Have you stopped to think about the difference between being on a diet and being an active participant in a weight loss coaching process? A conscious skill-based weight loss coaching process, to be precise!
People seldom receive the invitation to pause and think about what diets are. Why are they designed the way they are? And when we start a diet and end a diet – how does that affect us? If you’ve never pondered this – take a moment to answer this for yourself before reading on.
“I’ve got this all figured out!”
We find most of the people who ever go on a diet do it with the best of intentions and sincere hope that it will work (this time). They may have read the book, article, or talked to the person who did the same fast, cleanse, detox or diet. They may feel like “they get it.” And the kinds of people who come to us are bright and accomplished people, so in most cases they are pretty good at following and completing a diet.
Only when off the diet and back where they started (or worse), do people reach out for our support and ask: “what did I do wrong?” Typically, they haven’t done anything wrong, it’s just that the diet was a temporary step, not a permanent one. It was the bandaid, the crutch, the time limited pain killer. It did what diets do – help us (in the best of cases) achieve a desire or goal short term. Dieting is one of the reasons many of the people who come to us have had so much difficulty with weight loss. They’ve started and stopped many times. And they often perceive that place where they feel good in their bodies to be a sort of a buried treasure, a holy grail – always on the hunt for the fabled gold, never really completing the quest.
And that sucks. Big time.
It’s a hero’s / heroine’s journey
This weight loss thing is a hero’s journey. It has its faithful turns and twists, its ups and downs, its moments of despair. It teaches us something about what we’re made of. I often look at Roland and think: man, to figure yourself out like this…to determine it’s your unhappiness that was at the base of your eating behaviors. To look emotional hunger in the eyes and to believe that you can feel better and you can have an empowered stance in your adult life. To trust that life can gift you health and freedom you may have never had before. And to do it with two little kids and a taxing corporate job at 36. Well done, young padawan.
And well done for helping others do the same.
As coaches, we invite people on a journey, not on a diet. This is why when you click over to our courses and programs, or read our latest book, you won’t see a diet. Even our Real Food Reset, the closest thing to a plan we ever created, is an invitation to get to know how your body responds to different foods. The symptom tracker and reminder to look at how our ancestors lived do just that – to consider the place of modern food in your life – and to see how it’s affected you (because it has affected all of us whether we like it or not).
In any successful journey you learn something. A coaching process is designed with that in mind. We explore, learn the most about your life, we determine the positive action steps, take advantage of your strengths and resources, then teach skills and insist you learn to be gentle and accountable to yourself. We draw on your deepest values, and we foster compassion for your most vulnerable times. We teach you how to become an expert on you. And how to live in this changed body and be a force of good in your own life.
A diet is none of the above. And that’s why starting now, we are learning how to record our students’ successes in ways that can teach and inspire others to follow the hero’s call and to trust the journey. To show how to lean into support and to recognize diets for what they are – anything, but a long term compassionate skill-based solution.
We start with Dave, who’s one of Roland’s Breakthrough weight loss coaching group clients. Thank you, Dave, for giving us the opportunity to share!
See and get inspired by his story below.
To learn more about how we work, take a peek at one of our 5 day free programs, or book a 30 minute free session to find if this kind of work is right for you.
Be well:
Roland and Galina