Hello, welcome back to the podcast this week. I’m so happy to be here speaking with you today. The theme of today’s podcast episode is going to be guiding disempowerment. And what I’m referring to here is that experience of emotionally that a lot of us can have after we’ve spent a fair bit of time in the diet industry or attempting diet protocols. And what a diet is will mean different things to many of you. But how I like to define a diet is when we are attempting to constantly harness willpower to achieve healthy eating perfection, whether that’s a specific food protocol or a meal plan, it just doesn’t feel like a natural way of eating and we feel like we constantly have to be on top of our eating habits and it comes from this very restrictive pressuring place.
So I want you to consider what your definition of dieting is, what your past may look like and how that has left you feeling when it comes to the eating habits that you want to have.
What I know for me is that my history with dieting, when I think back to the changes I wanted to make, it did leave me feeling more out of control and less capable of the changes I wanted to make. And it’s because over a period of years attempting to eat perfectly healthy with protocols and plans, I just kept creating evidence that I wasn’t capable of following through. But in today’s episode, what I really want to show you is how it makes perfect sense if those path methods did not work for you and how you can move into empowerment now with your eating habits.
Because in order for you to solve your food struggles permanently and eat healthy naturally, you will need to truly feel like the leader of your eating habits. You are going to have to have a sense of self-trust that you are capable of making the changes you wanna make.
And we all start somewhere. So the first step is acknowledging how you may feel disempowered now, which is a hundred percent valid. Now, it’s no secret that acknowledging where we may feel disempowered is uncomfortable. Acknowledging that we feel disempowered is something that we may be resistant to because a lot of you hold yourselves in a high regard in other areas of your life. So a lot of you are very high achievers. You take yourselves quite seriously and you know how capable you are when it comes to your work or your family or your relationships.
But in this area of your life, dieting may have left you feeling the opposite, which can feel a bit at odds with how you want to see yourself.
So I just want you, if you are willing with me today, to really acknowledge where you may feel genuinely disempowered when it comes to this area of your life. And what I want you to know is that this is not a problem you have to solve for in the sense that you’re not to be fixed here. This makes perfect sense because this feeling of disempowerment that you may feel is not remotely reflective of how capable you are of making permanent changes with food.
Now you are just as capable at making permanent changes with food as you are at performing at work, taking care of your families, prioritizing your relationships, all of those other areas. Because here’s the thing I really want you to know. Your past with dieting, while it may have left you feeling disempowered, is irrelevant in terms of where you’re going with food.
And I’ll say that one again. Your past with dieting is irrelevant and it has nothing to do with you solving your food struggles. Now, those solutions in your past didn’t work for you because likely they required constant willpower, focus, discipline, effort. You had to be constantly micromanaging your eating habits in order to succeed with the solutions you were given.
And this is where I want you to start giving yourself the credit that your failures with dieting aren’t personal because those methods did not set you up for success with you. There are some people, and I know a lot of y’all have friends who succeed massively with diets. I had those two and some people dieting works really well. It doesn’t feel like it’s at odds with how they want to eat. It ends up just matching perfectly.
There are many more women in this world like you and I, who it just doesn’t match with.
It doesn’t match the experience of food we wanna have. That’s not where we wanna put our emotional energy towards every day in sticking to a food plan. So it will require so much more willpower and effort and energy for you to stick to a diet methodology that you don’t want to be doing. If you have people in your life who succeed with those methods, it’s because it didn’t require as much from them emotionally as it requires you. It’s important that we begin to approach healthy eating and weight loss based on the specific person who is wanting to eat healthy and lose weight because all of us will have a different type of approach to healthy eating and weight loss, and that really is what my practice is based on.
So failures with dieting aren’t personal. It’s that the solutions you’ve tried didn’t match what is necessary for you to create long-term results.
If a method requires constant willpower, focus and discipline, it isn’t a long-term solution because my friend I know as high achievers, we can ignore this fact. But as humans, we have a limited amount of emotional energy. We do not have an endless tank of emotional energy as highly as we can perform. I promise you this is true and we can burn out. So we cannot force ourselves to indefinitely stick to a manner of healthy eating that takes all of that energy.
I would love for you to consider here and be really honest with yourself on how you are making your past with food personal. This is how we disempower ourselves as women after we have dieted. The only way we feel disempowered is if we are making our past with food means something about us. So I want you to just take a moment and consider maybe you’ve never asked yourself this question, how am I making my past with food personal and what am I making it mean about me that I failed those past methods for me?
I would make it mean something is wrong with me. That was my go-to. And actually what almost felt worse was I would make it mean that I missed something, that there was something that I just wasn’t understanding, that there was some missing secret to long-term success with healthy eating that I just wasn’t getting. And this really compelled me to hustle over research, get all the certifications, all the things, and I still didn’t solve that problem. And it’s because I wasn’t missing anything or there wasn’t anything I wasn’t capable of understanding.
I just didn’t have the right solution offered to me that I needed. So just ask that question. What are you making your past with food mean about you? These are going to be the thoughts and beliefs that are fueling you feeling disempowered with these changes. But here’s the thing. You are a unique eater with individual needs and a cookie cutter diet protocol that doesn’t feel customized to you.
It’s not going to make the cut . It’s not going to address what you need to make long-term changes. You are a complex individual, lovely human, which means you need a process that is able to fit your needs and preferences. You shouldn’t have to adjust your needs and preferences to a cookie cutter process. It is safe for us to raise our standards in terms of what we believe we need as women to succeed in this area of our life.
We have been gypped when it comes to solutions in this area. And really personally, that is my goal for my coaching practice is to elevate the standard for us as high achieving women who know how to show up in the world. We deserve a method of healthy eating and weight loss that measures up to who we are as women. And what we need is a process that fits us.
We don’t need to force ourselves to fit a process. So that’s just to say that things that didn’t work out for you, it is a reflection of the diet industry and the diet industry only you have full permission to acknowledge that and to acknowledge how the past methods you’ve tried didn’t meet your needs. And that’s something you can validate yourself for now. And as you move forward in your healthy eating journey in your way, these things will start to become more obvious to you.
You will start to feel more empowered realizing, oh, of course it didn’t work out in the past. Those things just didn’t teach me how to do this long term. Because here’s the thing, if you identify as a high achieving woman, you know how to take action, you show up, you know how to get things done in your life. If you showed up fully to a past solution for healthy eating and weight loss and it didn’t provide you the progress you wanted, it wasn’t a solution that was tailored to what you needed in that moment, that’s it.
You do not need to question how capable or competent you are at making long-term changes with food. And you don’t need to let the feelings of this disempowerment define your experience of healthy eating, how you feel about your past with food, the thoughts you may have that something is wrong with you, you’re not capable, you’re missing something. Those thoughts do not need to define you and where you’re going in this area of your life, it makes sense that they are there. But you do not need to opt into those beliefs and attach them to who you are.
Acknowledge the disempowerment that you may have. I know for me, and a lot of you, it’s this heavy feeling that kind of feels like our emotions are weighing us down. And you may notice this feeling when you think back on your dieting history. So everything that you’ve tried and failed at with food long term.
But this doesn’t mean that you need to feed these reasons why you are disempowered as an eater. You are not disempowered as an eater when you notice the disempowerment, you’re there to witness something. Your brain is offering you something you are being offered emotionally. Witnessing your disempowerment and indulging in the disempowerment as if it were true are two different things. One will move you forward. One will keep you stuck in self-pity.
Choose the former, my friends. It is normal to feel disempowered in this area of your life, but what you make that mean and whether you allow that moment to keep you stuck is your decision. Now, I want to give you permission to feel this disempowerment and to validate why it exists, because there were things that didn’t work out in the past. And of course you feel disappointed by that. But here’s the really important thing is that your ability to show up and take action on this area of your life hasn’t left.
So you are just as capable now as you ever were likely more because of all of the evidence you now have of what doesn’t work for you. And you can take responsibility for moving forward and solving your food struggles from this type of empowerment. But I do wanna offer tactical ways you can begin creating more empowerment with healthy eating now because this is a hundred percent necessary for you to move forward. A really big shift that can create more empowerment with healthy eating is to sit and really determine your long-term goals for healthy eating.
So when a lot of us diet, we’re taught to focus on more the short-term finish line goals like weight loss and weight loss is great. It’s useful if it’s something you want that is extremely valid and I encourage you to prioritize that. But something we’re not often taught is to consider what will our compelling reasons for healthy eating be after the weight has been lost After that is no longer a struggle we’re having because what dieting does is it motivates you to eat healthy because of the promise of weight loss, but it doesn’t tell you how to keep eating healthy and prioritizing it after the weight is lost.
And so I want you to take a moment to consider what are your long-term reasons for eating healthy? What are your long-term goals with food and why is it about more than just the weight loss? What are your compelling reasons for eating healthy after the weight is lost? And what will keep you prioritizing this area of your life after you’ve reached that goal? It’s gonna really ground you that you are willing to give this the time it needs because it is not just about the weight loss, it is about so much more common reasons that a lot of you have are to be able to keep up with your grandkids, are to have the most fulfilling experience of being a human, that you can to be an example for your daughters or even your sons, to have the most fulfilling, intimate relationship with your partners to feel lighter, better, and more healthy, to have more energy.
So many things. I know you’ve got a bucket load of them, but I just want you to really determine those long-term goals for healthy eating here. It’s really going to bolster you into action for why making this a priority is important for you. Now, another way to create some more empowerment is to practice tactical compassion with yourself. So this is something I talk more about in episode 83 of the podcast. So if you’re curious, go back and listen to it.
But what I mean by tactical compassion is understanding that being compassionate with yourself is not fluffy or indulgent. It doesn’t mean you pity yourself. It just means you validate why past dieting didn’t work for you and you validate these reasons. So you do not make yourself wrong. Justify the reasons for why past dieting isn’t a solution. You would repeat, have your back.
It doesn’t need to feel like you’re cheerleading yourself or being positive just firmly in a really direct way.
Establish why your past failures with food makes sense. This is tactical compassion. It’s not fluffy, it’s real, it’s direct, and it’s effective. Alright, next to create more empowerment. This is a really important one. You guys take responsibility for what you decide to do. Now. Your past is done. Your past has happened. It is now just a fact that exists. It only has meaning when you give it meaning it is done. So now all that’s left is what you decide to do moving forward.
Take responsibility for that. Acknowledge from that tactical compassion that you opted into solutions that may not have served you long-term, but now what you decide to do moving forward with this awareness now is your decision. And you just get to decide what you wanna do. You are not a victim of the diet industry now. You are not even a victim of your weight gain or the eating habits you have now because you are a woman who gets to make your own choices now for how you want to eat healthy.
And whether this is your first episode with me or you’ve been a podcast listener for some time, you’re going to have more awareness now of what will not work for you and what will work for you. So know that you get to be the boss moving forward with how you want to solve this area of your life. Last two, create some more empowerment for yourself. Just begin taking leadership of your eating decisions. Start doing this in small ways. Begin actively choosing what you are going to eat.
So stop eating certain ways just because you think you should start to evaluate why do you want to eat healthy? What foods do you want to eat when you eat healthy? Why those foods? Why would you choose to eat those foods as the one who is responsible for your health? Why are you deciding to make healthy eating a priority?
Answer these questions. I actually recommend writing these things down and doing some journaling on it, but really lean into this energy of being decisive with how you will take action on solving this problem. This is the energy of a naturally healthy eater. It’s not disciplined, it’s not harsh, there’s not pressure. It’s just empowered, clear, certain and decisive. So this is the key with moving from dieting to becoming a naturally healthy eater. It’s making that shift from disempowerment to empowerment where you realize you’re the one who calls the shots and you’re the one who decides how you will take action on the solutions you want to partake in.
And the last tip I have for those that it resonates with is to seek support or begin a process that actually does fit your need. So as mentioned, if you listen to this podcast, or maybe it’s your first time with me, you’re going to start having some awareness of why things didn’t work out for you in the past and what you can do differently.
So as you build this awareness, you can start to think about what’s an approach that feels like something that as the leader of your decisions, you actually want to partake in What feels permissive for you? What feels good to invest your time or money in? And a way I think to tell if a process is a good fit for you is if the act of joining that process feels more empowering to you versus less empowering. So I think back to when I would attempt different diet protocols or methods, I may have been motivated to do it, but the act of doing it didn’t make me feel more in control or more empowered.
I didn’t feel like I was the leader of my life and the leader of the actions I took. I recommend taking action on a solution that elevates the concept you have of your yourself in an empowering way, and that doesn’t leave you feeling disempowered.
This is really the theme of my coaching program. Own your eating habits. So my goal personally is for every woman who joins to increase the concept of their selves when they join. So really opposite from a a lot of us experience, I really want a solution to be available where there’s no shame, there’s no disempowerment where women are joining because they feel like they have no other choice. Really, this program is designed for high achieving women who don’t see themselves as a helpless case.
They see themselves as a woman who equips themselves with the tools they need to succeed. Notice that difference in energy, right? So for those of you who want that empowered permanent approach to solving their food struggles, my program own Your Eating Habits was created specifically for you. So in this program, you receive the coaching, the tools, and the process you need to create naturally healthy eating habits step-by-step.
So it’s a program that really meets you where you’re at personally, and it helps you make those changes permanently. And the theme of it is really learning to eat healthy and lose weight in the way nature originally intended. It’s that foundational work. So I invite you to apply if you are committed to making the shift in your life now, you can apply at KatRentas.com/coaching. And remember from today’s episode, you are not defined from your past dieting failures.
The problem was never you. It was the methods of healthy eating you were attempting. You have permission to feel empowered with food now even as you’re making progress towards your weight loss goals. So empowered doesn’t necessarily mean you’re forcing positivity. It’s being really real and accountable with yourself, and you’re forcing positivity. It’s being really real and accountable with yourself and speaking to yourself firmly. As you say, I am capable of making these changes step by step now, and I’m capable of figuring it out.
I’m willing to give this the time it needs. That is empowerment, my friends, and it will be so useful for you to create the permanent results that you want. All right, it was my pleasure being here with you today. Thank you as always for joining me, and I will talk to you next week.