"What if I Gain Weight?" and Other Common Fears About Changing Your Relationship with Food
If you're like just about everyone else in the world, you've tried to make some changes to your eating habits and have probably been met with limited success. And one of the biggest reasons for this is that parts of you actually didn't want to make those changes.
Let me explain.
When we want to make a change in our behavior--any behavior really--we tend to have parts that want to make that change and parts that don't. For example, you may have parts that are gung-ho about starting that new exercise regimen and parts that are perfectly happy on the couch. Or parts that are psyched about trying out that new cookbook and parts that are more than happy to order Door Dash. And, of course, parts that want to stop emotional eating and parts that don't want to let go of food.
Many times, the parts of us that don't want to change are fearful or concerned about things being different. They're protective parts who don't want us to get hurt, so they will stop us from making changes, even ones that we know will be good for us.
This is why we need to get all (or at least most) of our parts on board when we're trying to make any type of change. Especially the parts that have fears and concerns about doing something different.
Even when we're trying to make changes that we know will be helpful to us, we still have parts that are fearful of change.
On this week's podcast, we're talking about the common fears and concerns that our parts tend to have when we try to change our relationship with food and our bodies. Some of these fears and concerns are:
Fear of failure: what if this change doesn't work?
Fear of success: what if it does?
Fear of losing food as a comfort mechanism
Fear of gaining or losing weight
Fear of people noticing and commenting on what you're doing
Fear of not knowing who you are if you don't struggle with food
The list above is not exhaustive. You likely have parts that have other fears about changing your relationship with food. It's absolutely worth getting to know allllllll of your parts that carry concerns. As we say in IFS (Internal Family Systems), we can't go anywhere that our protectors aren't ready to go, so we must get to know them.
If you've tried to making changes in your relationship with food to no avail, it might be because you haven't addressed the parts that have fears and concerns. Take a listen to learn more!
Click below to listen!