If you’ve been dieting for many years, you know it can get to be a little “much.” Chronic dieting can leave us frustrated, exhausted, and exasperated. Why does something so simple – weight loss – have to be so hard? Millions of people around the world are realizing that they’re just plain tired of dieting. So much so that an increasing number of people are deciding to take a break from weight loss altogether.  But taking a weight loss break doesn’t alleviate the very real fear that many of us experience: that the second we stop dieting, we’re going to gain weight.  In this episode of ..read more

Emotional eating: it’s something so many people beat themselves up for. But too often, we don’t acknowledge the real and legitimate reasons why we do it in the first place. Like other eating challenges, emotional eating always has a psychological or biological reason for being here. Emotional eating doesn’t just “happen” … it’s almost always an unconscious psychological strategy to regulate difficult emotions.  That’s the case for guest coaching client, Katy, who is going through a period of massive change – and is struggling to manage her feelings about it all. As a newly-turned 30-year ..read more

It’s no surprise that many people around the world would like to lose weight. In fact, between 2017 and 2021, 55% of all Americans have expressed the desire for weight loss.1 And unfortunately, many people who are single and would like to find love in their life are instead putting it off until they’re at their desired weight.  That’s the case for 41-year-old Shawnna, our guest in this episode of The Psychology of Eating Podcast.  Shawnna would like to lose about 50 pounds, and find a more peaceful relationship with food – one where she’s not constantly thinking about what, when, and ..read more

Body dysmorphia affects up to 2.4% of the worldwide population1, and occurs when we have intense shame, anxiety, and constant focus on perceived physical defects.  Body dysmorphia is considered a mental disorder, but that only goes so far in helping us understand what this condition is all about.  In this episode of The Psychology of Eating Podcast, we’re going to take a look at why we need to get past the label of ‘body dysmorphia’ – a medical term – and instead look to understand why body dysmorphia is actually present. And to do that, we must explore our personal story from childh ..read more

Hundreds of millions of people around the world are looking to lose weight, but find themselves frustrated when the weight doesn’t come off. And while there are many reasons why people can’t lose weight, there’s one very fascinating yet lesser-recognized cause for weight loss resistance: Trauma. In this article, we’re going to take a look at the connection between trauma and weight gain – and respond to the question that many people have been wondering:  Can trauma cause weight gain? For so many of us, it can be truly hard to understand why we’re not able to lose weight. It’s a very commo ..read more

Helping another human being lose weight and keep it off in a natural and harmonious way is the holy grail of health coaching or weight loss coaching. That’s because it’s profoundly difficult to lose weight and keep it off.  Did you know that approximately 96-99% of all people who lose weight on a weight-loss diet gain it back within a year? That’s a stunning statistic. The $500 billion per year global weight loss industry doesn’t want you to know this sobering fact. It’s not a good look. It’s no wonder why so many dieters find themselves in lifelong frustration, and why so many profession ..read more

Early in my career as a health and nutrition coach, I came to realize that diet and nutrition alone were not enough to help people lose weight or feel better. So many of my clients understood exactly what and how much they needed to eat – but they just couldn’t make themselves follow their own well-intentioned rules. This led me to the “aha moment” that there was a crucial missing ingredient in the health coaching universe: Eating Psychology. We absolutely must understand our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs to help create true change when it comes to our unwanted eating habits. WHAT we eat is ..read more

At some point along the way, we’ve all learned a few things about the science of the body. Perhaps you’ve been taught about vitamins and minerals. Maybe you know about calories. You might have read about what supplements to take when you’re under the weather. And no matter what your interest level is when it comes to biology, you’ve at least heard about DNA and the importance of genetics. But there’s one very important feature about the body that most of us were never quite exposed to: The body is far more than just a collection of biochemicals. The body is spiritual. It has a deeper dimension ..read more

For many people, emotional eating is a challenge that impacts our mood, weight, energy level, and our experience of life. We may know that we don’t want to emotionally eat, but that knowing isn’t usually enough to actually stop us. The key to freeing yourself from emotional eating and finding greater peace with food is very simple: Wisdom.  Meaning, we need to understand emotional eating more deeply.  And a great place to start is by examining one of the most important and misunderstood features about emotional eating.  It’s the thing we love most about food: Pleasure. The simpl ..read more

We live in a time when perfectionism is flourishing across the human landscape. Far too many people are burdened with the belief called: “I must be perfect.” We might believe that we need to have: The perfect body The perfect weight A perfect diet Perfect health The perfect life Or perhaps we live with the idea that we just need to be a perfect person who does everything perfectly.  After all, if we’re perfect, wouldn’t that mean that everyone would love us? Wouldn’t that imply that we can live happily ever after, with no worries and no blemishes on our souls, simply because we have ach ..read more