If not weight loss, then what?
The focus and message is simple: “Get your outside (your body) to an optimum weight and your inside (how you feel about yourself) will improve.” Many people believe that once they lose weight, then they will finally be happy.
When you work only from the outside-in, the changes are superficial and usually short-lived. If you focus on eating and exercise, without resolving the deeper issues of self-worth and self-love, it may not be enough to sustain your positive behaviours long term. You may find yourself reverting back to your old ways.
That’s why I work with my clients from the Inside-Out. Together we focus on your mental and emotional health, and how you nourish yourself in these areas. It’s not about knowing nutrition facts and fat loss strategies. There are no meal plans. And you may be relieved to hear, there are no weigh-in’s or before & after photos. Weight loss as a goal is put on the back-burner. You learn to focus on your inner qualities and inner values. You learn self-care and how to deal with your emotions without using food to cope. You learn the power of following your own intuitive wisdom.
If you were to take the focus away from working from the outside-in with WEIGHT MANAGEMENT and instead focus on working from the inside-out with HEALTH PROMOTION, how might that look?
Health promotion focuses on behaviour change. It is about caring for the health of the person, which includes mental, emotional and spiritual health.
Weight management focuses on body change and is about achieving a certain body shape or size. Its focus is primarily in the physical realm.
There’s diet and exercise for the sake of looking a certain way and this often comes with many sacrifices. And then there is wellness that is about HEALTH PROMOTION designed for long term sustainable results, results that go deeper than your body and its weight.
Here’s how it can look in action:
🍎 To get healthy you might eat less – weight management.
✅ To get healthy you might people-please less – health promotion.
🍎 To improve your self-esteem you could tone up your thighs – weight management.
✅ To improve your self-esteem you could praise yourself for all the things you did well today – health promotion.
🍎 To feel more motivated & inspired you could follow Fitspo on social media – weight management.
✅ To feel more motivated & inspired you could do meaningful work, study or volunteer your time – health promotion.
🍎 To feel better about yourself & life you could lose weight – weight management.
✅ To feel better about yourself & your life you could end toxic relationships – health promotion.
🍎 To get healthy you could give up sugar – weight management.
✅ To get healthy you could give up negative beliefs – health promotion.
🍎 To eat healthy you might count your macros – weight management.
✅ To eat healthy you might listen to your body’s natural hunger and fullness signals and choose foods which satisfy and nourish – health promotion.
🍎 To get healthy you could exercise more & eat less – weight management.
✅ To get healthy you could meditate more & gossip less- health promotion.
We need to wise-up because,
“Even when something promotes itself as ‘flexible food plan’ or ‘lifestyle change’ – if it’s controlling your food from the outside, it won’t address what’s going on with your inner self.”
~ Source Unknown ~
Here’s what we need to remember with this sort of anti-diet approach: We can have a health goal like eating more fruit and vegetables without the focus being on weight loss.
✅ HEALTH PROMOTION gives us long term meaningful results. Results that go beyond food and body and infiltrate into deeper areas of our lives.
❌ WEIGHT MANAGEMENT gives us short term superficial results.
✅ HEALTH PROMOTION will improve our self respect, self compassion and self worth. This in turn improves our mental, emotional and spiritual health – when these things are in check our body’s physical health will naturally come along for the ride.
❌ WEIGHT MANAGEMENT will perpetuate beliefs in perfectionism; body obsession & dissatisfaction; feelings of guilt when we eat something we “shouldn’t” and feelings of shame when we can’t stick to a diet or exercise plan.
✅ HEALTH PROMOTION changes our thought patterns to NOURISHMENT.
❌ WEIGHT MANAGEMENT changes our thought patterns to PUNISHMENT.
“What we eat really doesn’t matter as much as diet culture leads us to believe. I know, especially coming from a nutritionist, that might sound radical. But really, our health is largely determined by genetics, socioeconomic status, experiences of oppression and discrimination, and a whole host of other things that are largely or entirely beyond our control. Those determinants of health have a lot more to do with our outcomes than whether or not we eat “enough” kale. —————————————– What’s more, our mental health also has a huge effect on our holistic wellbeing. Obsessing over food and exercise and struggling with disordered eating or chronic dieting is *not* health-promoting. And it has a much larger and longer-lasting negative impact on our health than any of the foods our culture has demonized. —————————————– What we eat isn’t nearly as important as how we relate to what we eat. It’s time to start shifting the narrative, and to stop looking at food as the be-all-end-all of health. Focus on what makes you feel good, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. That’s where true wellness lies.
If people are to heal their relationship with food & body image they are required to have a series of insights which allows them to see their experience in a new way.
These insights can not be summed up in a neat little article titled Top Five Tips To Weight Management.
Healing occurs on a deeper level. Most of it subconscious.
It is an approach that is not top-down or outside-in.
It changes everything because it works from the inside-out.
And when things change on the inside, we no longer have any behaviours left to control or stop or manage on the outside.
We simply have a new experience of life.
Focusing [our dissatisfaction] on our bodies and hoping a diet will transform us into the person we were always meant to be is easier and distracts us from taking life changing, meaningful, sustaining actions like: ending a marriage, changing jobs, saying NO, standing your ground, making time for self-care, engaging into meaningful study or doing the inner work with a therapist – the stuff that requires serious inner EFFORT.
When you give up on dieting and move away from diet culture you don’t give up on yourself. You instead move closer to yourself. You make more time and space to concentrate on HEALTH PROMOTION – the inner work to true happiness and freedom.
Leave your comments below, if you were to focus on HEALTH PROMOTION, what health promoting activities would you be incorporating in your life?
Thank you to @body_peace_liberation AKA Kathleen Bishop for this quote & Photo Credit Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, CDN | Food Psych Podcast
