I Failed. Really, Really Badly.

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I have failed many times in my life. But never have I failed as often or as hard as I have with my eating.

The emotional pain of falling off the “good eating” bandwagon is sharp. One minute you’re all smug, thinking that you FINALLY have your eating under control. THIS time it’s for real. The kilos are melting off your booty. You’re kicking butt at the gym. Chocolate pies come and go and not a single crumb touches your lips.

Until…

Days, weeks and sometimes even months pass and then, something happens to shake your resolve and BAM! You’re right back where you started. Or worse, even further back than where you were when you started!

Believe me, I’ve been there. Hundreds, if not thousands of times. Sometimes the fall is hard and fast and so is the recovery. And sometimes, it’s slow and torturous. Little by little your focus wanes and you are lulled into a false sense of security. As if you really can eat all the cream cheese now without a single pound of unwanted weight or guilt. And like a drug addict looking for a final fix, the bartering begins…

“Just this one last time” you promise yourself, as you lick your lips with glee.

And ever so deceptively… you fall from grace. Again.

Of course, it’s not just you. It happens to the best of us.  My weight still fluctuates from time to time and the promise of fast (and let’s be honest, easy) weight loss is like dangling a chocolate coated carrot under my nose. 

In my dietary hey-day, I would cut diets out of magazines and file them alphabetically for later reference. I Googled fast weight loss until my eyes maintained a permanent blank stare. I cut pictures of fitness models out of magazines, decapitated them and stuck a picture of my own head on their bronzed body “for thin-spiration”.

Did it work? Uh, nope. It failed. Big time. Why? Because there’s no express lane to change.

Need proof? Oh, I got proof…

1. The starvation diet

I tried this one more than once (read: hundreds of times). I was sure that if I could just muster up enough “will power”, I could live without food (or at least, not eat very much of it) until my thighs looked like smooth, bronzed liquorice sticks . Inevitably this would end with me face down in a fresh baked cheese cake with the empty promises of “I’ll start again tomorrow” clucking together in my mind like two Skittles in an empty packet.

The Lesson: You’re supposed to eat. Not eating depletes your metabolism, your progress and your sanity. Deprivation is not fun. Eventually you WILL find a way to get what you need (namely, food)

2. The 100 calories a day diet

Closely followed by the starvation diet, is it’s less attractive cousin, the 100 calories a day diet. I managed to pull this one off for several weeks. I kept a food diary (ugghh!) and meticulously recorded every morsel that passed my lips. 10 lettuce leaves = I’m the queen of the world. 10 lettuce leaves + 4 hot dogs, 6 sodas, 2 blocks of chocolate and a family size pizza = I’m an epic failure.

The Lesson: Sometimes you need to try something more than once before you truly learn the difference between the right way, the wrong way, and your way.

3. Meal replacement shakes

Ahhh the beloved meal replacement shake. Because isn’t drinking vile tasting, chemically composed dirty dishwater better than eating real food? I’ve given this one a red hot go at least a dozen times. Was it successful? Sure. If you consider “successful” losing 5 kilos immediately followed by gaining 15 kilos.

The Lesson: The day that you can walk out into an orchard and pick a deliciously ripe meal replacement shake from a tree, is the day you should start drinking them.

4. Atkins

I spent over 20 years of my life following a vegan/vegetarian diet. I liked it. It made me feel good in myself and about the planet. So you can appreciate how desperate I was to switch out steamed broccoli for cheese, meat and copious amounts of lard. But desperate I was. And switch thing up I did. I lasted less than a day on this diet.

The Lesson: Listen to your body. It knows what it wants to eat. You don’t need to manipulate, deprive or connive. You CAN trust yourself to make good decisions and you can bet your last M&M that your choices will change with time. I now eat meat.

But there is always a silver lining…

If something isn’t in alignment with your deepest beliefs, you’ll never be able to pull it off. Subconsciously, you don’t want to starve or deprive yourself, but that’s exactly what a diet does.

You will have a few failures sprinkled throughout the story book of your life. It’s oooookaaaay.

The truth is that you’re NOT going to wake up tomorrow, magically thin and deliriously happy. That is not a thing. But you CAN decide today to ditch the crazy fad diets and take control of your own life.

If this was super easy, everybody would do it. But they don’t And they won’t. Because it isn’t. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

Were all these crazy diet’s fun? Errr, no.

But they are the foundation upon which I stand today, FINALLY living in a body that (most of the time) does not feel compelled to demolish every last chocolate from the box so that they won’t be there tomorrow when I “start again”.

This is about something bigger than you. This is about you creating a body and a life that you LOVE living in.

It’s time to grab those failures around the shoulders and give them a ginormous hug! They are you badge of honour. Wear them with pride and don’t look back.

Life is not about “getting it perfect” so why should your food choices be any different? Just do your best. Every.Single.Day. Just do the best you can. And when you fail again (because you will), just accept it, dust the cookie crumbs off your lips and MOVE ON!

So yup. I’ve failed. Really, really badly.

And with all my heart I hope you that you fail too. Why? Because it’s the path to your freedom.

Of course, if you want to speed the whole process up by a few life times, you can always check out my freakishly spectacular Personal Coaching Program.

You DON’T have to suffer to break the food-suffering-cycle and you DON’T have to keep running. Eventually, when you’re ready, you will slow down and realise that the thing you wanted was waiting for you the whole time. All you ever had to do was slow down enough to embrace it.

The clearer you are on where you want to go, the faster you can close the gap. And gap-closing is my specialty.  Thigh gap closing? Uh, no. This is WAY BETTER!

If you’re ready to move past procrastination and self sabotage with your weight loss and relationship with food, this is for you…

I have 3 positions open for Private 1:1 Coaching

This is for you if:

* You KNOW your life could be very cool if only you weren’t in a constant daily WAR ZONE with the refrigerator.

* You KNOW you are ready to quit losing and gaining the same 5, 10 or 50 kilos year after year after year and…

* You KNOW you want the WEIGHT, the OBSESSION, the FRUSTRATION, the GUILT and CONSTANT DIETING GONE FROM YOUR LIFE FOR GOOD.

One life.

One opportunity.

3 positions ONLY.

Are you done fooling around with this? Click here to find out more.

Oodles of chocolate coated love!

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