From the first moments of your life, as you suckled, you were perfectly set-up to connect with food as a health-enhancing, nurturing experience. That really is the incredible value that food can and should still bring to your life as an adult, but conditioning from outside influences has got in the way of that beautiful relationship. 

When you were a young child food was used as a reward, or very likely a means to soothe you in response to any hurt or upset encountered. And so, beyond the time of weaning, the pattern was reinforced in your brain that “food helps me to feel better”. It’s not likely you were taught to simply experience your feelings, because in honesty, who’s ever been taught that in the cultural landscape we find ourselves in?

Through the years of your childhood, you became aware of people around you - maybe family members or friends - adopting the language food restriction, probably as a means to manage weight or health. You absorbed their comments about specific foods, calories, and so on, being ‘bad’ or ‘fattening’ as you travelled through your adolescence and beyond. You were programmed to believe that someone’s self-worth was directly linked to their weight or ability to ‘stick with the plan’, and that was further entrenched when you witnessed praise being heaped on those who had willpower enough to follow the ‘prescribed diet’.

It was insidious.

You were carried along with it. It was imprinted that this is just the way it has to be. 

But all the while the message was mixed, and totally confusing, because all the ‘wrong’ foods were the ones people seemed to want; to miss; to pine after. These foods tended to be the ones that were linked with a ‘treat’ and feeling ‘better’.

"That’s why the willpower piece is sooo important."

Now, as an adult, you just desperately wish you could be better at the willpower part.

Today, those uncomfortable feelings telling you that you like sweet, comforting foods just won’t go away, and you find yourself having ‘treats', especially when you’re bored, experiencing a difficult day, or even when you just plain ‘deserve’ it. But your years of conditioning have taught you to not enjoy these moments for long, because they are ‘bad’, right? That pacifying feeling you are searching for is laced with guilt and self loathing, as you recognise you’ve let yourself down. Again. 

Throw into the mix all of the differing rules from the diet books, what you’re seeing on social media, and the ‘perfect’ lifestyle of those you aspire to be, and it all just becomes too much. 

You’re left overwhelmed, confused, and constantly consumed and preoccupied by thoughts about what you should or shouldn’t be doing. There is just no clear direction anymore! You’ve tried the diets, and while some worked for a time, none of them were sustainable, and all have added to the noise in your head. It’s crowded in there!

It shouldn’t be like this.

You’re a capable, intelligent woman, and you understand what success looks and feels like in many areas of your life. If only you could just feel happy and at peace with food and your body. You want to be healthy and feel good, and there are plenty of areas of your life where there is much to celebrate. You understand that your life is wonderful in so many ways, but the food part is always there, niggling away.