“Own” Your Choices

Looking over a client’s food log, I pointed out areas that needed change. She shook her head, admitting it would be hard for her to comply. “I want to eat because I need to feel in control of something,” she told me.

Her thinking was all turned around!

“If you feel like you’re not in control when you have to journal and eat right, that means you feel like these changes are being imposed upon you,” I explained. “You have to internalize this. You need to want this. It has to come from the inside out.”

If you feel deprived because you can’t have dessert with the gang, or feel spiteful about tracking your food, or sneak food when no one’s looking, that means one thing. You feel like this “diet” is being imposed upon you. You feel like it’s taking away your control.

If you really want to make healthy changes, you have to own them. You have to want them and they need to be your choice.