In this video, I describe what I’ve observed as the link between perfectionism in our relationships to food and our bodies, and the perfectionism we experience in the ways that we learn and grow.
From my many years guiding women to freedom from paralysing perfectionism in their food and eating, as well as in how their bodies look, I’ve observed something interesting… The way we experience food and our bodies mirrors the way we learn and grow.
The small groups of women I support throughout my 3-month FAB Freedom program embark on opening themselves to a revolutionary approach to their food-and-body lives, and, from there, their whole lives. I’ve observed the cycles of learning that typically occur through this growth process: the moments of freedom and inspiration – growth spurts! – followed by slower times of facing frustration as the road feels rockier, followed by another blossoming phase.
When we experience imbalances in food and body – either eating or judging ourselves as eating too much or too little, or weighing too much or too little – these imbalances are echoed in our whole lives. We tend to approach learning with similar black-and-white approaches. We judge ourselves as not learning fast enough, or doing a good enough job. And then, overwhelmed at the high bars we set for ourselves, we stop learning altogether, feeling hopeless that we’ll ever be good enough.
In my programs, I regularly communicate my belief that a relaxed, “good enough”, consistent, little-and-often approach to learning allows us to create new brain-pathways that positively transform our experience.
Through our schooling, we’ve been programmed to compare our path to others – stick with the program! – and yet we are all unique in our learning styles.
As women who have struggled with challenging relationships with food, it is vital that we respect and honour our own natural pace of learning, “digesting” only what feels like the right quantity for us in one sitting, going only as deep into each exercise as we wish to go, and then moving on without having to “get perfect” beforehand.
As our relationship with food and our body relaxes, so too do our experiences of learning and growth… and with that change, our whole world – both inner and outer – opens up to us, in all it’s strange, magnificent, changeable glory.
