I was an award-winning personal trainer and nutrition and wellness coach for over eight years.
I also spent close to three decades struggling with my own weight and food issuesâtrying to âstick toâ diets and/or healthy eating and lifestyle goals. And many years struggling with binge eating, bulimia, and (what I thought at the time was) an uncontrollable sugar addiction.
During the years I was working in the fitness and nutrition industry, whenever Iâd get new clients, Iâd find out what their health and fitness goals were, and Iâd give them the perfect plan to help them get there.
And I made sure to remind them, itâs not a diet, itâs a lifestyle.
I did that because itâs what I learned to do. Itâs what everyone does.
Because thatâs what weâre taughtâthat eating, living, or being healthy requires us to make choices that others have told us are healthy and not do the things theyâve told us are unhealthy.
You know⊠the perfect healthy lifestyle that constantly reminds you to:
- Eat this, not that⊠or youâll get sick, disease-ridden, and die early.
- Weigh this amount and not moreâŠ. or youâll get sick, disease-ridden, and die early.
- Move this amount each day, in these ways⊠or youâll get sick, disease-ridden, and die early.
- And⊠youâre not dieting. Youâre just eating healthy. Youâre creating a healthy lifestyle.
The perfect healthy eating and living plans constantly remind you that you must always be fighting, resisting, ignoring, and controlling yourself, your body, your hunger, and your cravings.
And always doing more, working harder, being disciplined, having motivation, building willpower, etc.
Thereâs a predictable formula for this supposedly âhealthyâ eating and living culture.
The formula insists that we conform to a socially acceptable, mythical, perfect body size and shape.
The formula treats our health as though itâs a future goal or accomplishment that we can only achieve later if weâre âgoodâ now.
The formula must be followed with no excuses. When itâs not, the problem is you and your obedience, willpower, discipline, motivation, and commitment.
The formula is primarily concerned with optics rather than actual health. As long as we portray the âpicture of healthâ and the behaviors weâre engaging in appear healthy, it doesnât matter if the pressure, fear, and shame created by trying to stick to them are actually destroying us behind the scenes.
The formula requires we trust the rules and advice of others over our own bodies.
Itâs a mass-marketed, templated, âeasyâ model that allows no room for our own inner knowing, logic, self-trust, or personal power.
Itâs easy to sell because it preys on fear and always sounds so shiny and tempting.
And this is what weâre taught it takes to eat and live healthy lives.
Multi-billion-dollar-a-year industries have taught us how to âget healthy.â
âLose weight, feel great. Gain confidence. Get fit. Be healthy and happy. Live your best life.â But the unspoken truth is that itâs only ââŠas long as you follow our rules.â
But youâre not going to be able to stick to this plan, and when you canât, youâre going to waste your entire life at war with yourself, promising to âget back on track.â
âOn track,â of course, meaning doing all the things they say youâre supposed to.
Itâs a paradigm that promotes constant fear and oppressive attempts to control ourselves and our bodies in order to follow one-size-fits-all, arbitrary prescriptions.
Nothing proves this more than how weâve become so completely conned into believing the lie that healthy eating is hard work that requires willpower, discipline, commitment, and constant vigilance.
Thatâs horrible and not a healthy way to live at all!
Weâve been sold this message because itâs highly profitable for us to believe that we cannot trust ourselves and our own bodies and we must rely on others to tell us what to do.
And weâve bought itâhook, line, and sinker.
But it forces us to go through life literally fighting with ourselves and our bodies, trying to follow their rules.
It forces us to live disembodied, detached, disconnected from, distrusting, and fully ignoring the wisdom of our own bodies and our own inner knowing.
Living in all that fear, disconnection, and distrust is so harmful.
For me, it resulted in bulimia, binge eating, anxiety disorder, panic attacks, chronic clinical depression, self-loathing, crippling shame, and what I was fully convinced was a sugar/food addiction so severe that I often went to bed at night afraid I would die in my sleep because I’d eaten so much.
I lived in a constant state of being completely consumed by not only the number on my scale but also fear and shame every time I âscrewed upâ and ate something âbad.â For decades of my life.
Eventually, my mental, emotional, and physical health deteriorated so badly that I recognized my only choice was to learn how to heal because I couldnât keep living that wayâit was killing me.
I finally recognized that my suffering was in large part the result of everything I was taught to do to maintain this supposedly healthy eating and lifestyle plan.
And all I really wanted was peace.
So I turned my back on it all.
I stopped exercising every day and started a little light, mindful walking and mobility work insteadâ whatever helped my body heal.
I released the need for my body to look a certain way or be a certain size and worked on healing my relationship with it instead of fighting to shrink, change, or control it.
I stopped trying to make myself âeat healthyâ and allowed myself to not only eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, but I even allowed myself to binge. I know that sounds crazy, but itâs truly the first step that helped me stop binge eating.
I shut out every single message Iâd ever gotten in my life about what it takes to eat or live âhealthy,â and I started reconnecting with myself so I could figure out what actually helped me best support my overall well-being, right now, in this moment.
I even eventually quit being a trainer and (traditional) nutrition and wellness coach.
I tuned out everything I knew about what âhealthyâ eating and living looks like, and instead I turned inward and started connecting with myself. I started getting to know myself, understanding the patterns that were driving all those unhealthy choices in the first place and learning to change those.
I started asking, how do I feel right now? How do I want to feel? What do I need (mentally, emotionally, or physically) in order to bridge the gap between the two, if there is one?
Itâs changed everything in the most glorious ways.
I havenât binged in many years. Thatâs a pattern that simply no longer exists in me.
Iâm not scared of, feel addicted to, or out of control around sugar (or any food) anymore.
Food no longer controls me⊠not even sugar.
I crave things that help me feel my best, including water, which I never used to drink before.
I treat (and speak) myself and my body with love and kindness.
All of the âunhealthyâ choices we make, all the unhealthy things we do to ourselvesâeven binge eating and supposed âsugar addictionsââitâs all merely the result of our conditioning. The stuff going on inside us.
My external world, my lifestyle, my unhealthy choices, they were all symptoms of what was going on inside meâall the self-abuse I heaped on myself, ironically, because I couldnât âstick toâ a healthy living plan.
When I changed that, when I stopped focusing on what I was doing and started changing my inner world, who I was being, my outer world (and the choices I was making for myself and my body) naturally changed.
Healthy eating and living should never be the goal, theyâre the result of how weâre being.
Because hereâs the thing, your body doesnât care about the âhealthâ goals you hope to meet in the future.
It only knows what it needs right now, in this moment, and whether youâre making choices that help support that or not.
If youâre trying to make yourself be consistent on some plan thatâs supposed to help you reach some goal at a later date, you are by definition, disconnected from your body and what itâs trying to tell you it actually needs right now
Thatâs a recipe for not making healthy choices and ignoring your bodyâs cues and messages.
Supporting our health requires supporting our overall well-being, and we can only do that when weâre deeply connected to ourselves through what I call wholehearted being: being present, connected, curious, and intentional about our unique moment-to-moment needs and loving ourselves and our bodies enough to want to honor them.
When you do that, making choices that best support yourself and your body right now become the natural result.
Not some arbitrary goal that you canât ever stay consistent enough to reach.
If youâre reading this and can relate to any parts of my struggles with weight, overeating, binge eating, and sugar addiction, I want you to know that you, at your core, instinctively know what you and your body need to feel and live your best.
Youâve just been conditioned out of that inner knowing after a lifetime of learning from everyone else that the only way to be healthy is to control yourself and your body and follow their advice instead of trusting your own inner knowing.
With wholehearted being, Iâve gone from binge eating, bulimia, obsessive and compulsive thoughts and patterns around food and exercise, self and body hate and distrustâŠ
âŠto kindness, compassion, self and body love and trust, and learning to genuinely want to eat in ways that best support and nurture me.
A New Path to Healthy Eating and Living
Healthy eating and living through wholehearted being helps you build a foundation rooted firmly in your own self-love, trust, and worthiness because how we feel about ourselves impacts every aspect of our lives, including how we treat ourselves and our bodies.
From there, you learn to make choices for yourself and your body through four main pillars of being:
Present in this moment and your body so you can break the conditioning that drives unhealthy behaviors
Connected to your inner worldâyour thoughts, feelings, communication from your body about what you need
Curious about your inner experiences in this moment, with gentle awareness, self-compassion, and non-judgment
Intentional with your thoughts, behaviors, and responsesâintentionally choosing from kindness, gratitude, love
This process is incredibly powerful because it does two things that are required for lasting change:
1.It helps you learn to love, trust, and value yourself enough to care how you treat your body.
2. It allows you to put space between your triggers and the conditioned, autopilot behaviors that drive unhealthy choices in the first place. This allows you to get to know yourself, your patterns, and your needs and learn new tools and practices that better support your overall well-being. Tools and practices that also help you learn to better understand and nurture, not only your physical needs, but your mental and emotional needs as well. And thatâs vital because our thoughts and emotions are major components of our overall well-being. They drive the choices we make.
Itâs a powerful and simple process but not an easy one. It takes courage to relearn to trust yourself with food, to learn new ways of being, and it takes a lot of practice, repetition, and support, but itâs so very worth it.
After eight years in the fitness, nutrition, and wellness industry (and almost thirty years of dieting), I finally got healthy and broke my sugar addiction by choosing to start focusing on my life instead of my weight or food choices.
By learning to tune out the external messages trying to tell me what I âshouldâ eat or do and turn inward to start making choices for myself that best nurture my whole being, moment to momentâchoices that are grounded in love, self and body trust, connection, and kindness.
And itâs changed everything.
About Roni Davis
Drawing on her own healing process plus over a decade of professional knowledge, education, and experience, E-CET founder Roni Davis guides women through the process of uncovering and changing the thought and behavior patterns that cause weight and food struggles. Her clients break unhealthy eating habits and heal their relationships with food and their bodies while learning to approach their overall well-being from a place of connection, self-trust, compassion, and love. Learn more with her free Why We Eat video series.
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