What’s Sabotaging Your Attempts To Eat Better and Be Healthier?

Today, I’m continuing the theme of what I touched on last week: the underlying issues that cause us to struggle with food, weight, and body issues.

When clients first find me, a lot of them tell me:

“Lauren, I know what I need to do to be healthier. I know what I should be eating and I know the kind of habits I should have in my day. But the problem is I just don’t have enough willpower. I can’t create a routine and I don’t have motivation. I just need more willpower.”

What I tell them often takes them by surprise. I explain that the problem is not a lack of willpower. Willpower is actually not a necessary ingredient for being healthy.

Self-discipline is necessary for being the healthiest and happiest version of ourselves, but it’s different than willpower. Self-discipline arises from having a clear, motivating vision of the best version of yourself, and the life you want to live.

Willpower tends to be focused on not doing something or not becoming something. It keeps the attention on who you don’t want to be and what you don’t want to do, instead of bringing the focus to something new and beautiful that you want to create in your life.

I want to address three things that I see that see sabotaging people’s attempts to eat healthier and take better care of their bodies

1. Your Body is Allergic To Pretending

First, is not understanding the fact that your body is allergic to pretending. I talk to my clients about the difference between their False Self and True Self, because this is something we have to understand to do the deeper layers of healing.

Spiritual teachers, from various religious backgrounds, have used the terms True Self and False for thousands of years. These terms are now being more incorporated into modern culture.

Your False Self is the part of you that is fear-based, and is culturally-programmed. It can, therefore, be culturally manipulated. It’s the part of us that has internalized the values of consumerism, commercialism, external validation, and other beliefs that are antagonistic to our inner wisdom.

Because we’ve been indoctrinated so heavily with these beliefs, we don’t realize that they are programming and not actual reality. Your False Self is also shaped by your family dynamics, and how you learned from your family to communicate, confront problems, or be in relationships.

Your True Self is the part of you that can’t be touched by cultural programming; it’s the compass of your heart and soul. Now more than ever, it’s critical we do this healing on an individual level to get in touch with our true selves and see through the False Selves that we’ve put on ourselves. It’s healing that’s critical on a global level.

What I’ve found is that when my clients are pretending — when they are acting largely from their False Selves — they tend to have a lot of mysterious health issues or stubborn food problems, even if they’re eating a perfect diet and taking gobs of supplements.

In this case, the solution is not to try a different diet, do more food sensitivity tests, or buy more health gadgets, because that’s not the level at which the problem is occurring. The problem is occurring because you’re not in an environment that is safe for your True Self, much less affirming and respectful of your True Self.

That’s the level of change at which I work with my clients, because that’s the level of change that creates meaningful results.

I help them create an environment where their True Self can flourish, and their bodies don’t have to have those allergic reactions to pretending.

2. You’ve Maxed Out The Healing In Your Current Paradigm

The second thing that can be sabotaging your attempts to be healthier is that you’ve reached the healing that’s available in your existing paradigm.

I have a lot of clients who find me after they’ve made significant healing progress after changing their diet, after implementing types of alternative medicine, and using some supplements. This has allowed them to create some big healing shifts, but then they get to a place where they feel stuck. No matter what else they change in their diet, or whatever new health gadget they try, they don’t make progress.

I know they’re in this place when they tell me seven words:

“I’ve tried everything and it’s not working.”

If you’re thinking or saying this, it’s actually great news. Congratulations! It means you’ve tried everything within that paradigm of diet and supplements, and now it’s time to move into a new paradigm.

Expanding into a new paradigm means you’ll be able to achieve a level of healing, freedom, and joy that was previously impossible.

It can feel uncomfortable at first, however, because this new paradigm requires a greater level of self-responsibility and radical mindset shifts.

But every single client I’ve worked with, and helped make the transition into this new paradigm,  tells me that if it was challenging at times, it was so worth it.

3. You’re Confusing Self-Sabotage and Self-Love

The third thing that can be sabotaging your attempts to eat better, take better care of your body is that at some level, is that your self-sabotage is actually self-love.

EFT practitioner Brad Yates says, “Self-sabotage is often misguided self-love.”

I see this frequently with my clients. Their subconscious is trying to make them preoccupied with food, dieting, and body anxieties. It’s trying to keep them discouraged and overwhelmed.

Why? Because their subconscious mind doesn’t know if they can handle positive but unknown changes in their lives.

Clients tend to find me when they’re on the cusp of change that makes them both excited and scared. They might have an inkling that it’s time for them to start dating again, or leave an existing relationship.

They might realize that it’s time to heal sexual trauma or heal family dynamics. Or they might feel like they just can’t take another day at their job, but they don’t know how to take the next step.

In the face of these changes, we can subconsciously hold onto food problems to stop us from moving forward. We want to avoid the rejection, confusion, or emotional pain that may be in store for us. But if we do that, we also avoid the financial abundance, love, and healing that is available to us if we make those changes.

The wonderful news is your soul — your intuition — asks nothing of you that you can’t handle.

My job is to give you the tools, the insight, and the guidance you need to make those changes in your life. And, by extension, you’re lifelong food and body issues will disappear.

Want to work with me?

Are you ready to permanently heal your food and weight problems with a spiritual, subconscious, and emotional approach? Then I’d love to work with you in my 8-week Food without Fear Program! 

It’s about what you’d spend on a weeklong spiritual retreat, and it includes everything you’re going to need to heal your relationship with food, weight, and body issues for the rest of your life.

In 8 weeks, you’ll achieve the kind of change that would otherwise take years of therapy and mindset work alone. That’s because I address so many levels of transformation.

This program includes hypnotherapy, personalized energy therapy, group calls, a transformative daily workbook, and weekly teaching modules.

Check out Food without Fear for more info.

In health,