.
“Some people fear that if people feel too good about their bodies and themselves, they will not be motivated to engage in healthful eating behaviors and physical activity. Studies show the exact opposite to be true: When people internalize weight stigma and feel bad about themselves because of their weight, they feel less confident in their ability to engage in healthful behaviors and are more prone to binge eating, avoiding physical activity, and other behaviors that contribute to weight gain.”
– Rebecca Pearl, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Weight stigma is the REAL root cause
Weight stigma is the negative attitudes and beliefs about people because of their weight. It leads to the labeling of people with stereotypes based on their weight. Unfortunately, it’s a common belief that weight stigma will motivate people who don’t meet body size ideals to change their behaviors, in order to avoid further stigma.
Weight stigma originated from the “old school” model of behavior changes through punishment or shaming. A great example of this today is the “before and after” picture we see so frequently on social media. They are unfortunately used by many health professionals.
Weight stigma is a centric element of diet culture. In fact, research has demonstrated that diet culture helps frame a larger body as a “health hazard”. I like to explain it to my students as the “goon” of diet culture. Without it, diet culture may stop existing.
Weight stigma has been researched extensively over the last 20 years. What research overwhelmingly shows is that weight stigma doesn’t encourage people to lose weight or improve their health. Instead, stigma leads to a greater risk of depression, poor body image, and self-esteem. It also leads to increased stress, disordered eating behaviors, and avoidance of physical activity.
Weight stigma has also been linked to many common health problems that were first associated with “obesity”. Is “obesity” or the stigma associated with “obesity” the true culprit? As you can imagine, experts and researchers are divided on this question. Since we acknowledge that weight stigma is causing the health issue, then diet culture will need to be condoned publicly… can you see the issue?
You can read more Cyclic Obesity Weight Based Stigma Model.
The Solution: Body Image healing
The only way to address the real root cause is to include body image healing in your practice/ program.
Making peace with my own body and healing my own body image was the path to releasing my own fatphobia. Doing so unlock my ability to end weight stigmatization in my own practice.
What most health professional doesn’t realize is that our individual body image is not only how we see ourselves when we look in the mirror. It’s also multidimensional. It encompasses:
- Perceptual body image: how you see your body
- Affective body image: how you feel about your body
- Cognitive body image: how you think about your body
- Behavioral body image: the way we behave as a result of our perceptual, affective, and cognitive body image.
Research is showing that a distorted body image leads to lower self-esteem, distorted relationship to food, depression, anxiety, hormonal disruption, and many other side effects. Many of our clients and patients come to see us for this in the first place.
Thomas F. Cash, PhD, is a true pioneer in the psychology of physical appearance research. He also developed today’s most effective treatment approach to body image issues, as well as many of the measures used in body-image research. Likewise, the body image healing cognitive-behavioral model is at the center of our proprietary non-diet approach, The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ .
Body Neutrality
In our non-diet clinical approach, we teach our clients the body neutrality framework and not body positivity. It includes body image professional training, the body neutrality framework.
Body Neutrality empowers women to embrace themselves as they are, including the parts they don’t like about themselves. Its focus is to avoid self-hate while simultaneously relieving from the pressure of having to love their body. Most importantly, the goal is to respect and accept your body for what it is – and that’s it.
Body Neutrality is the middle ground between positivity and negativity (shaming). Embracing body neutrality over body positivity allows our clients to experience negative feelings about their bodies, but without the pressure that comes with having to be positive all the time.
Body Neutrality helps women detach their self-worth from their bodies (good or bad). It’s about crafting a relationship of functionality with our bodies and engaging with it from a place of self-care instead of control.
Health can be weight-neutral
The World Health Organization defines health as “a complete state of physical, emotional, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” A weight-neutral approach to health is based on the idea that your health status or risk level can’t be determined solely by your weight.
It acknowledges that your weight is determined by a complex set of genetic, metabolic, physiological, cultural, social, and behavioral determinants. Many of these factors are either difficult or impossible to change.
Instead of focusing on a weight-oriented outcome, weight-neutral programs teach you to take charge of the factors within your control. These factors include your thoughts and behaviors. In short, taking charge of these factors will help you improve your well-being, regardless of your weight.
Weight-neutral approaches to health like the non-diet approach have significantly decreased body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and depression. They’ve also increased sustainable, enjoyable self-care behaviors such as eating and moving well in the long term.
A 2013 study by the Journal of Obesity found no link between body weight and the way we feel about ourselves. Yet, the findings show a link between how we feel about ourselves and the healthy activities we engage in. Meaning, the better we feel about our bodies the more likely we are to take care of them by eating well and being active, allowing us to create a positive cycle. Likewise, dissatisfaction with our bodies can discourage us from taking part in certain activities, eating properly to fuel our bodies and can eventually lead to weight gain.
The non-diet approach
The non-diet approach to health and nutrition recognizes that weight stigma is a contributor to one’s health. As professionals, we must address how our clients and patients relate to their body as the root cause before we can effectively address the effects ( eating and health habits).
The non-diet approach to health is the exact opposite of dieting. It’s a weight-neutral approach to health that instead focuses on a weight-oriented outcome. This approach focused on all the other factors that can impact one’s health beyond body weight. In other words, the ultimate goal is to support the patients to become their own experts at their bodies.
The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is our proprietary methodology that helps women to recover from diet culture and learn the non-diet way of life. Firstly, our 4 pillars are Body Wisdom, Body Trust, Body Respect, and Body Neutrality. Secondly, our framework is composed of 5 steps process: Intuitive eating, Body Neutrality, Self-Coaching, Emotional Intelligence, and Mindfulness.
The non-diet approach professional training center
We have created a number of free non-diet approach training resources to help you begin learning more about this revolutionary health approach. Join my non-diet professional community by requesting our non-diet client assessment tools
You can also listen to our non-diet podcast.
You can access non-diet approach training here
The non-diet coaching certification program
The Going Beyond The Food non-diet coaching certification program is a space where you can receive support guidance to become the best non-diet professional. It’s a program geared to refine your non-diet professional skills set and teach you the skills you need to build a successful business that can impact thousands of women.
It will help you develop as a powerful leader and help other women come back to their power. You will learn how to harness your ability to support and help other women. As a result, you can impact thousands of other women and dismantle diet culture.
Ready to get started with the Non-Diet Approach?
You can access all of our services on our work with us page. We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:
Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!
Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.
Undiet Your Life group coaching program is for women to learn how to eat intuitively, become body neutral, and learn self-coaching at their own pace while being supported in a group setting by Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches.
Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.
Non-Diet Business Coaching & Marketing
Any non-diet business coaching must include a segment on non-diet marketing.
For many, the words marketing is “yucky” or even “salesy”. Many of my new intuitive eating business students at first will tell me “I hate that part of my job”. Is that you, too?
If you are a health professional and have a private practice, then marketing is a vital part of your business. This is even more relevant for non-diet approach health practice.
To help you fall in love with marketing so that you can thrive in your business, this article will discuss…
Understand the non-diet business coaching framework
The best non-diet marketing strategy
3 pillars of non-diet marketing
If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 4
Links mentioned in the episode…
Non-Diet Certification Program
Understand the Non-Diet Business Coaching Framework
Let’s lay down the groundwork first about the non-diet approach before we get into the marketing aspect.
The non-diet approach to health is the exact opposite of dieting. It’s a weight-neutral approach to health that instead of focusing on a weight-oriented outcome. This approach focused on all the other factors that can impact one’s health beyond body weight. In other words, the ultimate goal is to support the patients to become their own experts at their bodies.
The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is our proprietary methodology that helps women to recovery from diet culture and learns the non-diet way of life. Firstly, our 4 pillars are Body Wisdom, Body Trust, Body Respect, and Body Neutrality. Secondly, our framework is composed of 5 steps process: Intuitive eating, Body Neutrality, Self-Coaching, Emotional Intelligence, and Mindfulness.
The non-diet business coaching framework teaches women health practitioners on how to build successful non-diet businesses. I share the basics of this framework in the first two podcast episodes of the Going Beyond The Food Show Non-Diet PRO. The Intuitive eating Mentorship episode and Intuitive eating Business episode.
Marketing to our future client can appear to be challenging at first. as I argued in my article Diet mindset professional training, our future clients have been used and abused by diet culture and have a very low tolerance to traditional fear-based marketing tactics. Hence, non-diet marketing should be based on love, education, and nurturing. We help people build and grow a profitable anti-diet business that makes good money inside the Good Money Mastermind
The Best Non-Diet Marketing Strategy
Marketing is the art of making change happen.
The success of non-diet marketing resides in the overall non-diet business strategy you have created for your business. So, let me repeat this very important point again: a marketing strategy is part of this overall business strategy. Do you have one of these?
An effective non-diet marketing strategy will help tell a compelling story about your offer/product in a way that will help your niche market (future client/patient) connect to your offer/product with a strong desire to commit (purchase). As a result, the commitment of resources leads to transformation for your client and equal sales and revenue in your business.
The 3 pillars of non-diet marketing
I will be covering the 3 pillars of an effective and profitable non-diet marketing strategy we teach inside the Good Money Mastermind and inside the Non-Diet Coaching Certification.
Pillar 1: Ideal Client Readiness
Trying to please everyone is the #1 marketing mistake that I observed in the health & wellness business sector. This is why the second element of a successful business strategy should include a comprehensive analysis of your ideal client and niche market. After that, you can create a unique marketing initiative that connects with your future clients.
Trying to convince people they need to change is the #2 marketing mistake I observed in the health & wellness business sector. That’s because not all your future clients are ready for your non-diet message now. If your future clients are still deeply entrenched in diet culture, then it will be a complete waste of your time and resource to market to them. Therefore, they need first to be open to a new approach.
Time and time again, women non-diet health entrepreneurs make these mistakes because they operate from fear instead of love. Fear of missing revenue and excluding potential clients is the main denominator of this fear.
By trying to please everyone, you actually prevent your niche clients from connecting with you and most importantly, take action towards their own transformation. Consequently, you prevent your business from being successful.
Therefore, your marketing strategy needs to ensure you connect to your unique niche market and with those in your niche ready to take action towards their own transformation.
Inside our Non-diet Coaching Certification Program, we teach a unique blueprint that blends in the transtheoretical model of transformation with basic marketing techniques.
Pillar 2: Emotional Connection
Our future client has been used and abused by diet culture and the weight loss industry. They have bought a lot of weight loss products out of desperation, and as we know, nothing has worked. Hence, your future clients need not only a different approach but also a different type of marketing.
Emotional marketing refers to marketing and advertising efforts that primarily use emotion to make your audience notice, remember, share, and buy (commit). It taps into the innate human desire to FEEL. Certainly, this is critical to a women-based audience.
The goal is to validate the way they FEEL now and show them how they can FEEL different later (after committing to your product). This type fo marketing helps out future clients buy from their hearts. This is because studies shows that people rely on emotions, rather than rational, to make decisions.
Emotional marketing inspires people to act. Similarly, it encourages more interaction between you and your brand long term which is critical to developing a sustainable non-diet business. Out of 1,400 successful marketing campaigns, those with purely emotional content performed twice as better as those with only rational content.
The most effective way to connect emotionally with your ideal client is to tell stories.
Pillar 3: Nurturing
The last pillar of a successful non-diet marketing strategy is to create a relationship of trust and credibility with your ideal client. That’s because the vast majority of your future clients will be doubtful given their experience thus far with diet culture. I know I was…. You?
Inside the non-diet coaching certification mentorship program & The Good Money Mastermind, we refer to this step of the program the “Non-Diet Marketing Funnel”. Think a liquid funnel here…. it’s the journey your client will go through as they enter your world.
Although we as non-diet health professionals are very familiar with a weight-neutral approach to health, our future customer is not. We have to face the facts: we live in a society that is fatphobic and heavily entrenched in weight loss approaches. In other words, we are the infancy stage of a non-diet world…
Hence, we need to educate our future clients to the non-diet approach. With each new interaction with potential clients, we need to educate and educate some more. And when you think you are done educating… educate some more lol! Likewise, you need to move your ideal client along your non-diet marketing from not knowing about the non-diet approach to understanding the basics of the non-diet approach. This needs to happen before they commit (purchase) to anything with you.
As your ideal client moves further down into your non-diet funnel, they will start trusting you and see you as an expert in this approach. As a result, they will be more willing to take a risk with what seems to them as a “completely crazy” approach to their problem: to ditch dieting, learn to eat intuitively, and accept their body.
Non-Diet Business Coaching Training Center
Would you like to see an example of nurturing in the non-diet world? If not done yet, join my non-diet professional community by requesting our starter pack for training for intuitive eating. I’ll send you the nurturing funnel I have built for professionals.
We also have created for you a number of free non-diet professional training resources to help you begin your research in the field of non-diet approach to health. You will find non-diet online training, webinars, podcasts, and articles.
You can access all of our services on our work with us page. We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:
Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!
Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.
Undiet Your Life group coaching program is for women to learn how to eat intuitively, become body neutral, and learn self-coaching at their own pace while being supported in a group setting by Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches.
Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.
Non-Diet Business Mentorship
The Good Money Business Mastermind is training program for an non-diet business and non-diet professional mentorship program. A business mentorship specifically designed and curated to support service provider in the anti-diet culture niche. Make good money helping people liberate themselves from diet & wellness culture!
This is what I was seeking but couldn’t find years ago.
Diet Mindset: How to unlearn diet culture thoughts
Diet mindset professional support to unlearn the diet culture thoughts training was not available when I started my transition to a non-diet approach to nutrition and health as a clinical nutritionist; had to figure it out on my own. Piece it all together…
In this podcast episode First Do No Harm: The Intuitive Eating Mentorship Journey I argued that the current model of practice for a nutrition professional top-down approach is causing more harm to a particular segment of our clients: women on the diet roller coster.
The solution: The bottom-up approach. Start first with addressing the diet mindset so we can move to coach nutrition and health later in the journey. Enter diet mindset professional training!
In this article, we will cover:
Diet Mindset Professional Training
Self-Coaching for Intuitive eating
If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 3
Links mentioned in the episode…
Non-Diet Coaching Certification
Diet Mindset Professional Training
In my professional studies as a clinical nutritionist, we barely touched upon the psychology of eating or diet mindset professional training. We jumped right into the WHAT to eat emphasizing greatly why it was so important to our health with a lot of facts and data.
So, I went into private practice and model what I had learned. Spending hours creating a complex protocol. Very quickly, I realized that wasn’t going to work… clients were overwhelmed and scared of the complexity of what they would have to do. I went to what I was taught: trying to convince them with studies, facts, and data as to why restricting this and that food was essential to their health. That didn’t work either.
Why wasn’t it working? Back then, I had no answer but today after years of independent studies I can tell you why: intellectual knowledge is not what motivates humans to change or make different choices. Especially not with food. The answer diet mindset professional training.
How human make food choices
So, if data points and fear-mongering isn’t an effective tool to help people change their eating habits, what is?
Of course, the primary driver to food choices is hunger however, what we choose to eat is not only our physiological and nutritional needs. Many other factors influence our food choice according to research:
Biological Determinants
For example, our innate eating cues hunger, fullness, and satisfaction which is what is recognized as eating cues in the world of intuitive eating coaching. You can also include here Set Point theory which I discussed in depth with Chris Sandle on our Going Beyond The Food Show podcast series about weight loss.
Economic Determinants
In sum, here we can think of cost, income, availability of food which is truly out of our control as health practitioners. These are major issues with the newest version of diet culture: the Wellness Diet.
Physical Determinants
For example, access, education, skills (e.g. cooking skills), and time availability which are mostly out of our control as health practitioners.
Social Determinants
This aspect of our food choices such as culture, family, peers, and meal patterns are mostly out of reach for us as health practitioners except one that is particularly relevant to our segment of women who have been chronic dieters: weight discrimination.
There is emerging evidence that experiences with weight stigma may lead to different eating behavior. For example, individuals ate more food after exposure to a weight stigmatizing condition. Additionally, in a study, 79 percent of women reported coping with weight stigma on multiple occasions by eating more food.
A properly structured non-diet approach to health engages clients and patients in learning coping skills to help reduce the impact of weight stigma.
Psychological Determinants
This is the world of mind and emotions. Elements such as mood, stress, and guilt are one area that as non-diet health professionals should be included in our approach.
Today, it is widely recognized that food influences our mood, and that mood has a strong influence on our choice of food. For this reason, these determinants are the first 3 pillars of the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ .
Attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge about food
This is where we include intellectual knowledge about food but also include all the constructed food beliefs pass down to us from the weight loss & wellness industries in order to sell their products.
How the diet mindset develops
What’s unique about our eating behaviors, unlike many other biological functions, is too often subject to sophisticated cognitive control.
We consciously manipulate our food choices beyond the need of our bodies to achieve other external gains/ goals in our life. One of the most widely practiced forms of cognitive control over food intake is dieting (cognitive dietary restraint).
In most studies on the topic of food choices, it’s most often observed that women and men behave differently with food. In this study, women reported significantly higher restraint, more guilt after eating in various types of social situations, and more overeating in reaction to unpleasant emotional state mood.
Women’s bodies are imposed on different beauty standards than men’s bodies. Diet Culture reinforces the thin ideals to women leading 91% of women in western societies to dislike their bodies and using dieting (cognitive food restraint) to meet diet culture expectations of their body size and beauty.
With repeated failed attempts at dieting, dieting has a 91%-95% failure rate over 5 years period, women’s brain & body develops coping mechanism as a mean of surviving diet failure and weight stigma. This is why we need diet mindset professional training!
Common thought errors or cognitive distortion
When it comes to how we think, the dieter’s brain adapts using what we know as cognitive distortion or thought errors.
Let’s take a step back first to make sure we all understand how the human brain functions.
When faced with an event or a trigger, labelled in the model below as circumstances then given an interpretation. This interpretation is based on our long-held beliefs, past experiences, values system including diet culture. We then form an opinion, a thought which then ignites an emotion. The emotions we feel then creates the actions or behaviours we take. The collective action we take then creates our result.
Cognitive Behavioral Coaching Model
Over time, the brain, or mind, adopts a “way of thinking” as a means to survive what we perceive as a difficult situation. These flaws in thinking are known as cognitive distortions or thought errors. This is what keeps women in the cycle of dieting and body shaming even though it has proven to be a very ineffective way of living life.
- Mental filtering
- Jumping to conclusions
- Personalization
- Black and white thinking
- Catastrophizing
- Overgeneralization
- Labelling
- Emotional reasoning
- Magnifying/ Minimizing
Over the years of working with women in a non-diet model of care approach, and my personal journey in recovering from 25 years dieting career, I have observed a pattern in cognitive distortion. I coined the term Diet Brain to better express this pattern.
Diet Mindset & Diet Brain
Diet brain, the term I coined a few years back, is the collective of 4-main thought errors. In my clinical observation and personal experience overcoming each one, this pattern that is present in most women chronic dieters I have worked. What are these traits?
All or nothing / Black and White thinking
This can be best described as the on the diet / off the diet lifestyle. The good and bad food dichotomy as dictated by diet culture. With time, it spread these faulty thought patterns to every aspect of our life: exercise, work, career, relationship, how we raised children….
Perfectionism
Simply put: Everything must be perfect to off so we can be worthy of love, acceptance. At first with diet, food, and exercise but as failure cumulated, it becomes a way of life to prevent potential rejection due to “unperfected body”.
This cognitive distortion leads to a perfectionist fantasy. We make our current life so miserable by thinking that solving your problem (aka body size and appearance) will provide us with the happiness we are seeking that we actually never live (and enjoy) our current life.
Mental filtering: It’s my body’s fault
The body and its size take the blame for everything that’s wrong in your life. From health to a relationship, to opportunity, to emotional state… it’s all the body’s fault. Women then consistently compare themselves with others based on beauty and body size.
People-pleasing
This is when women move to external validation because internal validation is absent. As they believe that they are unacceptable, they will attempt to please and comfort everyone around them as a means of avoiding rejection and gaining acceptance.
These four most common cognitive distortions most present with women chronic dieters then strongly influence their eating patterns, ability to practice self-care, and create health-promoting habits.
The non-diet approach will first help the client and the patient with their mindset and emotions before engaging in nutrition education. In our diet mindset professional training, we teach the framework of self-coaching.
Self-Coaching for Intuitive Eating
Self-Coaching is a framework that supports first becoming aware of our thought, observing them without judgment and last to change our thinking. It’s also an effective approach supported by neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.
We’ve developed a unique framework that supports the long-term goal of helping women recover from diet culture and become intuitive eater and body neutral. This is the best tool for diet mindset recovery for a professional approach. Self-coaching for intuitive eating is applied in 3 steps:
Step 1: Self-observation
The process of self-coaching cultivates the first skill which is about being an observer of our inner world – our thoughts and our emotions. This process helps raise the level of interception that clients will need as they begin to explore their innate eating cues with intuitive eating.
Step 2: Non-judgement
Self-coaching is about exploring your inner world with a “lense of curiosity” instead of judgment. Asking the question “I wonder why I think like this or do this” instead “I’m so stupid because I do this” is empowering and creates deep mental clarity. You can then decide how you want to think about X or what you want to do about Y.
Step 3: Conscious response
The last step of self-coaching is about choosing conscious responses or thoughts that work best for you and your specific situation, problem, or challenge. Self-coaching is ultimately about deciding consciously instead of reacting unconsciously.
Self-coaching as a thought in an intuitive eating mentorship program is about teaching our clients to connect to their innate wisdom and their power. It leads to emotional intelligence by taking charge of your mind and emotions.
That’s the feminist approach to food and health.
Get Started with Diet Mindset Unlearning Professional Training
We have created for you a number of free non-diet professional training resources to help you begin your research in the field of non-diet approach to health. You will find non-diet online training, webinars, podcasts, and articles.
You can access the non-diet coaching professional training here:
Non-Diet Professional Mentorship
Our Non-Diet Coaching Certification is a high-level business mentorship program for health professionals who want to take their business to a non-diet model of care. This program includes diet mindset professional training.
A 6-month journey of business and personal growth exclusively designed for female health entrepreneurs mastering their own journey beyond the food with intuitive eating and body neutrality, while also learning to market their intuitive eating business with a heart so they can have a massive impact on women’s health.
Intuitive Eating Business
The thought of starting an intuitive eating business can be scary and overwhelming.
Even for those that currently have a health business and want to transition to a non-diet business is frightening. Will I be able to sustain my income?
How can I make money off if I’m not selling meal plans, diet programs, detoxes, and cleanse?
If I’m not creating complex protocols for my clients: why would they pay me?
These are the type of questions this article aims to answer and many others.
What is the business of intuitive eating?
Being an Intuitive Eating Coach
Intuitive Eating Coaching Outcome
Who do we serve in an intuitive eating business
First Step to start an intuitive eating business
What is a Non-Diet Mentorship program?
If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 2
Links mentioned on the episode
What’s an intuitive eating business?
An intuitive eating business is when you exchange money in order to support someone with intuitive eating. This support can come in many different ways:
- Teaching them an intuitive eating framework
- Coaching their learning or progress as an intuitive eater
- Supporting them in their intuitive eating journey
- Encouraging to move forward when they struggle
- Answering their questions
- Inspiring them to move forward in the face of adversity
- Creating products that will support people who want to become an intuitive eater
This business is not a formulated typical health business and does not hold the same value system considering that most health businesses are created to support diet culture ideology.
The most prevalent difference in a diet culture-free business resides in its approach to healing. An intuitive eating business is anchored in what I describe as a “bottom-up” approach versus a “top-down” approach. The goal is to empower you to become your own expert at your body. A typical health business that is rooted in diet culture is built around the provider being the expert and telling you how to engage with your body. Very disempowering.
An intuitive eating business is based on self-compassion, trust, respect of the individual innate body wisdom, and ability to heal themselves.
As of today, the most frequent intuitive eating business model is the coaching business model. You exchange money with your service as a coach.
Intuitive Eating Coach Business
As an intuitive eating coach, you are healing your client/ or patient… they heal themselves. Your clients/patients have all they need to heal their own relationship with food and body. For many, that’s a departure from their professional training… it’s ok to feel unsafe at first.
An intuitive eating coach is a health professional who guides clients/patients in their recovery from Diet Culture. Moreover, your job is to guide clients on the path of becoming an intuitive eater by listening to their concerns and helping them with problem-solving. Recognizing what we spoke about in the first episode of season 1 of Undiet Your Coaching Podcast, that the human relationship to food is by far more complex than just simple food choices.
Problem-solving with your client as an intuitive eating coach will not require you to provide a complex meal plan or macro ratio. Instead, helping them master their mindset particularly shifting away from diet mindset towards a compassionate mindset.
You will help your client move from an external cue to know what to eat, when to eat, and how to eat towards internal cues. As well as helping them feel their hunger, fullness and find satisfaction in what they eat. Instead of teaching your clients to suppress their cravings and how to “fill up on aid food”, you actually help them be in their body at the moment.
You help them understand that all food is good. That being healthy doesn’t mean being restrictive and feeling deprived. That they no longer need to earn their food. You empower your clients, give themselves permission to eat.
Intuitive Eating Coaching Outcome
Your goal is to coach your clients in building confidence in their own eating cues to be their own internal nutritionist. Instead of helping your client live a “normal life” in a very restrictive dietary protocol and how to make cauliflower brownie, you help your client give themselves permission to eat.
With compassion, you guide your client to cope with emotions differently. Helping them build resilience and emotional intelligence. Helping them learn to process their emotions without food.
As your clients build trust and respect with their innate body wisdom, you help them detach from being their bodies and their appearance. In addition, helping them reconnect to their innate worth as women. Guiding your client away from shame towards neutrality. Helping them embrace self-care beyond their physical bodies.
Finally, you help educate your client to a weight-neutral health approach guided by health at every size principle. Moving their body with joy and practicing gentle nutrition.
Being an effective intuitive eating coach requires you to be an intuitive eater first with a willingness to grow and learn from your clients. You must possess intuitive eating professional skills but also, mindset coaching skills, behaviour modification skills. Also, mindfulness and body image resilience skills.
Serving versus Selling
Let’s talk about what everyone thinks about but doesn’t want to talk about. It’s going to get uncomfortable for some…
It’s ok to be making money coaching intuitive eating, to exchange your coaching services for money. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be successful in your intuitive eating business. It’s ok to monetize your professional skills.
Ready for this one: The more revenue you create, the more money you make in your intuitive eating business means more people freed from diet culture. Yup, it truly is.
Now, how you monetize your services and create business revenue does matter. You can build a business in a masculine, patriarchal way or you can choose to embrace your female energy that empowers everyone even those who do not purchase from you.
You can serve instead of selling. Serving means engaging with our clients without expectation. You offer value by creating free content, teaching your audience the very basics of intuitive eating, providing free resources to everyone. You become a resource helping people break down their own barriers, fears, and supporting them with an empowering message. Guiding them to the next level resources available.
The opposite of serving is the hard sell, aggressive to close mentality that comes across as pushy and self- focused. When you are focus on selling, you create free resources guard to disempower people so they are led to believe that the only way for them or resolve their problem is by buying your product.
Serving is based on love. Selling is based on fear. Serving leads to selling without selling.
Who do we serve in an intuitive eating business
We must recognize that the intuitive eating model of nutrition is not accepted by the traditional model of healthcare. As a result, intuitive eating services are mostly never covered by traditional insurance providers. Our services are typically private care, meaning an out of the pocket expense.
This is why most intuitive eating professionals have to be entrepreneurs alongside their profession. You can provide service for someone else’s business but in most cases, you will need to be running your own business.
This means that you need to embrace entrepreneurship and learn about setting up and maintaining a business, marketing your intuitive eating business as well as getting and retaining clients.
Let’s make something clear here: a professional health certification isn’t how you will learn to run a business. The vast majority of health certifications do not include business training and if they do, it’s not focused on a non-diet business model but instead a model that supports diet culture.
That’s why I created the Non-Diet Coaching Certification program. If we want to be successful in dismantling diet culture, I need you to know how to successfully operate a business.
First Step to start an intuitive eating business
The first place to start is with a business strategy. That’s you creating a brand-new business of transitioning your current business to an intuitive eating business model, you need a business strategy.
The strategy is what will turn your passion into biz and blow you to impact thousands of women. It’s the roadmap you will look up to as you work day-to-day in your business. Your business strategy consists of the following:
- Why
- What
- Who
- Where
- When and the…
- How much
The first layer of your business strategy that we teach is the why… not the what. This is where most business strategies go wrong. The business you create needs to be in alignment with your personal values, your personal goals, and how YOU want to lead your personal life.
To be an effective heart-centred intuitive eating business owner, you must care for yourself first. Make sure your business supports YOU not the opposite.
Non-Diet Business Coaching
Today, I own and operate a very successful intuitive eating business. It’s not always been like this. In this first episode of the PRO Series podcast, I share the story of my own professional and business evolution.
It took time and resources for me to get where I’m today. For over 4 years, I searched and trained in various professional training programs to create the Going Beyond The Food Method. I shared more on this in this podcast episode.
Although I had 15 years of retail business operation experience, I also had to learn the health business model. I had to educate myself, get coached in my blind spot, be mentored. Over the last 10 years, I invested approximately $60,000 in my business.
- I hired an experienced nutrition business coach before even graduating -8K
- The year following my graduation, I committed my first health business mastermind -10K
- 4 years ago, I hired an online business coach to help me transition my business online – 10K
- Over the next years, I have purchased 26k in online business skills courses to learn email marketing, funnel, summit, branding, etc…
Non-Diet Coaching Certification Program
The Going Beyond The Food non-diet coaching certification program is a space where you can receive support guidance to become the best intuitive eating professional. It’s a program geared to refine your professional skills set and teach you the skills you need to build a successful business that can impact thousands of women.
It helps you develop as a powerful leader and help other women come back to their power. You learn how to harness your ability to support and help other women. As a result, you can impact thousands of other women and dismantle diet culture.
I believe that the only way for us to be able to end diet culture oppression of women is by us women coming together and helping each other as women back into our power via intuitive eating and body neutrality. This is a woman issue…that must be resolved by women.
As women, we need to step up and change the future for the young generation of girls. We need to teach them that they aren’t defined by their bodies, we need to crush DC so it never gets its dirty hands on the upcoming generation.
The liberation of the upcoming generation will only come through our generation’s liberation from diet culture and patriarchy.
Currently, the traditional model of nutrition, coaching, and even health care is not set-up for this…it’s entrenched in diet culture. Most of the wellness industry is deeply entrenched in diet culture. The alternative health industry claims to be about the root cause… but never looked at the reason why women engage with food and body.
Bottom line we need a new approach
We need women who can help other women change their relationship to food and body, empowering women to become their own experts at their bodies, to help women build confidence in themselves and their power to know what’s right for them.
Women who will support other women. We need emphatic, compassionate women who have the skills to connect with other women and a passion for change.
My job is to ensure these women are doing their job so well while creating a sustainable business so they can keep impacting more women for years to come. Furthermore, my job is to ensure that these women are successful so they crush diet culture for the generations to come.
Ready to get started building an Intuitive Eating Business?
You can access all of our services on our work with us page. We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve :
Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.
Good Money Business Mastermind A business mentorship and a collective of ambitious, driven and empowered anti-diet culture providers and coaches on a mission to dismantle diet culture and make GOOD money doing it!
Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!
Intuitive Eating Mentorship For Professional: First Do No Harm
I help women with intuitive eating mentorship programs today but it wasn’t always so…
8 years ago, I was 2 years into my nutrition practice, Carolyn walked into my office. And she had just been diagnosed with high blood pressure and high cholesterol. She desired to be “healthier”.
I proceeded to take a diligent intake. And this intake process included a food journal, detailed health history as well as a symptomology assessment. Based on my assessment I concluded that a “whole food diet” would support her goals. Along with other lifestyle modifications.
Not only how I was teaching nutrition different but also my approach. So Carolyn would add foods to her plate instead of removing foods. Carolyn left my clinic with her food list, food journal and “ideal plate” handout in hands.
Then two weeks later she was back for a follow-up. Within 10 minutes, she was in tears.
“I’m so sorry Stephanie I wasn’t able to follow what you told me to do and thought this time would be different. My urges to binge on processed food at night are back in full force. “
“I ate my kids’ food in secret. What is wrong is wrong with me??”
Are we causing harm to our clients?
Shifting to a non-diet approach to health
The Going Beyond The Food Method™️
Non-Diet Professional Training
If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 1
Links mentioned on the episode
PRO Series – Free Training & resources
Non-Diet Coaching Certification
Are we causing harm to our clients?
We do not know what we do not know.
I was aggravating an underlying condition for Caroline. Not only did Carolyn had a disordered relationship with food but also with her body image due to years of chronic dieting. And all of my assessment tools and training never accounted for this condition. I was neither taught to assess how patient-related to food or to consider past dieting behavior in my assessment.
Fast forward 8 years later. When I reflected back on my first few years of practice not only most of my female clients were in fact in a disordered relationship with food but I also was.
Most nutrition experts engage in disordered eating
In 2012, an international study in 14 countries found a whopping 77 percent of nutrition students felt that eating disorders were a concern among their peers. And the reasons behind this are complicated: theories run from an obsessive overexposure to information about food and exercise, to pressure within degrees to be an “ideal nutritionist.”
Individuals that develop disordered eating may at first initiate a quest for a healthier lifestyle but then dysfunctional, compulsive beliefs about food emerge that then impair health, work, and social functioning.
If you are curious to know if have a disordered relationship to food then you should complete our free professional Non-Diet Coaching intake forms. Assess yourself and share your results with us!
Shifting to a non-diet approach to health
Carolyn was the most impactful client-practitioner I have had to this day.
Not only did she triggered in me a must needed professional shift but also a personal transformation. So my quest for another way of serving my client and healing myself began with her.
7 years ago when I searched for support, training and non-diet coaching certification nothing existed. Instead, I read the Health At Avery Size® research and book by Dr. Lindo Bacon. And then began applying a weight-neutral approach to health in my practice.
Over the next 4 years, I collected both a variety of professional and personal skills. This collection of tools is today known as The Going Beyond The Food Method™️. And this non-diet methodology is currently taught in Undiet Your Life Coaching Program
The Going Beyond The Food Method™
The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is a way of working with clients and patients which removes that emphasis and pressure to eat for weight loss or health. Instead, it embraces the Health At Every Size® weight-neutral approach to health, intuitive eating, body neutrality, mindfulness, and a self-coaching mindset.
This non-diet methodology respects the fact that each human has innate body wisdom. And that our the body knows what we need and what is best for us including food, eating, movement, weight, and self-care.
A practitioner who uses our methodology is focused on helping women rebuild a relationship of trust, respect, and neutrality with their bodies.The client is empowered to identify what will be best for her to optimize their own health and wellbeing.
At the core, a holistic based approach recognizing the 4 human bodies: mental, emotional, spiritual and physical human bodies. This non-diet approach for health coaches, nutritionists or any other health experts is a gentle process. And it focuses on skills building.
Ultimately, it’s about helping women conquer back their power and thrive unconditionally!
Intuitive Eating Mentorship
The Going Beyond The Food Mentorship program is an intuitive eating mentorship program, an anti-diet training and body image professional training. And it’s designed to support health professionals desiring to shift their practice to a non-diet model.
This is what I was seeking but couldn’t find years ago.
As a professional, a non-diet approach to health and nutrition can be scary as it empowers your client and patient to be their own health expert.
Non-Diet Coaching Professional Training
“If we are not going to hand out meal plans and “good and bad” food list, what will we do?”
That is a very common question and also a great starting point to understand which professional skills set will be required in a non-diet approach.
Food choices and healthy habits aren’t only derived from intellectual knowledge but also from our emotions and thoughts. This applied not only to healthy habits but to every habit we choose to do as a human.
As a non-diet practitioner, you will need to help with your clients with the mindset and emotional intelligence tools. We teach self-coaching for intuitive eating.
Chronic dieters and women who dislike their bodies are in their head instead of their bodies. You will need to help them come back into their body and to connect to their bodily sensation including their eating cues. Mindfulness is the perfect tool to cultivate body attunement.
Intuitive Eating Training
Intuitive eating is a well- researched and complete framework to help you reframe the before, during and after relationship to food with women. As a certified Intuitive eating counselor, I have studied directly with Evelyn Tribole and now included this empowering framework with all my clients in our non-diet online training.
As a non-diet professional, your skills wouldn’t be complete without a tool you can use to help your clients to heal their relationship with their body image.
Body Neutrality is the framework I have selected to teach in our program. It helps women understand that we aren’t defined by own physical bodies. This body image professional training goal is to respect and accept your body for what it is – and that’s it.
Non-Diet Business Coaching
Shifting your business to an anti-diet business model requires some small business adjustment mainly in the content of your professional services, health programs, and marketing.
Your intuitive eating business skills will require you to move to a serving message from selling messages. Your future client or patient will need to be educated about what is a non-diet and weight-neutral approach to health.
The 5-step process to build a successful Anti-Diet Business
1. Determine the non-diet business format that will support your personal goals
2. Define & refine your ideal clients and their needs
3. Create a non-diet service offer.
4. Market your offer or product using our exclusive non-diet transformation funnel system.
5. Deliver your product.
Bonus – Scale & Diversify
How to Get Started
We have created for you a number of free intuitive eating mentorship training resources to help you begin your research in the field of non-diet approach to health.
You can access this non-diet professional training by clicking here.
You will find non-diet online training, webinars, podcasts, and articles.
One last thing
Here’s the truth: As long as you teach any labelled diet (Keto, paleo, GF, DF, ….) and or handout food list and meal plan, you aren’t teaching sustainable health or nutrition. Point.
If the above is you, just about now you’re likely pissed at me. That’s ok sister! I get it. I was on the receiving end of this exact discourse about 4 years ago and I was mad but it planted a seed in my mind… and here I’m today!
It’s not your fault. As far as I know, today…no nutrition school or health coaching program currently offers Intuitive eating as part of their curriculum. So how were you supposed to know??
But now you know…. So, what will you do? Continue to arm people teaching diets or learn intuitive eating for yourself and slowly, gradually integrate it in your practice and help your client real sustainable changes.
It’s your choice. If you choose to opt-out of diet culture, we can help you in your journey.
We do not know what we do not know.
Most nutrition experts engage in disordered eating.
Individuals that develop disordered eating may at first initiate a quest for a healthier lifestyle but then dysfunctional, compulsive beliefs about food emerge that then impair health, work, and social functioning. If you are curious to know if have a disordered relationship to food then you should complete our free professional intuitive eating intake forms. Assess yourself and share your results with us!
Intuitive Eating Coaching
All women that come to intuitive eating coaching have failed… failed at many diets.
I love when women’s diets do not go according to plan… I get really excited because I know they are on the brink of huge transformation.That’s when you are forced to make a choice… stay in your comfort zone repeating your old patterns to jump on the next “new” diet…OR move forward past your dieting comfort zone and towards something different.
That’s when I come in… helping you feel the fear of trying something different and still move forward with courage.
What is intuitive eating coaching?
How do you teach intuitive eating?
Can intuitive eating really work?
What is intuitive eating?
Intuitive eating is a proven and well-researched self-care eating framework that teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food, empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.
The intuitive eating definition is a framework to recover from years of chronic dieting and diet culture. And it’s focus is on rebuilding a relationship of trust and respect towards your body while supporting your health and happiness.
Our unique approach, The Going Beyond The Food Method uses the frameworks of body neutrality alongside to intuitive eating and cognitive behavioral coaching. We integrate body image coaching along with intuitive eating specifically body neutrality has a a focus to avoid self-hate while simultaneously relieving you from the pressure of having to love your body. I shared the foundation of this approach since 2016 in my intuitive eating podcast, “The Going Beyond Food Show”
What is intuitive eating coaching?
That’s when me and my team comes in.
Over the last 8 years I have created the Going Beyond The Food Method, created and develop the curriculum of Undiet Your Life Coaching Program. Over in the last 3 years I focus my work on creating The Non-Diet Coaching Certification a program uniquely developed to train health professionals in the Going Beyond The Food Method. A number of graduates from the Non-Diet Coaching Certification are part of my coaching team at Beyond The Food along side with me as the lead Certified Non-Diet Coach.
As your partner, your Certified Non-Diet Coach a non-diet coach will support you in understanding and removing what is in the way of you becoming an intuitive eater. And what is in the way of your life without food and weight obsession Beyond The Food.
Your Non-Diet Certified Coach will challenge you to say “no” to going through the old patterns and enthusiastically say “yes” to the possibilities that are available to you with intuitive eating and body neutrality.
The journey of intuitive eating coaching
The journey begin by taking an overview of your life and dieting history and identifying areas that need action and/or attention. Then your Certified Non-Diet Coach will complete a series of assessment on your eating habits, body image and mindset.
Then you Certified Non-Diet Coach will assist you in establishing clear, concrete, measurable goals and support you in deploying a plan to achieve these goals. There is no old habits, patterns you cannot shift when coached by a professional coach. You are capable of so much more than you know or are currently creating.
At Beyond The Food we do not believe there is a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to 1-on-1 coaching. We create a unique strategy for you, individualized based on your past, specific needs and goals. Your Certified Non-Diet Coach responsibility is to guide you and supporting into solving the roadblock as they come along the path to your goals and keep your moving forward when you want to quit.
We listen with understanding and 100% confidentiality. Our relationships with my clients are intimate, honest, and rewarding. As we move closer to your goals being acheive the relationship with your coach will naturally evolve in a way that best supports you.
How do you teach intuitive eating?
Our work together is organized following my proprietary methodology The Going Beyond The Food Method™️. As an intuitive eating coaches, the outcome of our work together is a neutral relationship of trust and respect towards your body and its innate wisdom.
Our approach is unique for many reasons. We teach intuitive eating & body neutrality through the lenses of a lived experience combined with a holistic and science-based lens.
If you’d like to get a sense of my journey, as the founder of Beyond The Food Method read this article I wrote: Intuitive eating before and after: my story.
Can intuitive eating really work?
Here’s the most fascinating aspect of intuitive eating and body neutrality, it’s that you can’t fail. You can’t fail because it’s not a diet! And because I’m confident in myself and not afraid to sign my own praise… here’s why women love my coaching:
“This experience was life-changing and worth every penny!”
So first thing, know that I’m sharing my experience being an executive coach myself… and I’ve worked with dozens of global coaches personally and professionally. Coaching with Stephanie was life-changing forever and worth every penny you’ll put into it. – Anna Buber Farovich
“My work with Stephanie led me through a massive transformation!”
Stephanie is kind, inspiring and her knowledge and experiences helped me to sort out some issues I was not sure about and led me through a massive transformation both personally and in my business.- Hanka Valaskova
“Stephanie has really changed my life. I’ll never go back to the way it was…”
I’m in the Board of Directors and have a very busy lifestyle, but Stephanie’s coaching on perspective on life, lifestyle and dealing with our food issues has really changed my life. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to the way it was.–Eithne Wait
You can access more videos, audio and written testimonials here.
How do I get started?
You can access all of our services on our work with us page. We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:
Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!
Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.
Undiet Your Life group coaching program is for women to learn how to eat intuitively, become body neutral, and learn self-coaching at their own pace while being supported in a group setting by Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches.
Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.
How can I know if I’m the right fit for intuitive eating coaching?
If you’ve been on and off diets for longer than you like to admit, think your life will start when you finally lose the weight, while you eat emotionally, binge and hate your body: This is for you!
I had the opportunity to coach Ashley Dorough from The House of Dorough in the context of her blog and she filmed part of our session. I would encourage you to listen to the part of her first session. If you’d like to see more videos visit her IGTV account.
Part 1 – Is this your story too? -Click to watch
Part 2 – Why it’s beyond
I’m really busy now how will I find the time?
Well, that’s part of the journey. Discovering what is holding us back from having the time to take care of ourselves. The truth is, there’s never going to be enough time. Diet brain keeps you stuck in your patterns and cycle because you are waiting for the right time when you can do it all perfectly.
Listen to Ashley describe her self-care story… and my coaching.
Will I lose weight during the intuitive eating coaching process?
Well, that’s part of the journey. Discovering what is holding us back from having the time to take care of ourselves. The truth is, there’s never going to be enough time. Diet brain keeps you stuck in your patterns and cycle because you are waiting for the right time when you can do it all perfectly.
Listen to Ashley describe her self-care story… and my coaching.
Will I lose weight during the intuitive eating coaching process?
First, know that it’s completely normal for you to want to lose weight. We live in a society that is filled with weight stigma and thin ideal. That’s diet culture. Intuitive eating and body neutrality goal aren’t to help you lose weight. If you are focused on weight loss, it will actually undermine the process. While some people lose weight, others don’t. Our journey together is not about weight loss.
Listen to Ashley asking me “Is it ok if I want to lose weight?” … and my coaching.
If would like to access more science-based information on this topic visit these 2 articles on my intuitive eating blog: Health beyond dieting and Intuitive eating & BMI.
I have tried so many diets will intuitive eating coaching work?
Good news, it’s not a diet. Diets have a 91-95% failure rate on 3-5 years’ timeframe so no surprise it didn’t for you either. Dieting leads to weight gain. This process is completely different from dieting because the goal is not weight loss, it’s about learning to appreciate our body and rebuild a relationship of trust and respect with ourselves and our body.
Listen to Ashley and me answering the question “If it’s not about weight loss then what is it about?”
Why can I just do one session with you?
How long did it take you to get here? 1 hr or 10, 20, 30 years? I know for me it took 25 years and hoping to undo it all in 1 hour kept me stuck. The fear of commitment is in part the way in which your Diet brain operates to keep you stuck. Committing your time, energy and resources, your own transformation is part of the learning. If this is too much for you now, consider the environment of intuitive eating group coaching where we use the same methodology but no direct interaction with me.
What is Diet Culture and 4 Steps to Navigate It
If you’ve been following me on social media or reading my blog, you certainly have come across the term “diet culture.” I’ve mentioned it many times before. But what is diet culture? How does it impact your life? And what should you do about it?
This article tackles this topic and teaches you how to opt-out of it. Also, I offer some resources that will help you start a new life outside of this oppressive belief system. Here’s what you’re going to learn from this blog post:
How to navigate the diet culture
Diet culture educational resources
Now, let’s begin exploring the diet culture so you can take your first steps to freedom!
What is diet culture?
From the sound of it, you might think the term “diet culture” refers to a group of people who are on a diet. But it actually has a different meaning.
Christy Harrison, a colleague of mine, has the best diet culture definition. She defines it as a system of belief that worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue. It’s now prevalent in our society and oppresses women from all over the world!
How does this impact your life?
This means you may have spent your entire life thinking that you’re broken just because you don’t look like the impossibly thin ideal.
That’s just one angle. You can also look at the diet culture from three other angles:
The second angle is that it promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status. It makes you feel compelled, almost obligated, to spend massive amounts of time, energy, and resources, trying to shrink your body so you can fit into this thin ideal. Now, research is very clear that the dieting model has a 95 percent failure rate, so it might as well be an exercise in futility.
The next angle is it demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others. It forces you to be hyper-vigilant about your eating, shames you for making certain food choices, and distracts you from the pleasure of eating as well as from your purpose and power.
Last but not least, it oppresses people who don’t match the supposed picture of health or the thin ideal. This affects us most particularly as women, although it’s starting to affect men.
My 25-year journey inside diet culture
As you probably know, I used to have a love-hate relationship with food and my body. A 25-year career in dieting left me obsessed, frustrated and confused about food. I was also at a loss on how to take care of my body.
Dieting was stealing my life and at 39. Then I decided that I had enough… I finally chose to take my power back and free myself from dieting and body shaming. The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ was born out of my personal journey.
Now, as a health professional, I’ve helped hundreds of women work their way out of this oppressive culture and develop a healthier relationship with food using intuitive eating and body neutrality.
Is diet culture affecting you, too? I invite you to consider its impact on your life. Take our quick self-assessment tool we created to help women determine if intuitive eating is the right solution for them.
How to navigate the diet culture
I invite you, and honestly all women, to become diet culture dropouts! Below are the four steps you need to take in your journey towards freedom:
Understand that you have a choice.
Now is the best time to be a woman. Unlike the generations before us, we’re liberated and empowered! You have to understand that diet culture is a tool that the patriarchy uses to keep us from being in our power. It keeps us busy minding our calories and macros. It induces guilt and so we feel inclined to punish ourselves when we fail.
Whether you want to stay in the diet culture and be oppressed or to break away from it and change your life, it’s totally up to you. But you should know that you have the power to make that choice.
Take responsibility.
With great power comes great responsibility. Now, that sounds like a quote from a Spiderman movie, but as an empowered woman, you are responsible for your life. No one else is!
Now, you can be the victim of diet culture and drown yourself in self-pity and helplessness. Or you can say, “Screw this! I’m going to take responsibility, and I’m going to work myself out of it and change my life.”
It’s your call.
Educate yourself.
Read books and blogs. Listen to podcasts. Consume content that supports the choice that you’ve made for yourself. Be on guard against the content that might suck you right back into the diet culture. As I’ve said before, beware of diet culture programs disguised as wellness practices.
I’ve made it my personal mission to empower women by educating them so they don’t allow themselves to be oppressed. And so, I have put together some resources for you.
We have anti-diet culture podcast episodes on the Going Beyond the Food Show, where I interview health professionals. I invite you to listen as they share their expert insights and opinions on our relationship with our bodies and with food.
You can also read our anti-diet culture blog posts on this website. Here, we go deep into the research and the studies around diet culture as well as dieting and its impact on health.
If you’re looking for an anti-diet culture book, I recommend Health At Every Size by Linda Bacon, PhD. Dr. Bacon does research around health and dieting. It’s a book that gave me a lot of “aha moments” and subsequently changed my life.
Find a framework to help you reconstruct your relationship with food and with your body.
You’re going to shift from the way of life that diet culture has taught you to a more empowering way of thinking and doing things. This means there’s a lot for you to unlearn and relearn, so you’re going to need all the support you can get.
The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is a 5-step strategic process to help women move out of diet mentality and into self-care. Our 5 pillars are: mindset, emotional wellness, mindfulness, body neutrality and intuitive eating.
Diet culture educational resources
As a clinical nutritionist, I’ve found that intuitive eating is the most effective tool for developing a healthy relationship with food and your body. Intuitive eating teaches you to tap into your innate hunger and fullness cues. It requires you to relearn how to engage with food without restriction and without labeling food as “good” or “bad.”
The trauma around body image is more powerful than the one around food. What I have found over the years is that when we work through our relationship with food, it’s a lot easier and faster to heal body image issues.
We offer a variety of programs that will help you should you decide to opt-out of diet culture:
You can access all of our services on our work with us page. We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:
Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!
Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.
Undiet Your Life group coaching program is for women to learn how to eat intuitively, become body neutral, and learn self-coaching at their own pace while being supported in a group setting by Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches.
Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.
Women Food and Power
A short essay sharing how I claim my power back….my story to live a powerful life that I love through food and body image.
My life was pretty good: I had food on the table, a home, a car, a great career that brought in enough money, cool friends, a supportive family.
I thought of myself as an independent fierce woman.
But I also wondered, “… is that what life is really about?”
While by society standards I was doing all the right things I kept, wondering if every other woman was as anxious as I was about how I looked. Were they as overwhelmed as me at the thought of not losing or worse gaining weight? Is it normal to feel this frustrated with food and not being able to eat like everyone else?
Everyone around me reflected that it was all ok, but secretly, I knew something wasn’t right. So, I kept going making sure I was checking all the boxes:
My partner: Making sure he was happy, satisfied, that he felt loved.
The boss: I was delivering the results expected.
Social circle: Making sure I was there for them and was pleasant.
My parents: Striving to be #1, working hard and making money to ensure my safety.
Society: being a good girl and kept striving for the female beauty standards of thinness
And then the forties came along
It wasn’t one thing one moment… one day. It was a series of little things that collectively lead me to realize I was living the illusion of a happy life based on others’ beliefs.
That’s why I was eating…
I was years in the making. In fact, I was a pretty smart child and wasn’t afraid of speaking my mind. I played with boys as much as I played with girls. Certainly, a tough little girl.
But at 13, the society led me to believe that I was too much. Too tall. Too big. That if I wanted to be a good girl from now on, I needed to be less. Smaller. Thinner and also quieter. To achieve this goal of being a good little girl, food was going to be the weapon of choice. Over the next few years, I learned to diet and that shrinking my body was the gateway for me to manage my “too muchness”.
By the end of my teenage years, I learned that my power was food because I was so into diet culture. I learned that for society to accept women, she must conform to its standards. Unfortunately, I wasn’t born with a body & spirit that naturally conform to the norm so I accepted that I would need to work hard at fitting in for the rest of my life.
That’s exactly what I did for nearly 27 years until my forties came along. I started to read self-improvement books and questioning the beauty ideal imposed on women.
Women Food and Power: My journey
Up to then, my power was food (and the attempted control of weight) all to fulfill the illusion that being smaller would deliver better. I thought if I couldn’t control my height at least I could control my weight.
It turns out that controlling my weight wasn’t an easy task. It worked and then it didn’t but I learned quickly to be a “good fat person” by at least trying to lose weight and making sure everyone knew I was trying hard. That’s when I started to eat in secret.
By the time I hit my mid-twenties, I had a strong coping mechanism in place to cope with my inability to conform to what my body should look like.
- People-pleasing: I sought external validation so I made sure I wasn’t rejected
- All or nothing: On and off the diet. It’s my fault it doesn’t work so try harder
- Perfectionism: To compensate my “not enoughness” and “too muchness”, I needed to strive to achieve everything perfectly
- Mental filtering: Life is about controlling my body, therefore, my food.
That’s what I call today Diet Brain. Diet brain was the way my subconscious mind evolved to cope with the world that I felt rejected me and my body.
But something happened in my late thirties. I had this resounding secret thought “I can’t do it anymore”. I felt exhausted and the excitement of the latest diet has vanished. Soon enough, my body followed suit and wouldn’t cooperate anymore. I was anxious, depressed, and sick.
I couldn’t imagine that the rest of my life was going to be just another “diet”. Is that what life was about? Really just managing my weight?
I was born worthy
The truth was that my life focus had been on chasing my self-worth. I was failing at the task but always trying and I was failing because self-worth was never going to come from being smaller.
I was born worthy but somewhere along the line of my life, someone or something led me to believe that I needed to earn my worth through my body size.
Although I had chased my self-worth for over 27 years through my body size and had yet to find it, I never questioned this belief. The indoctrination from diet culture early on in my life was still creating my reality today at 40. That’s the magic of the subconscious mind.
That is until I started to question my beliefs. Could I be enough without being in a smaller body? Is it possible to be loved and supported without being smaller? Could I be successful without being quieter?
I always had a choice
Yes: It was a possibility. I could be loved, supported, and accepted at any size.
I started to notice women in my life that were “enough” without being smaller. Women who were successful, happy, and confident in non-conforming bodies. Women whose power wasn’t wrapped around food. New people came into my life reinforcing the possibility. Books, blogs, videos… over months I had plenty of evidence.
Yet I was still stuck. I had made different choices. By then I knew it wasn’t my fault that I was the way I was but it was my fault if I stayed like that.
I needed to go from wanting to change to deciding to change. The problem was I was afraid. Scared of the perceived work it takes to change. I didn’t have time. I didn’t have the resources…
The pain of doing the work appeared to be greater than the pain of staying in the “not enough”. So, I chose to stay put. I kept lurking on what was possible.
I had so many stories in my head that keep me from not making the choice to change. Let’s face it, when it came to my ability to change my subconscious mind was telling me: “You are a failure” or “ You’ll never be able to do it” or “Why would this be any different than your attempt to manage your weight?”.
My subconscious mind was on a mission to keep me safe and secure in my comfort zone. Not believing in myself was my comfort zone. I wasn’t worthy enough to believe in myself.
What if you couldn’t fail?
I believe in paying to be held at a higher standard that I can conceive for myself. So, I committed myself to have someone show me the way.
The greatest achievements I had in my life up to this point came from being taught by a great teacher or coach: sport, business, and adulting. I knew that if I was going to make it happen it was not going to be on my own…
“What if you couldn’t fail, Stephanie?” she asked.
In every other part of my life, failure was not an issue… would have learned from my mistake and tried again. Likely tried something different but nevertheless, failure wasn’t fear.
Why wasn’t it different from food and weight? I don’t have the answer just yet but it was. I think it’s because I had so many traumatic experiences in that sphere of my life that fear of failure paralyzed me.
“You are wildly capable, Stephanie. Look at yourself, you have dieted for 25 years, starving yourself, depriving yourself, overworking your physical body… you’ve done it all! You are so capable to do the work and make peace with food & your body so you can reconnect with your innate power!”
So, I got over myself and went for it.
Women Food and Power: The tools I found
I learned to think thoughts that actually made me feel good and learn tools to release thoughts that didn’t serve me. I learned to manage my emotions, process them productively instead of being overwhelmed by them. I now decide what stories play in my head.
At the same time, I learned to be present in my body not to what others think of my body. I’m present in the moment in my body. I’m no longer afraid of being with myself.
I learned to interact with my body as my best friend and be neutral. My physical body no longer is the filter through which I see my life. That’s body neutrality.
Lastly, I learned that I had the power within me to feed myself. My body and I are “good enough” to be our own nutrition expert. That was a turning point for me… through intuitive eating, I shifted the relationship of power with food.
Food was no longer about being less… food was about being ME.
That was the work and I did it.
Empowering yourself
How you engage with food is how you engage with your life. If you feel powerless around food you feel powerless with your life.
How you think about our body is how you think about yourself. When you hate your body, you hate yourself.
There’s a basic formula for life: Our thoughts create the way we feel, our feelings drive the action we choose to take, our actions forge our results, therefore, our thoughts become our reality.
If right now you think you aren’t good and/or worthy enough to have what other women have, that’s exactly the reality you’ll keep creating for yourself.
The most effective way to feel disempowered is to give your power of choice to something else, someone else than you. That’s what millions of us, women do when we decide to buy into the beauty ideal consequently, diet culture. The path of less resistance is to conform not to question.
Being empowered is recognizing that you do have the power to affect your life. It’s simply recognizing that you have the power to choose.
On the other side of fear is freedom.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” -Anais Nin
Let’s do it together
You can access all of our services on our work with us page. We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:
Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!
Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.
Undiet Your Life group coaching program is for women to learn how to eat intuitively, become body neutral, and learn self-coaching at their own pace while being supported in a group setting by Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches.
Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.
Good Money Business Mastermind A business mentorship and a collective of ambitious, driven and empowered anti-diet culture providers and coaches on a mission to dismantle diet culture and make GOOD money doing it!
Self-Coaching for Intuitive Eating
Have you ever wondered about self-coaching for intuitive eating and asked, “Can I be successful with intuitive eating on my own?”
After all, intuitive eating is meant to empower you to be the expert of your own body and make you the boss of YOU.
However, just as there are diet coaches, there are also intuitive eating coaches. But do you need them? And what’s self-coaching anyway? If you are your own coach, does that mean you don’t need a coach at all?
These are the questions that I aim to answer in this article. I also hope to help you understand what coaching is, especially in relation to self-coaching. Last but not least, I want to show you what the self-coaching model looks like and how it can help you change your thoughts and your behavior.
But first, let me discuss what intuitive eating is, just to make sure you understand the concept before we move on to self-coaching.
What is Intuitive Eating?
This is the intuitive eating definition I usually give whenever I’m asked about the concept: “A self-care framework that uses your body’s internal cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction to guide your eating behavior.”
Eating intuitively teaches you to trust your own ability to meet your own needs. It’s an empowering alternative to dieting. It requires you to be attuned to your body’s cues.
You can learn more about eating intuitively by listening to my intuitive eating podcast episodes.
Now, let’s explore self-coaching.
What is Self-Coaching?
Coaching is identified as the process of supporting a person towards a goal. It’s a form of development that leads people from where they are to where they want to be.
Typically, in a coaching relationship, there’s a coach, who does the coaching, and a coachee, who is the learner or the client.
Self-coaching is when you become your own coach. You are both the coach and the coachee. The idea may sound a little strange to you, but yes, you can coach yourself. You have an innate wisdom that knows what’s best for you and enables you to become the expert of your own life.
Coaching Versus Training: What’s the Difference?
Some people use the terms “coaching” and “training” interchangeably, but actually, they’re two different things. Training is focused on learning and acquiring knowledge. It’s usually formal.
On the other hand, coaching is focused on developing the skill set to apply the knowledge learned. It’s often informal, discussion-based, and experiential.
The History of Self-Coaching
The first use of the term “coach” in connection with an instructor or trainer was in the 1830’s at the Oxford University. The term is slang for a tutor who “carried” a student through an exam. In the 1860’s, the term was used in sports to refer to an athletic trainer or instructor.
With the advent of the human potential movement in the 1960’s, the term came to refer to mentors, especially in executive development in the corporate world. Today, there are coaches in different areas of life–life coach, coach for binge eating, fertility coach, etc.
Self-coaching came to the world’s awareness about 20 years ago. Dr. Joseph Luciani is the leader in the field of self-coaching. He wrote four books on the subject, including The Power of Self-Coaching. This book is a must-read for those who want to understand the science behind coaching and self-coaching.
Coaching Versus Self-Coaching
In a coaching relationship, both the coach and the coachee establish goals centered around what the coachee wants to achieve. The coachee commits to taking action towards improvement. On the other hand, the coach brings guidance, support, tools, resources, framework, and a step-by-step action plan to help the coachee achieve the goals they set together.
On the other hand, self-coaching is tapping into your innate wisdom to make the best decisions certain areas of your life. It’s the same inner wisdom that guides you when you practice intuitive eating.
Intuitive eating is the process of learning to self-coach yourself around food.
So which one is better for you—coaching or self-coaching?
Having a coach is always better. A coach helps you build confidence and maintain momentum. You’ll know where to focus and you’ll never feel lost and overwhelmed because there’s someone guiding you.
Most importantly, a coach will help you see your blind spots, the patterns you aren’t aware of yet, so you’ll know why things haven’t worked out in your own.
But what do scientific researchers say about self-coaching?
Research on Self-Coaching
If you’re torn between self-coaching and coaching, you may want to know what scientific researchers say about the different types of coaching.
Researchers from different universities in Austria and Italy conducted a study on individual, group, and self-coaching. They found individual coaching to be the most effective type of coaching.
On the other hand, research on self-coaching reveals that it is not as effective as the other two types of coaching.
However, this doesn’t mean that self-coaching is useless or that it doesn’t work.
The best thing you can do is start with a coach who will guide your first steps towards your goal and teach you to be independent. A good coach will equip you with everything you need to learn so you can later transition to self-coaching.
How to Do Self-Coaching for Intuitive Eating
As I just said earlier, you can either hire a coach or you can do self-coaching. If you choose to strike out on your own with intuitive eating, here are the steps you need to follow. This is self-coaching 101 for intuitive eating. Follow these and you’ll get a good head start:
Step 1: Find out whether intuitive eating is right for you.
Step 2: Determine whether self-coaching works for you.
Step 3: Understand how your brain functions.
Step 4: Be aware of your thoughts.
Step 5: Pick one thought and investigate it.
Step 6: Replace the thought that is not serving you with an empowering one.
Step 7: Coach yourself by reinforcing the new thought.
These steps are discussed in greater detail in the following paragraphs. If you want to focus on a particular step, you can simply click the corresponding link above.
Step 1: Find out whether intuitive eating is right for you.
To help you with that, I have created a starter kit of self-assessment for eating, body image and mindset. Download the free non-diet assessment kit and complete the eating assessment. These are actually the same assessment I use with my private clients!
So go ahead and take the test.
Step 2: Determine whether self-coaching works for you.
In the free starter kit of Non-Diet Assessments there is a second evaluation for your mindset. Take it to determine your current mindset state and if self-coaching can be of support to you.
Step 3: Understand how your brain functions.
The self-coaching model is based on the CBT framework. CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) is a type of psychotherapy that aims to change negative patterns of thinking and behavior. This framework gives us a window into how the brain works.
Here’s a graphic that shows the self-coaching model:
At the very top, you’ll see circumstance. This is an event that acts as a trigger, something that happens in your life that causes you to have thoughts and emotions that influence your behavior.
The image that you see goes through your brain and into a filter called perspective. Your perspective towards body image is shaped by your beliefs, assumptions, and past experiences.
After your brain goes through this filter, it creates a thought. Then, these thoughts create emotions. Your emotions influence your actions. Finally, your actions create a result.
When you understand how the brain works, you can use this to your advantage and influence the whole process to get the results you want. This is why understanding how your brain works is crucial in self-coaching.
Step 4: Be aware of your thoughts.
Kara Loewentheil, my mentor and the author of Unfuck Your Brain, once said, “Awareness precedes change.” So if you want to change your thoughts, you must first be aware of them.
Here’s an exercise that will help you become aware of the thoughts that influence your actions:
Grab a pen and a piece of paper. Write down your thoughts that you’re currently having around eating and/or body image.
Now, this is important: Write these thoughts down without judging them. Be in the “observer mode.” Just dump these thoughts onto a piece of paper as they come.
Step 5: Pick one thought and investigate it.
After writing down your thoughts, look for the one that comes up frequently (perhaps a recurring theme) or the one that’s most painful.
Take that thought and put it through the self-coaching model. What were the circumstances that trigger this thought? What emotions come up when this thought enters your mind? How does this thought influence your actions? What results do these actions create?
Investigating your thoughts will help you fully see the impact of your thoughts in your life. Some people skip this part, which is why they fail at self-coaching. They jump from being aware of a negative thought to changing the thought outright.
This step is essential. DO NOT skip it.
Step 6: Replace the thought that is not serving you with an empowering one.
Now that you’ve investigated the thought that has been responsible for the results that you don’t want, it’s time to replace that thought with one that empowers you.
In the previous step, you saw how your old thought led you to the results that you didn’t like by putting it through the self-coaching model. This time, you will create a new, empowering thought by applying the same model you used to investigate the old thought.
In a nutshell, this is how you do it: Create an empowering thought that generates the emotion that drives the actions needed to produce the results you want.
Step 7: Coach yourself by reinforcing the new thought.
You now know how you need to think and what you want to think. It’s your job to go and repeat that thought many times every single day. You can get creative by making a poster that reminds you of that new thought. Or you can scribble the thought on a Post-It and stick it where you’re likely to see it often.
Now, reinforcing a new thought in order to change results isn’t as easy as it sounds. It will require patience and practice. You also need to keep the motivation and momentum going, especially when you must take action. Setbacks will be inevitable, but look at them as learning opportunities rather than failures.
In the end, the benefits you reap will be well worth your patience and effort. So, keep at it!
Need support to learn self-coaching?
If you’re looking for an program to help you learn self-coaching we offer two different option: Beyond Mindset is short term program specifically focussed on teaching self-coaching.
Undiet Your Life Program is our signature intuitive eating coaching program that teaches you self-coaching techniques, along with intuitive eating and body neutrality. It also aims to equip you for self-coaching for your entire life.
Intuitive Eating and Body Image… FOR KIDS!
The foundational information you need to teach your children how to be competent eaters – with the ability to manage food, weight, & health successfully for the rest of their lives.
Majority of the women in my community share my story of being introduced to the world of dieting at an early age. And for years we believed that it’s the way to go to control our eating and improve our body image. Until such time we finally realized that diet doesn’t work. It’s just a band-aid solution to something that needs a permanent solution. We don’t want to pass this kind of relationship to food to our children. We don’t them to live their whole lives restricting, which actually brings about more craving. Instead, we want them to practice intuitive eating and learn to be competent eaters as they grow up.
But how do you raise your kids to become competent eaters and body confident? No need to Google the answer because I have the best suggestion for you.
Intuitive Eating and Body Image… FOR KIDS!
My friend and colleague, Dr. Jillian Murphy, ND, creator of The Food Freedom/Body Love Method for women, is sharing with us her 5-part podcast series on Intuitive Eating and Body Image FOR KIDS!
Recently, I interviewed Dr. Jillian on our podcast, The Going Beyond The Food Show. We covered the basics of integration of intuitive eating in a family setting. I’d suggest listening to this interview first then moving on to the specialized series below.
In this podcast series, Jill will acquaint you with the concept of Intuitive Eating for kids. She’ll introduce the Ellyn Satter Feeding Competency Model and address common misconceptions, objections, and mistakes made when implementing this model.
Here’s an overview of the podcast episodes:
- EPISODE 1: Competent Eaters. The skills and structure you need to raise competent eaters. We’ll discuss Ellyn Satter’s Division of Responsibility, why we want to raise competent (not healthy!) eaters, and the research on long term outcomes with regards to food management, weight, and health. This is the foundational theory you’ll need to move forward.
- EPISODE 2: Obstacles, Resistance & Nutrition: What about picky eaters? Compulsive eaters? WHAT ABOUT HEALTH?! We’ll trouble shoot common parental worries and discuss why HOW you feed your children is ultimately more important than WHAT you feed them.
- EPISODE 3: Understand Appetite, Weight, and How to Help your Child Without Harming. This is a BIG one. The majority of methods for helping children “manage their weight” actually backfire – resulting in children with more food issues, body image issues, and higher weights. So what to do? How can we help our children without interfering with their normal physiological processes?
- EPISODE 4: Body Talk. Learn how to talk to your children about their bodies, other bodies, and foster a sense of body confidence in your children – even while living in a thin-is-best, diet culture!
- EPISODE 5: Permission & Discipline. The key concepts you need to master in order to feed your healthy family and raise body confident, competent eaters. Here we take the theory and turn it into practical strategies you can get started with today!
Teach your Kids NOW!
Dr. Jillian Murphy is one of the Naturopathic doctors I know who shares my passion in teaching women to have a healthy relationship with food. Using a combination of research and clinical experience, she was able to discuss how parents can help their kids. Particularly, to develop intuitive eating and a positive self-body image, which they will carry until they grow up.
I highly recommend that you listen to Intuitive Eating and Body Image FOR KIDS! So, start NOW and teach your kids to become competent eaters with this 5-part podcast series.
Welcome!
I’m Stephanie Dodier
Non-Diet Nutritionist & Coach
I teach and coach women how to break free from the socialized thinking of diet culture and liberate yourself from unrelenting pressure to be thinner so that you can eat in a way that truly supports your well-being and start living the life you’ll look back on with no regrets.
Join me in leading the feminist health coaching revolution!
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