WTF is a Mind Body Eating Coach?

I am super excited to be a Certified Mind Body Eating Coach trained at the Institute for the Psychology of Eating!

As I discussed in my post, Who the Fuck Needs a Life Coach, not everyone is familiar with professional coaching, so it’s sometimes necessary to explain what coaching is, how it works, and who coaching can help.  Beyond that, it may be easy to identify what a business coach, nutrition coach, or fitness coach does – and who might hire them – but what the fuck is a Mind Body Eating Coach?

I’m glad you asked!

While an eating coach might sound like someone Joey Chestnut would hire, a Certified Mind Body Eating Coach helps people who struggle with weight, body image, low-energy, digestive issues, or compulsive eating behaviors like stress eating, overeating, and binge eating.  

Mind Body Eating Coaching (MBEC) addresses the nutritional aspect of what’s going on for the client, but our sessions also focus on the personal, emotional, and psychological aspects of what may be driving unwanted eating behaviors.

MBEC training is a nine-month course of study focused on Mind Body Nutrition, and Dynamic Eating Psychology. According to the school’s founder, Marc David, “Mind Body Nutrition takes the science of nutrition to a whole new place, and Dynamic Eating Psychology is a positive, results-oriented approach to eating concerns that speaks to heart, mind and soul.”

A Certified Mind Body Eating Coach is not going to offer you a specific eating plan, nor exercise program, though she may help you create one specific to your body.  MBE Coaching helps clients get to the root of why we do the things we do, and why we do what we don’t want to do.

This unique approach offers a pathway to finally heal our relationship with food and body that is different from anything I’ve ever experienced, and I’m willing to bet most of my readers have never tried anything like this before either.

So WHO might hire a Mind Body Eating Coach?

Those who will benefit from Mind Body Eating Coaching are those who wish to:

  • Replace endless dieting with lifelong nourished eating.
  • Release unwanted, or compulsive eating behaviors.
  • Find a natural and sustainable way of eating that suits their own body.
  • Savor life instead of rushing from one moment to the next.
  • Feel confident in the skin they’re in, instead of feeling worried about what they weigh.

Here’s what my current clients are saying about Mind Body Eating Coaching:

“Even though I have had only 2 coaching sessions with Cyndi, I cannot believe what a difference it has already made with myself as a whole. The week following my first session was amazing. I was able to actually have calm peaceful moments, (which I have not had since my husband passed almost 3 years ago). I am so looking forward to where my next sessions lead me.” ~ ST in Vallejo

After only two months, my insatiable desire to snack after dinner is almost completely gone. I can’t believe it was this easy. I thought I was eating a healthy low fat diet, and it turns out THAT was why I couldn’t stop snacking! I’m eating more food, and I am starting to release excess weight!” ~ SL in San Francisco

“Cyndi is a great coach- she’s patient with her clients as they learn.  She’s funny, insightful, informative and easy to work with. I like how she celebrates the smallest “aha” moments as she guides you in your journey.” ~ PC in Vallejo

“Cyndi has been very helpful in keeping me focused and keeping me grounded and bringing me back to earth when I lose it. She has taught me a lot about enjoying what I’m eating and being mindful when it’s meal time. I derive great enjoyment from our sessions. I find them very useful and Cyndi very uplifting” ~ BK in Pinole

Please forward this blog post to anyone you know who might like to:
– Replace endless dieting with lifelong nourished eating.
– Release unwanted, or compulsive eating behaviors.
– Find a natural and sustainable way of eating that suits their own body.
– Savor life instead of rushing from one moment to the next.
– Feel confident in the skin they’re in, instead of feeling worried about what they weigh.

What do you have to lose?

Grow on!

If you’re considering hiring a coach, please use THIS LINK to schedule a chat to see if I’m the right coach for you!

Stop and Smell the Fucking Roses

Today would have been my grandmother’s one hundred eleventh birthday. She’s been gone since the late nineties, and I still miss her, but I never focus on her being gone.  I always think how blessed I was to have her wonderful energy in my life.  

Life is full of challenges that demand our time and energy. Sometimes they grab our attention so hard that for awhile that challenge is all we can think about. In our minds, we slow time and chew our options.  The subject constantly pops up uninvited. We may lie awake at night turning it over and over. When it slips out of mind, we almost reach to bring it back because we miss the familiar vibration.

I want us to learn to savor every blessing, every success, every step achieved toward our goal, every tiny triumph with the same single-minded focus that we use to worry!

Why?

The things that we look at, and think about are the things life brings us.

When we focus on hardship or challenge, Life brings us hardships and challenges.  When we focus on what we love and enjoy, Life brings us love and enjoyment. I want us to celebrate everything we love, and get infinitely MORE to love.

I want us to stop and smell the fucking roses!

I feel like roses are literally an invitation from Life to slow down enough to enjoy what’s right in front of us. Not all roses have scent anymore since they have been bred for beauty, so when we find a scented rose, it’s a moment to enjoy.  Let’s stop and enjoy it!

We’re always in such a hurry to rush into the next challenge that we often forget to celebrate finding a solution for the previous challenge. We can get so focused on the larger puzzle that we fail to give ourselves credit for all the pieces we’ve already fit neatly into place.  

If we have a goal to take a fabulous vacation, I invite us to enjoy thinking about it every chance we get! We want to enjoy exploring the area with Google image searches. We want to research fun places to stay, and activities we might enjoy and imagine ourselves being there.  We want to savor the trip long before it begins!

Equally, we can savor the trip long after it ends.  The moments that brought the greatest joy can be brought back to enjoy and appreciate until the day we die, if we invite them in to lift our hearts and delight us again.  We want to milk those special moments for all the pleasure, all the upliftment we can get.

If we have a goal to drop some excess weight, I invite us to celebrate every step in that direction.  Make a different choice for breakfast?  Do a happy dance! Stick to our food plan for the day?  Celebrate! Did we slow down to be present with our meals? That’s a HUGE win!  Woo hoo!  

Why wait to celebrate once the whole goal is reached, when we have the opportunity to create MORE success by acknowledging and celebrating every decision in service of that goal? When we applaud every step we make in that direction, Life brings us more success to applaud.

When we slow down to appreciate the roses, we get more roses.

Grow on!

In what ways do you celebrate success?
What milestones are you ready to celebrate?

My Lucky Day!

I read an article somewhere about 40 years ago that explained that people who expected bad luck on Friday the 13th often found bad luck, while those who did not expect bad luck rarely find that Friday unlucky.  I decided then and there the I would not expect bad luck on Friday the 13th.  I took it one step further when I decided to dub Friday the 13th my own personal lucky day.  Since then I have had many happy encounters on Friday the 13th, in fact my first child was conceived on Friday the 13th.

Around that same time I also read an article that explained that symmetry was one of the markers for beauty in human faces.  The more symmetrical the face, the more attractive other humans find it.  In fact currently Wikipedia says “Facial symmetry has been found to increase ratings of attractiveness in human faces. More symmetrical faces are perceived as more attractive in both males and females, but facial symmetry plays a larger role in judgments of attractiveness concerning female faces.”

I agreed with the concept when they trotted out photos of beautiful celebrities and started measuring and comparing the two sides of their face.  Symmetry is wonderful indeed.  Nature is symmetrical in many beautiful ways.  Symmetrical lines of architecture always draw my camera’s lens.

When I woke with Bell’s Palsy, that long-ago article was the first thing that came to my mind.  My next thought was, “I’m no longer beautiful,”  because my face was completely asymmetrical.

My smile opened many doors to me in the first fifty years of my life.  It was difficult to imagine my life could ever be the same or that people would ever see me the same magical, privileged way I had been seen when I had my symmetrical beauty.

I mistakenly believed that my value, my worth, was intrinsically tied to my physical beauty. Once I began working with my amazing energy coach, I began to see that my worth was intrinsic. My value had nothing to do with my smile.  My beauty emanates from my core vibration, not my face.  This shift in perspective improved my life in more ways than I can say.

It must be my lucky day!  After all these years it finally occurred to me that if I can just decide that Friday the Thirteenth is lucky for me, then I can just decide that asymmetry is beautiful.

Grow on!

What thoughts/beliefs/perspectives are you currently holding onto that do not serve you?
In what ways is that thought/belief/perspective limiting you?

Feel good NOW!

Most of us know that when we look good, we tend to feel good.
But are you aware that the opposite is also true?

When we feel good, we look good.

Think about a time when you felt really great about yourself.  How much more comfortable were you in your own skin?  How powerful and confident did you feel?  When we feel accomplished, triumphant, successful, truly loved, filled with purpose – of course we look better.  Our body chemistry is completely different than when we feel confused, failed, unloved, directionless, or under attack.

It is common in this world, I have noticed, for people who are reaching for a weight-loss goal to try to reach that goal by forcing, harassing, restricting, stressing, pushing, and hating themselves.  

It is also common to decide that the body is not right by societal standards, so it must not be liked, in fact it must be hated.  We feel we must hate the body into submission, hate our eating issues for making us fat, hate food for being so fattening and delicious at the same time, hate our appetite, flog ourselves at the gym until we finally reach a weight where we will feel better about ourselves, or just give up entirely and eat for solace because we are so damned imperfect.

If any of this resonates for you, you’re not alone! 

Somehow this crazy world has conditioned us (brainwashed us through media propaganda, and advertising campaigns designed to sell a magic fix for bodies that are not right by societal standards) to believe that we must hate ourselves until we reach their standards.  To which I feel compelled to reply:

Fuck. Their. Fucking. Standards.

I invite you to join me in saying, “Fuck their standards.” 

If they don’t like my body, FUCK them.  Because you know what I decided to do?  I decided to approve of my body right now.  I decided that their standards are fucking stupid, and they do not appeal to me, so they do not apply to me because I am the authority on what is fucking beautiful in my life.  

Why?  Cause it’s my life. 

Their judgements only count if I give them validity and I just revoked their right to decide anything for me.  I choose to decide for myself.  I invite each of you to step into your own power and decide for your self what is beautiful in your life, because who the fuck are THEY anyway?  Who are they to judge ME unworthy? 

I am a child of God, a conduit of Divine love and light, and I will not dim my light to allow them to feel comfortable in my presence!

They want me to feel diminished, unworthy, and powerless so that they can grow rich and feel better about themselves. Fuck that! And while we’re at it, fuck the collective ‘them’ who believes they are anyone’s authority on what is good and right and beautiful.

If we feel more beautiful when we are feeling truly loved, then what POWER we wield when we choose to truly love ourselves as we are, without waiting for the approval of others.

I choose to feel my true divinity flowing through me.  I choose to feel confident and powerful.  And every time I feel the Divine Truth of Who I am, I look fucking amazing.

photo by donnio, on a day when i felt GREAT and it shows.

Grow on!

  • What is stopping you from feeling good about you NOW? 
  • What baby steps can you take toward loving yourself more now?
  • What kind of example do you want to set for your children and grandchildren?
  • Each time you become aware that negative self-talk arises,
    what can you say to remind yourself to move gently back in the direction of self-love?

Be Your Own Best Friend!

Have you ever told your best friend that she looked fat in her outfit, or that she needs to drop a few pounds?  Have you ever looked your best friend in the eye and told her she should be ashamed of her body or her weight?  No?

Then why the fuck would you do it to You?

Have you ever looked at an infant with her chubby knees and thought, “I just can’t love someone with all that fat!”  I seriously doubt it.  

So why do we withhold love from ourselves, or shame ourselves for fat on our body?  Why would we hold ourselves to a higher standard of perfection?  How possible is it to love ourself the way we love our friends?

Hate does not help.  Hate does not motivate.  Hate does not inspire.

If we perceive that someone does not like us, we often feel wounded, or hurt.  It is no less painful when the disapproval comes from self!  Disapproval of self can damage the psyche, delay healing, and derail our goals.  

We cannot hate ourselves into loving our body, and as a wise client recently reminded me, we cannot heal what we hate.  If we live in a home we hate, how much effort will we put into repairing it?  Same goes for our body!  If we have a body transformation goal, how much effort are we willing to put in if we constantly tell ourselves the body is unlovable as it is, and needs to be fixed?

Next time you look at yourself appraisingly, give yourself as much love and support as you would give your best friend!  Next time you get a little off track with your plan, or goals, try gently encouraging yourself back on track rather than belittling or berating yourself for a perfectly normal human moment.  

Perfection is a damaging illusion, a standard to which we rarely hold others, yet frequently try to hold ourselves. Our body transformation goals cannot manifest when we are under attack.

What will it take to treat you like your own best friend?

Grow on!

Practice looking in the mirror and telling that beautiful human how MUCH you love them. This is challenging for many people, so don’t give up. Persist with the practice of telling you that you love you, more often than you tell yourself negative messages.

Next time you catch yourself saying something mean to self, pretend you caught yourself saying it to your friend, or your child. What would you do? I might hug them and apologize and promise to be more intentional as often as possible moving forward.

Make a list of everything that you appreciate about your body! Our body is a miracle that we often take for granted. We can be so grateful for our lungs that breathe without any effort, a heart that beats for our lifetime, and so much more! We cannot focus appreciation and disgust onto the same object at the same time, so keeping this list handy can help when we are feeling frustrated with our body in some way.