Many years ago, I was sitting with my good friend Jan, discussing strategies for working with clients to help them meet their weight and exercise goals. She had discovered one of the major stumbling blocks preventing success was her clients' overwhelming sense of guilt. Not that they were unable to follow a specific plan for eating, nor that they didn't like exercise. Well, that was certainly part of it; but the main factor was that, as a result of not being able to meet their goals, they felt they had failed, because they didn't do what they "should" have been doing.

Because her clients were constantly telling her "I should eat better," I should exercise more," "I should not have had those cookies, because now I am a bad person," she came up with this wonderful phrase: don't SHOULD on yourself.

Isn't that a wonderful piece of advice? Well, you absolutely must watch how you say it, and who you are with when you say it; yet, when stated slowly and clearly, it does cover a lot of area.

Think about it for a moment. What do you experience when you think you haven't done the things you "should" have done? How do you feel when you didn't meet your exercise goal? When you didn't lose all the weight you thought you should lose in a week? Probably not good. Why do you think this is true? Usually it's because you've set yourself a goal (run 5 miles every day OR never eat chocolate again) that is impossible to meet. And, when you are unable to meet your goal, you feel terrible. For some reason, while we often say "patience is a virtue", we are unable to apply it to very personal situations, such as improving our health by losing weight and beginning to exercise. We set amazingly unrealistic goals (lose 25 pounds, run the marathon) and expect to be able to accomplish these goals-yesterday. We set high expectations for ourselves, goals that are impossible to meet. Then, when we realize we cannot possibly live up to these expectations, we conclude we have failed; never having seen that failure was the only outcome we could have expected.

Being "at peace with food" involves a taking a journey to develop a new relationship with food. Instead of being marked by frustration and disappointment, by fear and competition between you and the food you eat, food eventually takes its place as one of the many activities in your life, along with family, friend, working and being active.

Being at peace with food, and with yourself allows you to make choices to improve your health that are more realistic. You learn to move more slowly, realizing that you are not in a race to become healthy. Rather, you are developing a new relationship with yourself, and new relationships, if they are to be good ones, take time. You are able to set small, realistic goals, beginning at a slow pace, and increasing over time. For example, you start by walking an extra five minutes three times/week, and build it up to 25-30 minutes three times a week. You realize that you are full after eating 2 cookies, so you don't have to eat five. You learn to appreciate smaller portions, because you know you are allowed to eat more if you want.

Finally, you learn how to change behaviors because you realize you want to, not because you should.

Copyright (c) 2008 At Peace With Food