Have you ever said or thought this... “I’ll just lose those last __ lbs then I’ll be happy” or “If I could just lose __ lbs then I would finally love my body!”  I can remember having these thoughts and saying things like this at least once or twice a week.  In this episode, I’ll be discussing how tying your happiness to your weight can have more of a negative impact on your body, health, and quality of life than you may realize. I can tell you, it didn’t help me one bit, in fact, it made things even harder when it came to food and exercise.  I’ll be talking about a few things I feel need to be addressed on this issue like... Where did all of this come from?  Think about it. It’s everywhere you look, tv, internet, radio. We’re fed by the diet industry from a young age that there’s a very specific way our body should look, a culturally ideal body, and once we look that way then this whole new, wonderful world opens up to us, we feel great about our body, we become happy, healthy, accepted, loved, successful… so naturally, we strive for that. I’m about to tell you it’s a bunch of BS right there. I know, tough pill to swallow...BUT it needs to stop because it’s not only ruining our relationship with food and our bodies, it’s now hitting the younger generation and I’ll talk a bit more about that in this episode too.     How it triggers destructive behaviors around food and exercise?   Seems if we don’t look like that culturally “ideal body”,then we’re taught our body is the enemy, it’s not good enough and it needs to be fixed and changed. With all that is out there to “help fix us” ( we’re not broken) it leads to unhealthy behaviors that can have some long-term effects on our overall health.    How to overcome these thoughts and strive for true health and/or sustainable weight loss   It all starts with your approach and your thoughts. You can still want to lose weight and that’s fine, but fighting against the body and forcing change isn’t a smart or healthy strategy. Neither is putting living your best life on hold until you look a certain way. You CAN be happy right now without even losing your first pound ( trust me on this one. I explain it more in detail in the podcast)    PLUS...MUCH MORE.  So dive in and take a listen.