There’s a common conversation I have with about 1/3 of my coaching clients, that usually starts something like this:
“I just started my food journal, and I feel like a failure and I hate my body more.
I don’t want to be all about forcing myself to compare my body to the media or to have my fitness be all about looking a certain way.
Even more I don’t want my daughter to feel like this about her body.
Is this a cop-out for not keeping a food journal? Is it ok to just focus on health? What would that look like?
Are these crazy questions to ask?
And the following is an email I just sent to one of my clients, verbatim.
I’ve written so many versions to online clients, so many times, I’ve had this conversation in person with gym clients or on the phone with phone clients – it keeps coming up because this is a really important inquiry to be in, and it comes up for so many people.
AWESOME!!!!!!
This is absolutely THE BEST inquiry to be in!!!!!
So three things –
1.) We TOTALLY can work on having a better relationship towards food!!!!2.) We totally can shift the context from size to health!!!!3.) Both of those totally are a cop-out for tracking!!!!
TRACKING:
So I like to use money as a metaphor – because everyone can relate to it, and it’s easy to count.
Some people are totally obsessed with money at the cost of everything else in their lives – obviously that’s bad.
Some people never think about money at all – they don’t balance their checkbook, they miss meals, ect. For basic financial health, that totally doesn’t work either.
Tracking food is all about CONTEXT. If someone came to me and said that they wanted to eat HEALTHIER – we ABSOLUTELY would track their food. Your food journal is your checkbook register for your food. If you want to pay your bills, you need to know what’s in your bank account. It would be crazy to never look at your bank account, and just hope for the best.
RELATIONSHIP TO FOOD:
As far as relationship to food – here is the fun/hard part – it’s all made up. We could argue about what’s been given to you by the media, your peers, ect, but what you have now – wherever you got it from – is now your job to either keep feeding, or to feed something else.
For relationship to food I like to use that old arapahoe indian parable “There are two wolves fighting inside me, one is greed, fear and anger, and the other is generosity, love and kindness. Which one will win? The one I feed.”
It’s the same way for body image:
Wolf #1: Talking to yourself about hating parts of your body, constant comparison to others/media, trying to dominate your body, trying to use your body as a tool for acceptance.
Wolf #2: Appreciating all your body does, focusing on your favorite parts of your body, practicinggratitude for your body, cutting yourself off when negative body thoughts pop up (they never stop popping up, you just stop feeding them), being proud of your body, and being inspired by what your body can do.
And we can play the same game about food:
Wolf #1: Being resentful of eating healthy food, feeding thoughts of missing out because not eating crap, justifying being lazy about healthy food, talking about how hard it is to eat healthy, complainingabout how healthy food isn’t what you really want.
Wolf #2: Appreciating how healthy food makes you feel, focusing on your favorite healthy foods, practicing gratitude for getting to eat healthy food, cutting yourself off when negative food thoughts pop up (they never stop popping up, you just stop feeding them), being proud of eating in a way that fuels a strong healthy body, and being inspired by what eating good food does for you.
There’s a really great book on cognitive therapy for body image and food called The Beck Diet Solution. The short version is this: Mostly we have a bunch of really shitty pre-programmed thoughts and ideas about food and body image, and we actually need to cut ourselves off and practice new thoughts. And it has a bunch of structures for doing that.
Here is what I am going to have you start with:
1.) Write your food journal down, instead of using myfitnesspal. You are going to take a picture of your written food journal, and email it to me every day.
2.) In your journal, besides what you ate – you are going to write down how you felt – if eating that way made you feel better or worse (like, energy, fullness, ect.) and you can even put any other feelings you had about food that day.
3.) Gratitude practice: Every day, you have to finish your journal with one thing you really love about your body. It can be anything, but I want you to really do the work on this one. Find something. It could be you like the way your hair looks today, or it could be that you are happy you could do lunges, or you are happy that you have eyes to see that beautiful sunset. Whatever it is, find something and write it down. Gratitude about your body is going to be one of your most importantdisciplines.
4.) Focus on that word discipline: One of the quickest and easiest ways to add
feeling good about your body is to add discipline:
1.) Discipline about healthy food2.) Discipline about maintaining a strong body (workouts)3.) Discipline about daily gratitude
Focus on your disciplines (what you do) vs anything else. People actually have way healthier feelings and thoughts about their body from their disciplines than they do from any kind of results.
P.S. This is the BEST kind of work you can be doing!!!!! Sooooooooooo great!!!!!!!
Josh
*Important Note: Scope of practice and referring out:
As a trainer, I feel like it’s the responsibility of every professional to know when to refer out, and I refer out gladly. If a client hurts their knee skiing and comes in and asks me to fix it, I’m going to refer them out to a Physical Therapist immediately. And I feel exactly the same way about coaching relationship to food and body.
As a trainer, I’m totally within my scope to help people who have all of the normal kinds of body and food conversations that healthy folks deal with. That being said, if someone gets “stuck” with body image or relationship to food, I immediately refer out to counselors or psychologists. I love to work as a team with someone’s mental health professional when appropriate.
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