Many women come to me experiencing massive amounts of overwhelm when it comes to eating healthy.
This is perfectly normal.
In fact, it’s pretty much expected in our current society.
We’re constantly bombarded with new fad diets, nutritional advice, and weight loss elixirs that claim they work.
Which leaves us in a cycle of desperation and self-punishment when they don’t give us the results we want long-term.
I understand this all too well.
I was caught in this mind-numbing, yo-yo dieting cycle for years.
Where I felt like a diet refugee looking for the healthy eating advice that would finally make me stop feeling overwhelmed.
I’m excited to share with you that eating healthy can feel simple.
And you can learn to eliminate the overwhelm for yourself – right now.
First, we need to talk about what overwhelm really is.
Overwhelm is simply a feeling or vibration in your body.
Nothing more.
This feeling is created by your thoughts.
The thoughts that create the feeling of overwhelm are usually laced in self-pity and indulgence.
Examples of thoughts that create overwhelm might be:
If you feel overwhelmed with eating healthy, you will have thoughts similar to these.
What thoughts such as these do, is they create the belief that your eating habits are out of your control.
Which leaves you feeling helpless, frustrated, and overwhelmed.
This is a feeling that you create.
You alone are responsible for feeling overwhelmed when it comes to eating healthy.
When you can take emotional responsibility and realize this for yourself, it puts you back in the driver’s seat.
You become in charge of your relationship with food.
The reason your brain loves to resort to negative thoughts and indulge in overwhelm?
Because those thoughts keep you from progressing.
The truth is, your brain hates change. Because it wants you to be safe.
And it knows that everything you’ve done up until this point has kept you alive.
So, it will insert thoughts to prevent you from doing anything different.
Which causes you to self-sabotage your eating habits.
When you can understand this, you can see how those feelings of overwhelm aren’t personal at all.
It’s simply your handy brain doing it’s job.
I want you to know that overwhelm will always be an option.
The feeling of overwhelm has nothing to do with your current eating habits or level of health.
It’s due to your thoughts about your eating habits.
This is so important.
Because you need to realize that you will never reach a place where those thoughts don’t exist.
Your brain will always seek to keep you safe.
So, it will provide thoughts that seek to overwhelm you and cause you to self-sabotage.
There is nothing wrong with this.
It just means your brain is working!
And the truth is, we have a really good reason for being overwhelmed.
We live in a fast-paced society where we are constantly being asked to devote our time and energy.
It seems like our jobs, family, and relationships are always competing for our attention.
The feeling of overwhelm will always be available to you.
You need to decide whether you want to indulge in it.
Or whether you want to consciously and intentionally move past it.
So, you can create the healthy and happy life you desire.
Now that you understand how you create the feeling of overwhelm, you can begin working towards eliminating it.
So you can learn to eat healthier, improve your relationship with food, and reach your ideal weight.
The truth is, the feeling of overwhelm isn’t something that has to affect your eating habits.
I want you to follow this 5-step process to begin eliminating the overwhelm around food.
First, I want you to practice having an awareness of your overwhelm.
The fact that you even read this article is a crucial step!
You now have an awareness as to why you experience overwhelm with food.
From this knowledge, you also want to brainstorm what thoughts are causing that overwhelm for you specifically.
To do this, you can journal for a few minutes by asking yourself “why do I feel overwhelmed with food right now?”.
When you observe what you wrote, you will be able to see what thoughts are leading to the feeling of overwhelm.
This is a super eye-opening exercise.
So, don’t skip it!
From there, I want you to begin observing how you create the feeling of overwhelm in everyday life.
What thought in that moment led you to feel a spike in overwhelm inside your body?
This will reveal so much for you.
As I mentioned, the feeling of overwhelm will always be available to you.
Therefore, you need to change how you respond to it regularly.
To begin responding to overwhelm in a way that serves you, you will want to practice feeling it.
There’s nothing inherently negative about the feeling of overwhelm.
No negative emotion can actually harm you.
It’s simply a vibration in your body.
Where it goes wrong, is when you react to the negative emotion in a way that doesn’t serve you.
In short, it’s not the overwhelm that’s sabotaging your eating habits.
It’s your reaction and resistance to overwhelm.
For example, you didn’t overeat because you felt overwhelm.
You overate because you were trying to escape the feeling of overwhelm.
This is such an important distinction!
You will need to master your ability to not react to overwhelm when you experience it.
To practice this, I want you to commit to fully feeling the overwhelm next time it occurs.
Sit in silence for 5-10 minutes and feel what that feels like inside of your body.
This exercise is so important.
Because when you commit to feeling overwhelm, you will see how little power it has over you.
It’s crucial that you create your food plan ahead of time.
Specifically at least 24-hours in advance of when you plan on eating.
The reason for this is that you want to decide your eating choices without the drama.
When you make food choices in the moment, you will do what feels good at the time.
Planning your eating choices in advance gives you the opportunity to make food choices intentionally.
Which will allow you to honor your healthy eating goals.
Remember, overwhelm will always be available to you.
It’s important that when it does occur, that you don’t make spontaneous eating decisions based on how you feel.
When you plan ahead of time, you already made a promise to yourself and your eating choices.
As mentioned, I want you to notice when you experience overwhelm, you will want to escape.
Your brain will want you to react to the feeling of overwhelm, instead of experiencing it.
Have an awareness of this and expect this resistance.
Resistance to making healthy eating choices comes in the form of urges.
An urge is what you experience when overwhelm comes up and you want to escape.
This urge will often lead you to seek comfort in the form of overeating or emotional eating.
Instead of following through with your healthy eating plans.
The key is to avoid reacting to those urges.
That resistance is perfectly normal and should be expected.
You don’t have to sabotage your healthy eating plans because you feel overwhelm.
And you do not need to react to the overwhelm or feel the need to escape from it.
You can just experience overwhelm, and make that mean nothing negative about you.
We now know that the feeling of overwhelm is caused by our thoughts.
So, to practice eliminating overwhelm over time, we can practice new thoughts that serve us.
The feeling of overwhelm will always be available, but it is possible to lessen the extent of it in our lives.
This can be done by practicing new thought patterns, which eventually turn into beliefs.
Instead of indulging in negative thoughts, here are some thoughts to try on instead:
Instead of overwhelm, these thoughts can create feelings of commitment, love, and stability.
This is the type of shift you want to experience when doing this work over time.
If you can manage your overwhelm, you will be well on your way to changing your eating habits with ease.
Most of the resistance we experience with our eating habits isn’t due to the tactics.
It’s due to our inability to manage our emotional state.
This is a perfect example of this.
I want you to walk yourself through the 5-step process above.
Really do the work to manage your feelings of overwhelm over time.
This will make your eating habits so much easier.
I can’t wait to hear how this worked for you.
Hey there! I'm Kat Rentas. I’m a certified life and health coach for women who believes that eating healthy should feel simple and sustainable. I teach hundreds of high-performing women to change their eating habits without the overwhelm. Want to change your eating habits in a way that is aligned with your needs, preferences, and goals? You’re in the right place. You can read my full story here.