The Truth About Willpower

If only I had enough will power……

I hear this over and over from my clients and many times during recent Nourish YOU sessions. It makes me so sad. Our culture tells us it’s our fault we are overweight, that it’s a personal lack of willpower.

The women I talk to are hardworking, super smart, managing a household AND a business all while raising children. They are in no way weak or lacking ANYTHING. The problem is not their willpower. They are powerFUL.

I also know plenty of people who wouldn’t say they have a lot of “willpower” who are skinny.

So, what is the real problem?

It’s complicated, multi-layered and different for everyone. But part of the problem is continuing to blame ourselves and our willpower. Doing that will not change us or in any way fix the problem. It only adds guilt and shame to an already painful and challenging struggle.

It’s time to let go of judgement of ourselves and others around size or weight and eating. It’s also time to quit beating ourselves up for not maintaining crazy eating plans. Those plans don’t work. When they do work- it’s only for a short time. If they did work, you wouldn’t be struggling with weight- again/still.

This doesn’t mean we stop caring about ourselves, in fact, letting go of judgement can be the MOST caring action we can take. It actually frees us up to look at our wellbeing and health in a loving, kind and productive way. It provides space to establish a long term healthy relationship with our bodies and food.

When we can let go of the judgement we can begin to see that the real gauge for health is how good we feel. We can get down to the root causes of not feeling well (and why we gain weight). We can then take action that supports and heals our body.

Stop fighting with/judging yourself and put that energy into supporting your body and addressing the real problems.

How? It starts with a shift in mindset. Knowing that there is a reason it didn’t work for you, knowing that you are not broken.

Catching the thoughts like “I must not be doing it right.” Or “I just need to do it harder/better/longer/more” and changing the dialog to “This isn’t the right thing for my body”and “I need to take care of me/reduce my stress/get more sleep/work on supporting my body”.

It takes trusting ourselves and our experience. Own your awesomeness.

It takes practice. Be gentle with yourself.

It takes different influences. Check out intuitive eating and body positive sources.

It requires getting support. Look for people who have freedom in their relationship with food and eat well.

This week I challenge you to take one small step. Begin to own your awesomeness. Look for proof that you can trust yourself. What have you accomplished? How have you gotten to where you are today? When/where has your body's wisdom shown up in your life? Write it down or share it with a friend. If you are feeling really brave, share it in the comments!

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