We’re kicking off the Telesummit tonight with a big fat talk on fat activism!  We’ll be chatting with Marilyn Wann (author of Fat!So?), Amanda Levitt (Founder of Love Your Body Detroit) and Peggy Howell (PR Director for NAAFA).

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be talking health with Dr. Linda Bacon and Ragen Chastain, fatshion with Marie Denee, Rachel Kacenjar, and Yuliya Raquel, sex with Hanne Blank and Virgie Tovar, social media with Marianne Kirby, Margitte Leah Kristjannson and Brian Stuart, fitness with Jeanette DePatie and Anna Guest-Jelley, fat/queer intersections with Bevin Branlandingham, Charlotte Cooper, & Jessica Luxery, and politics with Paul Campos and Amy Erdman Farrell. You can see the full schedule here.

When you register, you’ll get free live access to all of the interviews, and you’ll have the opportunity to get yourquestions answered by our panel.

Click here to learn more and register!

I can’t wait to see you there!

Body Love Revolutionaries Telesummit Starts Tonight! originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on January 31, 2012.

Listen to the podcast of this post here:

I’m writing this post by hand in bed.  Sitting at my computer in my office wasn’t working for me, and I felt that if I changed my location and switched to pen and paper I’d be able to write.  I knew instinctively that doing so would help me with this post, so I happily acted on that instinct.

So far so good!

This post is on a topic near and dear to my heart.  As most of you know, one of the techniques I work on with clients is intuitive eating.  This is highly transformative process that allows people to reconnect with their hunger, fullness, and internal sense of what really nourishes them.

Sometimes intuitive living takes some juggling (Image Courtesy Of http://www.retronaut.co/)

As you can imagine, what nourishes you often goes beyond food.  Figuring out what food supports you in feeling your best can be just the beginning of a deeper process of finding out what else needs to shift and change in your life to support you.  In fact, if you take a deep breath right now and ask yourself, “What nourishes me?”  you might be surprised by some of the answers you receive.  Relationships, work, our homes, spirituality, exercise, hobbies, etc. can all be incredibly nourishing.

This process of listening in to what you want and need and acting upon it is what I like to call intuitive living.  The more you act upon that voice inside you that pushes you toward what you really need, the more you feel like your life is really yours.  This process is incredibly rewarding and worthwhile, so I’m going to break down the technique for you here.

How To Get More Intuitive

Step 1:  Ask  – Step one is asking yourself questions like, “What is nourishing to me?  What would be fulfilling for me?  What would be fun or enjoyable for me right now?”  This is a process of learning what you need, what makes you tick, what makes you feel satisfied with your life.

Step 2: Listen — In order for step one to work, you have to be willing to hear the answers.  You have to allow yourself to be okay with everything that comes up, even if what comes up involves major, possibly scary life decisions.  Just stay open and respect the answers that come.  The more willing you are to listen, the louder and more crystal clear your internal intuition will become.

Step 3: Act On Information (Even/Especially The Small Stuff) – This step is often the hard part.  This is the part where we take the information we gleaned in step one and take some action. Sometimes it’s easy to take action — like when your gut says it would be nice to go see a movie and you have a free afternoon and the movie theatre is a block from your house.  It’s important to act on these intuitive messages as much as you can, even if it seems nonsensical.  (For example, I have finally learned that when I drive somewhere I should go the way my instinct tells me, even if it seems out of the way.  When I don’t, I always encounter more traffic and problems than I expect.)

Sometimes, though, it’s much harder and more complicated to act upon your intuition.  It can involve more planning, like a career change, or more emotional readiness, like ending a relationship. (Believe me, I’ve been there.  It only took me about ten years to act on my gut feeling from the first semester of law school that working full time as a lawyer for the rest of my life was a really bad idea.)

Mindset Shift:  Prioritize Your Desires – In order to really live intuitively, you need to prioritize your desires.  You have to prioritize nourishing your soul.  There are going to be days when you’re confronted with conflicts like staying at work or following your desire to go to a yoga class.  In fact, probably nearly every day, you’re going to be confronted with a cascade of shoulds and the question of how and where and when to displace them with what you intuitively feel is right for you.  More and more, as you work through this process, de-prioritize the shoulds.

Being In The Flow

When you practice intuitive living, you automatically feel more in the flow.  You’re in the right place at the right time more often, you talk to someone who gives you the answer to something you were questioning, opportunities come your way that align more with what you want.

Here’s an example from my own life.  About 15 months ago, I was interviewed by Autumn of The Beheld blog (the post didn’t appear until more recently.)  Around the time of the interview, the blog featured a post about how she’d completely stopped using shampoo on her hair.  I was really intrigued by it, and sort of wanted to do it, but rationalized reasons why I just couldn’t.  Nearly a year later, I finally decided to act on my intuition and try “no-poo” and now, three months into it, I really love it. It took a lot of investigating into how to do “no-poo” right, and in the forums I found on it I also found a lot of people who use only body art quality henna to color their hair.  I’d been coloring and highlighting my hair for about 7 years, but my scalp was always irritated by commercial hair dyes, even the ones that were supposed to be more natural.  Henna is a little complicated, but luckily Amanda of Love Your Body Detroit is an avid henna user and ended up providing me with great tips on henna.  (I have it happily plopped on my head as I write this.) Once I stopped using shampoo, my commercially produced body washes felt too harsh on my skin, so I started using natural soap and I (and my skin) are so much happier.  Finally, going “no-poo” also lead me to get rid of a lot of the hair products that were cluttering the top of my dresser, because when you don’t use shampoo you can’t use hair products that cause build up.  I found that I really liked using less products and having less products cluttering my space.  I wanted to declutter more, but I felt like I needed support in changing my mindset on what to keep and what to let go of.  Then, about three weeks ago, seemingly out of the blue, my client Nadira mentioned how a book called The Joy of Less had helped her and her husband pare down their possessions and create lots of wonderful space in their home.  I bought the book and it helped me immensely.  And while this is an ongoing project, I can happily say that I’m writing this to you from my significantly decluttered and spacious feeling bedroom.

In other words, listening to my intuition about not using shampoo put me on a trajectory that led to a lot of lovely changes in my life.  Of course, if I hadn’t listened to it, I’d probably be okay, but I wouldn’t have gotten to enjoy the happiness that less irritated skin and a less cluttered apartment has brought me.

I would love to hear about your experiments with intuitive living.  Please let me know how it goes in the comments section below or on my Facebook page.

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/free to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining! And, please join her and twenty of the biggest names in HAES(R) and Fat Acceptance at the Body Love Revolutionaries Telesummit!

Intuitive Living originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on January 9, 2012.

The Body Love Revolutionaries Telesummit Is Back & Bigger Than Ever!

Last year, over 400 of you signed up to stake your claim as Body Love Revolutionaries.  You joined us on live calls with some of the most bad ass folks in fat acceptance and HAES(R).

This year, we’re back with a group of twenty (!) amazing people who are at the forefront of this revolution for this telesummit.

I’ll be talking Fat Activism with Marilyn Wann,  Amanda Levitt  and Peggy Howell, Fat Health with Linda Bacon and Ragen Chastain, Fatshion with Marie Denee, Rachel Kacenjar, and Yuliya Raquel, Fat Sex with Hanne Blank and Virgie Tovar, Fat Blogging and Social Media with Marianne Kirby, Margitte Kristjansson, and Brian Stuart, Fat Fitness with Jeanette DePatie and Anna Guest-Jelley, Fat/Queer Intersections with Bevin Branlandingham, Charlotte Cooper and Jessica Luxery, and Fat Politics & History with Paul Campos and Amy Farrell.
When you register, you’ll get free live access to all of the interviews, and you’ll have the opportunity to get your questions answered by our panel.

Click here to learn more and register!

I can’t wait to see you there!

Join Me For The 2nd Annual Body Love Revolutionaries Telesummit! originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on January 3, 2012.

Cover Art For The Gossip's Single "Standing In The Way Of Control" (courtesy of wikipedia)

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast of this post here:

How often do you hear or say phrases like this?

“My eating is so out of control.”

“If I could just get my weight under control . . .”

“I’m really bad at portion control.”

“I just have no self control.”

Often in my first session with a client, they describe a lack of control as being one of their biggest problems.  We all learn to talk in terms of control.  We all learn that our bodies are out of control, our eating is out of control, our self control is out of control. And so we think that what we need is more control.

What if I were to say that control is not the answer at all?  What if the reason that all of these things felt out of control was a result of trying to control things?

What if relinquishing control were actually the answer?

The concept of control is aligned with the masculine paradigm.* In this paradigm, we use things like control to try to guarantee a certain outcome.  For example, dieting is a very masculine paradigm way of thinking.  When we diet, we try to control our eating and exercising in order to control the desired outcome of losing weight.  This may actually result in the desired outcome for a while, but over time it doesn’t work, because control doesn’t work.  We can never control for everything.  As much as we like to think that we can, we can’t actually control our metabolism.  The old “calories in/calories out” is an utter fallacy when it comes to the complex mechanism of our body.

Also, where there is control, there will eventually be rebellion.  Where there is a diet there will eventually be a binge or “slip ups.”  And in the masculine paradigm, the answer to rebellion, or binges, or messing up a diet will always be more control.  More control leads to a bigger rebellion, and the cycle continues.

But what if we stopped trying to control?  Sounds scary, right? That’s because we live in a society that glorifies the masculine paradigm, and we’ve all learned that without the stern master of control, everything will fall apart.  There is some part of us that believes that if we stop trying to control our bodies, our food choices, our choices in general, that we will be shunned by society.  There’s a part of us that believes that if we let go of control, we’ll gain a thousand pounds, wear a bikini to the office, and lose our friends and family.  We’ve been told that control is good for us.

More control is not the answer.  More control keeps you stuck.

You may be wondering, if control is part of the masculine paradigm, what might the feminine paradigm offer in its stead?

It offers trust.  Self-trust and intuition.

Image courtesy of inspirationalboost.blogspot.com

From the feminine paradigm perspective, control is not needed, because you have your own internal guidance system.  You have a system within you, a collaboration of body, mind and spirit, which guides you on everything from what to eat and how much, to how to approach a situation at work, to which person is best for you to date. You could call it intuition, or you could just call it you.  It’s that part of you that knows what to do, even when the outside world tells you that you don’t.  The more you trust this inner voice, this inner knowing, the more loud and clear it becomes.  The more you act upon it, the less out of control you feel, because it was never about control in the first place.

So this week, in honor of Independence Day, ask yourself if there are any parts of your life that you want to try to control less.  See how it affects your well-being, and tell me about it in the comments section below.

And by the way, if you’re ready to stop trying to control emotional or compulsive eating patterns and really allow yourself to start healing, check out my How To Heal From Emotional Eating Home Study Program.  It’s only $97 through Sunday, July 10th at midnight Eastern.  Click this link to get the special rate: http://www.healfromemotionaleating.com/independence.

*I realize that the terms “masculine paradigm” and “feminine paradigm” may be problematic.  I’m using these terms to describe a duality of guiding principles for how people look at the world.  In no way do I mean that all men are one way and all women another, or any of that.  It has nothing to do with anyone’s gender or identity.  It’s more to do with how an overabundance of one paradigm and a negating of the other is damaging to all of us.

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to sign up for her newsletter and get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

You Don’t Need More Self Control (Independence Day Edition!) originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on July 5, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast of this post here:

(I’m bringing back an oldie but goodie this week, but I’ll be back “live” next week with an interview with an international fat superhero…)

In a recent workshop, one of the participants brought up the fact that she sometimes doesn’t like to eat leafy greens because they remind her too much of her dieting days.  Whenever she eats greens (salad in particular), she feels what she used to feel while dieting — restricted and annoyed, and even a phantom-like feeling of hunger.

The kid loves jam. Image courtesy of boingboing.net.

How many of you can relate to that feeling?  I know I can!  When I first started working with the concept of intuitive eating, I felt like I was fighting a never-ending battle with a variety of food rules, even food rules that conflicted with one another.  I had spent significant portions of my life as an Atkins dieter, an Overeaters’ Anonymous member, a low carbohydrate vegetarian and a Weight Watchers’ points aficionado.  As you can imagine the Atkins part of me and the low carb vegetarian part of me had some things in common but highly disagreed with the Weight Watchers’ point keeper and the O.A. dieter!  Did I believe in low carb or low fat?  Was a scooped out bagel a good choice or a terrible one?  Was I overdoing the olive oil or should I slather it on?

And while I have come to terms with my diet rule demons, as a counselor who often talks about intuitive eating, I can run into some problems.  I’m often asked about what foods are good to consider when you’re suffering from low energy, but whenever I talk about food in this way, I often have to work my way around my own fears of sounding like a Weight Watchers or O.A. leader.  Whenever I talk about leafy greens and added fiber and drinking adequate water,  I get a creepy feeling that I’m imposing food rules on my clients, even though I have no intention of doing so.  To me, I care more about how my clients actually feel when they eat certain foods than how they should feel or what they should be eating.

Image Courtesy Of The Graphics Fairy

Diet rules impede intuitive eating because they stop you from connecting with your body’s wisdom.  Whether you’re confining your eating habits to old diet rules or avoiding food that reminds you of your dieting days, you end up being a slave to diets.  I’m sure that wasn’t (or isn’t) your intention if you’re trying to break away from diets.

So here are some tips for letting go of old diet rules to make way for a more connected, body-centered way of eating.

1) Get Clarity – Take a moment to write down all of the diet rules that still haunt you.  They may be conflicting, nonsensical, or sometimes sort of sensible.  Whatever they are, get them all out on paper.  Then decide if any are worth keeping.  Only keep the ones that really honor your body and its changeability – such as getting adequate water, avoiding allergenic foods, stuff like that.  Throw out any rules that limit the types of foods you can eat (unless you have allergies or other health concerns) and definitely toss the calorie and carb counting.

2) Listen To Yourself – We all have a voice within us that tells us what foods nourish us and advises us as to our hunger and fullness.  Note, we ALL have this voice.  Sometimes this voice has been stifled by pushy parents or diet rules or our emotional torment, but trust me, it is there.  Take steps to actively listen for this voice.  Honor it no matter how quietly it speaks.  If you think you heard it and turned out to be wrong, listen for it again tomorrow.  Trust me that it is safe to trust yourself.

3) Pay Attention – Notice which foods feel best to you.  Do you like a muffin and coffee in the morning or an apple and almond butter and tea?  Does it depend on how much sleep you got, how much stress you’re under?  What time of year it is?  Are comfort foods comforting sometimes and sometimes not so much?  Notice the effects on your energy levels.  Notice comfort and discomfort.

Continually repeat the above to get better and better at tuning in.

In truth, the only rule is that there are no rules.  You make the rules.  It’s okay to be heady with that power as long as you let your body lead the way.

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to sign up for her newsletter and get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

Are Old Diet Rules Getting In Your Way? originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on June 13, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, HHC
http://www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast here:

I want to make something really, really clear.

If you’ve been practicing intuitive eating, and it hasn’t resulted in weight loss, it is not your fault and it doesn’t mean that you’re doing it wrong.

When I first heard about intuitive eating as an alternative to dieting, I read everything that Geneen Roth ever wrote.  And although she has a lot of good things to say, she also implies, again and again in each of her books, that if you eat intuitively you will lose weight.  She even uses that trick that every diet marketer in the history of diets uses, writing things like:

“By May I had gained 15 pounds.  From May through September, my weight stabilized.  In October, still eating what I wanted, I began to lose weight, and over the next two years, I lost 30 pounds.  That was five years ago.”  ^[1]

What Ms. Roth doesn’t tell you is that she is an anomaly.  There’s no “results not typical” even though they are.  There’s no mention of the fact, in any of her books, that dieting wreaks havoc on your metabolism such that intuitive eating may not have much of an effect on your weight at all.^[2]

And, perhaps most perturbing, is the fact that practicing intuitive eating with the expectation of weight loss really screws up your ability to eat intuitively.

The truth is that you can’t be intuitive when you’re looking for a particular result.

It’s like reading tarot cards to find out if someone who you want to date likes you back.  If you’re feeling desperate enough, you will read all manner of loveliness into cards that say that this person has no interest in you.

It’s the same with intuitive eating.  If you’re doing it to lose weight, you will convince yourself that you just want to eat celery sticks when you’re body is jonesing for some protein.  You’ll convince yourself that you’re not hungry when you are.  You’ll keep yourself in the dieting framework of punishment and reward and restriction.  You’ll be reading the cards all wrong because you don’t want to believe what you see.

Intuitive eating is not about control, it’s about trust.  It’s about trusting your body’s signals of hunger and fullness, desire and satisfaction.  It’s about trusting your body enough to know that it needn’t be so controlled.

When you allow yourself to eat intuitively, you will get results. Those results may or may not include weight loss, but they will definitely include something more.  They will include a letting go of the daily stress of worrying about food and weight.  They will include feeling at peace with your body and it’s needs.  They will include a new spaciousness in your life for joy, an openness to possibilities, a willingness to love and approve of yourself and be the fully-embodied person you were born to be.

If you’re ready to experience these beautiful, tangible results, I invite you to join me for How To Heal From Emotional Eating, a 3 class teleseries which starts in just a few days.  Click here for more info:  http://www.healfromemotionaleating.com.

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to sign up for her newsletter and get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

© Golda Poretsky 2011

1. ^[1] Geneen Roth, Breaking Free From Emotional Eating (New York: Plume, 2003) 19 ↩
2. ^[2]   This is one of the many things I loved about Dr. Linda Bacon‘s book, Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight.  Linda disclaimed her own weight loss by writing the following.  “You’ve heard this before.  Every book about weight starts with the weight loss testimonial.  It gets your hopes up and sells books.  And when it doesn’t work the same way for you, that’s always your fault–you must have done something wrong, if you didn’t get the same results.  So let me be clear: My weight-loss results aren’t typical, and I don’t mean to use my experience to promote any weight loss technique.”  (Dallas: BenBella Books, 2008) xxii ↩

Intuitive Eating And Weight Loss originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on February 21, 2011.

Lillian "Diamond Lil" Russell

by Golda Poretsky, HHC
http://www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast here:

Lillian “Diamond Lil” Russell is truly a source of inspiration and fatspiration.  Back in the 1890′s and early 1900′s, Lillian Russell was uber-famous.  She was a celebrated and beloved singer and actress, and a major sex symbol, and the fact that she was known for weighing over 200 pounds did not diminish her appeal.

Diamond Lil wasn’t just gorgeous and talented.  She was also really socially progressive. She was a feminist who fought for women’s suffrage, she was married four times (often seeking a divorce when she felt the relationship was over), and for nearly forty years (often while married), she was also the lover of man named Diamond Jim.

Diamond Jim was known for his prodigious appetite.  Just to give you an idea, a typical breakfast for him was supposed to consist of eggs, pancakes, pork chops, cornbread, fried potatoes, hominy, muffins, and a beefsteak. For refreshment, a gallon of orange juice—or “golden nectar,” as he called it.

Lil and Jim would often have elaborate parties with lots of delicious food.  And both of them were known to eat with gusto, with pleasure.  Lillian was one of the few women that Jim had ever met who really enjoyed food as much as he did, and her love for food and her pleasure in eating was actually considered part of her appeal, not just for Jim but also for Lil’s adoring fans.

In other words, Lillian’s enjoyment of her food was really sexy.

But the truth is, the way Diamond Lil enjoyed her food was actually really good for her, too.  The more you enjoy food, the more you savor food, the more your body recognizes that it’s eating, and the more your body can recognize that it’s being nourished, so that your mental hunger and physical hunger can be more aligned.

This is the science of how your awareness and enjoyment while eating aid digestion, assimilation, and metabolism when you eat.  Scientists have determined that 30-40% of your ability to digest and assimilate food actually happens because of “cephalic phase digestive response” or CPDR.  “Cephalic” just means of the head.  So CPDR is just a scientific term for the way you use the senses located in your head when you eat.  That is, the enjoyment and satisfaction that you get when you see, smell, and taste your food.

If 30-40% of digestion happens as a result of this CPDR, then what happens when we sidetrack it?  What happens when our awareness is on the television and we miss the visual enjoyment of our food?  What happens when we eat quickly and barely take a moment to enjoy the smell or taste of our food?  What happens when our mind is focused on calories, fat, points, guilt over what we’re eating, shame over what we’re eating?

You guessed it.  We miss the CPDR, we miss the pleasure, and our mind doesn’t really understand that we’ve eaten.  So we eat more and more, and feel full if we check in with our stomachs, even when our brain is saying it’s still hungry.

When you eat with pleasure, you feel satisfied.  You feel nourished.  Your body and mind feel taken care of.  And when you feel this pleasure and satisfaction, it’s an invitation to anyone that you’re eating with to enjoy their food too.

So this Valentine’s Day, remember that enjoying your food is sexy and good for you! Just eat like Diamond Lil!

By the way, if you want help with healing from disordered eating, my new class starts in just a few weeks!  Click here to check it out.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to sign up for her newsletter and get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

© Golda Poretsky 2011

Valentine’s Day Inspiration — Eat Like “Diamond Lil” originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on February 14, 2011.

I’ve heard from many of you that emotional or compulsive eating is the number one issue that you want to solve.

And I totally understand why.

Emotional eating does not get “fixed” by traditional methods, like dieting and portion control. And though I’ve touched on how to heal it in my free teleclasses, I wanted to do a more in depth teleclass that would be accessible to lots of you as well as really healing.

So I’ve created “How To Heal From Emotional Eating–An In Depth Teleseries.”

If you’re tired of going numb when you eat, not enjoying your food, eating beyond your comfort levels (or not even knowing what your comfort levels are) this class is for you.

Please take a moment to check it out here, and feel free to take advantage of my special “early bird” rate: http://www.healfromemotionaleating.com.

Shifting your eating from stressful to peaceful will make a HUGE difference in  your life.  I’ve seen it in my own life, and I continue to see it, every day, in my clients’ lives.

You deserve it.

So go to http://www.healfromemotionaleating.com and register now.

“See” you in class!

New Teleseries–How To Heal From Emotional Eating originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on February 8, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, HHC
http://www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast here:

To tell the absolute truth, I’ve been a little overwhelmed this week.  So I’ve decided to share another snippet of my book, Stop Dieting Now: 25 Reasons To Stop, 25 Ways To Heal.  Please enjoy!

Reason #9: Diets Teach You Not To Trust Yourself And Reward You For Not Thinking For Yourself

The way we relate to food and our bodies colors other aspects of our lives. If you’re accustomed to dieting, you’re accustomed to feeling as though you need a system of outside rules to control your life. This is particularly dangerous considering that at any given time, 115 million Americans are on a diet, the majority of whom are women. What does this mean for women when we’re constantly being told that we can’t be trusted to perform the basic bodily function of feeding ourselves properly?

The diet system reinforces low self esteem in dieters by making them feel like they have no “willpower” when they have diet lapses. In actuality, diets encourage people to ignore their internal will in exchange for the perceived will of the diet industry. Dieting gives dieters the message that they cannot trust their internal sense of what nourishes them. This distrust of internal signals affects other aspects of a dieter’s life, where they seek external approval and control of their non-food related actions.

Tip #9: Actively Listening To Yourself

The way to move out of this type of thinking is to begin to trust yourself and your intuition. Start listening to your inner voice, and accept what it tells you. Act upon your inner voice. For example, if your inner voice tells you to take a different route to work or wear a different outfit than you had planned, follow it and see where it takes you. Eventually, your inner voice will speak up in relation to food choices too. With practice, you’ll find your inner voice becoming louder and clearer in every facet of your life. Hearing this inner voice will help you to move out of a dieting mentality and support you in becoming an intuitive eater.

If you feel like your inner voice is too quiet to hear, just guess at what she would say and act upon that guess. You will be right more than you expect. In time and with practice, you will hear your inner voice loudly and clearly.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Want to learn more about intuitive eating and the science of Health At Every Size?  Then join me for the Body Love Revolutionaries Telesummit!  Click here to learn more and register for FREE.

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to sign up for her newsletter and get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

© Golda Poretsky 2011

Who Can You Trust? originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on January 31, 2011.

We’re kicking off the Telesummit tonight with the fabulous Dr. Anita Johnston, eating disorder specialist and author of Eating in the Light of the Moon: How Women Can Transform Their Relationships with Food Through Myth, Metaphor, and Storytelling.

In addition, I’ve assembled a group of amazing women who are at the forefront of the Body Love revolution for this free telesummit. We’re going to explore everything from plus-sized fatshion, to bigger bodies in art, to the science of Health At Every Size.

Over the next few weeks, we’ve got Dr. Linda Bacon talking about the science of Health At Every Size (SM), we’ve got Marilyn Wann talking activism, we’ve got IGIGI founder Yuliya Raquel talking fatshion and that’s just the beginning. You can see the full schedule here.

When you register, you’ll get free access to all of the interviews and the recordings, and you’ll have the opportunity to get your questions answered by our panel.

If you know you want in, just click here to register for free.

I can’t wait to see you there!

Body Love Revolutionaries Telesummit Starts Tonight! originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on January 25, 2011.