Healthy Weight Loss 101: The First Step to Breaking Free from Overeating

What should you eat to lose weight?

How much energy have you devoted to this question? Low carb? Raw food? Jenny Craig? Women spend billions of dollars on weight loss, and create a lot of stress making decisions about which diet or weight loss plan to try this time. It’s ironic, because deep down, we know that diets don’t work. And in fact, many of us have lived out the lesson that diets can lead to binge eating and weight gain and bigger problems with food than we started with.

It’s not hopeless. Healthy weight loss and what I call peace with food are possible, but they don’t begin with a diet.

Here’s the important truth:

The battle with overeating isn’t going to be solved by a diet because the root battle with most overeating isn’t about the food.

If you want to break free from overeating cycles and weight loss battles, the critical question you need to be asking is this: What are you using the food for?

• What’s triggering you to overeat?
  
• What propels you towards the vending machine or sends you straight for the comfort food?
  
• What role does food play in your life?
  
• How does your current way of eating serve you?
  

THESE are the million dollar questions. The truth is, you are smart and resourceful and you better believe that you are turning to food for a reason.

The way you are currently eating does something important for you.

Maybe your eating distracts you or comforts you. Food might momentarily boost your mood or your energy. Maybe you use it to procrastinate or hide out or reward yourself. Are you eating to cope with stress or frustration or exhaustion? Be curious about your hunger and the reasons that you eat.

Understanding the meaning of your overeating changes everything. Understanding the purpose of your overeating helps you move beyond unhelpful self-blame and shame and guilt and into a place of compassionate understanding. From this place it’s possible to start addressing the real root causes.

Because it’s probably not about the food.

If you are a stress eater, you’ll want some more effective tools for addressing the stress in your life. Comfort eater? With the right tools, you can definitely find a better way. Exhausted? Overwhelmed? Nervous? Upset? There are better tools and strategies to address these feelings. And the truth is, once you have the tools and strategies to feel effective, food just doesn’t have the same appeal. Really.

Effective weight loss doesn’t start with the food—and—when you address the root cause of your overeating, you don’t just change your weight. You change your life.