7 Essential Steps to Giving Up the Fight with Food and Your Body

So, first things first.

Notice that I said giving up the fight not giving up. This is where many people get hung up. Many people can’t fathom the idea that it doesn’t have to be a struggle, a fight, a war, hard, etc. The most common reason women tell me that they don’t love and accept themselves is that if they did, they would just be a fat, miserable mess for the rest of their lives. They think that accepting their bodies and giving up on their bodies are one in the same.

But that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

When you love and accept something, you take care of it. Like, for real.

Not starve it.

Not shove it full of crap food it doesn’t want or need.

Not skip basic hygiene.

Not exercise to the point of exhaustion, pain, or worst yet, exercising on top of pain and injury.

Not call it horrible names like fat, ugly, and worthless.

Not mentally beat the shit out of it.

Not ignore it.

Takie care of it.

Do you take care of the people you love? Yes? Then you know what to do.

So.

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about what I believe to be the essential steps in dropping the struggle and creating a truly peaceful relationship with food and your body.

7 Essential Steps to Giving Up the Fight with Food and Your Body

Step 1: Make the Choice to Have a Peaceful Relationship with Food and Your Body

Yep. It is a choice. Just like everything else is a choice. You get to decide. Do you want to be at war or in peace? You want peace, then choose peace.

Step 2: Make Peace with Peace Not Being Perfect

Having a peaceful relationship with food and your body does not mean that you life will be rainbows and butterflies from here on out. It simply means that you choose to respond to life rather than react to it. It means that you embrace all parts of life, not just the parts that are perceived as good. Being at peace with food does not mean that you will never want to overeat, binge, diet, over-exercise, buy clothes that don’t fit, or whatever. It means that you choose to behave differently when you do.

Step 3: Create Awareness of Why You Use Food and Your Body to Cope with Your Life

Ultimately, the reason you use food and your body to cope is that you have beliefs and thoughts that are creating that. Your reality is created by your thoughts. Your thoughts are created by your beliefs. So, you have to create awareness around not only your behaviors with food but the thoughts and beliefs that are driving those behaviors. For example, right now, it is likely that you probably believe that thinness will make you happier. Or that food is “comforting”. Or that, like I mentioned above, it has to be hard. Or that your body isn’t trust worthy. Or that you aren’t trust worthy.

Find those beliefs and change them.

Step 4: Feel Your Feelings Instead of Eating Them

Your behavior with food and your body is being driven by your thoughts and beliefs and so is your behavior with your emotions. Your emotions are like a steering wheel to your most amazing life. Even the ones that have been deemed as negative or bad. Perhaps you believe that you would drown in your feelings. Or that they would kill you. Or that you’d never get out of bed. Or that you’d never stop feeling “bad”.

Yeah, so all that is bullshit. Your emotions are your greatest gift and when you start to feel them instead of stuff them, your life will change in amazing ways.

Step 5: Forgive Yourself

Connect with that part of you that didn’t know a better way. Find the little girl inside who believed all those horrible things about herself. Connect with her. Wrap her in love, compassion and forgiveness. Extend that love, compassion and forgiveness into your day to day life. Every day. Choose it.

Step 6: Decide What It Is You Truly Want for Your Life

Connect with what lights you up. If you are feeling your feelings, this will be super easy. When you feel good, joyful, happy, peaceful, content – you are in alignment with what you want and what is true for you. When you feel like shit, you aren’t. Connect with your joy and do more of that.

Step 7: Do It All On Purpose Everyday

This is the part that people really easily forget, don’t want to do, or think isn’t actually necessary if they did all the rest. Well, of all the steps, this is the most important. Our brains are like a record and a record player – it very easily and automatically drops into the grooves that you’ve been reinforcing for years. You can create new grooves but you have to do that on purpose. Otherwise, you are just going to get the same old song. Write a new song and then sing it. On purpose.

What I want you to know is that it really doesn’t have to be hard. It doesn’t have to be a struggle. It doesn’t have to be a fight.

Remember, your thoughts are creating your reality. If you think it has to be all those things, it will be.

You get to decide.