Have you ever put off the following because of your size?
- buying yourself nice clothes
- getting a shorter haircut/highlights
- booking travel
- setting fitness goals (like hiking to a beautiful spot)
- speaking kindly to yourself
- eating and moving in a way that feels good
If you said “yes” to any of these, you may be holding yourself back in your weight loss fantasy. You deserve these things NOW – and this post will show you how to bring yourself toward them.
Many women put their lives on hold until they are 20, 30, 50, or 100 pounds lighter. On the one hand, holding on to the fantasy can provide a source of hope that life will be better when you are lighter. But for many clients, this hope is actually a self-limiting belief in disguise. It force them to live life with the constant guilt of managing on-again, off-again diets. And they’re not alone.
Research shows that diets don’t work sustainably for most who try. The mindset of “just one more try” keeps many women from actually meeting their mental, physical, and emotional needs now. The No More Guilt Framework was built to change that. I show clients how to eat, move, and feel confident in ways that feel effortless. We do this work by taking the focus off weight and size and move it toward behaviors and mindset that ACTUALLY work to improve your health and wellbeing. This means you learn to enjoy and live your life RIGHT NOW – not “when I lose weight.”
My clients want the act of taking care of themselves to feel like “second nature”, instead of restriction, guilt, and shame.
Waiting to live your life until you are smaller stops you from respecting and enjoying life in your here-and-now-body
And after nearly 3 decades of trying to lose weight, my client Jessica knew it was time to work toward something new.
Jessica called me because she was struggling with “binge eating, eating without connection to my body, always thinking about and planning weight loss goals and feeling shame and guilt around food. I was looking for help because I knew this was not healthy and it felt consuming in ways I did not want to be consumed.”
Like all my clients, Jessica had her reservations about working with someone. She had “failed” many diets – and she didn’t want to feel like that again. Plus, it can feel vulnerable to talk about food and body image.
On her discovery call, we spent time making sure my style, approach, and philosophy were a match for her goals. Jessica reflected on this intro conversation after her graduation from the No More Guilt program saying, “After I had the initial call with her, [Melissa] came across passionate about the work, warm, and optimistic. I didn’t have any hesitations going in as I had spoke to a few coaches trying to find the right fit and in my gut I knew I needed to learn more about my relationship with food and my body”
Jessica started coaching with me during the start of the pandemic. As it has for all of us, this time added to a feeling of uncertainty. Despite this, through many disruptions to her “normal life” – Jessica was able to benefit from our work together. As a result of moving her through my No Guilt Framework, Jessica says she has benefitted in the following ways:
1. I am able to recognize diet culture much more easily
2. My relationship with my food and body is much stronger including feeling my hunger and knowing the reason I am eating in different situations
3. Working together helped me normalize some of my struggles and feel less alone in them
4. I was able to let go of a fantasy of losing an extreme amount of weight and my life starting when I did. These thoughts still pop up in milder ways now but I can see through them
I am so inspired by Jessica’s work in the 1:1 No More Guilt coaching program. She now has skills that will continue to respect her body that will grow for a lifetime. My clients go from stuck in diet fantasies to enjoying their lives completely free of food guilt – and you can too. Learn more about Jessica’s program here.
