The Strategy that Actually Helps Us Stick to ANY Healthy Eating Plan

This strategy actually helps us stick to any healthy eating plan.  It doesn’t matter what healthy eating plan you follow. All diets work.  The best diet for you is the one you will actually follow.  

Whether you like Weight Watchers, keto, intermittent fasting, Whole 30, clean eating, Nutrisystem, paleo, etc., you can use this strategy to help you stick with it and finally reach and maintain your feel-good weight.

Over the years, I tried so many different diets, but no matter how much I wanted to stick with it, I felt powerless around sweets, especially candy.  I could be “good” for a couple of days, but eventually, I would cave, buy a bag of candy and more often than not polish it off while driving home from the store.  

No matter how much I wanted to stick to my healthy eating plan, I just couldn’t get myself to stop eating candy all the time.  

Every time I failed again, I felt so embarrassed and frustrated.  I felt like such a loser, and I didn’t understand why I didn’t have the willpower and self-control to stick with any diet. I felt stuck and hopeless, and I just wanted to find the diet that would finally work for me.

The Key to Sticking to Any Healthy Eating Plan

Then while attending The Institute of Transformative Nutrition, I learned that when we are in a stressed state no amount of willpower helps us stick to our healthy habits.  Our brain’s priority is to get back to a relaxed state. So if drinking, gambling, shopping, watching TV, eating, etc, is the fastest way to get you there, then your willpower will fail you every time.  

You see, once the stress response is activated, our brain automates our actions even though we think we are making conscious decisions.  We get thrown into what I call The Chronic Stress Loop which causes us to continually make the same unhealthy decisions even if we have just consciously decided to make healthier choices.

This was a tiny part of a six-month curriculum, but for me, it was the key to finally understanding why I failed over and over again.

In order to stop eating candy all the time, I needed to figure out what was causing me to get stuck in The Chronic Stress Loop and then devise an action plan to break free.  

Stuck in The Chronic Stress Loop

Let’s take a look at how we get stuck in The Chronic Stress Loop

Let’s take a closer look at how Eating Well Blockers sabotage our healthy eating plan over and over.

Eating Well Blocker:  Stressors

There are five main categories of stressors that throw us into the Chronic Stress Loop:  

• Daily Stress: traffic, finances, work, poor sleep, children, dieting
• Environmental Triggers: vacation, seeing food, time of day, pairing
• Stressful Events: death, illness, moving, divorce, unemployment
• Stressful Emotions: unsatisfied, anxious, bored, frustrated, overwhelmed, guilty
• Stressful Relationships: humiliated, rejected, judged, excluded, unappreciated, unsupported

Eating Well Blocker:  Subconscious Blocks

As I mentioned above, once we are in a stressed state, it becomes our brain’s primary goal to get us back into a relaxed state.  Our brain will activate our subconscious thoughts and beliefs based on our values and core experiences that help us justify why it’s okay to abandon our healthy eating goals. (sometimes these thoughts activate cravings) 

When I caved and ate the candy, my thoughts were something like:

• Just a little won’t hurt.
• I haven’t lost weight yet anyway.
• I’ll be “good” tomorrow.
• It’s been a terrible day, I deserve this.
• I am not that fat.
• I am a sugar addict.
• I have no self-control around candy.
• I’ll start again on Monday.

Even though we aren’t always aware of these thoughts, they control between 80-90% of our conscious actions. Once the stress and subconscious blocks are activated, we rely on our default habit to soothe ourselves.

Eating Well Blocker:  Default Habits

If you are here, then your default habit is likely overeating or not prioritizing habits that support your healthy eating goals like meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking healthy meals, exercise, self-care and sleep.

My default habit to soothe myself was to eat candy, but if there was no candy, then anything sweet or even salty would do.

Unwanted Manifestation:

If we continually abandon our healthy eating plan, eventually, a manifestation like extra weight or guilt for not sticking to our healthy eating plan begins to present itself.  

The extra weight or guilt becomes an additional stressor and you get stuck in The Chronic Stress Loop.

How Tapping Helps Us Break Out of the Chronic Stress Loop

Instead of overeating or skipping healthy habits to soothe ourselves, we replace our unhealthy default habit with tapping, stay out of the Chronic Stress Loop and actually stick to our healthy eating plan.  

Let’s take a look at why tapping reduces stress so well.

Brainpower vs. Willpower

When we feel stress, our fight and flight response is activated.  

Our ancestors’ main stress was survival, so the amygdala starts pumping out hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, to help us run away or fight dangerous situations like being chased by a tiger.  

While this was perfect when our reaction to stress required physical movement, today, stress happens mostly in our minds.  

Today’s tigers are our Eating Well Blockers.    

If we don’t release the stress, it builds and builds until our subconscious mind helps us remember the quickest way to soothe our stress.

If our default habit to soothe ourselves is to overeat or quit healthy habits, no amount of willpower is going to help us resist the urge because our brain thinks our life is in danger.  

We think we lack willpower or self-control.

In reality, our brain is programmed to prioritize “escaping the “tiger” over resisting the food or following through with our healthy habits because our brain is wired to believe it is more important to our survival.

Failing over and over again is not our fault, but we can break out of this pattern.

We CAN learn how to tap into our brainpower vs. willpower and easily stick to a healthy eating plan.

Tapping Tames Today’s Tigers

Today’s tigers are our Eating Well Blockers (stressors, subconscious blocks and default habits) that keep us stuck in The Chronic Stress Loop.

• The Emotional Freedom Technique (tapping) helps us tame these tigers because it reduces our stress by releasing it from our body.  
• The Emotional Freedom Technique is based on lightly tapping on meridian points similar to acupuncture.  When you tap on these points, it has been scientifically proven that a relaxation signal is sent to your brain.
• Even though you are saying stress-inducing statements while tapping through the points, your body remains calm and does not pump out unnecessary hormones. 
• This allows you to safely and easily release your Eating Well Blockers and you’re able to break out of The Chronic Stress Loop and actually stick to your healthy eating plan.
• Instead of overeating or skipping healthy habits to soothe ourselves, we replace our unhealthy default habit with tapping, release our stress, stay out of the Chronic Stress Loop and actually stick to our healthy eating plan.  

Tapping Works for Everybody

Most people who have never heard of tapping, think it sounds weird and aren’t sure if they want to try it.  You might not want to do it in front of people, I don’t, but I promise you tapping into your brainpower to stick to a healthy eating plan is so much more pleasurable than trying to use willpower to follow a diet.

Then there are the people who have tried The Emotional Freedom Technique and liked it,  but it hasn’t helped them stick to their healthy eating plan.  

Even my classmates from The Institute of Transformative Nutrition and The Emotional Freedom Technique Certification Program didn’t understand how to use tapping to stick to their healthy eating goals consistently.  

These were well-educated women in the health and wellness industry, and they were still struggling to stick to their healthy eating goals.  They started reaching out to me to help them figure out why they caved over and over again.

When this started happening, I was really just using tapping to help myself stick to my healthy eating goals.  I didn’t know that the various tapping techniques I had developed were something that others weren’t doing.  

Once I realized how much my tapping techniques were helping my classmates, I started integrating more and more tapping into The Peaceful Eating Method.  Now at that point, not all of my clients were willing to try tapping, but the clients who did got better results and more importantly were able to maintain them.

Tapping to Stick to a Healthy Eating Plan

Today, I teach all of these Tapping Techniques in The Peaceful Eating Method.  If you are ready to take a deep dive and learn all the different strategies to become a Peaceful Eater and stick to your healthy eating plan, then check out The Peaceful Eating Method.

However, if you want to learn how to use tapping to stick to your healthy eating plan, then The Stress-Free Eating Jumpstart is a great option.  Go HERE to learn more.

Remember, your brain is wired to prioritize reducing stress.  If overeating or quitting your healthy habits is the fastest way your brain knows to do that, then you will continually abandon your healthy eating plan.  Start tapping into your brainpower versus willpower today and finally stick to your healthy eating plan.