As a person with a long history of dieting and failing, I can tell you that diets don't work. The reason is simple. They don't consider the fact that we are human beings with complex needs and desires, as well as an inner wisdom that can guide us to know what we really need. The Holistic Approach to Eating includes the whole person - with physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs. Its unique value is that it creates lasting results, because it gives you an opportunity to meet all of your needs in an appropriate way. After over 20 years of dieting, I was finally able to achieve and maintain my ideal weight permanently using this approach.
It is interesting to ask people with weight problems why they eat. There are usually a lot of reasons and hunger is generally towards the bottom of the list. Holistically, this is seen as an imbalance, where they are trying to fill emotional, mental and even spiritual needs with food, often torturing the body as a result.
If you have a problem with weight and can see that this is true for you, the following tips can provide a way for you to begin to sort this out and bring yourself into balance. You can learn more about what your needs are and find appropriate ways to fill them, so that you will only be trying to fill the needs of your body with food.
1. LOVE AND NURTURE YOURSELF REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU WEIGH. Dieting has taught most of us that we are failures and lack self-control. That is the exact opposite of the truth. All of our problems in life are all related to how we feel about ourselves. And the way we treat ourselves is an external reflection of this frequently delicate sense of Self. When we feel good about ourselves, we can see that we deserve to treat ourselves well. When we feel bad about ourselves, we tend to treat ourselves badly.
On a spiritual level, the truth is that each human being is unique and has wonderful gifts to offer in their lives. This is true regardless of what you weigh. A good first step is to begin to do little things to love and nurture your self each day. I like to take a bubble bath now and then, to go shopping (not as much to buy as to enjoy looking at pretty things) and take leisurely walks in nature. You don't have to do big things or spend a lot of money. It can be as simple as allowing your self to take a break at work and get some fresh air, but it helps to do nice things for yourself each day.
2. CONNECT WITH YOUR BODY'S INNER WISDOM. This is the real key to reaching and maintaining your ideal weight for life. All of the other tips relate to the basic truth that your body deserves to love itself, knows what it needs and will communicate with you if you are willing to listen. If you can learn to eat what your body needs, you will naturally gravitate to your ideal weight. This may take practice, but it is the key to lasting success in any weight management program.
3. EAT WHEN YOU ARE HUNGRY AND STOP BEFORE YOU FEEL TOO FULL. When your body needs food, it begins to give you hunger messages and produces digestive juices. You don't want to eat every time you have a little twinge of hunger, but when you have a healthy hunger, your body is telling you that it is time to eat. If you eat then and stop when you are satisfied, which is before you feel too full, this will produce good digestion and your body will tend to gravitate to its ideal weight.
If, on the other hand, you do not listen to the messages from your body, you are negating your inner wisdom and certainly not nurturing yourself. You are sending the message that your body's inner wisdom is wrong. And when you allow yourself to become too hungry, your body goes into survival mode and tends to overeat.
4. DON'T EAT WHEN YOU ARE NOT HUNGRY. People do not generally become heavy by eating when they are hungry, so the real trick is not to eat when you are not hungry.
When I was heavy, food was my strategy for filling my needs, and hunger was only one need on a long list. If I were stressed, bored, nervous, unhappy, afraid, etc., I would eat. It did not actually fill these needs, so the real point was that I needed to learn other strategies to deal with them. For instance, if I was unable to solve a problem at work, instead of eating, I needed to find something else to do. I found that getting away from my desk and taking a few breaths of fresh air or a glass of fresh water worked better than a few cookies.
5. GET TO KNOW YOUR REASONS FOR EATING. In its deepest sense, the journey to your ideal weight is a journey of self-discovery. If you find yourself eating when you know your body is not hungry, you have an opportunity to learn something about yourself. What need were you trying to fill with food? If you can examine what happened and find a more productive way to fill that need, you will not find yourself trying to fill it with food in the future.
6. ELIMINATE SELF-JUDGMENT AND THE POSSIBILITY OF FAILURE. When you begin to look at weight loss as a journey of self-discovery and closely examine your reasons for eating, you may be entering uncharted territory. It is important not to judge your behavior and to eliminate the possibility of failure. The more you learn about yourself, the easier it will become to follow your body's inner wisdom, so there is only the possibility for greater and greater success.
It can help to look at yourself as an interesting stranger or pretend that you are a detective working on a case. This way, you can separate the behavior you observe from your sense of Self and look at it in a more objective way.
7. EAT WHAT YOU WANT TO EAT. I love the saying "You can never get enough of what you don't want." I can remember when I used to carry bags of raw carrots with me and eat them for snacks. There is nothing inherently wrong with raw carrots, but when what you really want is a peanut butter sandwich, you will never get enough raw carrots to fill that desire. I would dutifully eat a few raw carrots, then a few more and more, then give up and try to fill the desire with another food, like celery or fruit. Eventually I would give up and stuff myself with food until I felt sick, but I would never feel satisfied.
It is much better to ask yourself what you want to eat when you get hungry and eat those foods until you feel satisfied. Bingeing is largely related to taboos. If you eliminate all of the taboos and eat what you want, your body will learn over time that you can have anything and you will gravitate to the foods you need to maintain good health.
8. DON'T SNEAK FOOD. If you find that you do not want others to see that you are eating, there is some shame underlying the desire to hide. On the other hand, if you feel good about yourself and what you are doing, there is no reason to want to hide it. So it is important to eat in the open, and notice what you are trying to hide if you feel the desire to sneak.
9. DON'T USE YOUR SCALE TO "WEIGH" YOUR SUCCESS. When I was dieting, I would weigh myself daily and make note of every minute change on the scale. In particular, I would weigh myself when I was "bad", like if I went out and had a big dinner. Instead of feeling good, I would end up concluding that I had failed, which would make me want to eat more.
To eliminate this pattern, I recommend weighing yourself once a week or less.
10. DON'T LET OTHER PEOPLE CONTROL WHAT YOU EAT. We are all influenced by our families, friends and business associates. We are also bombarded with advertising. You cannot allow any of this to distract you from relying on your body's inner wisdom to guide you with what and when you eat. In our society, eating food has become a recreational experience and there are more opportunities to eat than you can take if you want to be sensitive to your body and reach and maintain your ideal weight.
In addition, some people may actually want you to stay heavy. For example: a person who comes from a family of people who are generally overweight may find that the family members want him or her to stay heavy to maintain a sense of belonging. Or a husband may want his wife to stay heavy to keep other men away from her. It can be helpful to imagine how you would feel with the people you care about if you achieved your ideal weight and to understand how this influences your eating habits.
A final note: this Holistic Approach also builds in future success. We all know that life continues to bring new challenges. When this happens, you may temporarily lose your balance and begin to gain weight. But you also know that you will have the tools you need to deal with it. By re-examining your needs and finding appropriate ways to fill them, you can quickly bring yourself back into balance and maintain your ideal weight for life.
Jane Mountrose's booklet, The Holistic Approach To Eating: Lose Extra Weight and Keep It Off For Life, provides more specific tools with a four-week plan, written exercises and guided visualization processes to help you to move quickly on your journey to success.
