More and more I’m seeing women wanting to stop yo-yo dieting for good, and leave the binge restrict cycle and the associated emotional and stress eating behind. But at the same time, they may still have weight loss goals, and want to ensure they’re still focusing on their health.

So a few weeks ago I ran a brand new mini group coaching experience called Done with Diets - and noticed a few recurring patterns that I’m sharing here with you today. Because the women I worked with had lots of knowledge and they didn’t lack discipline. The problem was that all of that wasn’t translating into action.

So in this episode we’re exploring 3 of the key hidden patterns that were dictating their relationship with food, leading to stress and emotional eating and keeping the food freedom they wanted at arms length.

And help you to start building a calmer, more balanced and intuitive relationship with food and your body.

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A few weeks ago, I ran a brand new group coaching experience called Done with Diets. And today I'm going to share with you three of the key lessons that came from that.

And honestly, it was such an eye opener for everybody who joined, because the thing is that none of them was missing knowledge.

Every single woman in there knew exactly what she should be doing, but there were missing pieces, which meant that the knowledge was not translating into action.

So together we figured out what those missing pieces were and how we could use that to help them stop outsourcing control and start rebuilding a more grounded, trusting relationship with food and their bodies. And I'm sharing that with you here today as well.

Welcome to the Busy Woman's Guide to Wellbeing, the podcast for women who are done with the hustle and are ready to feel at home in their own skin. I'm your host, Alix Life, therapeutic and fitness coach for busy women who want to do less, live more, and feel good from the inside out.

Every week I'm going to help you to cut through the noise, challenge the shoulds, and find new ways to live and move that actually feel like you. Hello. Hello. And a huge welcome back to the Busy Woman's Guide to Wellbeing.

And I'm super excited today to share with you some of the lessons that came out of the recent Done with Diets experience that I ran a few weeks ago.

So I've had a bit of time to digest what we talked about, to organize my thoughts on it, and I know that what I've got to share with you today is going to be super, super valuable if you are ready to ditch the yo yo diets and find the food freedom that has possibly been eluding you for far too long. And the experience that I ran, it was the very first time I'd done it.

It was the very first time I'd done that kind of format where it was all run through telegram.

I was dropping a daily audio into there, a sort of seven or eight minute audio into there in the morning, giving them something to think about, a bit of a theme for the day. And then a little bit later on, I was giving them a prompt to think about a certain area of their relationship with food or with their bodies.

And then they were coming back to with either a reflection on that prompt that I had given them or a question or an answer to a question that I might have asked them about their relationship with food, their relationship with their body.

And it was really, really interesting because in doing that, what it allowed me to do was to see this, this kind of range of different experiences, this range of different beliefs that everybody had.

But I think what was really interesting was that while everybody was quite individual, and I did give people individual bits of coach reflections that they had, is that there are a few key themes that kept coming out time and time and time again.

And even though I gave everybody something slightly different to work on, because obviously every woman is different, what I really saw was some really key themes coming out. And these are things that I definitely have been aware of before. They are definitely things that I've spoken to my clients about.

But I think doing it in this intensive three day experience and working with several women over that three days, it really solidified a few of these things for me and really brought home to me some of the things that were really important in this whole conversation.

And I think one of the most interesting things was that even though this experience was all about our relationship with food, we actually barely talked about food at all.

And I think that that is really telling because for a lot of us, when we think about our goals around weight, around nutrition, around wellbeing, we're focusing directly on the food. We're looking at, how can I reduce my sugar cravings? How many calories am I supposed to be eating? On eating plenty of protein.

So we feel fuller for longer, right? We know all of that stuff, we have all of that knowledge.

But what became really clear to me over these three days, even more clear because I did know this already, is that what we're really missing is the deeper foundations, the deeper foundations that really dictate our relationship with food and our relationship with ourselves.

And the problem is that when we focus on the hacks, on the willpower and the motivation, on managing cravings, cravings and all of those kind of things, we're missing that bigger picture.

We're missing a much, much more fundamental and important piece of the conversation, which is actually around things like identity and self worth and boundaries and nervous system patterns. Because the thing is, our relationship with food is a microcosm of our relationship with literally everything else.

And that's why we can't look at it in isolation. That's why I can't sit in front of you and say, if you just do this, you'll stop craving food. If you do that, you won't eat emotionally so much.

If you do this, then that's going to stop the comfort eating. Me doing that would be essentially selling you a lie. Because what we need goes deeper.

What we need, like I say, has got common themes but is individual to each and every one of us in terms of how. How we deal with that in the context of our own lives. And I think that is such an important thing that I want you to take away from this.

Because if you feel like you are battling it all the. If you feel like you're fighting against your body, if you feel like you. You know what to do, but you can't seem to make yourself do it.

If you feel that you're always having to go back to the start again, it's not because you don't have the willpower. It's not because you don't have the right strategy. It's because you have not dealt with the deeper stuff.

You haven't dealt with that relationship with yourself. And a really honest reckoning is required for this, is required if we are going to change the way we think about things.

And what was really interesting to me, and it's not the first time that people have said this, but. But the women that were in there, in that group, you know, they would say to me, I've never thought about it like that before.

I've never considered that before. I've never even thought about that as having an impact on my relationship with food.

And yet when I bring that to people, they can look at it and they can go, but it makes absolute sense. I totally understand why that would put me in this position and why that makes me feel like I'm never achieving anything.

And I am very aware of my weaknesses, but I'm also very aware of my strengths.

And one of my strengths is to be able to very quickly laser focus on the couple of things that are going to make the biggest shifts for somebody that are going to take somebody towards that transformation. What is the thing that means you are not making progress?

And when we do that and when I help women with that and I point that out for them, they will say to me, I'd never thought of it, but it makes complete sense.

And that's the thing, what I want to do in today's episode is reopen your eyes to other things that go way beyond the stuff that you are focusing on right on right now.

And so we're going to change that focus and we're going to look at what are some of these things that you do actually need to be looking at that you do actually need to be focusing on that are going to help you.

So I think the first thing was identity work, because who we believe we are and what we believe we deserve is going to directly drive how we interact with food and with our bodies. So what this does when we start to get into identity work is it takes us away from just focusing on behavior change.

Now, don't get me wrong, behavior change is important, but behavior change has to have a foundation in who we are and what we believe we deserve. Because if we don't have that in place, then behavior change is going to be sticking a plaster over something and not actually solving the problem.

You know, like when your kids are little and they bump their knee and they've got a little bruise and they want a plaster to make them feel better. And of course you do it because placebo effect, you're like, there you go.

You're going to feel better now, but you're like a plaster is going to do absolutely sod all for your bruise. This is the same thing. We can focus on behavior change. We can focus on the individual little things that we need to be doing to.

To get where we want to go, whether it's focusing on our protein intake or whether it's managing sugar cravings or whatever that thing might be. But we need to have the identity work underneath that to act as the foundation for all of those things.

It's going to make behavior change so much more easy and so much less frustrating for us.

So just to give you an example, you may identify as somebody who can't be trusted around food, or you might identify as somebody who always has to watch what they eat, or else you just pile a load of weight on. Or you might identify as somebody who only needs to look at a slice of cake and I put three pounds on. How many times have you heard.

Heard people say that? Clearly it's a load of rubbish. But that stuff, we might joke about it, but that stuff is worming its way into our brain.

And it's saying you can't even look at a slice of cake, let alone eat one, because you'll just be really fat if you do that. So that's part of our identity. You might identify as somebody who's just never happy with their body.

You know, if you've been doing this for 30 years, you've been dieting for 30 years, you're identifying as somebody who doesn't like their body and never has. So all of those things feed directly into our identity, and that in turn feeds directly into the actions that we take every single day.

So if we have an identity of I can't be trusted around food, or I'm someone who can't be trusted around food, then food is always going to create anxiety. Food is always going to create distrust.

You're always going to feel like you're having to manage it and you're having to manage yourself around food because that is so tied up in your identity, on your beliefs about who you are and what is possible for you. And if freedom around food doesn't matter, truly feel possible for you, you're never going to get there.

You have got to create the belief that that is something that you can have, that is something that you deserve.

And if at the moment your identity is saying you don't deserve that, you can't have that, then of course it's always going to be a battle and it's going to feed into how you feel about yourself. And the thing is, what we do as humans is we tend to try and confirm the things that we, we think to be true around our identity.

We're very attached to our ident, to who we think we are. And so our brain is always going to fight for the existing identity because it wants to confirm that it is in fact, right?

So when you go and have that biscuit and your identity or part of your belief is, well, I can't just have one, I'll end up having the whole packet. Then you end up playing into that. That's exactly what you end up doing. And then that confirms again, you see, you can't be trusted around food.

And so that identity just keeps perpetuating itself because you believe that that's the case. And so you take an action that proves that is the case. And that proof plays right into you See, I knew it. I can't be trusted around food.

And so sounds ridiculous and it feels ridiculous. And you're sitting there thinking, how can that possibly be true?

But I want you to be really honest about how is that playing out in your life right now? What is your identity around food? What is your identity around your body?

Do you keep repeating the things that confirm to you over and over and over again that that is in fact true, that that is in fact your identity? Does it keep you running towards those things? I'm gonna take a wild guess that yes. It just creates more of that.

It draws attention to that thing and you create more of it. So what we really need to be looking at is what, what is the identity I am stepping into?

Am I gonna keep hanging onto that identity of if I eat one biscuit, I'll eat the whole packet, or am I gonna start to lean into the identity of I'm a woman who trusts herself around food and who can enjoy a biscuit or two if and when she wants to. So what you do then is you start to. You start to like, almost create a new contract with yourself.

You start to create a new sense of, of actually who you are. And that's the thing. Once you start to consciously create that identity, you start to take action that aligns more closely with that identity.

If you continue to allow yourself to perpetuate those old negative identities, that's what you're going to keep more of.

If you allow yourself to step into something new, if you allow yourself to step into the identity of being somebody who trusts itself around food, being somebody who is okay with her body as it is, then you start to make decisions from a different place. You are going to start to try to want to try and prove that new identity, right? So have a think about that.

Have a think about, you know, be honest about how is that playing out in your life right now. And then what you can do, like I say, is really think about. I am the woman who. I am the woman who listens to her body.

I am the woman who doesn't need rules to feel in control. I am the woman who moves her body in ways that feel good. I am the woman that trusts herself around food. So what is that for you?

And how is that going to start to inform the way that you, you make decisions and that you react to stuff? So that's number one. Number two, the second part that came out really, really deeply was self compassion.

With everybody I've ever worked with, I think self compassion has been a. A stumbling block, let's put it that way. And the truth is we tend to not hold a lot of compassion and kindness for ourselves.

And we often seem to believe that transformation is only going to happen when we are really tough with ourselves.

When we look at what we're doing wrong, when we see the weight that we've allowed to creep on, when we see our lack of discipline or inability to stick with things, when we see ourselves as unhealthy because of our weight, we can be incredibly hard on ourselves and hyper focus on these things. And it's.

It's almost like we're trying to punish ourselves into progress, that if we can be mean enough to ourselves that we'll finally grow a backbone and do something about it. But in my experience, that never works out well.

It is always going to backfire because it keeps us in that cycle of feeling disappointed with ourselves. It keeps us being hard on ourselves. It keeps us feeling like we're never doing Enough. And it's. It's kind of similar to the identity piece in that.

In that if we keep focusing on all the stuff that is wrong, if we keep focusing on being hard on ourselves, then we just bring more and more of that to ourselves. And honestly, it's got to stop. We've got to stop being so freaking mean to ourselves.

We have got to be able to hold compassion for ourselves exactly as we are. Because honestly, when you take action out of compassion, that looks very different to the action that you take out of pressure.

It starts to feel very different.

It starts to open up that little crack of space that allows you to soften a little bit, to judge yourself a little bit less, to show a bit more understanding for yourself and why you are where you are. And when you do that, it leads to more consistency, it leads to more curiosity. It reduces the stress that you feel around food.

It makes decisions feel easier.

It reduces the need for the emotional eating because instead of using food to comfort yourself, because you're basically beating yourself up all the time, you've already decided that you can look after yourself in other ways, that you can be more compassionate with yourself, that you can. You can be okay with yourself. And I've talked about this before.

I won't go into huge depth in it, but I think this is one of the B's I get in my bonnet around self acceptance. Because we often think self acceptance means that I've given up. Self acceptance means that I will never change.

Self acceptance means that to stay fat forever or what, whatever that might mean for you. But it's not about that. It's about being able to hold space for yourself as you are. It's being able to hold compassion for yourself as you are.

It's about saying, hey, look, I'm here, and that's okay. The place that I am at is because of the collection of experiences that I've had in my life.

And I can hold kindness for myself around that in the same way that I would for a friend, in the same way that I would for my daughter. And once you can do that, like I say, you start making decisions from a very different place all of a sudden. It's not decisions from pressure.

It's not decisions because if I'm mean enough to myself, then I'll make the right choice. It's decisions from what is going to be good for me, what is going to feel good for me at this point in time.

And doing it from a place of I'm okay as I am. I accept myself as I am. Doesn't mean you have to stop, stop changing. You can absolutely keep changing while you hold compassion for yourself.

But it's just approaching things at a different angle. And I just, that was such an important part of the puzzle for me. And like I say, this was not it just in done with diets.

This is probably in every single woman I've ever worked with around relationships with food, relationships with their body. So to bring that self compassion in, I just really want you to ask yourself, what would I say to my daughter?

What would I say to a friend if she was in that particular moment that you are in where you're being really hard on yourself? How would you show compassion for her? And how can you then turn that inwards on yourself?

Because when, when you don't allow for that, you're not being fair on yourself. You're not giving yourself what you would give to other people.

And you know, you know that if your daughter was to come to you and start saying some of the things that you say about yourself, you absolutely, you would not stand for that. You would not allow that kind of talk and you would know that that is not productive. And yet you do it to yourself. So where's the self compassion?

Get working on that one. And then that leads me on to trust.

And again, I've spoken about this before because for me trust, it's the linchpin and it's the difference between those who are reaching their goals and those who aren't. It's self trust.

Because again, every woman I worked with knew exactly what she should be eating, she knew how she should be exercising, all of those things. Knowledge was not the issue. But there was definitely something going on around a lack of trust.

Not trusting hunger, not trusting full, not trusting cravings, not trusting the need for rest, not trusting themselves without the rules. And we all do this, don't we? Diet has become our safety net because we have stopped trusting ourselves.

We feel that we have to outsource it to something or someone else. We have to outsource it to the calorie counter, we have to outsource it to the diet, we have to outsource it to the workout plan or whatever.

We need somebody to tell us exactly what to do because we're not not doing it ourselves. And there's something wrong with us. And that's the place that we go to.

And that just perpetuates that, that loss of trust, we lose that connection with ourselves, we lose that ability to make decisions based on what we actually need. And we start Second guessing ourselves, we start using food as an emotional crutch, we end up in a reactive relationship with food as well.

So starting to bring trust back to ourselves is absolutely key. Because when we trust ourselves, we feel safe in our body. And when we feel safe in our body, we make better decisions.

And we have got to make better decisions or we have got to trust the decisions that we're making about ourselves. This is so, so, so important. So this, I mean, you know, the self trust, it's a big piece.

And actually the other things that I've talked about today around self compassion and identity and things that, that all feeds into this sense of self trust. But suffice to say that when I work with women in this area, trust is what I, what I want them to achieve.

Trust is what I want them to feel in themselves. I'm not here to tell you what to do.

I am here to open the door to the trust that you can have with yourself and to the knowledge you already have of yourself that you are denying right now. So how can you start to bring trust back to yourself?

And you know, the really the most simple way of doing this is just to start tuning into your body again. Tuning into hunger, tuning into fullness, tuning into energy levels, tuning into emotions. Because we've distanced ourselves from those.

Because we don't necessarily trust the way that they ebb and flow and change all the time. But we need to tune back into that. We need to allow the ebb and flow of all of those things. We need to get curious about what's happening.

We need to start showing our body that we are willing to listen. We need to start showing our body that we are willing to start trusting. So, so those are the big things.

But I think the big thing for me is food is not something to fight. Your body is not something to fight. And I think many of us are in a relationship where it has turned into a battle.

So what we really need to be doing is looking at where can I bring in more trust, where can I bring in more compassion so that you can actually start to work with your body and remember that the way you are with food, it's simply a mirror. It's simply a mirror to everything else in your life.

And that usually means that there are things underneath that, that which need a little bit of attention paying to. And we really got into that and done with diets.

I was reflecting back to each person what it was that they needed to start paying attention to things that they had not paid attention to before. And it created a lot of aha moments and it was very eye opening for a lot of the people in there.

It really opened their eyes to looking at things and seeing things and making sense of things in a very different way. And you know, in the end, I didn't send a single person away with tips on how to manage their food intake or how to stay fuller for longer. Right.

We didn't do any of that. That is not what these women need.

But they all walked away with an individual area to work on, whether it was identity or self compassion or whether it was around boundaries or self worth, for example, because that stuff certainly came into the mix as well. So this stuff lies a lot deeper than you realize.

And when you are willing to start looking at that, you start to notice the change in how you relate to yourself. Not just food in your body, but in every other area of your life as well. And remember, your identity is going to shape your actions.

More compassion is going to fuel more consistency. And that self trust is the thing that is going to anchor that long term change.

That is when, when we've got that in place, that's when we start to put the strategies on top. That's when we start to put all of those bits on top of that, when we start to do the behavior change.

So identify which one of those needs the most work for you. Don't try and do it all at once and get started. Because. Because just like the woman I worked with the other week, you are not broken.

You're just following a few outdated rules and you just need that little shift of perspective to start seeing things a bit differently. But anyway, keep your eyes peeled because I will do done with diets again at some point in the future.

I don't know when yet, but I am going to do it again. It's been an amazing experience. I actually really loved doing it and it was like I say, really eye opening.

So keep your eye peeled for that in the future. But for now I am going to love you and leave you and I'll see you back here again next time. Thank you as always for joining me.

If this episode has hit home, share it with another woman who needs to hear it and come connect with me on Instagram at Life Edit with Alix for more real talk, mindset shifts and daily inspiration.