The Archetype Diet: Reclaim Your Self-Worth and Change the Shape of Your Body

How Your Mind Shapes Your Body   “I know what I’m supposed to eat, but I just can’t seem to lose weight.”   This is the most common refrain I hear from my female clients. As a board-certified nutritionist and functional medicine practitioner with of­fices in Manhattan and Los Angeles, I have worked with more than three thousand women of all ages, sizes, and socioeconomic backgrounds. These clients come to me because, no matter what they do, they can’t seem to change the shape of their bodies and are plagued by physical ailments from lack of energy to breakouts to perpetual bloating. They’ve tried every diet, detox, and exercise program under the sun, and while they might achieve some measure of success, they inevitably plateau or succumb to old habits that caused them to gain weight in the first place.   These are educated women who know that eating pizza and drinking soda won’t help them lose weight. At the same time, they’re ashamed that their appearance matters so much to them. Shouldn’t they, as empowered, twenty-first-century women, be focusing on their careers and their families instead of stressing over a bit of belly fat or the shape of their thighs?   This is where traditional diet plans fail most women. They focus ex­clusively on the physical—what and how much to eat—without acknowl­edging the role that your emotions play in helping you stick to a plan. Losing weight (and keeping it off) is only partly a physical process. Yes, what you eat (or don’t eat) matters, but the main reason so many women struggle with food (despite knowing better) is psychological.   In the more than ten years that I’ve been working with women, I have found that the number one factor that determines whether a woman will succeed on her diet—and be able to sustain it over time—is where she sources her self-worth from. Whether she’s a successful woman who re­wards herself with a glass of wine (or three) every night after another long day at the office, or a kind and caring woman who finds herself in the kitchen at ten p.m. eating leftovers because she didn’t have time to sit down and eat a real meal since everyone else’s needs came before her own, these women have developed a dysfunctional relationship with food that prevents them from achieving their goals—dietary and otherwise. It may sound like a stretch—how is it possible that our feelings about ourselves can so profoundly affect what our body looks like or how much fat we put on—but time and again I’ve seen this pattern in my clients.   Here’s what I mean. How you feel affects how you behave—including the way you eat—and the results eventually show on your body. You al­ready know this intuitively. When you feel worthy of love and acceptance, you radiate confidence and energy and move through the world with ease. You take pleasure in caring for yourself and are more present and purpose­ful in the choices you make, dietary and otherwise. When your self-worth takes a nosedive because you think you are not pretty enough or smart enough or simply not good enough, you retreat into patterns that you hope will make you feel better but rarely do. You might skip meals, comfort eat, reward eat, or restrict food to compensate for these feelings—and then beat yourself up for not being more disciplined. Before long, you’ve given up on even the best-laid diet plan.   The way we source our self-worth is determined very early in our lives, typically in childhood, and is therefore so fully integrated into our identi­ties that it can be difficult, if not impossible, to see how it drives our be­havior. If you believe that your value as a person depends on some external factor—like good looks, intelligence, making others happy, or being unique—you will always be drawn to behave in ways that you think will increase that value and this will often influence how you approach food.   Through my work with clients, I have found that there are four pri­mary ways that women derive their self- worth which I have distilled into four essential archetypes. Archetypes, as defined by Carl Jung, are pat­terns of instinctual behavior. The first archetype is the Nurturer, who val­ues herself on her ability to care for others. While this is a lovely and much-needed trait, if she is not conscious of her behaviors, she can end up prioritizing other people’s needs and feelings to the point where she is depleted and exhausted. The second archetype is the Wonder Woman, who is a powerful female that derives her sense of self from what she has achieved in life. But, in her quest to not be a “nobody,” she can become overwhelmed and emotionally disconnected from others. The third ar­chetype is the sensual and playful Femme Fatale, who sources her self- worth from her physical body. This can make her incredibly alluring—but debilitatingly self-conscious. The fourth archetype is the Ethereal, who is dreamy and creative but highly sensitive to the world, making her feel discombobulated and anxious.   Each of the archetypes embody a particular set of personality traits— positive and negative. The problem occurs when the primary archetype starts to hijack your actions and thoughts to the exclusion of other things that make for a balanced life. The more dominant your archetype is (i.e., the more your sense of self-worth is wrapped up in one particular facet of your life), the more its negative attributes will show up in your behaviors as you seek to validate yourself by acting in a way that supports your self-worth.   In many cases, this behavior will affect your approach to food as well. For example, if you’re a Wonder Woman and measure your value through your accomplishments, you may work through dinner in an effort to meet a deadline or check one more task off your to‑do list. When your stomach starts rumbling at nine p.m., you’ll order Thai takeout and then kick yourself ten minutes later for sabotaging your diet. The next day, when the pressure of work starts building yet again, you’ll repeat the cycle; your sense of self-worth and the emotions associated with it have won out, yet again, over your rational mind.   Traditional diet programs focus on how your eating behaviors affect your body—change your behavior, change your body shape—but they fail to consider the beginning of the behavior cycle. Yes, if you eat nutrient-dense foods that rebalance your hormones and help your body function properly, you will lose weight. But if you don’t change how you use food (e.g., as a reward, distraction, desensitizer, comfort, or punishment), and more important, why you use food in this way, you will eventually revert to eating the same way you always have, ending up frustrated because you “know better.” You can’t master step three in the cycle until you understand how you got there. You need to start at step one—understanding where you source your self-worth from—if you want to have a balanced relationship with food and yourself.   Although every woman is unique, my work with my female clients has helped me identify certain patterns within each archetype. Specifi­cally, women who source their self-worth from the same place tend to approach food in similar ways. In practical terms this means that, if they are out of balance and using food as a coping mechanism, they tend to suffer from the same physical imbalances and gain weight in the same way.   This discovery—the link between self-worth and body shape—made me realize that there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all diet plan. Women need customized programs in order to address their distinct goals and challenges from both a physical and a psychological perspec­tive. That is why I developed the Archetype Model, a road map of what to eat for weight loss, vitality, hormonal balance, and an overall sense of well-being. At its core, this model, which has become the foundation for how I treat all of my female clients, is about understanding why you eat the way you do (by identifying your archetype) and how that behavior affects your body. Then you adopt a food plan designed specifically for your archetype. The model also gives you the tools to examine how you came to source your self-worth in a particular way so you can free your­self from the hold that these beliefs had on you. The Archetype Model addresses the body and the mind, and it’s all backed up by science and psychology.