Why Am I Eating This Now?
Your Life and Eating Aligned
LIVE Group Program
Have you ever wondered how you can be so good in other
areas of your life but not with food?
Have you tried stress coping tools like journaling,
meditating, and taking a walk but don’t really want to do those
things because they aren’t as satisfying as food, Ted Lasso, or both?
Do the bro habit “hacks” that rely on near total control of your schedule and life
not work for your unpredictable reality due to parenting/caregiving, work,
and late stage capitalism making everything so difficult?
My evidence-based, client proven “Why Am I Eating This Now” (WAIETN) process teaches you how to want to want to eat healthy in a sustainable way to feel remarkably better with your food and life, not just less stressed.
No white knuckling food required.
This group format provides an accelerated learning curve with the support and collaboration of a small group of bad joiners tackling similar challenges.
Registration is now closed
Navigate the Experience
Who Is This For?
WAIETN? is rooted in developmental psychology. It’s different than therapy or coaching yet will make therapy more effective and provide missing pieces to your healing puzzles.
The people who join hate small talk, are bad joiners, driven, have healthy skepticism, and food seems to be the one nut they can’t crack. We value depth, nuance, and wisdom. And we laugh!
This process requires a willingness to take small, manageable actions outside your comfort zone (You will break the all-or-nothing cycle for sustainable results so no GO BIG OR GO HOME energy here).
This Adult Development process IS NOT for you if:
- You have only recently embarked on a path of personal growth
- You are not currently in a position to invest in yourself financially
- You still think food is only about food and are currently unwilling/uncurious to do emotional work
- You want a quick fix, a plan, or more rules to try and follow
This process IS for you if your primary goals are to:
- Work on the root causes of why you turn to food.
- Learn a clear, efficient process to understand the murkiness and chaos of stress eating and resolve it with less to do, not more tools
- Put food in a mindful, not obsessive place in your life
- Stop wasting time and precious mental energy on food, never getting ahead of your overwhelm, and unsustainable solutions
- Get off the “all-or-nothing” train in your food and life and learn psychological flexibility
- You’re ready to invest emotionally and financially in high-level support to deeply awaken to the power you have to create a deeply fulfilling life, and the food falls into place as a side-effect
The Stress-Eating Cycle is about Psychological Safety
Stress eating happens when you worry about not being good or doing the bad thing. With food. And with your specific stressors.
It’s when you worry it looks like you’re trying too hard when you get the salad but aren’t thin enough.
It’s when you worry it looks like you aren’t trying hard enough when you order ice cream.
It also happens when you hop on social media and feel like you’re missing out and feel an insatiable desire for ice cream.
Or you’re out with friends and feel separate because of the life choices you’ve made to lean into loving your family or being an entrepreneur.
Or when you’re so overwhelmed, you don’t have the capacity for anything, other than the easy relief of your UberEats favorite.
You turn to food, if food is your thing, because of past patterns of how you learned to use food.
These learned patterns have gone on for so long they feel like who you are – someone who struggles with food, loves food too much, food addict – versus learned ways of using food.
And if you learned them, you can unlearn them.
Perhaps you were rewarded with food for accomplishments like good grades or after a softball game.
As an adult, this tracks to being hyper-productive and driving towards the next accomplishment. The exhaustion means you deserve ice cream and Netflix for getting through your daily grind.
Or perhaps growing up, your family dynamics or school (academically or socially), were really tough.
And eating out together as a family (or eating in secret) was the one time all hard feelings were forgotten.
As an adult, this tracks with needing a refuge from the unpredictability of when your schedule gets thrown a curveball. Again.
When childcare falls through. Or the relentless unpredictable nature, sadness, and grief of caretaking your ailing Mother.
Food is there like it’s always been to provide a stable refuge.
If you’ve ever felt the unstoppable pull to the fridge, or been on “automatic pilot” around food, that is an example of your historic patterns controlling you.
To stop stress eating is not about willpower, discipline, or more restriction.
It’s about becoming aware of your individual stress eating cycle and effectively interrupting this cycle by making choices that are aligned with your values.
Whether it’s stress from a work project or relationship conflict earlier in the day or week, you can learn how to resolve stress without food.
You’ll liberate yourself from stress eating while bringing more ease, fulfillment, and self-trust to your life.
Clockwise from the top…
1 — TRIGGER
Your kid’s school closed down. Your team member isn’t performing well. You didn’t hear back from your date. You start to spiral…
2 — STRESS REACTION
You “gear up” about what’s the right or wrong thing to do. You (unconsciously) choose between one of three reactions that have worked well in the past: Compete, Avoid, or Accommodate.
3 — BEHAVIOR
These three stress patterns generate choices that reduce anxiety but aren’t aligned with the resilience, freedom, and fulfillment you want. You find yourself irritated, frustrated, and further stressed because now you have your food choices to stress about.
4 — LOSS OF SELF TRUST
You then beat yourself up because you aren’t following through on what you want to be doing. With food and life. And nothing is changing. You believe the “you don’t have enough willpower or discipline” myth that feeds diet culture.
5 — LOOPS BACK TO TRIGGER
You become less resilient, more overwhelmed, and more all-or-nothing, as well as more frustrated and cruel with yourself.
6 — AUTO-PILOT EATING
The cycle repeats…
…and we’re back to the top.
How We’ll Break the Cycle
When food was coupled with your past stress experiences, you never learned how to actually work through your stress. Because growing up, you were at the mercy of what was normal to do. And, you didn’t have the same resources available that you do today, as a grown ass adult.
For example, when I was bullied in fifth grade, I was so ashamed I never told anyone. I started eating cinnamon raisin bagels as soon as I got home from school. This did not solve the problem!
But I grew up in the 80s/90s, the era known as “benign neglect”. No one “did feelings”. So neither did I! I didn’t know there was another way to manage this stress.
My emotional eating escalated because I still felt painfully separate. And now I was stressed about being out of control around food and my weight.
Had I actually told my parents, I could’ve alleviated enough of that separateness. As an adult, while I no longer fear being bullied, I can still feel a sense of separateness when I’m struggling.
Because of the WAIETN process, I know how to identify when I’m feeling separate, how to use those emotions to grow, and then identify what I need to dissolve my sense of separateness and stress.
Whether it’s from being an older Mom (I had my son at 41), or going through menopause before my peers (thanks to teenage cancer treatments), or even when I’m surprised I feel separate, I have the WAIETN process to come out
better from my stress.
At the heart of this work is discovering you have so many different choices in how you can handle your stress today. And stress can be productive, not an obstacle, to accomplishing your goals.
This three-month program draws deep into developmental psychology to guide you through the root-cause of why you stress eat, how to identify and resolve these patterns by infusing more relief, ease, and support into your stress to free you from your “white-knuckle” relationship with food.
The more aligned your life is with what you need and want, so goes your eating.
Why Am I Eating This Now? Live Group program is a safe space for curious skeptics to explore and transform why their frustrating eating makes sense and address the root-cause of the overwhelm that leads to stress eating.
MODULES
Each module acts as a lily pad to interrupt the stress eating cycle. This process is designed and proven to help you make life-changing connections that have been elusive for years and meaningful progress with your food and life goals. You’ll uncover:
- Lesson 1: Why eating self-sabotage and falling off the wagon make sense by discovering the four emotional triggers and rigid beliefs about how to handle your stress that cause you to turn to food
- Lesson 2: Your current patterns of handling stress, which make food worth it in the moment (but not afterward!) and life more overwhelming than necessary
- Lesson 3: How your Inner Critic is actually an Inner Protector and how this mindset shift repairs the self-trust you have in yourself around food for less rules. You’ll learn two key tools to stop turning to food (hint: it’s not about willpower)
- Lesson 4: How to support your nervous system to build your capacity so your stress doesn’t feel like high stakes and you have more choices in how to handle your stress so you don’t turn to food.
- Lesson 5: Discover your values-based Option C to soften your rigid belief of how you have to manage your stress, which both prevents stress and allows you to better manage stress for a more satisfying life and radical food freedom.
This also includes:
- Tools and practices in each lesson to guide you through the above process
6, 90 MINUTE Q&A CALLS (Times/Dates in FAQS)
In each call, I’ll do a live teaching summary of the lesson, break-out rooms to strengthen our sense of community and support, and then have plenty of time for Q&A and coaching to drastically shorten your learning curve. Adult learning is influenced by connection, safety, and experimentation. The live group format offers an invaluable environment for exponential growth and progress.
2, 30 MINUTE NERVOUS SYSTEM CALMING PRACTICES
Insatiable guests and esteemed collegues Stacey Ramsower and Ashley Neese will take you through somatic experiencing and breath work nervous system regulation experiences to support this part of interrupting the stress eating cycle. Both Stacey and Ashley are pursuing their Ph.Ds and are amazing bridges who can speak to the psychology and physiology of change.
24/7 ONLINE SUPPORT ON A PRIVATE COMMUNITY PLATFORM
You’ll be able to connect with others in our live WAIETN group and have support in between our Q&A calls in our private, easy to use, separate from social media and ad-free platform.
The Results
While everyone is different, side effects of this work include:
BEFORE | AFTER |
---|---|
Trying a “different” yet the same restrictive eating plan instead of getting to the emotional root causes | Eating and living more consistently with your goals because you think about food significantly less |
Seeing stress as a reason to put healthy eating and living on hold | Seeing stress and overwhelm as a chance to realize you have more choices to create your life on your terms and this leads to adult safety, making food obsolete |
Feeling trapped in the Deprivation-Guilt/“good”/”bad” eating cycle | Increasing freedom and relief as you realize discovering more satisfying, expansive choices is the solution and you dissolve the “track” |
Feeling like life is happening to you and out of your control | Awakening courage and confidence you didn’t know that you had or was available |
Thinking you are weak or broken based on food choices | Being kinder and more compassionate with yourself as you understand your eating makes sense. This opens the door for honest, not defensive, reflection. |
Self-monitoring and judgment around food and insecure life areas (i.e. job, dating, etc) | Dramatically less food noise and self-monitoring as you gain self-awareness and confidence that will improve every area of your life – even those that are already good |
Client Success Stories
“Why Am I Eating This Now? was the perfect program to show me how to stop crashing and burning.”
Read my story
“I stopped slipping with healthy eating and have the tools to keep going.”
Read my story
“I truly thought I’d never break free from emotional eating but I have.”
Read my story
“I’m empowered with tools to help me make balanced, healthy choices with not only food, but relationships, work and life in general.”
Read my story
“It’s not about the food!”
Read my story
“I wish I could bottle this feeling up and give it to everyone.”
Read my story
“In a way, betting the time and money on the course was like betting on myself.”
Read my story
“Ali has the rare gift of clarity.”
Read my story
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What are the dates/times for the 2023 WAIETN Live Group? and What's the time commitment each week?
What's the difference between the live and the self-study versions of Why Am I Eating This Now?
I really think I have a food addiction. Can this help?
I love your work Ali, I just don’t know if this will work for me.
I don’t know if I should do Why Am I Eating This Now? or wait till Truce with Food reopens.
Can I get reimbursed through my insurance?
I have gastritis, depression or trouble sticking with the food protocol I know I should. Will this program help me?
What is your completion rate?
I’m really busy. Can I fit this in?
I’m not really a group person. And I'm ashamed.
I want to believe this is truly different but I don’t want to waste anymore money on food and weight loss.
My problem is I'm a non-eater or I'm just really stressed and burnt out. Will this program help me?
How big is the group?
I’m in recovery from alcohol, attend 12-step meetings and see a therapist. I have attended food-based 12-step meetings and found them unhelpful. My fear is I will be learning things similar to what I’ve learned through psychotherapy and the 12 steps. Will this program benefit me?
Have a question not addressed here? Feel free to write to me:
My Personal Story
I thought I needed to be fixed when I entered the suburban strip mall Weight Watchers at 11 years old.
Learning how to effectively deal with my own food, health and life stress gave me the perspective, skills and tools to create a miraculous recovery from my cancer treatments, which included freeing myself from a decade of binge eating, depression and this year, getting pregnant at 40 after Western Medicine told me impossible. This ripple effect enabled me to leave my Corporate job and create a business and life where I am in choice and fulfilled in ways I never thought possible and am grateful for every damn day.