By the time clients enter our program, they are out of control with food. They can write books about nutrition and diets. They know the fat grams, calories, and carbohydrates in most foods. They know how they should eat, and how they shouldn't. They just cannot put that knowledge into practice. They are locked into an uncontrollable cycle with food where obsessive thoughts about weight, body image, diets, and food consume their lives. They have disconnected from their Self and their appetite.
Our program connects people back to an internal form of control, making it possible to eat when hungry, make healthy food choices, and stop eating when full. Clients learn to identify the thoughts, feelings, and situations that trigger using food or thinking excessively about food, dieting, weight, and body image. Then, with the Diets Don’t Work® program they learn to substitute healthy methods of caring for themselves and connecting back to their own healthy appetites.
The Diets Don’t Work® program is a structured program based on cognitive-behavioral theory, solution-focused theory, and educational awareness. It is complemented with guided imagery, hypnotherapy, affirmations, and meditation techniques. It is complete with corresponding homework assignments, self-awareness assessments, progress charts, and recorded guided imagery. The Diets Don’t Work® program is 12-step compatible.
Why Diets Don't Work
Many of us know how much to eat, what to eat, and when to eat. We may know the calories, fat and carbohydrate content of foods. We have the knowledge but just can’t put it into practice.
We may not know why we overeat. We may be eating when we are lonely, angry, sad, anxious, bored, etc. We may be using food to cope with stress in our lives. But in time, food stops working and our unhealthy eating patterns or extra pounds don’t offer comfort.
We are not using food for physical hunger. We may not even know if we are hungry or not. As soon as the thought of food comes to our minds, we are hard-wired to reach for it. It becomes automatic. In essence, eating becomes a habitual coping mechanism.
Repeating this behavior over and over forms a predictable habit pattern. We gain weight, go on another diet, rebel and start the cycle over again.
All diets work temporarily. However, when we diet, we set ourselves up to overeat because we subconsciously rebel over restricting our food. Some proceed to develop eating disorders. Binge eating often starts as a direct result of dieting. So how do we get out of this cycle?
How the Program Works
We know all behaviors start with a thought, whether we are aware of the thought or not. We act on these thoughts throughout our day. Have you ever wondered, “why am I eating this?” Many of us have totally disconnected from our internal appetite. We may habitually reach for food when we are not hungry. We learn that awareness is the first key for opening the door to change.
We cannot change something we are not aware of, but with awareness change is possible.
Through the use of our structured program, awareness leads to new thinking patterns that produce new eating behaviors. You learn alternatives that can work uniquely for you. Your behavior changes easily and naturally when your internal habitual thoughts change. This personal internal form of control is empowering and dramatically increases self-esteem.
This is not about following someone else's food plan or diet. We have learned from years of experience that external controls work only temporally. At Diets Don’t Work®, our goal is for you to attain internalized, healthy eating habits that you can maintain yourself—permanently.
Our program addresses the core issues of out-of-control eating and shows how to reconnect to a natural way of relating to food, your appetite, and body. Each session or group is outlined with specific objectives, goals, homework assignments and corresponding guided imagery. The sessions assist you in identifying unhealthy patterns, triggers, underlying thoughts and belief systems that keep you locked in the disordered eating.
It's time to stop this cycle that robs you of the quality of life you deserve. Experience the freedom of living life without the constant thoughts of what to eat, or not eat, as you live free of disordered or compulsive overeating — permanently, easily and naturally! You can do this; we can Help!