I look at my relationship with food and body and my own personal struggles, successes and growth as a continuous search for home. Home being, at the most basic level, the body I inhabit, the swirling thoughts, feelings and beliefs that form how I show up in the world and how I build and nurture my relationship with myself and others.
Creating a safe space to call home, in this world of perfectionism and body shaming, can be a daunting task. I, like many millions of folks, spent untold years and money searching for the perfect body, perfect diet, perfect relationship with food…only to realize that what I needed was within me all along. I realized that if I could learn to truly accept myself bruises, warts and all I would have a chance at finding peace with my body and food and begin to fully live my life while putting food in its proper place as a condiment to a life well-lived.
No more regrets, no constant second-guessing, no missing out because I’m not the perfect eater, living in the perfect body. It’s incredibly freeing. Coming home requires tuning out the constant food and body shoulds, getting quiet and truly learning how to read your body, your needs, your desires that best support a full and content life. When we love and respect ourselves our natural inclination is to give ourselves the best care possible. Healing usually takes the path of digging in to discover why we don’t feel worthy of loving self-care in the first place.
I believe everyone has the capacity to heal, but your path to wellness may look different than mine. I don’t find that a 1-2-3 approach is necessarily sustainable.
In my experience I believe there are two ways that we get driven to overeat, binge, or compulsively eat and that it’s first set up by disliking our body to a degree that we feel compelled to change it via severe calorie restriction, which then sets us up physically to binge, by the survival part of our brain kicking in to take care of us. The second is the emotional component where food is our balm. It’s the salve that soothes like a cool lotion on a hot sunburn. The food puts out the emotional fire that feels too painful or uncomfortable to feel—whether it’s loneliness, past trauma, anger, hurt feelings, despair, lack of confidence, whatever you’re feeling, you need to investigate. This can be scary, because it’s hard to feel our feelings, but pushing them away will not make them go away, by using food to self-soothe the only thing we’re doing is reinforcing that food is the way to deal with our emotions. I work with people from a place of compassion and strength to help guide them through this journey of letting go of food as our “friend” or “safe space” and trusting that they’re safe space lies in coming home to themselves and trusting that they are their own best expert.
Stacie Heintze is a Mind Body Eating Coach and wants you to embrace your body and food. Love is NEVER all or nothing…it takes patience, work and time to love anything fully. The same holds true for loving food, loving your body and loving yourself. That means learning how to listen to your body and take the best care of yourself. Diets fail because they force you to go to extremes. After denying yourself something that you crave or need, the habit that we try to suppress often comes back with a vengeance! This yo-yo pattern leaves you feeling worse about your body and yourself than before you started.
Stacie takes a holistic approach to examine not only the foods you love and the foods you eat, but your health and your story as an eater. She’ll develop a comprehensive plan for you and guide you anywhere you want to go, and you’ll get there together!