Coaching rebellious eating with your clients requires the same set of skills that you use to coach any human behaviour.
Our clients hire us to solve a problem. In this case, it’s to find a solution to the rebellious behaviour they’re experiencing.
If you are craving the solution to coaching rebellious eating – that is a normal human reaction.
However, as coaches, we need to coach the human behaviour, regardless of whether it’s rebellious eating or something else.
COACHING REBELLIOUS EATING: UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
In order to coach your client’s behaviour, you must first understand WHY the behaviour is present in them.
Rebellious eating is a refusal of obedience for your client – resisting authority. It’s an action created by the brain to affirm one’s power.
Rebellious eating is not about the food for your client – it is simply a medium that the human brain is using to affirm one’s power.
It is a behaviour that is created mostly from that rebellious emotion (i.e, anger, resentment) that your client is experiencing as a result of food rules and diet culture.
The truth is, your client isn’t rebelling against the rules, they’re rebelling against their own thoughts about the rules.
At the end of the day, your client’s rebellious eating is about fighting for their autonomy and agency.
COACHING REBELLIOUS EATING: THE “SOLUTION”
The first thing you need to help your client with is awareness. First, the awareness of what they are rebelling against. They also need to build awareness of their innate wisdom and how to tap into that wisdom.
Your client has everything they need to be autonomous. That is, until they give up control to external guidance, which requires them to deny their innate wisdom.
Secondly, you need to help your client understand WHY they believe that they need external control. This is where you investigate the thoughts and beliefs that guide them towards external methods of control.
Ultimately, the work here is for your client to unlearn what conditioned the mind, in order for them to stop fighting themselves.
As a coach, you need to help them understand what is and present that to them with consent. Then, together you can reprogram their mind to the new beliefs and thoughts that will end rebellious eating.
Your job is to stay with them until they HAVE the desired behaviour.
What you’ll learn listening to this episode:
- Understand WHY your client is rebellious eating
- What rebellious eating is actually about for your client
- The two things you need to help your client with rebellious eating
- The role of awareness in ending rebellious eating
