What is the difference between a “normal” eater and a dieter? A person who is overweight and a naturally thin person?

A normal eater or naturally thin person THINKS about food differently and so they just eat normally.

If you are a normal eater, you DON’T worry about:

Timing – you eat when you are hungry.
About calories or points – you eat what tastes good to you and what makes your body feel energized.
Amount or portions of food – you stop eating when you feel satisfied.

I hear you saying, “Easier said than done!” I was with you!

Believe me it took me a really long time to understand and model “normal eaters” and that’s because I was approaching “trying to be normal” in all the wrong ways.

I was still trying to DO something different around food.

But the reality is naturally thin people aren’t “doing” normal eating. There’s no trick.

They’re not doing anything.

Normal eating isn’t something a person does, it’s more about how that person THINKS and how they FEEL about themselves.

The point is, it’s how you feel about what you’re eating, not actually what you are eating that makes the difference.

A naturally thin person is “good” with what they eat and the fact that they are eating.

An overweight person who has a dieter’s mentality is not okay with what they are eating, they are obsessed with it and worrying constantly about it and so they never feel good.

And what happens when you are not feeling okay about yourself? Generally you go to what makes you feel good. For most overweight people, they look to food for comfort. So you see the vicious cycle?

The rub is dieters typically think and feel about food differently…

• They are always mindful of everything they eat and are usually very judgmental about it.
• They feel ashamed whenever they’ve “eaten too much.”
• They try to “control themselves” around food even if they are not on a diet.
• And often they have anxiety about eating food, rather than allowing themselves to just enjoy the pleasure and tastes of the food.

You see, eating “normally” has little to do with what you are putting in your mouth or not. Instead it has everything to do with how you feel and think about what you are putting in your mouth.

Naturally thin people eat a big meal if they are hungry. No big deal.

If they indulge in a cookie in the middle of the day for no reason, they eat the cookie and move on.

If they eat an entire bag of popcorn at the movies, they eat the bag and feel their body beg for water and then get over it.

What they eat has NO bearing on how they feel about themselves or their self-esteem. They don’t beat themselves up – it means nothing.

When you judge yourself by what you are eating, when there is a “good” and “bad” way, you will invariably end up feeling bad.

So unless you change your thinking, your behaviors will never change and you will always have that dieter’s mentality that will always keep you crazy around food.

In other words…
The more you obsess,
The more you try to control food,
The more time you spend time searching for the next fail-proof diet…
The more likely you are to turn to food for comfort.

When you stop dieting and start tapping into our natural, biological instincts around food without guilt, judgment, or the need to control…you find non-food-related coping mechanisms, new practices for self-care begin to emerge. And you start to enjoy food again like you did when you were a kid.

Are you are ready to learn how to change your thinking and become a normal eater? I’d love to help. Contact me so we can schedule a FREE mini session to figure out how you are thinking about your food and a critical tool to change it.