February 2023

If creating your own food protocol and plans still feels overwhelming and intimidating to you, start small. Choose one meal to begin. Generally speaking, the easiest one is probably breakfast. If you’ve been eating breakfast bars and drinking breakfast shakes, or you’ve been running through fast food windows for egg sandwiches and deep-fried hash browns, that could be the place to start.

Ask yourself: What do I want for breakfast that will nourish and give me energy, and is easy to prepare?

Make a list.

Then make a decision: What are you going to have for breakfast this week, Monday through Friday? (Leave the weekends off for now.)

Write it all down.
Post it – keep it visible.
Then prep for it.
Eat the breakfasts you’ve planned. (Not the breakfasts you want instead, in the moment, when you just don’t feel like eating what you planned and prepped.)
This is how you build trust with yourself.

Don’t worry about the other meals. Don’t be in a hurry.
Get your breakfasts down.
Do this for one week, two weeks, one month. Whatever it takes.
You’re building trust. You have your own back.

When you begin a new diet, you feel empowered.
“Yes!” you say, “I’ve got this. This time, I’m going to make it work.”

You shop for the foods you will eat. 

You prepare dishes and meals ahead of time.

You tell your family and friends what you’re doing. 

You might even build a support system to help you along. 

This is all good stuff. No doubt.

You are psyched. 

You follow the plan. 

You lose weight. 

People might even begin to notice the changes. 

Yes, yes, yes, this is it. 

You’re on a roll, in a flow state.

Then one day, it’s not so easy anymore. The flow has stopped. 

You find that you don’t want to eat what you’ve been eating. 

You want to have what everyone else is having instead. 

You’re tired. 

Just this once… you’ll have something else. 

Then there’s just one more time, and you’ll get back on track after. 

But there’s always another just this once. 

You’re bewildered and panicky. 

What’s going on? 

You loved what you were doing… how you were eating and taking care of yourself.

It’s seemingly gone, evaporated.

This was the way things rolled out for me over and over again on my decades-long quest to overcome overeating, emotional eating, binge eating, and weight gain. I don’t even know anymore how many times I found myself confused, demoralized, and desperate to recreate what I knew (thought) was the solution to the (food, eating, me) problem. 

Here’s what I discovered and want you to know:

First, it’s normal that it gets hard.