Ending The Diet Cycle For Good

When I was a teenager I experienced a major health crisis & was supposed to be?on medication?the rest of my life.

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I wasn't on board with that...so I began to explore ways to reclaim my health naturally.

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Food, fasting, bodywork, mindset, supplementation, activation...I did it all, and it worked.

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My healthy food commitments served me well...

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BUT...I?developed a habit of controlling my food choices based on whether a food was "good" or "bad", "right" and "wrong".

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This "food rules" based thinking worked well for me for many years...until?midlife when I started gaining weight.

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I started dieting...using food rules based eating plans that promise proven results but are shown to have a 95%+ "failure" rate.

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AND...the failure?is BLAMED on your lack of willpower and effort not on the system itself, right?

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I started weighing myself, judging myself and feeling frustrated.

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Until one day, I was driving home from the gym, and found myself saying, "Maybe my body is just broken."

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THIS IS NOT WHAT I TRULY BELIEVE, WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?

Well, what happened was...

1?? I was feeling out of control, wanting to transform my body.

2?? I fell into a diet cycle...

3?? And I needed to step out of the Diet Cycle and reconnect to myself and my amazing body.

Here's what the diet cycle is...can you relate to it at all?

1.?You start a new food plan/ detox/ cleanse with a feeling of excitement and motivation, like nothing will stop you. Clean out the pantry, prep the food, you are ready! It feels great!

2. For a few weeks, you are riding high on discipline and focus! Following the plan and feeling committed!

3. You find your cravings and hunger increasing.? As a result, you have no more willpower and go off the plan - eating cake at a party or hiding in the pantry eating your kids’ snacks (that was me!).??

4. You feel shame and guilt, about breaking the rules and overeating. You feel awful about yourself. After going off the plan, you decide you might as well enjoy yourself, so that’s what you do!? Undoing all of the hard work and progress of the last few weeks. It’s so frustrating!

5. After a while, you feel the need to get “back in control” with food again and start another diet or clean eating plan. And the process repeats itself once again.?

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After learning about the diet cycle, I realized that the diets set me up to fail.

Here’s why…

Diets ask us to restrict how much we eat and/or make certain foods forbidden.?

??But food restrictions or food rules can only be sustained for a limited amount of time.?

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At a certain point, whether it's a lack of willpower or just feeling fatigued, we will eventually rebel against those rules - leading to overeating, binging, and eating the foods we were denied.?

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Research shows that when we are underfed, we will obsess about food- if it’s from lack of food or a self imposed caloric restriction.

??Strict food rules are counterproductive.

Diets and strict rules were exactly what was keeping me stuck in the “start over again diet cycle”.?

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I discovered that the only way to truly shift my struggles with food was to change how I thought about food……

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?? I stopped labeling food as good and bad.?

?? I let go of tracking and counting everything I ate.?

?? I traded in my strict rules for a realistic plan that I could follow.?

?? I stopped beating myself up for small "mistakes".?

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And I had some pretty incredible results….

I learned how to eat and take care of myself in ways that felt good, not like a punishment.?

I felt a new freedom and confidence with food and my body.

I even felt confident and relaxed around food!

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That’s when I realized I wasn’t a failure, the diets were the failure all along.

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It makes perfect sense that I was always searching for the “perfect food plan” because as a little girl I was taught that dieting was the solution.

Sadly, these are the lies we’ve all been told.

If you’ve found yourself on the diet cycle more times that you’d like, I want you to know that you can break up with dieting and finally find peace with food.

I’ll be sharing more in the coming weeks about how you can work with me in my Making Peace with Your Plate? 14-day group coaching program.?

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Kim Jacques is a Midlife Health & Lifestyle Coach specializing in helping women, just like you, to rediscover how to listen to their body & designing a healthy lifestyle that they LOVE. #IntuitiveEating #AncestralHealth

Would you like to learn how to have a beautiful relationship with food through the act of Mindful Eating? Register for my FREE GUIDE: https://www.kimjacques.com/mindfuleating