Why You Struggle To Change Your Eating Habits

This month’s theme has been all about eating. This isn’t to make you feel the guilt for any delish Christmas foods you have been eating (or about to eat!). But I know many women are already feeling the body burden of indulgence overload, and are starting to think about healthy eating goals after Christmas and New Year’s are over.

Now let me be clear when it comes to your relationship with food, it’s not just about what you eat – although that is very important.

It’s also how well you digest and absorb what you eat.

Why you eat what you eat.

And how you eat.

When it comes to nutrition, our practice takes a holistic and individual approach, to ensure each of our clients is nourishing their bodies, in a mindful and emotionally and mentally healthy way.

There are a lot of diets and meal plans out there, but all too often there is no thought or coaching around your relationship with food. Many people will start out on a new nutritional plan, and maybe only stick to it for 2-12-weeks, as it all gets too hard, too unenjoyable, or they just slip back to old harmful eating habits. Then the pattern of yoyo-dieting sets in. Some ‘health-nuts will stick to a ‘clean’ eating plan for a longer duration – may be many years, maybe for life – yet even if this is the case, too often these people develop disordered eating. Stressed about if they're eating the 'right thing' for their body, highly anxious in social situations where there are a lot of junk foods around. Maybe feel extreme guilt and self-loathing if they eat off-plan. 

The reason why this happens all too often is that ‘diets’ or even ‘clean eating’ rarely address your relationship with food: why you eat what you eat, how you eat, and your vision for yourself, your health, and your life. 

At Chris & Filly Functional Medicine, we use many different types of healing nutrition plans, depending on what is going on with the client. However, we are big believers in not just looking at what you 'should' and ‘should not' eat. We also look deeper at your eating patterns and your relationship with food. 

Are you emotionally eating? Are you stress eating? Are you culturally eating? Are you boredom eating? WHY are you eating this way? Are you addicted to food – or a type of food? Are you scared of food? Until you understand why and how you eat, you will never be able to break free from harmful patterns. Through coaching, lab testing, and body system treatments, we uncover imbalances in your body, mind, behaviour, and environment that affect the way you eat.

We also look at the stories you have about your body. Are you trying to eat ‘healthy’ because you love your body, or because you hate it? If the latter, you will need to dig deep and learn to love your body. Only then will you be able to truly serve and nourish your body with food in a psychologically and physically healthy way. Only then will you truly be able to heal your body, and rise to optimal health and wellness. 

If you’d like to learn more about this, we recently held a live web class all about emotional eating, imbalances in your body that lead to harmful eating patterns, and how to crawl out of harmful eating cycles. You can go here to access the recording.

Filipa Bellette is Co-Founder of Chris & Filly Functional Medicine. She is an accredited Clinical Nutritionist & Functional Medicine Practitioner. She is also a Ph.D. thought-leader, award-winning writer, and regularly published as a guest blogger & in the media. Together with her husband Chris Bellette, Filipa has worked with over 2,000+ busy, burnout clients in the last 10+ years, and specialises in producing healthy, balanced, and happy Mums & Dads...or as she calls it, a Power Parent! Filipa’s own passion for producing high-performance Power Parents came from her own personal experience of Mummy Burnout, after having babies and juggling the demands of business, family, and her failing health.