I have lost a total of 120 pounds—basically, 40 pounds, three times in my life. The last time I lost weight, I did not use conventional diet techniques, I used emotional eating and cognitive psychology tools to lose the weight, deepen my relationship with myself, and sustain my lifestyle changes.

The first time I lost weight, I was in my 20s. I gained weight between high school, college, and undergraduate school. You know, lots of beer, late-night eating, and cafeteria food. The internet was rather new and I typed in a “diet calculator” on how to lose 40 pounds and it spit out some sort of formula that restricted me to 1200 calories, 35 grams of fat, and another metric that I don’t remember. This led to consistent obsession about food, going to bed hungry and basically not enjoying my life. After a few months of this I could not sustain these efforts, nor did I want to so I slowly gained the weight back, leaving me even more upset than when I had started.

Then in my late 20’s and early 30’s I started having children and with each pregnancy I gained 40+ pounds and was determined to take it off. After the first pregnancy my OBGYN at the time was not happy with my weight gain and encouraged me to eat clean after the birth and I started to have more of an interest in exercise. This time I lost weight in a healthier way but started to rely heavily on exercise to keep my weight down. Despite still overeating, I started trying different workouts and used vigorous exercise to keep my weight at bay.

As I have gotten older heavy exercise has not been effective in keeping my weight down, so I turned to my coaching tools to help. This process has taught me how to honor my hunger & fullness scales and how to allow my feelings instead of eating foods that don’t serve my goals. This has been such a profound experience for me and my clients because it helps deepen your connection with yourself and your body and how to honor your commitments.

 No more of those fad diets that have you relying on something outside of yourself. We all have so much wisdom inside of us; we must listen to our body’s signals, learn how to feel our feelings, and allow urges to go off course. This way of losing weight is so powerful, and the tools can be applied to other areas of your life.

If you desire to lose weight by learning to honor commitments to yourself using cognitive psychology tools, I invite you to reply to this post to chat about it. This is a gift that keeps on giving, and I would love to mentor you through my weight loss program called “A new way of being”

Have a fantastic week, everyone!!!

Melanie