When it comes to food, have you ever told yourself "I just need to be better. I just need more discipline. I don’t have any willpower when it comes to eating biscuits/pizza/chocolate (replace with your trigger food)".

I get it. It’s easy to think that you just lack self-control when you eat even though you know you’re not hungry. Because you might not know WHY you’re doing it, and just think that you have no willpower, but you know that it’s not because of hunger.

And if you think that makes you a bad person, because you just can’t resist food, and think "What’s wrong with me?" Well... this blog post is for you!

I want you to know that there’s nothing wrong with you: everybody uses food even when they’re not hungry (to a degree), and it has nothing to do with your willpower or lack thereof.

The myth of willpower in the dieting industry

In the age of social media, we’re constantly exposed to messaging from people who want to sell us their AMAZING diets: WW, Slimming World, Keto, counting calories, etc…

And they all have one thing in common: even if they manage to convince you that theirs has nothing to do with a super restrictive diet, the reality is, they are STILL giving you a strict roadmap to follow. If you don’t follow it to the t (because you know, you are a human being, with a full life that fluctuates), and “fall off the band wagon”, what's their first reaction? Come on, you just need to have discipline and more willpower!

Ah willpower… That glorified skill that the fit people you’re looking up to all seem to possess… Because they’ve made it very clear that the ONLY reason why you don’t have the same results as them is because you don’t have enough of that willpower. “Just eat less carbs”, “Just eat 80% dark chocolate”, “You need to have more discipline, just get a salad when you are at the restaurant”, etc… The only thing that those messages achieve is to create shame (and might even be one of the reasons you start binge eating, but we’ll come back to that). It certainly doesn't give you the tools to understand WHY you sometimes feel out of control in front of some foods and can’t resist/can't stop eating them. Because believe me, there is a reason, and it is not that you don’t have willpower.

There is a problem with relying on willpower, and you have probably experienced it if you’ve dieted at some point in your life. You know that feeling - you find a new eating plan, you get super excited because finally, that’s going to make you lose those few stubborn pounds, and you go all in! For 7 days. Maybe a month. You keep going, relying on your willpower. But at some point, something just snaps, and you start “falling off the bandwagon". Why? Simply because nobody has an endless supply of willpower. Think of it as a battery: it runs out after a while, and the excitement is gone.

And once your supply of willpower is empty, you’re faced with the stress of restricting what you eat, counting every calorie/point/syn. Restricting what you eat not only causes you mental stress, having to plan what you eat all the time, calculating if you are “allowed” to eat this specific food or not, feeling guilty if you eat something that doesn’t exactly fit in your super strict plan; it also causes biological survival responses. What you take for a lack of willpower is simply your body driving you to get what it needs - whether that is nutrients you haven’t given it, or something to calm itself down and give it some comfort by eating the food that you like the most.

Why your body fights against restriction

When you restrict what you eat to follow a strict plan, the binge-restrict cycle kicks in. Deprivation will lead to cravings for that specific food you’ve been preventing yourself from having. At some point, after resisting it as much as you can, you’ll allow yourself to eat that food, and realise that you just can't stop (because you’re eating it on autopilot, feeling guilty for having given in to your craving, because you’re already telling yourself that this won’t happen again and that you’ll "be good" and won’t have that food again for a month.)

You then start to feel guilty - “I’ve got no discipline, I just ate two packs of biscuits, what’s wrong with me?” And therefore, to ease the guilt, you tell yourself that from tomorrow you’ll hit the gym even harder, that you will eat less and make sure that this doesn’t happen again. Welcome to the binge-restrict cycle! Take it from someone who’s been there - it is not a fun place to be in.

If you feel like this would never happen to you, let me ask you: have you ever noticed that the more you tell yourself not to eat something, the more you want it? The more it stays stuck in your head, and you keep thinking about it? That craving doesn’t go away, no matter how many apples or yoghurt you eat to make the feeling disappear.

Something I see very often with my clients during our coaching sessions is that if they’re craving a brownie, they will find any “healthier” alternative possible not to eat the brownie. They start by eating an apple, but the craving is still there. Then they go for a yoghurt, but it’s still there. So they try cheese, a hard-boiled egg, rice cakes, whatever is in the fridge… and 2 hours later end up going to the coffee shop to buy the brownie. As your Emotional Eating Coach, I’m here to tell you that the “healthier” option here was to just eat the brownie in the first place and to enjoy it! In that case, my client ate a lot of foods she deemed healthy but that she didn’t even want, and still ended up eating the brownie. Which she couldn’t even enjoy, because she felt so guilty of eating all the other foods beforehand and for giving in to her craving. And she didn’t get the comfort she was seeking by wanting to eat the brownie.

What you have to understand is that us, humans, we don’t just eat to fuel ourselves. Food is so much more than fuel - it’s tied to our emotions, to our culture, to comfort. Eating when you need to soothe your emotions is the most natural thing to do - but that doesn’t mean that it’s a good thing when it's your only coping mechanism. Think about how when a baby cry we try to feed them. How when we have a booboo, we’re given a lollipop. Or that if we have something to celebrate, we'll go for a nice meal out. Food is so much more than fuel, and seeing it as all it is is so important when you want to heal your relationship with it.

So, what works instead of willpower?

When clients come to me after having dieted for years, the first thing I recommend is a simple one (but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy): give yourself permission to eat.

That idea that if you only listen to your body, you will only want to eat junk food and chocolate? That’s not true. Eating intuitively means being connected to your body, so you know how to listen and give it the food it needs. And your body WILL call for veg, protein, carbs, treats, everything. However, the reason why I don’t recommend intuitive eating at first to my clients is that you need to heal your relationship with food first, to be able to do that properly. By properly, I mean that if you have spent years following someone else's rules, you more than likely have forgotten how to listen to your body - and it's easy to mix up emotional cravings with actually body needs when you haven't listened to your body in years.

If you hear someone saying that they tried eating intuitively but the only thing their body wanted was burgers, it was probably because that was something they viewed as “bad” before, had restricted, and now they are craving it. Chances are, it was simply satisfying a craving. The more you restrict something, the more you’re going to want it! By giving yourself permission to eat that food, and to enjoy it, you will have less obsession and cravings over it.

The second thing is to nourish your body regularly, eating a variety of foods from all food groups. This will help reduce your cravings, because your body will actually get what it needs to get from what you eat. It doesn't mean that you won’t ever have cravings again, but they will be less frequent and less intense.

And last but not least, it's essential to learn to work with your body and not against it. We’ve learned to listen to external messages and rules when it comes to food, instead of listening to the cues that our body sends us. Women who have dieted before often don’t get hunger cues or fullness cues, because they’ve learned to not listen to them and just eat what was planned for them. But your body knows what it needs, and when it needs it - so stop working against it, and learn to listen to it. Eat when it tells you that you’re hungry, instead of drinking water hoping that it will go away. Learn to recognise when you’re full, so you can stop eating when your body has had enough. Your body is full of wisdom, so listen to it!

I know it’s easier said than done, and that’s something that all my clients work on with me during our sessions. Healing your relationship with food goes hand in hand with healing your relationship with your body! Understanding your emotions is key - even though emotional eating is natural and very common, if it starts causing issues for you, then you need to look into it. But trying to suppress your emotions isn’t going to work and that might very well lead you to bingeing.

It’s never been about willpower… it's about working with your body, not fighting it! Remember that when you restrict food or bury and ignore your emotions, your body and your brain look for a way to comfort themselves. Relying on willpower is only temporary... nourishing yourself and listening to your body & your emotional needs is forever!