Hey y’all, today’s episode is important. I want to talk with you today about a belief that is very, very likely floating around in your head and doing you a grave disservice. And you probably don’t even know that it’s there. Before I do that, I want to share something with you that a member of Your Missing Peace shared with me that is very relevant to this.

It’s about how she found the program, my program, and why she joined it. And she’s given me permission to share this quote with you. So, here is what she says. And I’m not going to share her name with you to protect her privacy, but we’ll just call her S. Okay?

So S says, “when I started the program () this is my, Your Missing Peace program).

“When I started the program, I was very stuck in a terrible cycle. Diet. Mess up. Binge. Get angry at myself. And then start all over again. I was frustrated. I was unhappy with myself. I felt hopeless and at the mercy of this cycle with no idea how to fix it. Except the idea of the same things I’d been doing, which weren’t working.

My thoughts were always preoccupied with food, with dieting, and with weight loss. One day, in desperation, I searched YouTube looking for help, and I accidentally found your podcast. And you were saying things I had never heard before. You talked about self-compassion. About having your own back, about taking time to pause.

You talked about breaking the cycle without deprivation or dieting. I cried and thought, how have I never heard any of this in 30 plus years of dieting?”

You all, messages like this break my heart. They break my heart and they fuel me because I hear them all the time. The good news, I guess, is that I hear these things from women who are now hearing a new message, or who are working with me in my program, or who are a coaching client.

But honestly, this message right here, this message I got from S, is why I do what I do. Because we live in a culture that teaches women to value themselves based on their weight. And based on their appearance. We live in a culture that sells food and eating as an answer to almost everything, to every feeling, to every need, to every moment of uncomfortableness. We live in a culture that teaches women to discount our own needs and to place the needs of others over our own.

And one that pushes a multibillion dollar diet industry down our throats. Promoting programs and food plans that don’t solve the problem and that blame us when we don’t get results.

That’s the real message, by the way, if it hasn’t become really clear to you. That’s the real message that all those beliefs that you’ve instilled over the years are based on the fact that it’s your fault if these programs haven’t worked for you. That you just need to try harder. Or have more discipline. Or curb your cravings. Or be a different person.

We live in a world that also teaches you to deny your hidden hungers or to suppress them. Or to blame yourself for having them. And then blames you again, because food becomes a Band Aid. It becomes a coping strategy. It becomes a way to numb or to distract yourself.

Because you’re supposed to be denying those hidden hungers instead of taking care of them. And you’re not being taught to take care of them in the first place. And then because you’ve been taught the problem is you. It becomes something that way too often feels like it needs to be hidden.

So many women live in a world where it feels acceptable to obsess out loud about your eating or your food plan or your weight loss. But do you know how few women feel comfortable talking about the lack of freedom and peace they feel with their eating? Do you know how few women feel comfortable or like it’s acceptable to talk about their cravings and their urges to overeat?

The days that don’t go well with the things they’re trying to do with their eating? The times when eating goes sideways and feels out of control?

The woman s who sent me this message I’m going to tell you nobody would know on the outside how hungry she was for these answers. I’m willing to bet you that nobody knew that she was as she said desperately searching YouTube for answers.

Because on the outside in her exterior life, she’s got it going on. She’s taking care of all the other pieces. I do what I do this podcast, the Your Missing Peace program, the coaching one on one that I do with women. I do what I do because I talked to one too many incredible women who were smart and resourceful and successful with so many things, so many different areas of their life.

But at the same time, who felt hopeless about their eating habits, about their overeating, about their binges or their weight. And they felt bad about themselves because these things weren’t lined up the way they wanted them to be. And these amazing, incredible women, and you may be one of them, felt alone and isolated.

Your Missing Peace, which is my six-month coaching program, it includes a lot of valuable pieces for solving the overeating puzzle. There are a lot of different pieces and resources in that program. And I think the coaching meetings and the online support community are some of the most powerful.

And the power in those things is sometimes incredibly surprising to people who join. I’ve come to realize that we become so accustomed to things that we are tolerating. And a lot of people have become accustomed to how alone or isolated or guilty, or even ashamed they feel when it comes to their overeating or emotional eating or their cravings or their binges or their weight.

Here’s, here’s the way I think about it. Have you ever had something that was physically wrong with you. That it was maybe a chronic thing that you’d kind of gotten used to, you were just tolerating? And then you were amazed when it got fixed or it went away?

I can give you an example. I had a while ago, several years ago, I had a chronically stiff neck for a while. And it just didn’t go away. As bizarre as it sounds to me right now, I just got used to it. I got used to not being able to fully turn my head in one direction.

It didn’t hurt. Unless I really tried to turn my head. I just, it was stiff. I couldn’t turn my neck. And after a while I got used to it and I didn’t even think about it very much. And then I went to see a chiropractor for something else, and he did this whole assessment because I was a new patient. He noticed the problem. And even though I said it wasn’t a big deal, I actually said, Well, that’s not why I’m here. It’s not a big deal. He fixed it.

And as you might imagine, once he fixed it, and it was a pretty quick fix, I mean it happened in the office that day, in that visit. Having my neck actually work right, having full mobility of my neck, it was amazing. It was actually startlingly amazing. Because I had just decided my, my head didn’t turn that way all the way. Right?

Here’s the thing, too many smart, amazing women, and again, you might be one of them, have become accustomed to feeling shame and guilt and then isolation and loneliness around and about their eating, their overeating, emotional eating, and also the vicious cycles that you go through with these things.

Along with the guilt and the shame and the loneliness that goes along with it, and not talking about things that people become accustomed to, you can also become very accustomed to the thoughts that go along with it. Thoughts about needing to be stronger. Thoughts that you need to have more discipline.

Thoughts that you need to be harder on yourself. That you need to push yourself more. Thoughts like, I should be over this. What’s wrong with me? Nobody else struggles with this. Which is a lie, by the way. And I can tell you that as somebody who has spent the last 30 years having women tell me about their relationship with food and eating.

Lots of other people are stuck in this cycle. And all of these things that you may have become accustomed to and the things you tell yourself in your head, all of these things reinforce each other.

Let me read you the first part of S’s share again, what she sent to me. She said, “when I started the program, I was very much stuck in a terrible cycle. Diet. Then mess up. Then binge. Then get angry at myself and then start all over again.

. I was frustrated and unhappy with myself. I felt hopeless and at the mercy of this cycle with no idea how to fix it except the same things I’d been doing which weren’t working. My thoughts were always preoccupied with food and dieting and weight loss.”

If you can relate to even one inch of this statement it is so important to ask yourself how alone you currently are on your mission to stop overeating. How alone are you? How isolated are you? Are you open to asking for help? Do you believe that there are others who feel like you do? Can you allow yourself to feel the relief that you might feel if you didn’t have to solve this problem, this puzzle, all by yourself?

As S said, by trying to fix something you don’t know how to fix by doing the things you’ve been doing that aren’t working. Are you open to asking for help? How isolated are you?

I will tell you, when people join Your Missing Peace, and they come to their first coaching zoom and sometimes, you know, that’s a nerve-wracking thing. What’s going to happen? But when they come to their first coaching zoom, there is so often a relief that is palpable.

That is visible. That you can see once someone settles in and hears what other people are talking about. Shoulders relaxed. People sit back in their chair. Sometimes there are tears. People say things like, Oh my gosh. These are my people. I never knew that there were other people who feel like I do. Or, I can relate to everything that was said.

Or, what so and so said, that’s me. I’ve never heard anyone talk about this before. These are all things that are actually routinely shared by new members who join Your Missing Peace. And that’s just the beginning.

My point for you today is this. Do not allow diet culture to keep shaming and isolating you. Stop telling yourself you’re the only one. Be open to the possibility that there is support and help out there for you.

Ask yourself, are you open to letting it in? Working in this area, working on these beliefs, it will make a world of difference.

I’ll talk to you soon.