Reveal the Relationship
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>> Hello, it's great to be with you again.
The material in this lecture
centers around very important truth
of the emotional eating puzzle.
The fact that your clients don't live in bubbles.
Granted, some of them will be more social than others.
Some will be introverts and some will be extroverts.
Some will have a very busy social calendar, and some won't.
Though you might see more clients who don't,
especially if they're really struggling
with emotional eating because as you might recall,
emotional eating can fuel isolation.
However, all clients will, at some point,
eat with other people,
and it will likely be a difficult area for them to navigate.
Revealing the relationship takes confidence.
By sharing with people
that you're changing your way of eating,
you're letting them in on the fact
that you struggle with it.
Many emotional eaters are secretive with their habits,
so exposing this vulnerability can feel terrifying.
Clients might want to change,
but might still feel ambivalent
about giving up certain foods or habits that they enjoy
or that bring them familiarity and safety.
Therefore, they might feel uneasy
about announcing their commitment
because declaring it out loud and revealing it means
that they now really have to commit to it.
This can create a sense of accountability
that's motivated by fear or extrinsic motivation.
For example,
"Now everyone's going to be looking at what I eat.
What if I fail?
Now I'm failing publicly, and people are judging me."
This type of thinking could motivate a person
to keep quiet about what they're doing.
How do clients move past these feelings?
Luckily, our focus today
is on how you can support them with this.
In particular, how you can help them
drop clear boundaries around food
and reveal their shifting food relationships with others.
Setting boundaries requires courage,
but using them with others requires more courage.
However, honoring and respecting personal boundaries
around food with other people
is an important part of healing food relationships.
Not only does it empower your clients,
it can also help them nourish their relationships.
This is because it helps them respect
other people's boundaries.
Yet again,
how we do one thing is how we do everything.
Building boundaries goes beyond food
and it can motivate a domino effect of positive change.
To quote Brené Brown,
"When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable,
we feel used and mistreated."
This is why we sometimes attack who they are
which is far more hurtful
than addressing a behavior or a choice.
We do this with others and with ourselves.
When we don't have boundaries around our actions,
we might judge ourselves
because we feel like we aren't in control of our own lives.
For example,
we might think of ourselves as weak or pushovers.
As an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach,
you can strategize with clients
on how to reveal their new food relationships
in social situations that might trigger emotional eating.
In other words, you can help them navigate
how to respect the revised relationships with food,
the mindsets and habits
they work on during the coaching process with you,
when eating with family, friends, and others.
This can take time and it can feel very vulnerable.
Have you ever seen a magazine
with photos of celebrities going out in public
with transformed bodies for the first time?
Many of them remain very private
about life changes for a long time
as it can feel vulnerable and can also make waves.
Many of your clients might feel uncertain
about how to navigate emotional eating triggers.
They also might be afraid to make waves
with new eating habits
that they think draw attention to themselves.
Have you ever made changes
that you felt uncomfortable revealing to others?
How did it make you feel?
How did you navigate that?
Grab your journal, pause the video, and think on that idea.
Did you come up with anything
that might help you coach clients around this?
Relationships nourish us
and they're an important part of not using food
for a purpose,
plus, practically speaking,
we have to eat with others sometimes.
However, your clients might eat with people
who don't understand their goals or their new boundaries.
Their family members or friends
might not like the changes they see.
Change can be hard,
plus seeing the changes your client is making
might highlight their own perceived shortcomings.
They might feel affected by the changes.
For example,
if the family had a tradition of eating pizza
on Friday nights,
and now your client is choosing other food options.
Clients might even receive hurtful comments.
In other words,
your clients might face many challenges
to their new personal boundaries around food,
challenges that you might very well have faced yourself.
While we're sometimes quick to draw other boundaries,
such as personal space, and topics of conversation
that make us uncomfortable, when it comes to food,
we're often much quicker to not honor
our personal boundaries.
We decide to give into celebration
and overindulgence on sweets.
We joined the late night snacking party
or we order an unsatisfying salad for lunch
just because everyone else is.
As always, there are many factors at play,
factors that often contradict one another.
For example,
eating with others can motivate positive food relationships,
while social isolation can motivate emotional eating.
And we often change our eating habits
when we eat with others.
But this also depends on the situation.
Studies show that men might eat more when eating with women,
but not with men.
However,
while women often don't eat more when eating with men,
drinking more alcohol can increase the amount
that they consume.
As an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach,
you can help clients navigate potential challenges
and help them honor their personal boundaries around food.
Now as with other areas of coaching,
you might be looking forward to a laundry list of strategies
and methods to better prepare you.
But as you also know, we're not here to spoon feed you
because you're all unique individuals
with different approaches,
and your clients are all unique individuals
with different needs and challenges.
For today, I want to highlight three broad guideposts
for coaching around this.
Have your journal handy
as you'll be interacting with this material as we go.
Maintain neutrality and non-judgment.
As a coach, you want to model these
with respect to your clients' mindsets and behaviors,
as well as the boundaries they choose to build.
You can help guide them
and illuminate alternate perspectives,
but it's ultimately up to them.
Coaching with neutrality and non-judgment
creates a safe space for clients
to practice sharing vulnerable emotions
that they haven't shared with others,
as well as emotions that social eating brings up for them,
which have likely perpetuated unhelpful coping strategies,
like using food.
Modeling neutrality and non-judgment
helps foster these mindsets in your clients.
These are helpful mindsets to return
to when they feel challenged in social situations
that trigger maladaptive eating habits.
Can you think of some reasons why this is the case?
Grab your journal, pause the video,
and write down some ideas.
What did you come up with?
Here are a few ideas.
Maintaining a neutral and nonjudgmental mindset
can help clients explain their food boundaries
to others using nonthreatening language.
People will likely ask the reasons behind habit changes,
and you can help clients practice possible responses.
Practicing non-judgment
with regard to their own eating habits
serves as a form of self-nourishment,
so that clients are less likely to cope with food
when they feel stressed in social situations.
And neutrality can take the focus away from the food itself
so that clients focus more on social connection.
I'm sure you came up
with some valuable insights of your own,
and I encourage you to share them in the Facebook group.
Let's move on to the next coaching guidepost.
Help clients cope ahead.
Coping ahead is a very helpful component of coaching.
After all, you want clients to feel confident knowing
that they have the tools they need.
You want to help them
make the most of their particular circumstances
based on their experiences.
Coping ahead means considering possible triggers
and social dynamics that cause discomfort
and motivate mindless eating or using food to cope.
Do you remember the Food Factors handout
from earlier in the course?
This handout explores possible triggers and stressors
that motivate unhelpful eating mindsets and habits,
and you can still access it in your Learning Center.
In this module, we include a handout
called Social Eating Strategies that provide suggestions,
as well as space for clients to create their own strategies
for coping ahead.
Before you take a look at that,
take a moment now to think for yourself.
Our credibility as Integrative Nutrition Health Coaches
lies in our own stories of personal change, doesn't it?
We're living proof in the possibility
of moving forward towards goals.
Grab your journal, pause the video,
and write down a few ways that you have used coping ahead
around social eating in your own life.
See that?
You have so much to offer clients.
Coping ahead decreases vulnerability to triggers
and it relates to setting clear boundaries.
Clients have a plan and they're clear and firm about that.
They are in charge.
This relates to the last guidepost for today.
Empower, empower, empower.
And here we are, one more time, empowerment.
This is probably the most valuable piece.
The more you can empower clients
to nourish themselves by tuning in
and respecting their personal boundaries around food,
the more confident they'll feel sharing them
with others or not if they don't feel ready yet.
And the greater the possibility
they'll receive nourishment beyond food.
I know you have some ideas of your own,
so let me first empower you
by giving you a few minutes to write down your own ideas.
Pause the video now, and write down some coaching strategies
that can empower clients around social eating.
Now let me ask you this,
have you tried any of those strategies yourself?
Again, your credibility stems from your experiences
with change.
Let me list a few more empowering ideas
for your coaching toolkit.
You can remind clients
that they don't need approval or validation from others,
and you can validate them to boost their confidence.
You can encourage them to practice assertiveness
and you can practice this with them.
You can help them continually connect
to the why behind their bio-individual boundaries,
such as "I'm helping myself.
I'm committing to myself.
I'm connecting to my values.
I'm focusing on myself,
rather than always needing to please others.
And I'm empowering myself around food,
which will empower me in other areas."
And you can continually remind them
that they don't have to reveal anything
if they're not comfortable with or ready to reveal.
You can empower clients by helping them with clarity
and you can empower them by helping them feel prepared
to navigate possible challenges.
Finally, you can remind them that they decide
when and with whom to share their food boundaries.
As someone once told me, there's no timeline for your life.
Have I sold you on empowerment yet?
Okay, let's review and put it all together.
Throughout this course, we've talked a lot about connections
between food and relationships.
We've highlighted the importance of social connection
and connecting with others through food in nourishing ways.
However, while many people value
the connecting quality of food,
many people struggle to eat with others
due to shame of personal eating habits,
fear of judgment,
fear of inability to stick to self-prescribed boundaries
whether helpful or not,
and difficulty focusing beyond the food itself.
But we humans, like many animals thrive on connection.
As an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach,
you can help clients
honor their personal boundaries around food in ways
that help them focus beyond the food
to the people they eat with.
This feels self-empowerment
and it nourishes relationships by helping them
respect other people's boundaries
and thus nourish their relationships.
Just like revealing other personal changes,
revealing new food relationships can feel vulnerable.
Three broad guideposts you can use in coaching
are to maintain neutrality and non-judgment,
help clients cope ahead,
and empower, empower, empower.
We included several done-for-you handouts
and your Learning Center for you to use with clients,
so take a look at those.
We're also asking you to send out this material
by practicing high-mileage questions about food boundaries.
And as always, keep sharing in the Facebook group.
Thanks for joining me,
and I'll see you back here again soon.