Many of my clients have been caught up for decades in a never ending fight to control their appetites.

They’ve learned to override and ignore their hunger, and to restrict their food intake through the long list of diets they’ve tried.

These same women think about food almost non-stop. It’s nearly an obsession for them. They come to work with me because they feel tired and trapped, and they don’t know how to get out of it.

When I work with a client who is struggling with this, I’m clear from the get-go that the constant dieting and need to monitor and control is less about wanting to lose weight, and more about trying to create a sense of certainty.

Our nervous systems and our egos both prefer to know how everything is going to turn out. Nearly all of us would choose certainty over uncertainty if given the choice.

But as good as our best educated guesses are, there is so much we simply can’t know, and for many, this is terrifying.

We often respond to uncertainty with attempts to control the thing we feel the most uncertain about. If we can’t control that, we will try to control whatever we think we can control.

One place where so many of us like to exert control is around food, diet and eating.

If we can’t control what’s going to happen in one area of life, then surely we can control what we eat.

If we can control what, how much, or when we eat, then in some way we feel like we are in control.

But the thing is, we can’t actually sustain this kind of control.

Even if we follow the perfect diet, only eat specific types or amounts of food, and control our appetites and impulses as best as we can, eventually we’re going to slip up, eat the wrong foods, and then feel desperately out of control. Again.

Because as hard as we try, it is impossible to override our biological imperative to eat AND to derive pleasure from eating itself.

So, how do we get out of this trap? The answer is bigger than letting go of the dieting mindset alone.

The only way to transcend this inner battle with food and appetite is to befriend the thing we are most terrified to befriend: the mystery of life itself.

As we make friends with all that we can’t know and all that we can’t control, we come to realize there is a beauty in not knowing.

There is a perfection in allowing life to unfold as it will. There is a poetry in surrendering our need for certainty and instead trusting our ability to meet whatever life brings our way.

As you deepen in your ability to navigate the ups and downs and the unknowns in life with greater trust, you will need to control your body and hunger less and less.

As you learn to make friends with the mystery of life itself, you can learn to lean into the wisdom of your appetite, and the true gift that it is.

As you grow into a woman who honors her body and her hunger, you will begin to see how much of your life force was caught up in trying to control the impossible.

You’ll be free to channel that energy into living more fully and fluidly than ever before.

And that is a magnificent thing.