Psychology of Eating

The psychology of eating is a holistic approach aiming to explore and understand how we feed ourselves and our relationship to food and our body. In today's society, in most countries, weight and body image is a huge concern in the lives of the majority of us.
 

Here are some revealing data  from a study carried out in France by Ipsos in 2015:
 

– 1 out of 3 French don't see themselves physically as they really are
– 63% confess watching their weight
– A huge concern:50% talk about their weight often with their family, 40% with their doctor, 37% with their friends
– 44% have been on a diet before in order to loose weight.

It concerns 55% of women and 32% of men
– More than 1 French out of 4 (26%) have even been on more than one diet in their lives (4 on average)
– 58% of those who have been on a diet have not lost weight or at least not as much as expected
– 65% of those who have lost weight on a diet have largely gained it back

 

However, according to the same study, before starting a diet, most French people give themselves the means to succeed: 49%, and even 73% of obese people, have consulted a
specialist (dietician, nutritionist or doctor).
 

So how can we explain this failure encountered by a large majority of them?

 

41% of the French explain it by their feeling of frustration. 33% say they have had enough of not being able to enjoy the good things, and 32% have struggled to resist external temptations.
 

Therefore, it might be relevant to ask whether most of the diets out there are adapted. This is where the psychology of eating comes into play. Unlike most of the other approaches that focus mostly on calorie restriction, forbidding certain food and base their success on the amount of weight that is lost, the psychology of eating proposes to address people's challenges with food and body in a very different way.
Indeed, like any holistic approach, the person is considered as a whole with their past, traumas, beliefs, environment, etc.

 

Thus, there is no one size fits all diet and the attention is not focused solely on the nutritional aspect. Through regular coaching sessions, short or longer term, I help my clients finding more balance in their life and improving their relationship to life in general, which is often an analogy to their relationship with food and body.