Irene Pace - Eat Like You Teach: How to Reset Your Weight and Reclaim Your Life

How to Reset Your Weight
and Reclaim Your Life

IRENE PACE, RD

NEW YORK

LONDONNASHVILLEMELBOURNEVANCOUVER

EAT LIKE YOU TEACH

How to Reset Your Weight and Reclaim Your Life

2020 Irene Pace, RD

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in New York, New York, by Morgan James Publishing in partnership with Difference Press. Morgan James is a trademark of Morgan James, LLC. www.MorganJamesPublishing.com

ISBN 9781642796896 paperback

ISBN 9781642796902 eBook

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019943714

Cover Design by:

Megan Dillon

Interior Design by:

Chris Treccani

www.3dogcreative.net

Emotions Wheel graphic by Geoffrey Roberts

All other graphics by W.T.L.Rathnasekara

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For my children Lacey, Daphne, and Hugh who engaged in the most creative and entertaining self-directed play while I wrote. I love you guys like crazy. My world is an infinitely better place with you in it.

For Bose who makes the best noise cancelling headphones on the market.

I dont have to know how to solve a problem in me. I just have to be willing to have a new experience. Practice observing. Practice acceptance. Practice willingness.

Tracy McMillian

B eing a nutrition professional who is struggling with eating sucks. Its not just about your pants not fitting or the mind games you play with yourself like you can almost feel your arteries slamming shut (true story) or its somehow okay because what youre impulsively eating is fruit and cottage cheese (also a true story). Its isolating, distracting, and it messes with your confidence, your identity, and your integrity. You dont turn to friends for support because youre their go-to for all things nutrition. Outing yourself to colleagues feels like career suicide (not to mention more shame than you could bear right now).

As your waistline grows, you feel like its the elephant in the room. Youre distracted in appointments, wondering if your clients are onto you. The word fraud invades your thoughts like that song you cant stand but cant get out of your head. Eating trouble is not only costing you your health and eroding your confidence, but its beginning to pick away at your sanity too.

I bet youve tried to figure this out. Maybe casually at first when you felt a little off-track. You tightened things up for a while. At some point you thought, Okay, I better do something about this. Time to get serious. Perhaps that looked like a highly detailed meal plan and tracking sheet or apps or both. Perhaps you went the route of expertly calculated macros and meal templates (but which ratios to use hmmm?). Perhaps, even though you know it never works, you said goodbye to bread or chocolate or cheese forever.

What would you give right now to have your eating back on track? To go to bed at night knowing youve got this (and your pants will fit in the morning)? To feel sharp and focused at work and enjoy time with your family and friends - free from the weight of this secret youve been hauling around?

This book serves to help you reset and experience what it feels like to get your eating back in alignment with your values and your identity. To put an end to creeping weight and the worry that goes along with watching your waistline grow. To let you know that youre not alone and to give you a clear plan from a trusted source to get back to living life the way that matters most to you.

Parts of you want to show up in the biggest of ways and do what you know needs to be done to see yourself through this. Other parts of you are afraid. What is this is going to look like? What if it doesnt work? What if you actually are a fraud? What if youre doomed to just keep eating like this and gaining weight and feeling like crap forever?

While I cant take your fear away, I can tell the part of you that is afraid this: I had the same fears and its ok to be afraid and do it anyway. It will be difficult but so worth it. The tools and system I share with you here are the ones I use to help myself and others like you. Every. Single. Day. One sure thing is that time will tick forward. You can pass that time continuing to do what you already know isnt working or you can try a different way. What youre doing now will always be there to go back to - anytime you choose.

Feeling conflicted is a normal, and even necessary, part of the change process. You know this and you see it in your clients all the time . Its different when it happens to you, right? It is, but it isnt. The question becomes, how can you feel conflicted and move forward anyway?

Let the part of you that wants to keep reading, help the part of you that is afraid. Its not exactly that easy, but the solution is a lot less complicated than you allow yourself to believe. It seems fitting that a big messy problem should have an equally complicated solution, right? I thought so, too.

Heres what I learned instead.

Consistent and persistent actions trump big grand gestures. Its the small actions that you take every day, every hour, every moment, that matter most. No choice is neutral. Each choice moves you towards or away from where you want to go and who you want to be. There is huge opportunity in that. Any moment is a chance to begin again. You get to cast little votes in favor of you over and over and over. The end game is to be consistent and persistent at taking actions that are best for your body, and your life. To, most of the time, choose the actions that serve you best.

If youre still here reading, I imagine you want to know how to do that. Welcome to my story and the strategies that changed my life. The principles in this book have the power to change your life too. You will see more clearly where you keep getting stuck. You will know a way though this is possible if you are willing to think differently and lean into discovering and following a path that is uniquely yours.

To begin, you get to figure out what works for you. What is best for you and your body and your life. In order to take consistent and persistent action on something, you have to know what that something is. You cant figure this one out in your head, sorry think-y folks. Youve got to try stuff. Get open to, and deliberate about, experiencing new things. Ill teach you a system to do just that.

Next, once you find what works for you, get consistent and persistent about doing it. Youll explore what helps you be more consistent and how to do more of that. Youll look at what gets in the way of you being consistent and how can you clear those obstacles from your path.

In ) youll get a deeper look at the solution and learn about building an Owners Manual for yourself. A set of handling instructions for your body and your life that open the door for you to care for yourself like someone you are responsible for caring for.