The advice to eat less and exercise more has become all too familiar for many women.

Yet despite following diets and exercise plans, lasting weight loss can still feel out of reach. According to Sharon Ries, coach-healer and founder of Life Axis, the reason is that weight loss is about far more than food and fitness.

“A weight loss journey is both an outer and an inner journey of self-change. Ideally, these two aspects need to complement each other.”

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She explained that many people unknowingly carry emotional patterns and beliefs that influence their relationship with food.

“It’s not poor discipline, weak willpower, or lack of commitment. Rather, if resistance to using highly effective tools like eating plans and exercise shows up, it’s a sign that something deeper and hidden needs to be understood and healed before healthier external behaviours can follow to achieve a weight loss goal.”

Drawing on more than a decade of experience helping people lose weight, as well as her own journey as an emotional eater, Ries said she has seen how unconscious resistance can prevent people from achieving the changes they consciously desire. “The body keeps the score,” she said, quoting psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk.

Ries believes eating is a biological, psychological, and deeply conditioned behaviour, not just a nutritional one. “The earliest layer is how we were conditioned around food as children. Many of us grew up with sweets used to stop tears or reward good behaviour, which quietly wires the brain to associate food with love, comfort, or approval – and not nutrition.”

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Ries said one of the most common emotional triggers she encounters is the feeling of being not enough or too much. “These feelings, in turn, affect our self-image, feelings of self-worth, personal power, safety and belonging, confidence, and even fear of failing, once again, along our weight loss journey.”

She explained that stress hormones can increase cravings for sugary and fatty foods, while emotions such as loneliness, frustration, boredom, resentment, and exhaustion often drive comfort eating or binge eating.

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“The way to recognise a trigger is to check if your urge to eat is driven by physical hunger or something else.”

To help people interrupt emotional eating patterns, Ries recommends the H-A-L-T self-care method. When a craving arises, people should ask themselves whether they are Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired before deciding to eat.

“They can then meet the real need, make a nutritious snack, take some deep slow breaths, vent to a journal or do some exercise, text a friend or call a family member, take a nap, and watch the urge disappear as soon as the true need is met.”

As part of women’s month, Ries is offering a complimentary ‘Is it really hunger?’ self-assessment. She described it as a reflective coaching tool, and not a clinical diagnostic instrument.

“This awareness can help to reveal what needs attention – at the level of emotions, beliefs, patterns, and identity – in the inner self-change process to accelerate the weight loss journey and more easily achieve and maintain goal weight.”

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