Is this what freedom feels like?

I’ve spent the beginning of many new years poring over diet plans…WW, Jenny Craig, Whole 30, South Beach Diet, LA Weight Loss, and others. 

I’d tell myself that this time would be different. 

This time, I’d vow, I’d stick to the program like glue. 

Because, I reasoned, these programs HAD to work.  

Certainly, my lack of willpower was the reason I hadn’t succeeded in the past.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that all the mental math I was doing was pointing to my body as the problem in the equation. 

My body was the problem to be solved. 

And if that was true, then diet A plus exercise B had to equal success, right? 

But when it didn’t, I felt even more defeated -- and mentally exhausted -- than before. 

However, I still believed that the answer was OUT THERE. 

So, a few years ago, I joined yet another program to solve my problem -- but this time it was based on life coaching. 

Through coaching, I began to see that my body was not the problem. 

Instead, my body was really my teacher.

When I was willing to turn to it, and say, “Teach me,” the answers started to come.

I learned about the foods that *I* like and that fuel me.

I also learned about the foods that are pretty healthy, but that don’t feel great in my body.

I learned to move my body in ways that feel good, and that I want to keep doing. 

I also learned to work through injuries when they happened -- instead of seeing them as a sign of what my body can’t do. 

I learned to navigate those times when I was using food for reasons other than hunger.

Bad parenting day? Fight with husband? Shitty day at work? 

You name it, overeating was my answer to avoid dealing with the problem. 

But learning to feel my emotions was the solution to that one.

If you’d told me years ago, as I was poring through those diet programs, that the answers were within me, I wouldn’t have believed you. 

Then, slowly, through each step and exercise my coaches offered, I saw that this approach offered something incredibly different: freedom. 

Freedom from diets.

Freedom from obsessing about what I’m eating. 

Freedom from focusing on what’s wrong with me.