Is Your Inner Rebel Blowing Your Diet AGAIN?

Today, I want to introduce you to her (even) less mature although somewhat more entertaining younger sister, our inner Rebel.

Both of these show up as disempowering voices within each of us.

No one is immune from them although they manifest differently based on our inherent personality and our upbringing.

It’s crucial to be able to identify the voices of our Critic and Rebel in order to be able to separate them from the voice of our authentic, wise, grounded, capable, rational self.

When we fuse with the Rebel and the Critic and allow them to dominate our thoughts, it feels like we’re off-kilter (at the very least) or spinning, completely unbalanced, and out of control (at their extreme).

We eat, drink, check FB, shop (whatever your addiction) to distract us from the incessant drone of the Critic, and the tension she creates.

In order to get a handle on those behaviors, we have to recognize when these disempowering voices start calling the shots.

When it comes to weight, no amount of rational “vowing to stop eating” or “starting a new diet plan” is going to override the wiring driving our conflicting behavior.

None.

Unconscious programming always wins.

That’s the way we’re designed.

That’s why every “new plan” ends just like every other “new plan” that came before. Wherever we go, there we are, as long as our Rebel and Critic are driving the bus.

Our Critic’s role is to keep us playing small, to keep us safely living just under our growth edge. She works in an underhanded, subconscious, passive-aggressive way.

She’s both a nagging, hopeless, “why bother” feeling and a tape running through our mind reminding us of all the “reasons” why we can’t do something.

She’s the reason Prozac exists. Depression, fear, and anxiety are her fortes. Imposter Syndrome is her specialty.

She keeps us spinning and “getting ready to get ready to get ready”. She reminds you that no matter what, we’re not quite good enough yet to leap.

Better take another course, check Facebook, update our Linkedin profile, stall a while longer…

As long as you’re paralyzed, you’re safe in her eyes.

She fully subscribes to the promise that the devil you know is way safer than the devil you don’t.

Our Rebel, on the other hand, is way more obvious in her undermining insanity.

Most women can identify her when she chimes in. She’s like the quirky friend that we avoid when we are “being good” because she’s oh so fun to be “bad” with.

She provides a welcome relief from the internal tension caused by the underhanded voice of the Critic.

Our Rebel feels like the sly grinning devil on one shoulder urging us to throw caution to the wind and just “Fck it”.

We can only (dysfunctionally) operate under the tension of the Critic for so long.

Then we cave to the Rebel’s urging us to break the rules (especially the ones we’ve set for ourselves because it’s usually our Critic that made the rules to begin with).

We all have our own unique Rebel but when it comes to women who struggle with weight, some of their Rebel’s favorite lines are, “You can start again Monday”, “Just this once”, and “It’s not fair”.

When we heed our Rebel’s urging to throw caution to the wind and deal with it all “tomorrow”, we experience momentary relief from the Critic’s incessant tormenting and her constant reminder that we’re “not yet good enough”.

But…

Heeding the Rebel’s urging to break the rules always turns up the Critic’s volume.

The problem isn’t so much in the Rebel urging us to “misbehave”, it’s in her ability to provoke our inner Critic.

And their dance continues…

Keeping us from ever quite achieving what it is that we truly desire.

This really unhealthy codependent relationship between the two inside our mind is what turns the Rebel’s “one bite” into the Critic’s “all or nothing thinking”.

This dance makes that one bite turn into a whole bunch of dieter’s drama that leads to one week, then one month, then longer “getting ready to get ready to find the willpower to get back on plan”.

It’s so easy to buy into their drama and lose our objective ability to step back and watch their BS for what it is.

We lose our ability to separate into our wise authentic mind because they hijack our rational frontal cortex.

When that happens, we follow them into their predictable disempowering spin over and over again.

So what’s the solution?

The first step is to recognize your personal drama triggers.

For most women, their triggers are collective stress like natural disasters, Covid, etc, the internal stress of hitting an upper limit, leaning out over your growth edge, getting triggered in that predictable yet disempowering way by your spouse, peer, boss, or a complete stranger, and coming up against a competing commitment.

Particularly persistent Critics are protecting us (although it’s a very misguided attempt at protection) from something that they believe will happen based on something that’s happened in the past.

The reason it doesn’t work to override their insanity with our rational brain is because the Critic and her misguided fear are not housed in the same part of the brain as our ability to recognize her craziness.

The Empowered Craving Freedom Method I use with my clients targets the unconscious programming of our Critic at its source freeing my women from their incessant cravings and frustrating behavior around food!

Want to learn more? i invite you to join my free Facebook group where I cover this and a whole lot more. 🦋

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