Most women in our current society aren’t eating the way they want.

The women I coach want to eat in a way where they’re able to nourish their bodies properly, while still enjoying the foods they love.

While this seems simple, it can feel nearly impossible for most women to make this a reality.

Eating healthy and losing weight can be a lifelong series of failures.

Where a woman is picking up healthy eating habits and putting them back down weeks later.

Which will cause most women to end up frustrated and full of self-doubt.

They’ll think that effortless healthy eating habits just isn’t in the cards for them.

Because of this, I’ve made it my mission to teach women how to form healthy eating habits with ease.

Despite what you’ve heard, it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Learning to eat healthy is actually incredibly simple, when you learn the truth about how to build those habits long-term.

The key to building healthy eating habits is to first understand what’s preventing you from eating healthy in the first place.

Here, I’m going to give you the 11 reasons why you aren’t eating the way you want. 

My goal is to help you understand what you’ve been doing wrong.

So, you can form a relationship with food and your body that feels effortless.

11 Reasons Why You Aren’t Eating the Way You Want

1) You’re Not Paying Attention

Many women have no idea how they’re currently eating.

They know they don’t like their current results or eating habits.

But they’re clueless as to how much they eat, when they eat, what they eat, etc.

In order to know where you’re starting from, you need to establish a baseline.

Track what you eat for a week to gather the data and observe how you eat.

No drama needs to be associated with this. These are just facts.

Drama only comes from what you make the facts mean about yourself.

2) You Don’t Know Your Food Story

We all have a “food story” that makes up the relationship with food we have today.

Especially as women, we’re thrown into the diet-industry from a young age and taught to criticize our bodies negatively.

So, I want you to explore what your food story is.

What conditioned you to have the relationship with food and eating habits you have right now?

This can seem like a painful process for some, but it’s necessary.

Be willing to experience the uncomfortable emotions and go there.

This process will leave you feeling more empowered.

Since you’ll realize you likely have very good reasons why you eat the way you do right now.

3) You Cling to Old Food Beliefs

When you look back on your food story, you might notice how your experiences with food shaped your beliefs about eating today.

Most of us have limiting food beliefs from as early as childhood.

And if not addressed these can spiral into unhealthy eating patterns in adulthood.

Limiting food beliefs can look like:

• “Carbohydrates make me fat”

• “Sweets are bad for me”

• “Vegetables just aren’t my thing”

It’s important you become aware of these beliefs and be mindful of them.

So, you can begin re-writing your food beliefs for the healthiest, happiest version of you.

For more on this, read this article here.

4) Your Diet Mentality is Still Present

As mentioned, most of us are brought up under the notion that diets work for weight loss.

And that if we focus on the “right food actions” that we can lose weight, feel confident, and be happy.

Chances are, I don’t need to explain why that’s false is you’re here.

Diets never work long-term and will only lead you to a lifetime of weight fluctuations, frustration, and pain.

However, even if you’re aware of this, you’ll still need to work to free yourself from a diet mentality.

A diet mentality can present itself with thoughts such as:

• “What do I need to eat to lose weight?”
• “What method of eating is most healthy for my body?”
• “I’ll burn off those calories I ate later”

This mentality can be sneaky.

It’s important as women that we’re hyper-aware of this and addressing it moving forward.

For more on this, read this article here.

5) There’s No Food & Body Connection

Most of us have lost the intimacy with food & eating healthy throughout our lives.

Eating healthy has become very “results-based” where we only eat healthy to lose weight.

It’s a means to an end.

We’ve lost touch with what our bodies need to eat to truly feel their best.

And we’ve lost the love that we feel in caring for our bodies with the right foods.

To truly eat healthy with ease, you need to re-establish that food and body connection.

Pay attention to when you are hungry throughout the day.

Be mindful of when you feel comfortably full during eating.

Be curious about what foods make you feel amazing.

Make note of the foods that make you feel sluggish and worn-down.

Have good intentions with food and start caring about what your body is trying to tell you.

She’s always willing to speak to you if you’re ready to listen.

6) You Don’t Feel Your Feelings

The number one struggle women face with eating healthy is emotional eating.

And it’s mainly due to the fact that you aren’t experienced in feeling negative emotion.

Meaning, when you experience negative emotion (stress, worry, fear, etc.), rather than experience it, you cover it up with food.

This is incredibly common and if this resonates with you, show yourself some compassion.

Most of us aren’t taught to embrace negative emotion at its fullest.

But to avoid emotional eating patterns you need to be willing to feel any negative emotion that comes up for you.

Be willing to sit in silence with it and observe it in your body (meditation can be useful for this).

The great news?

A negative feeling can’t actually hurt you.

Unless you give it power to negatively affect your life.

7) You’re Obsessed With the “Right” Actions

Most of the healthy eating solutions available to you in the diet industry are action-based.

Meaning, they’ll give you a set of actions to follow in order to lose the weight.

It’s no secret that this rarely works long-term.

You’ll usually find some way to self-sabotage and “fall off track”.

And this has nothing to do with your abilities to eat healthy.

It’s because you can’t force yourself to complete actions without first addressing your thoughts.

A model that explains this is:

• Thoughts lead to feelings

• Feelings lead to actions

• Actions lead to results 

• Circumstances are neutral

In short, you can’t skip to the end of the model and try to change the actions outright.

Your brain will self-sabotage if you still have the old thoughts present.

You need to first create new thoughts that will allow you to take the right actions and have new results over time.

For more on this, read this article here.

8) You’re In Victim-Mode

It’s not uncommon for us to be prone to a victim mentality when it comes to the way we eat.

We can often feel like our unhealthy eating patterns and weight gain “happened to us”.

While this type of behavior is natural for our brains, it’s important we call ourselves out on this.

You need to become aware that you are responsible for every result in your life.

Over time, you created your eating habits and weight due to your actions.

And there’s no drama here. No negative emotion needs to be associated with this.

This is simply the facts.

The amazing news?

This also means you’re capable of creating entirely new results with food and your body.

To take responsibility for your new results, it’s important that you take responsibility for the results you have now.

You’re not a victim of your eating habits.

So, stop giving your power away so easily here.

9) You’re Forcing Yourself to Follow Someone Else’s Food Rules

You will fail to eat healthy if you try and force yourself to stick to someone else’s food rules.

Which is essentially what a diet entails.

A diet can be seen as “a method of eating requiring you to stick to food rules written by someone other than yourself”. 

An eating plan that someone else wrote has no idea what your preferences, needs, or goals are.

You need to experiment for yourself and write your own food rules.

This is done over time by you paying attention and measuring your results with food.

Questions to ask yourself when writing your own rules:

• What foods make me feel amazing that I want to include in my diet?
• What foods don’t make me feel good that I want to set boundaries with?
• What boundaries can I set in my diet from a place of love rather than restriction?

This process can get really deep (which is what I help women with in my coaching) but it’s worth it to try it for yourself from the get-go.

10) You Don’t Enjoy Cooking

Most women I work with have tight schedules where they think they don’t have time to prepare healthy meals.

While I understand the struggle of not having hours every night to cook a fancy meal, it’s important that you enjoy the process of cooking food.

Make space in your schedule to experiment in the kitchen.

Begin to enjoy the journey of learning healthy recipes.

Make your kitchen space an enjoyable and relaxing place to be.

While this sounds frivolous, it’s actually a crucial mindset shift you need with food to enjoy the process of eating healthy.

The simple act of making cooking healthy meals fun is such a game changer.

11) You’re Unwilling to “Be Here”

At the surface, many women I help want to change their eating habits.

But they’re often under the mentality of “one foot out the door”.

On a deeper level, they are not willing to be present with the person they are now.

With their current struggles and eating habits.

To form healthier eating habits, you need to be willing to be fully present with your current eating habits.

Which means being curious and compassionate about the version of yourself you are right now.

This seems like a frivolous concept, but it’s so crucial to make real progress forward.

What to Do Next

If you’ve been struggling to form healthy eating habits that last, I encourage you to go back through this list and see which reason applies to you.

If you’re anything like I was, most of the concepts on this list applied to me.

When you read these reasons, show yourself compassion for any that resonate with you.

It’s not our fault that most of us were brought up with toxic food beliefs in childhood.

However, it is our responsibility to evolve and redesign our relationship with food on our terms.

I can’t wait to see you do this for yourself.