The Relationship That Has the Biggest Impact on Your Weight

What many women aren’t told about letting go of weight is that it is often a symptom of a relationship breakdown.

They assume the weight gain was because their body is somehow broken, "going downhill", or unloveable.

But this belief lies just below their awareness and usually sends them on a never-ending quest for the “problem” and therefore, always needing a solution.

What she may not know is that long-term success has a lot more to do with the relationship we have with our own Masculine energy, the way we speak to ourselves than almost anything else.

This is because the way we perceive a situation can determine how we show up (feeling confident and curious or defeated and insecure), act, and ultimately, is a strong determinant of the outcome.

When this relationship is out of balance, the voice we "hear" becomes overly critical and she spends a lot of mental energy trying to get away from the critical jabs she sends herself all day.

She feels the tension in her body and even though she tries to do relaxing things like spa days, getting to bed earlier, or taking a bath, she can never fully relax.

She thinks telling herself these things are keeping her “on task” or “from being lazy” but these are really keeping her from feeling safe within her body.

This pattern usually goes back as far as she can remember- before she was born in many cases, and even further outside of her awareness, she’s recreated the same pattern her own mother dealt with.

(The way we feel about our body is often inherited like our eye color).

She can’t imagine and struggles to trust, that there’s another way.

What I know to be true is it is difficult to want to focus more effort and attention on her body when it *feels* so unsafe.

What she needs to do to shift this is to practice letting love in.

It can start on the outside, like lotion soaking into her skin after a warm shower.

Feeling her own skin with love may be triggering and yet touch has a calming effect on the body and mind.

This can be simple like caressing her arm or tracing the fingers of one hand with the other- putting loving attention on them.

As she does this, she will reduce all the distractions and be able to feel her body’s current experience.

When she does this, she has access to knowing what she needs.

But what stops her from feeling safe enough to sink into her body- much less her deepest, most vulnerable feelings- is a fracture she’s experienced with masculine energy from her past.

This causes her- unknowingly- to freeze and protect herself when she feels vulnerable instead of revealing her needs.

One helps her survive, the other to thrive.

Under this much protection, she is unable to receive love, the “nutrient” that’s lacking in her diet.

Not being able to let love in creates a similar paradox of malnourished obesity.

Having too many calories and not enough nutrients, these people are essentially starving while seeming to struggle with excess.

The basic needs for survival (ie calories) are being met, and yet without key nutrients (i.e. vitamins/minerals), a body won’t thrive.

In fact it will have an even more difficult time functioning as the weight continues to accumulate requiring more nutrients in an already sparse environment.

Likewise, without learning to allow love in, she can do “all the right things” only to feel more discomfort the longer she is unable to connect with her heart.

She is emotionally malnourished, starving from the inside out.

Without being able to feel safe receiving what she truly needs, she will not be able to stop searching for it.

This creates a slightly empty feeling.

To prevent feeling this void, she’s trained herself (from a very young age) to associate it with “hunger” and settles instead for loads of empty calories trying to feel “full”.

This is especially common in homes where food was offered when emotional connection would have been appropriate (i.e. a time of grief= cookies or disappointment= “let’s go get ice cream”).

Parents and family members are well-meaning and yet, unable to process their own emotions around a situation the child is facing leaving her feeling isolated with her emotions.

Often, this lack of emotional validation disguised as a feeling of hunger began subtly and now, as an adult, feels uncontrollable.

All she will think to do is try to control it even more.

This is what draws her to the “diets” that require a lot of discipline, the ones that sound like a formula- eat X+ don’t eat Y= lose weight.

So angry at herself and not having her needs met, she will find herself in a binge cycle finding release from the anger in a bag of something crunchy.

This is inevitable because traditional diets approach her emotional malnourishment with more discipline when what she needs is more validation.

She needs an inside-out approach before an outside-in approach will have lasting results.

She needs to experience what has been keeping her from receiving.

Usually, this is connected to her dad.

It is often her experience that he was absent- working a lot, physical distance or emotionally unable to connect with her- that informs her not to open herself up to masculine energy.

She still loves him, because we always want to love our parents, but the connection doesn’t feel nourishing.

This sets the tone for many of her other connections without her realizing it.

The same degree of disparity between the love and effort she gives vs receives is often mirrored elsewhere in her world.

It feels “normal” to her to give more than she gets and her diet is no different.

She may even think this is “mature” to not be so “needy”.

But love is bidirectional and the need to receive love in return never goes away or is outgrown.

It morphs into a more “adult” version of this dynamic- working long hours, never being able to say “no”, eating or drinking “because she deserves a treat”.

She is still not receiving what she actually craves.

It’s not until she is able to *feel* seen and heard for what she truly desires (affection, approval, protection) that she’s able to allow her heart to melt.

She rarely realizes how much she’s been trying to carry until this moment and the tension leaves her body in the form of tears.

This release creates the same feeling she’s been seeking from continuing to eat.

The difference this time is, as her heart begins to melt, she is able to see and hear things differently.

She hears compliments for the first time.

Her only “job” is to let them into her heart.

This is slowly filling the space where the feeling of emptiness once was with love and authentic connection.

To do this, she has to trust her own masculine energy- which is slightly easier after being able to release her painful experience from the past- to lower her guard and allow kindness to flow back to her.

This nourishes her in a way she didn’t know she was looking for.

Because she's shifted the relationship with her masculine energy, her once critical thoughts are now available to be loving discipline that supports her growth and helps her set boundaries within herself.

I’ve had clients report that their relationship with hunger- which had been combative- feels less threatening.

In fact, it carries so much less emotional charge that they only notice because they aren’t thinking about it all the time.

I wrote in a previous post that in relationship terms, hunger is the masculine energy and pleasure is the feminine in our relationship to eating.

Like in dating, to find the right partner for her, a woman healing her own masculine energy has the biggest impact on how she relates to men.

So too, when a woman is able to heal her relationship to her masculine energy, she is able to see hunger as less threatening and more of service to her weight loss goal.

This is counterintuitive and this is my specialty.

I help women release generations of beliefs about her body and food so she can trust herself and spend more time letting those things fuel her purpose on the planet.

In my transformational online program, Nourished, I teach the necessary shifts to heal the relationships that keep a woman from experiencing deep nourishment.

In 6 modules, she will understand the basics of relationships to know where she needs to heal.

Learn the basics of masculine energy and heal her relationship with hunger so she control isn’t the only tool she has to engage it.

She will learn about her feminine energy- the deep feelings and power that are trapped underneath the way she’s been speaking to herself and how to use them to make healthy eating feel like less pressure.

The inner child, the part of her that has the highest likelihood to derail her progress will have an entire module to help unwind some deeply held (and often painful) beliefs so she has permission to move from survival to thriving.

How to set goals in a way that serves her growth without keeping her paralyzed by the fear of failing and how to use her masculine (action), feminine (desire), and inner child (creativity) to find solutions that fit her life.

We discuss nutrition basics, what to look for when you’re trying a diet, and the mindset shifts to navigate the most common roadblocks differently than before (the scale, plateaus, tracking, etc).

This is still available as a self-study option to be completed at your own pace.

To customize support, I include voice messaging support for 6 weeks in addition to 1:1 coaching session to really clarify what’s happening in your unique situation and make sure you have the support you need as you’re learning something new.

The women that create the best results from this transformational program are naturally intuitive, creative, and self-aware.

They often have their own creative ventures and have done a lot of personal development but not found a way to apply it to their health and wellbeing.

They have been successful in the past with diets and yet realize they are ready for long-term solutions and desire deep healing in their relationship with their body.

If this feels like a good fit, email me (CSchandNutrition@gmail.com). Tell me what you resonated with from above and I’ll ask a few questions to make sure you have everything you need to get started right away- whether you want to do it on your own or with extra support.