Successful weight loss can be an elusive goal for many.

Jill Bennett appears to have a handle on it.

She tried every diet and supplement in her 20s. And then at 35, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

“I was unbelievably body-obsessed,” she said.

“I never felt good about myself, always felt that I was fat, but I wasn’t.”

Adding to her woes, she was a former national-level sprint hurdler and a personal trainer.

She struggled to reconcile the cancer diagnosis with her self-image.

“[After cancer] I would say that I became very detached from my body because I felt very betrayed by my body,” she said.

“More than anything else, I was probably in an identity crisis because I was a fitness trainer who had cancer.

“I didn’t know how to work with anybody about their health because I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone about health. I told myself I got cancer, so therefore I’m not healthy.”

After two surgeries, the penny dropped.

“We become disconnected for all sorts of reasons — work, life, trauma, technology. Healing is about reconnecting the mind and the body. Everything changes when we work to reintegrate, including weight.

“My whole process was making peace with having cancer and what I found was that anybody struggling with weight loss, injuries, disease, anything — it’s the same thing.

“It’s hard to have a relationship with your body when you feel betrayed by it. Weight didn’t seem to matter any more. I still ate healthfully, but I never dieted again.

“When I focused on it, I struggled a lot, but when I stopped, I didn’t have any problems.

“Oftentimes when people lose the most weight is when they’re not paying attention to it.”

The 44-year-old is now a holistic personal trainer.

For the past five years her clients have called on her more often for help with injuries, surgeries, disease and recovery, than weight loss.

Her belief is they’re all part of the same problem — a disconnect between mind and body.

To counteract that, she holds a four-part workshop, Healing Emotional Eating.

It helps participants explore their eating behaviours, exercise habits, food addiction and other common inhibitors.

“I always say, it’s not about the food, but it’s not not about the food, because we need to understand our unconscious drives,” she said.

Those who attend can expect to learn more about various types of eating habits. The “careful eater”, for example, is a slave to the nutrition label; the “professional dieter” has tried every fad.

Ms Bennett said it’s important to realise that each person has a “different operating system”.

“If you’re compliant, the chances of you meeting your goals are strong.

“If you’re more of a defiant person, the chances are slimmer because you’re actually going to defy your own goal that you’ve set.

“I want to understand my own hardwiring so that I can enjoy life better and I want to help other people understand their hardwiring.

“There’s a lot more going on than just goal-setting and achieving.

“Self-sabotage is as common as the common cold. I often say it’s one of my favourite topics because I do it and I want to understand it better.”

Her experience brings the benefit of uncovering “hidden belief systems” and “unconscious limitations” that prevent people from reaching their goals.

“Genetics, for example, seems like an insurmountable problem, but I believe that’s very limiting,” she said

“What happens if most of the family struggles with their weight and one person doesn’t? That makes it less about genetics and more about beliefs.

“It’s pretty limiting to say that genetics is to blame.

“How do you overcome that? You don’t.”

She encourages participants to look at the alternatives.

“I formed the course to help people understand their self-sabotage, live beyond it and understand some of the limiting beliefs that they’ve formed about themselves,” she said.

“I work with the mind-body connection.

“Our bodies are designed to heal and my experience is that as we continue to pay attention to the body in a healing way, it will heal.”

Healing Emotional Eating runs throughout the year. Contact Jill Bennett at Beyond Fitness or heyjbennett@yahoo.ca for private coaching.