Why Do YOu Think You Can't Stick to a Diet?

I had a client that, when she was growing up, was really close to her family and every time she accomplished something that her family was proud of, the family would go out to eat to celebrate. This made her feel really good and connected with her family and made her feel loved. This was an event that hit a core emotion that us humans have, which is to feel love from people that we care about immensely.
Those were the times that she valued and cherished the most, to not only feel the endorphin rush of accomplishing a goal but, most importantly, the acceptance of her family. Nothing could replace this feeling of importance and in those moments that’s where the food association with love was created.
Now, with that female client, as she grew older and started a family, she became extremely busy tending to her kids and husband along with taking care of the household chores. She had become a very loving and caring mom but always putting the family and everyone else first. She forgot to take care of herself, and she started to gain weight and body fat.
While she loved her family and got great fulfillment from being a great mother, when the kids were asleep and her husband was off at work, she would feel lonely. She needed something to fill that void. Well if no one was near her to give her the personal interaction to fulfill those needs, she naturally turned to food to comfort her because it was easy and available.
As the food comforted her and she started to gain some weight, she decided that she wanted to do something for herself. So she purchased a gym membership and a personal trainer. She went faithfully because she was a committed individual, but she noticed that for some reason she was just not getting the results that she wanted. We analyzed her workouts and she was training the right way. We analyzed her cardio workouts and she was performing those correctly as well. She was doing everything right and we were dumbfounded.
Finally when we analyzed her nutrition, we discovered that she was struggling to eat consistently healthy and stick to a nutrition plan. She just could not stick to the nutrition plan for the life of her. She could not figure out why she couldn’t, she just thought she lacked will power. It started to affect her self-esteem and self-worth. She was extremely frustrated and felt hopeless.
It was not until we discovered together that the real reason why she could not stick to a nutrition plan was not that she lacked “will power,” but it was that anytime she would feel the normal human emotion of being lonely she would use food as a way to fulfill that need.
That was an “aha” moment because we knew that if we could satisfy that need in more creative ways outside of eating, then we would be able to successfully create and stick to our nutrition plan. So instead of mentally beating her up and making her diet more strict, we took an outside the box approach and came up with some different solutions.
To fulfill that need of being connected and loved, we looked at some other options such as developing a deeper relationship with her husband on an emotional level. Letting him know he was not failing as a husband but that there were specific things that she needed from him in order to help her improve her life.
Also we came up with the idea of having a girl’s night out where she developed deeper and more meaningful relationships with her friends. We budgeted some time out of the week to have that “friend time” to allow her to feel those emotions of being connected and loved in other avenues as well.
Needless to say, her life is more fulfilling and balanced. And she is able to stick to her nutrition plan and reach all of her fitness goals.
The purpose of sharing this story with you is to challenge you to think outside of the box and not think that it is your will power that is lacking. Instead, it is a deeper issue at hand that usually has to do with emotions, that is hampering your progress toward goals.