Diet War Got You Down? How a Feminine Touch Can Make All the Difference

I posed this question the other day, and I’d love to see what YOU think…

If someone told you that there was some GREAT business out there to invest in…but it had a 99% failure rate (translation: it was almost certain that you would lose everything you put into it), would you invest in it?

I’m guessing the answer is a definitive NO.

But guess what?

That’s basically what we do when we choose to go on a diet.

Diets have a 98-99% failure rate, meaning most peeps who go on one gain all the weight they lost or MORE back within a year.

Yet, time and time again, we invest our hard earned cash, time, energy, and even our desires into them.

It sounds so insane when we see the hard, cold facts, but yet we keep searching…
searching to find the perfect diet, the perfect workout, the magic pill that will make our weight-loss fantasy a reality.

See, as a nation, we are really great at LOSING weight. I’m sure you can name many programs you have done where you did indeed lose weight. But that’s not the issue. The reason the search continues is because we haven’t found weight-loss “systems” that are sustainable and lasting.

There are some big reason whys and one of them is this…

Diets rely solely on a very masculine approach to weight-loss and the body.

What do I mean by that?

Think about it. Diets by nature are all about strict rules, numbers, counting, measurement, facts, systems, and extreme exercise.

We are taught through these programs that we can not trust our bodies, we can not trust ourselves around food, and that the body is something that must be controlled as well. We are fed the idea that we must rely on some outside system to tell us how much we can eat, what works for our bodies, and that in order to love our bodies, we first must whip it into shape.

It’s a “by any means necessary” kind of approach, based on force, control, and even suffering. Take a closer look at the language that is used in the multi-billion dollar industry around body, weight, and food:

Fight Your Hunger
Incenerate Fat
Battle of the Bulge
No Pain No Gain
Whip Yourself Into Shape

Do you see a trend here? I don’t hear much about compassion, about working with your body. Feels like we are going to war or something!

Reality check: Anything you try to force into submission will eventually say “ENOUGH OF THIS” and either shut down to protect or defend itself another way.

This includes your body. So yes, you can fight against her for awhile, you can fight against her innate desire for pleasure, her natural sensations of hunger. You can even change her shape via struggle and punishing exercises, but she will do what it takes to protect herself and get her needs met in the end.

Sometimes I get flack for my open disgust for Weight Watchers. Well yesterday I saw a photo outside their meeting spot that read “Lose Weight…Fight Your Hunger.”

Perfect example of what I am talking about. You can’t “fight your hunger”, nor should you. It’s natural for your body to get hungry and desire food. This kind of backwards thinking is exactly what is keeping us stuck around food, weight, or working with our bodies. Once again, what you fight will come back to defend itself.

We are in deep need to bring more of the feminine into the equation.

Here’s what I mean. What if we thought more about what foods actually NOURISH the body instead of what their calorie or point count was? What if we could learn to listen to our bodies and trust her body wisdom?

What if hunger meant we needed to be re-fueled or needed better quality food, not that there was some enemy inside of us that needed to be destroyed? What if we learned to move our bodies in a way that filled up us with joy,excitement, and compassion?

What if we allowed ourselves to love our bodies, ourselves, so much that we naturally eat, move, and live in a way that supports her?

What if we no longer allowed a scale to measure or worth? And what if we were given permission to actually explore the emotional reasons why we might be holding on to weight instead of just trying to get rid of it? This is the feminine way to releasing weight, connecting to the body and to food.

I’m thinking there would be a lot more truly healthy and happy people out there, male and female alike.

It’s not to say that the masculine ways don’t have their place. Sometimes we do need a straight-up nutritional shift. Sometimes we might have a food allergy, we take the food out, and wow…we start to feel better and even find our weight starts to shift. Sometimes we love a good challenge…maybe bootcamp is your thing and it feels you up with joy. Awesome. Do what lights you up.

But as it is now, the way we have been going about it all, is WAY out of balance.

And the statisitcs show it isn’t working. So isn’t time to stop doing it the same old way and be open to a new approach? Let the feminine way to start to move her way through you to create lasting change built on compassion, respect, and a willingness to listen to the body instead of fighting her.

Afraid it won’t work? After years of dieting and struggling around food and your body, what is there to lose…except the diet struggle itself?

If you are feeling me on this, then I’d LOVE for you to do a couple of things:
1) In the comments below, tell me your thoughts, especially how you are going to bring in more of the feminine into how you relate to food and your body.

2) Share this post if it touched you in any way. Email it to a friend or post it on Facebook. Tweet it. The more we get the message out, the better. YOU can be an agent of change.

And if you want to take your own evolution further, are ready to break free from the diet cycle and stop putting your life on hold until you are the “perfect weight”, then I invite you to sign on up for my Body Freedom Breakthrough Package. (You can learn all about it HERE). It’s an amazing way to start to put these feminine principles into practice and get incredible support in the process. I’d love to work with you!

With all my love,